Shanxi produces more coal than India. How will it survive in China’s clean energy future?

Deep in the recesses of an underground cavern, covered in dust and soot, Xu Xiaobo wondered why, having recently graduated with a degree in mechanics, he was on his hands and knees sifting through layers of coal sludge. But there was no time to ponder the ancestral forces that had brought him down into one of his province’s oldest mines. There was coal to dig for.

New to the job, keeping up with colleagues was challenging. As he tried to crawl at speed under a conveyor belt of coal, he landed badly and sprained his wrist. He still can’t rotate it properly.

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The Labour Party is starting its second year in control of the government with difficult choices over whether to curb spending or raise taxes.

Researcher says tech could replace nearly all human labour within 20 years and societies urgently need to prepare

If Adam Dorr is correct, robots and artificial intelligence will dominate the global economy within a generation and put virtually the entire human race out of a job. The social scientist doubles up as a futurist and has a stark vision of the scale, speed and unstoppability of a technological transformation that he says will replace virtually all human labour within 20 years.

Dorr heads a team of researchers who have studied patterns of technological change over millennia and concluded that the current wave will not just convulse but obliterate the labour market by 2045. What cars did to horses and carts, and electricity to gas lamps, and digital cameras to Kodak, are templates for the coming shock, he says. “Technology has a new target in its crosshairs – and that’s us. That’s our labour.”

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Government framework to recognise ‘core rights’ said to barely reach minimum ordered by court ruling

Dino Wong and Geoffrey Yu count themselves among the lucky ones. The Hong Kong couple were married in 2019, in a hastily arranged trip to the US Pacific territory of Guam. The couple, who had been together for about five years and wanted to marry, were spurred to take advantage of amended tax-exemption laws that finally recognised same-sex couples.

“I was a student and he was a doctor, so it helped a lot,” laughs Wong, now a clinical psychologist.

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Exclusive: Mohammed Baraka asks von der Leyen for help, saying he is stranded in Cairo without residency rights

A Palestinian man who worked for the EU in Gaza has appealed to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, after the closure of his office left him in Cairo without a job or residency rights.

Mohammed Baraka, who served at the EU border assistance mission at Rafah in southern Gaza and was evacuated to Egypt when the war broke out, has accused Brussels officials of “coldly” dismissing him from his job by email and “abandoning” a loyal employee.

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Dull questions, awkward silences, excruciating gaffes: socialising can be a minefield. Here’s how to avoid disaster – and even enjoy yourself

The cliche about small talk is that everybody hates it. The misapprehension is that it has to be small. In fact, conversational interactions are objectively good. “The person who starts the conversation is in a better mood afterwards; they tend to feel more connected – and not just to the person they’re talking to,” says Gillian Sandstrom, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Sussex. “We all have a fundamental need to feel connected, valued and seen.” Even if small talk were not socially beneficial, society would demand it nonetheless – we are coming in to wedding season and we are all going to need some moves.

However, we have this perception that there are rules, which haven’t really changed since the 50s: keep things light and relevant, avoid sex, religion and politics, stay on safe territory, such as the weather. But anodyne topics tend to be boring and difficult to segue out of.

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Heat caused 2,300 deaths across 12 cities, of which 1,500 were down to climate crisis, scientists say

Planet-heating pollution tripled the death toll from the “quietly devastating” heatwave that seared Europe at the end of June, early analysis covering a dozen cities has found, as experts warned of a worsening health crisis that is being overlooked.

Scientists estimate that high heat killed 2,300 people across 12 major cities as temperatures soared across Europe between 23 June and 2 July. They attributed 1,500 of the deaths to climate breakdown, which has heated the planet and made the worst extremes even hotter.

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A small but influential cohort of the president’s far-right political coalition spared him their ire but turned with a vengeance on the attorney general and the top officials at the F.B.I.

The popular bot on X began making antisemitic comments in response to user queries

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence firm xAI has deleted “inappropriate” posts on X after the company’s chatbot, Grok, began praising Adolf Hitler, referring to itself as MechaHitler and making antisemitic comments in response to user queries.

In some now-deleted posts, it referred to a person with a common Jewish surname as someone who was “celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids” in the Texas floods as “future fascists”.

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President Trump wants to shutter the agency and shift responsibility and costs of emergency management to the states. In Texas, that process appears to already be underway.