While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, July 7, 2025
If trading partners from Taiwan to the EU do not strike deals with Washington, tariffs will start on Aug 1, said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Tariffs will kick in on Aug 1 barring trade deals
US tariffs will kick in on Aug 1 if trading partners from Taiwan to the European Union do not strike deals with Washington, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on July 6.
The rates will 'boomerang back' to the sometimes very high levels which President Donald Trump had announced on April 2 – before he suspended the levies to allow for trade talks and set a July 9 deadline for agreement, Mr Bessent told CNN.
He confirmed comments by Mr Trump to reporters aboard Air Force One on July 4 in which he also cited a new deadline: 'Well, I'll probably start them on August 1. Well, that's pretty early. Right?'
The president said he had signed 12 letters to be sent out, likely on July 7.
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Death toll from Texas floods in US reaches 69
A volunteer looking for missing people in Hunt, Texas, on July 6, following severe flash flooding on the July 4 holiday.
PHOTO: AFP
The death toll from catastrophic floods in Texas reached at least 69 on July 6, including at least 21 children, as the search for girls missing from a summer camp entered a third day.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, speaking at a press conference on the afternoon of July 6, said the death toll in Kerr county, the epicentre of the flooding, had reached 59, while another 10 had died elsewhere in Texas and 41 remained missing.
Among the most devastating impacts of the flooding occurred at Camp Mystic summer camp, a nearly century-old Christian girls camp, where 11 girls and a counsellor are still missing.
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Israel to call up 54,000 ultra-Orthodox students
A decades-old military conscription exemption for ultra-Orthodox students was overturned in 2024.
PHOTO: AFP
Israel's military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a Supreme Court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments.
The Supreme Court ruling in 2024 overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller segment of the population than the 13 per cent it represents today.
Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18, lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Members of Israel's 21 per cent Arab population are mostly exempt, though some do serve.
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Tourist leaves dog in hot locker to tour German castle
Tourists objected and security staff were alerted when a woman shut her dog inside a hot locker so she could tour Germany's Neuschwanstein Castle.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A dog was rescued from a locker for valuables at Neuschwanstein Castle in southern Germany after its owner shut her pet inside over the objections of other tourists so that she could visit the famous attraction, police said on July 6.
Neuschwanstein, a picture-postcard castle with surging turrets nestled in the Alps near the border with Austria, is one of Germany's top tourist attractions.
Despite it being a hot summer's day and half the locker already having been filled by a pram, the woman locked the dog inside the small space and left to tour the castle, police in the nearby town of Fuessen said in a statement.
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British driver Lando Norris wins home grand prix
Lando Norris won a treacherous rain-hit British Grand Prix at Silverstone on July 6 from his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri.
Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg, meanwhile, took third spot for the veteran German's first podium in 239 races.
Norris returned to a rapturous reception from British fans as he won his home race for the first time and moved to within eight points of leader Piastri in the drivers' standings.
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Straits Times
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Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox The US is doing too little to close the energy-transition technological gap. A mine for heavy rare earth metals, the minerals crucial for everything from electric cars to drones, robots and missiles, on the outskirts of Longnan, China. In retrospect, the symbolism of the moment was foreboding. On May 15, 2019, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning US firms from doing business with Chinese telecommunications companies, including Huawei Technologies. Five days after that first broadside in a brewing trade-and-technology war, Chinese President Xi Jinping was photographed touring a factory producing rare earth magnets. Such devices, his visit seemed to imply, could be a geopolitical weapon for China quite as potent as advanced semiconductors are for the US.
Straits Times
38 minutes ago
- Straits Times
From glass and steel to rare earth metals, new materials have changed society throughout history
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Innovation in materials science has driven technological change and, as a result, shaped global economies, politics and the environment. The rare earth metals case illustrates how a single category of materials can shape trade policy, industrial planning and even diplomatic alliances. Many modern devices – from cellphones and computers to electric vehicles and wind turbines – rely on strong magnets made from a type of minerals called rare earths. As the systems and infrastructure used in daily life have turned digital and the United States has moved towards renewable energy, accessing these minerals has become critical – and the markets for these elements have grown rapidly. Modern society now uses rare earth magnets in everything from national defence, where magnet-based systems are integral to missile guidance and aircraft, to the clean energy transition, which depends on wind turbines and electric vehicles. The rapid growth of the rare earth metal trade and its effects on society isn't the only case study of its kind. Throughout history, materials have quietly shaped the trajectory of human civilization. They form the tools people use, the buildings they inhabit, the devices that mediate their relationships and the systems that structure economies. Newly discovered materials can set off ripple effects that shape industries, shift geopolitical balances and transform people's daily habits. Materials science is the study of the atomic structure, properties, processing and performance of materials. In many ways, materials science is a discipline of immense social consequence. As a materials scientist, I'm interested in what can happen when new materials become available. Glass, steel and rare earth magnets are all examples of how innovation in materials science has driven technological change and, as a result, shaped global economies, politics and the environment. Glass lenses and the scientific revolution In the early 13th century, after the sacking of Constantinople, some excellent Byzantine glassmakers left their homes to settle in Venice – at the time a powerful economic and political centre. The local nobility welcomed the glassmakers' beautiful wares. However, to prevent the glass furnaces from causing fires, the nobles exiled the glassmakers – under penalty of death – to the island of Murano. Murano became a centre for glass craftsmanship. In the 15th century, the glassmaker Angelo Barovier experimented with adding the ash from burned plants, which contained a chemical substance called potash, to the glass. