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The Guardian view on rare earths: it’s common sense to secure essential supply chains | Editorial

Outsourcing the industry to China cannot continue, but Europe knows it can no longer count on the US for a solutionThe alarm sounded 16 years ago. In 2010, China blocked exports of key rare earths to Japan in a row over disputed islands in the East China Sea. The critical minerals are essential to everything from advanced weaponry and iPhones to electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines, so the rest of the world took note. But it didn’t take much action. China still accounts for about 70% of rare-earth mining globally and 90% of separation and processing.Then, last year, Beijing forced Donald Trump to back away from his trade war – not with its retaliatory tariffs, but the curbing of rare-earth exports. A scramble for new supplies began in earnest. The year-long trade truce is due to expire in November. The price of erbium, an element essential to communications infrastructure, has already jumped because of fears that export controls will soon be renewed. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 hour ago

AI’s worst disasters will arrive unannounced | Letters

Dr Simon Nieder on the global efforts needed to curb the threats posed by AI. Plus letters from Dr Anthony Harris and David KylerTimothy Garton Ash is right that serious artificial intelligence risks demand international action, but “AI Hiroshima” may be the wrong picture (Would even an AI disaster on the scale of Hiroshima be enough to make humankind protect itself? I fear not, 22 August). Hiroshima was not technology going rogue. Human beings designed the bomb, authorised its use and dropped it. The technology worked much as intended.AI may one day behave in ways we cannot control, but many of the gravest harms could happen without any dramatic moment when “the AI takes over”. AI might help design a pathogen, find a vulnerability in critical infrastructure or improve a weapons system while people still decide what happens next. Other harms may build almost invisibly through thousands of ordinary decisions – more autonomy here, one safeguard removed there, another consequential task handed over because the system has worked well so far. By the time the danger is obvious, the important decisions may already have been made. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 hour ago

Why solar bonds are a bright idea | Letter

A financial model that could cut the cost of installing solar panels for many homeowners is welcomed by Alexis AbramsonThe UK proposal to use “solar bonds” to make rooftop solar more affordable is a smart solution to a fundamental problem: the rising cost of capital (Cut cost of loans for solar panels on UK homes, ministers urged, 21 August).A household that can pay for solar upfront saves money from day one. For everyone else, high-interest financing can consume much of those savings and ultimately deter people from installing the technology. A solar bond structure changes that equation: investors receive a modest, guaranteed return, and homeowners get access to cheaper capital. Because the loan is attached to the property rather than the individual, there’s no issue if the person moves. Continue reading...

The Guardian 1 hour ago

The datacenter backlash is bringing the entire political spectrum together – against Big Tech billionaires

The movement against datacenters is uniting Americans because they perfectly illustrate how a few individuals hold all the power to control decisions that impact our livesBryce Gustafson has been knocking on doors in Indiana for more than a decade. The lead organizer with Citizens Action Coalition (CAC), a consumer and environmental organization, he usually encounters a mix of reactions when he’s out canvassing; whatever issue he’s talking about, there’s always at least a few people on the other side. But at a recent festival in the rural town of Monrovia, Indiana, he was struck by an unusual spirit of unity.He was there about a proposed datacenter, a 550-acre (222-hectare) Google project in this small town of 1,600 people. “I had 50 people I talked to,” Gustafson told me. “Nobody wanted that datacenter in their community. And at least a half a dozen people came up to me to say, ‘Hey, I voted for Trump. What the heck’s he doing, supporting these things?’” Continue reading...

The Guardian 2 hours ago

Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez defends ‘endless’ benefits of her oil deal with Trump

Deal that will reportedly see US take control of 65bn barrels of Venezuelan oil has provoked outrage in her countryVenezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has defended her government’s highly controversial energy deal with Donald Trump, insisting the South American country will maintain ownership and sovereignty over its massive oil reserves.Rodríguez, who assumed power in January after Trump ordered the abduction of the president, Nicolás Maduro, took to the airwaves on Saturday to push back against criticism of what the US president has called “the biggest oil deal in world history”. Continue reading...

The Guardian 3 hours ago

Nurture not nature? How young women can learn to better wield economic power | Heather Stewart

Project in Zambia shows how teaching young women to negotiate better can have a long-term impact on their prospectsWomen making their way in patriarchal societies down the ages have always had to wield their meagre economic power deftly. New evidence from a fascinating research project in Zambia suggests that’s a skill that can be learned.A team of female US academics have been gathering data for more than a decade, which shows that teaching young women to negotiate better can have a long-term impact on their prospects. Continue reading...

The Guardian 3 hours ago

Recruiter places ‘phoenix’ firm into liquidation just months after repurchase erased millions in debt

New company reportedly quickly fell behind with promised repayments to administratorA recruitment executive who was allowed to buy back the assets of his bust company in instalments, despite it accumulating almost £3m of debt, has placed his new business into liquidation after falling behind with promised payments to the administrator.The news is the latest event to raise questions about the practice of “phoenixism”, accounting’s controversial art of liquidating companies to allow directors to return with a new entity, free of debts. Continue reading...

