China is dramatically tightening its control over crucial rare earth minerals, in what US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called “a global supply chain power grab”.

Donald Trump, who is due to meet Xi Jinping in South Korea in a few weeks, has hit back by threatening 100% tariffs on all products from China. Beijing has accused Washington of “stoking panic” and making “grossly distorted” remarks. But it’s clear that China’s “chokehold on rare minerals” will be its “key bargaining chip” in the trade talks, said the BBC.

What are rare earths?
A group of 17 metallic elements with similar characteristics, they are key – and largely irreplaceable – components in electronic products and green technologies. Despite their name, they are abundant in the Earth’s crust but they’re hazardous to extract and purify. According to the International Energy Agency, China now controls 61% of rare-earth mineral production and 92% of the processing.

“You may not be familiar” with the names of rare earths, said Ayesha Perera, the BBC's Asia editor, but “you will be very familiar with the products that they are used in”. Yttrium and europium are used in the manufacture of television and computer screens, cerium is used for polishing glass and refining oil, and neodymium is used to make the magnets in computer hard drives, EV motors and jet engines.

Rare earths are also widely used in semiconductors: the building blocks of our digital world. Almost anything with an on/off switch will have dozens, even hundreds, of semiconductors inside.

What has China done?
The new restrictions will require all foreign companies to have the Chinese government’s approval for the export of even small quantities of rare earths – and those companies must explain what the intended use is. Beijing has been clear that export licenses may not be granted, particularly for those related to semiconductors or artificial-intelligence development.

Chinese nationals and Chinese companies will also be banned from working with foreign companies on rare earth mineral extraction and processing without government permission. Some of these restrictions are already in place; others are due to come into force in December.

What does this mean?
It marks “a nearly unprecedented export control”, said The Wall Street Journal. It gives China “more leverage” in trade talks, “ratcheting up pressure on the Trump administration”. As well as being “an escalation” in the US-China trade war, it “threatens the supply chain” for the semiconductors that are “the lifeblood” of the world economy.

The days are getting colder but inside the temperature is rising as the annual thermostat battles heat up.

A survey last year found that 53% of couples argued over the heating. Eight in 10 women said they secretly turned up the thermostat, while most men wanted a cooler house and admitted to starting rows over energy bills.

‘Stealth-adjusting’
There’s simply “no such thing as a couple who wants their house the same temperature”, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. One half spends the colder months “stealth-adjusting the temperature”, while the other half stealth-adjusts it back.

This constant battle does act as a “release valve” for all the other tensions, though. “Conversations about compromise, lifestyle, mortality, domestic load and everything else” are “mediated through this very slow-burn conversation”.

Men are generally thought of as the ones who turn the thermostat down but sometimes it’s the other way around, said Susannah Frieze in the Daily Mail. “I slink around the house, unseen by my husband, turning down the dials on radiators.” While our son is “shivering like a whippet”, my daughter will also “spin the dial down” given half a chance.

‘Battle of the sexes’
The “split between those who reach for a jumper” and those who’d rather turn on a radiator “can be almost Shakespearean in its bitterness”, said Will Gore in The Independent.

Still, the “central heating battle of sexes” is “only to be expected”, said Nick Harding in The Telegraph. There’s “plenty of scientific evidence to show that men and women react differently to temperature”.

A study published in The Lancet found that women’s hands can be significantly colder than men’s: 28.2C for women, on average, compared with 32.2C for men. A 2025 review published in the Building and Environment journal concluded that, in cold environments, women feel significantly chiller than men, and have lower skin temperature.

Women also have less muscle, which is a natural heat producer, and more body fat, which can block the flow of blood carrying heat to the skin and extremities. They are generally smaller than men, so they have a higher skin surface to volume ratio, causing them to lose heat more quickly through the skin.

So women should stick to their guns next time they find themselves arguing over the thermostat with their other half, said The Telegraph’s Harding. “There is plenty of biological ammo” to back up their position.

Kenyan police struggle to control the crowd during a stampede at the entrance to Nyayo Stadium, where the body of opposition leader Raila Odinga lies in state. The former prime minister, who has died at the age of 80, was a giant of Kenyan politics for decades.

Luis Tato / AFP / Getty Images

Hampshire: Wheatley House, Kingsley
An attractive Grade II, 16th century property surrounded by 4.4 acres of landscaped gardens and grounds within the South Downs National Park. 6 beds, 3 baths, kitchen, 3 receps, games room, self-contained 2-bed cottage, garden, stone stable, outbuildings, parking. £2m; Hamptons

Carmarthenshire: Pantgwyn Farm, Whitemill
Characterful 18th century property, with an option to purchase two self-contained 2-bed flats that work as holiday lets, as well as a farmyard, barns and pasture paddocks. 6 beds, 3 baths, kitchen, 4 receps, garden, parking. £550,000; Savills

Yorkshire: Dowgill Farm, Summerbridge
Striking Grade II house with Elizabethan origins, set in 12 acres. 5 beds, 5 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 4 receps, study, 3-bed annexe, outbuildings, parking. £1.895m; Savills

Devon: Burrow Farmhouse, Drewsteignton
A delightful 16th century farmhouse set in 14 acres on the edge of Dartmoor National Park (a further 30 acres available by separate negotiation). 4 beds, 3 baths, kitchen/dining room, 2 receps, 2-bed cottage, outbuildings, garden, parking. £1.85m; Jackson-Stops

Can anyone stop J.D. Vance becoming president?
Freddy Gray in The Spectator
If Donald Trump is “the grand old statesman, smiling benignly on a world that has learned to love him”, J.D. Vance is “his terrier”, jumping the fence “to growl at the opposition”, writes Freddy Gray. Trump supporters “lap up” the vice president’s “controlled yet vicious performances”. Vance’s “powerful media profile” marks him out “as the obvious president-in-waiting” and he knows “how to stay ahead in Trumpland”: “never cross the boss”.

Nobody wants rent controls, but we’re getting them anyway
Matthew Lesh in The Telegraph
Rent control “inflicts” a “corrosive decay” on cities, writes the Institute of Economic Affairs think-tank’s Matthew Lesh. “It discourages the development of much-needed new housing” and “limits mobility and choice”. Yet, with the Renters’ Rights Bill, the government is “quietly introducing rents by state decree”. Landlords are “likely to withdraw their properties” and renters will “pay the price, shut out of a shrinking market and trapped by the very protections claimed to help them”.

Lord help us – the church is agonising over same-sex couples again
Catherine Pepinster in The Independent
“While most Anglicans were basking in the unusual dappled sunlight of unity surrounding the appointment” of Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury, writes Catherine Pepinster, “her fellow bishops were gathering” for “another discussion, and a vote”, on blessings for same-sex couples. “As for gay priests wanting a civil marriage, they can go whistle.” “Red tape”, “politics” and “money” are all at play here. “In the modern-day Church, love is a numbers game”.