Donald Trump said it was “very dangerous” for the UK to do business with China, after Keir Starmer announced a series of economic agreements between London and Beijing yesterday. The US president threatened 100% tariffs on Canada earlier this week over economic deals struck by Canadian PM Mark Carney on his recent visit to Beijing, raising fears of similar levies for the UK. Homicides in England and Wales have fallen to their lowest level in nearly 50 years, according to the Office for National Statistics. The number of murders, manslaughters and infanticides fell to 499 in the 12 months to September, down 7% year-on-year. Police also recorded 9% fewer knife offences and 9% fewer firearms offences. Archaeologists have unearthed 450,000 objects during work on the HS2 train line, including a possible Roman gladiator’s tag, 19th-century gold dentures and a hand axe that may be more than 40,000 years old. The treasures are being stored in a secret warehouse in Yorkshire for further research.

The recent unrest in Minneapolis looks chaotic, says Robert Worth in The Atlantic, but much of it is in fact meticulously choreographed. Over the past year, 65,000 Minnesotans have received extensive civic protest training. In packed auditoriums, they are taught how to handle Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents: what facial-recognition systems they use, how to legally observe their raids. Some sessions focus on “direct confrontations”. Locals between 14 and 70 practise facing off against trainers acting as ICE operatives, receive tips on how to avoid being easily knocked to the ground, and learn how to react to a range of possible scenarios, such as an unexpected raid on a neighbour’s home.

The charities that run these sessions aren’t organising the anti-ICE protests. This is a “leaderless movement” that has been growing ever since the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. Today’s protesters, who swarm ICE convoys and patrol neighbourhoods with cameras, organise themselves on the same encrypted Signal networks that formed in the “febrile weeks” after Floyd’s death. They have a livestream of the entrance to ICE’s base and use Signal’s audio chat to radio in live locations of ICE vehicles. Volunteers stand outside school gates with whistles around their necks each morning to ensure children get in safely. When agents in riot gear descended on an apartment building opposite a school earlier this month, teachers put the school into lockdown and parents rushed to block the entrance by linking arms. There is obviously “profound unease” about what’s happening in Minneapolis. But there’s also an “undertow of hope” that it can provide the rest of America with “a model of democratic resistance”.