The Guardian 3 hours ago

Big business has shown small firms what to do – and what not to do – with AI | Gene Marks

Small business owners have watched large companies fumble – and sometimes succeed – with AI, and then use what worksOne thing I’ve learned about corporate America is that what it succeeds at ultimately trickles down to benefit small businesses. Bleeding-edge technologies such as the internet, mobile transactions and the cloud were first perfected by large organizations – government and corporations – and now they’re available to the masses at a much lower cost and with better reliability.The good news is that it’s also the same for what they fail at. Continue reading...

The Guardian 4 hours ago

‘Without us, no wheel would turn’: the unsung heroes keeping England’s transport moving

On shift, but out of sight – from ‘that person with the table tennis bats’ on the airport tarmac to remote signallers managing rail trafficNot many people get to park their car here – bang in the middle of Heathrow airport, on the taxiway just a stretch of grass away from where a line of passenger planes is coming in to land.It’s close enough to see the shimmering air and smoke as nose tyres hit the tarmac. “An A380 will put down as much rubber as a car’s entire tyre,” Jack Quantick-Thorne says. He knows – part of his job is to ensure the runway team scrapes it off and patches things up overnight. And it is all recycled, he adds. Continue reading...

The Guardian 5 hours ago

Hospitality boom and $100 chicken nuggets: how the US Open became obscenely expensive

Record crowds, premium seats and an unchecked resale market are transforming the self-styled people’s slam – and leaving ordinary fans fighting to get through the gatesIt takes a truly exceptional affordability crisis to put Bill Ackman and Zohran Mamdani on the same side of the barricade. Yet this month the billionaire hedge fund manager and New York’s democratic socialist mayor found common cause over an unlikely grievance: the cost of getting into the US Open.Ackman took objection to the cost of a grounds pass listed for $363. Mamdani responded to the broader uproar by securing 1,000 tickets for New York residents at $100 apiece, prompting more than 336,000 people to apply for them. Somewhere between the two sits the uneasy economics of the modern US Open, where a $65 ticket with no guaranteed seat on any court can fetch more than five times that amount on the tournament’s resale marketplace. Continue reading...

The Guardian 5 hours ago

‘It’s therapy by stealth’: the adult fans helping Lego build its billions in sales

A growing number of people are rediscovering their love of plastic bricks in later life and boosting the Danish company’s bottom lineIn a cosy cafe in Kingston upon Thames on the outskirts of London, nine people gather in the early evening to drink and talk. To the casual observer it may look like a book club, but when the friends reach into their bags it’s not paperbacks they produce – but packs of Lego.Geoff Lay, who organised the gathering, worked in software development before recently starting Noble Brick, a Lego-focused events organisation. Continue reading...

The Guardian 7 hours ago

Could this policy fix the care system and slash student debt at the same time?

Andy Burnham is in need of radical proposals. A ‘care first’ year in exchange for 50% off fees could be just what he needsThe UK’s social care sector is in crisis. Costs are spiralling, with many local councils forced to dedicate the vast majority of their budgets to it. At the same time, more and more families are seeing their savings disappear into the black hole of nursing home fees. With an ageing population, the problem is set to get worse.In only his second week as prime minister, Andy Burnham pledged to succeed where so many of his predecessors have failed: by fixing Britain’s social care system. And yet, as parliament returns from recess, the new-ish administration is still worryingly unclear about how it will do this. Despite Burnham declaring that care workers should enjoy better compensation, we don’t know how he plans to pay for any of it – not least because he has kept Starmer’s campaign pledge to not raise income tax, VAT or national insurance. At the moment, it looks as though it will be impossible to square the circle. Continue reading...

The Guardian 7 hours ago

Cities are the big winners in Burnham’s devolution drive. But what happens to the rest of England? | John Harris

Labour has promised a ‘fundamental rewiring’ of power. But some areas are years into their devolution journey while others scramble to get startedApart from the joyous hyperactivity that comes with suddenly making it to No 10, there are good reasons why Andy Burnham seems to be a prime minister in a hurry. If he decides that his first term is going to run to its maximum length, he has three years, which is a maddening time-frame: too long for him to just tinker here and there, set out his long-term vision and then ask the electorate for permission to do more, but probably too short to start and finish many of his key projects. His chosen solution, it seems, is a mixture of the strategies he would use for each approach, which includes running at some issues at breakneck pace.So it is with his specialist subject: devolution for England. The huge changes now afoot actually began under Keir Starmer, with the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act passed earlier this year. Areas that previously had two tiers of local government will see them replaced with new unitary councils. But the most historic move centres on regional mayors – what the government calls “strategic authorities” – and a shift that the Whitehall PR machine is hyping up as a “fundamental rewiring of the way our country works, surrendering power that for too long has been held in Westminster and Whitehall”. In principle, this is unquestionably worth celebrating. But it also gives rise to a whole range of increasingly urgent and awkward questions.John Harris is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The Guardian 7 hours ago

UK asks banks for feelgood stories about keeping out dirty money

City firms tapped for case studies to try to convince global watchdog that London has cleaned up its actThe government is asking bankers and lawyers to provide feelgood stories about how they blocked dirty money from entering the UK, as ministers try to prove the UK’s money-laundering controls are working.The Treasury’s call for evidence is meant to illustrate that the UK has upped its game when it comes to preventing financial crime, particularly since its last dismal assessment by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) global crime watchdog in 2018, which fuelled allegations that London had become a hub for “dirty money”. Continue reading...

The Guardian 7 hours ago

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