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. 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Johannes Gutenberg's printing press, completed in 1455, made reading more accessible to people across Europe. With it came a need for reading glasses, which grew popular among scholars, merchants and clergy – enough that spectacle-making became an established profession. By the early 17th century, glass lenses evolved into compound optical devices. Galileo Galilei pointed a telescope toward celestial bodies, while Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered microbial life with a microscope. Lens-based instruments have been transformative. Telescopes have redefined long-standing cosmological views. Microscopes have opened entirely new fields in biology and medicine. These changes marked the dawn of empirical science, where observation and measurement drove the creation of knowledge. Today, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory continue those early telescopes' legacies of knowledge creation. Steel and empires In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the Industrial Revolution created demand for stronger, more reliable materials for machines, railroads, ships and infrastructure. The material that emerged was steel, which is strong, durable and cheap. Steel is a mixture of mostly iron, with small amounts of carbon and other elements added. Countries with large-scale steel manufacturing once had outsized economic and political power and influence over geopolitical decisions. For example, the British Parliament intended to prevent the colonies from exporting finished steel with the Iron Act of 1750. They wanted the colonies' raw iron as supply for their steel industry in England. Benjamin Huntsman invented a smelting process using 3-foot tall ceramic vessels, called crucibles, in 18th-century Sheffield. Huntsman's crucible process produced higher-quality steel for tools and weapons. One hundred years later, Henry Bessemer developed the oxygen-blowing steelmaking process, which drastically increased production speed and lowered costs. In the United States, figures such as Andrew Carnegie created a vast industry based on Bessemer's process. The widespread availability of steel transformed how societies built, travelled and defended themselves. Skyscrapers and transit systems made of steel allowed cities to grow, steel-built battleships and tanks empowered militaries, and cars containing steel became staples in consumer life. Control over steel resources and infrastructure made steel a foundation of national power. China's 21st-century rise to steel dominance is a continuation of this pattern. From 1995 to 2015, China's contribution to the world steel production increased from about 10 per cent to more than 50 per cent. The White House responded in 2018 with massive tariffs on Chinese steel. Rare earth metals and global trade Early in the 21st century, the advance of digital technologies and the transition to an economy based on renewable energies created a demand for rare earth elements. Rare earth elements are 17 chemically very similar elements, including neodymium, dysprosium, samarium and others. They occur in nature in bundles and are the ingredients that make magnets super strong and useful. They are necessary for highly efficient electric motors, wind turbines and electronic devices. Because of their chemical similarity, separating and purifying rare earth elements i nvolves complex and expensive processes. China controls the majority of global rare earth processing capacity. Political tensions between countries, especially around trade tariffs and strategic competition, can risk shortages or disruptions in the supply chain. The rare earth metals case illustrates how a single category of materials can shape trade policy, industrial planning and even diplomatic alliances. Technological transformation begins with societal pressure. New materials create opportunities for scientific and engineering breakthroughs. Once a material proves useful, it quickly becomes woven into the fabric of daily life and broader systems. With each innovation, the material world subtly reorganizes the social world — redefining what is possible, desirable and normal. Understanding how societies respond to new innovations in materials science can help today's engineers and scientists solve crises in sustainability and security. Every technical decision is, in some ways, a cultural one, and every material has a story that extends far beyond its molecular structure. Peter Mullner is Distinguished Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, Boise State University. This article was first published in The Conversation .
Straits Times
40 minutes ago
- Straits Times
Forum: Not easy to buy online tickets for football matches
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox The Football Association of Singapore is using Ticketek, a company based in Sydney, Australia, for selling tickets to football events in Singapore. I am 68 and am finding it very difficult to secure tickets, as the process seems rather complicated. The password field, even when filled with the required 12 characters, does not always let me proceed. I also find electronic payments a security risk. Surely a company which has counters in Singapore should be chosen as the ticketing partner, as that would give us a choice to buy physical tickets. It doesn't help that Ticketek's helpline is an Australian number. One suggestion is to sell the tickets at the venues for three days after the match dates are announced, so that fans like me can go physically to buy them. It looks like I cannot even go support Singapore's boys' and girls' squads in the Lion City Cup 2025, or watch the national team when they face India and Bangladesh in the coming months. As retired seniors, we feel locked out from attending football events in our golden years. Please think of us. Prakasam Alexander Maria Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore Eligible S'poreans to get up to $850 in GSTV cash, up to $450 in MediSave top-ups in August Singapore Four golf courses to close by 2035, leaving Singapore with 12 courses Singapore Singapore's second mufti Sheikh Syed Isa Semait dies at age 87 Singapore Fewer marriages in Singapore in 2024; greater marital stability for recent unions Singapore Competition watchdog gives SIA, Malaysia Airlines conditional approval to continue cooperation Singapore About 20 delivery riders meet Pritam Singh to discuss platform worker issues Business OCBC sets loan target of $5b and covers more territories in boost for serial entrepreneurs Singapore Reform Party to leave opposition group People's Alliance for Reform; two parties remain
