The Week 1536

What happened British Steel in the balance The Government seized control of the day-to-day running of British Steel last weekend following a breakdown in talks with the Chinese owner, Jingye, over the future of its Scunthorpe steelworks. Ministers suggested Jingye had been negotiating in bad faith and running down supplies of raw materials to force the closure of the loss-making plant. Worried that Britain’s last two blast furnaces were at imminent risk of shutting down, the Government passed emergency legislation on Saturday to give it the power to direct British Steel. It was the first time Parliament had been recalled for a weekend sitting since the 1982 invasion of the Falklands. Officials then scrambled to acquire the necessary raw materials to keep the blast furnaces going, securing a key delivery…

What happened US stock markets rose on Monday, following the news that electronics such as smartphones and computers could be exempt from Donald Trump’s tariffs – including the 145% levy on goods from China. The prospect of the exemptions, which also covered components such as semiconductors, alleviated fears that the price of iPhones in the US (80% of which are made in China) and other electronic gadgets were about to skyrocket. On Sunday, however, Trump said the exemptions were temporary, and warned that new levies on electronics could be announced within days. This apparent about-turn came just days after Trump had abruptly suspended most of his reciprocal tariffs for 90 days, following the steepest fall in US government bond prices in 40 years. Most countries are facing a blanket 10%…

An American man with terminal cancer has set himself the challenge of performing acts of community service in all 50 US states before he dies. Doug Ruch, 55, started his “dying to serve tour” after being given 12-18 months to live. Reflecting on things he could “have done differently”, he realised he had a choice: “I can sit at home and wait to die, or I can go out and live.” So far he has visited ten states and volunteered at food banks, soup kitchens and other projects. A nine-year-old kerry blue terrier has become the first dog to climb all the mountains in Scotland’s six major categories, including 282 Munros, 227 Munro Tops and 222 Corbetts. Betty climbed them with owner Shona Marshall, of Kinross – one of fewer…

Controversy of the week The Trump-Xi face-off “Know the enemy and know yourself.” So wrote the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, said William Hague in The Times, and perhaps Donald Trump should have listened to that advice before launching his trade war with Beijing. It was a “strategic blunder”: Trump thought he could shock China’s leader, Xi Jinping, into submission by imposing a 145% tariff on Chinese goods; but he didn’t “understand the mindset” of his opponent, who is prepared for a “long struggle”, and knows that American consumers reliant on cheap Chinese goods “will scream long before the Chinese factory worker who has less work to do”. Beijing has retaliated with a 125% tariff against the US, said Gideon Rachman in the FT, and if Xi wants to get “nasty”,…

The number of dogs taking “puppy Prozac” has risen 20-fold in a decade. About one in 500 dogs in the UK are on fluoxetine (sold under the brand name Reconcile), to treat anxiety and aggression, up from one in 10,000 in 2013. Partly, this is due to “lockdown puppies” struggling with separation issues; but vets also say owners are projecting human emotions on their dogs, and have unrealistic expectations of dog behaviour. Royal Mail is moving with the times, and trialling new postboxes that have solar-powered barcode readers and hatches large enough to take parcels. Customers can also use an app to request “proof of posting”. Five are being piloted, to add to the around 115,500 conventional postboxes in the UK.…

Space tourism, after pop star Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez, the former journalist who is engaged to Jeff Bezos, flew to the edge of outer space in one of Bezos’s Blue Origin rockets. The all-female crew spent four minutes at the Kármán Line (which is about 60 miles above sea level) before returning safely to Earth, in a mission that lasted less than 11 minutes. A Minecraft Movie, which has made more than half-a-billion dollars at the global box office, despite being slammed by most critics. The action adventure, starring Jack Black, is based on the popular videogame, and is replete with in-jokes that have become TikTok memes. Audience members have responded so raucously to a scene in which Black shouts, “Chicken jockey!” that police have been called to some…