Beijing may be using Youlin Chen’s knowledge to devise ways of staging nuclear tests without detection, advocates for his release from spying charges suggest

An American seismologist has been detained in China on espionage charges since 2024, his family has revealed, saying Donald Trump’s direct appeal for the scientist’s release to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, went unanswered.

Youlin Chen – who has researched how to detect underground nuclear tests using seismological data – was detained on 5 November 2024, according to a statement from the NGO Global Reach, which is working with his family to secure his freedom.

Humans have long sought to geoengineer the Earth’s environment. Tim Flannery outlines a few of the wildest ideas from the 20th century

An increasing number of scientists think we have let the climate crisis fester for so long that our only hope to stave off ever-intensifying catastrophes is to use technological interventions. Cloud brightening, injecting sulphur into the atmosphere and the use of tiny mirrors in space – all of which might reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface – are among the concepts being promoted by entrepreneurs and governments alike. Geoengineering, they argue, is now inevitable.

Ever since the God of the Old Testament granted our species dominion over the Earth, ideas of remaking the world to better suit us have been a dominant thread in human thinking. We have for centuries toyed with grand ambitions to alter and re-form the climate and environment, many of which – in retrospect – seem doomed or absurd.

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Sir Keir Starmer cuts civilian investment while deepening reliance on American power. That doesn’t feel like national renewal

Since Brexit, Daphne du Maurier’s final novel, Rule Britannia, has been seen as a prescient warning about the UK cutting itself adrift from Europe. After joining and then leaving the EU’s predecessor, the Common Market, in a referendum, Du Maurier imagined the UK facing such economic instability that its prime minister submits to a US takeover. Britain is occupied by US forces, sparking an uprising that eventually forces them to leave. Sir Keir Starmer’s defence investment plan (Dip) would not belong in Du Maurier’s novel, but has the same nightmare logic: a Britain adrift from Europe told that fiscal necessity and national security require deeper incorporation into American power.

It shows the strain inside Sir Keir’s government that the plan took a year to move from strategic defence review to partial funding plan. John Healey, the former defence secretary, resigned after deciding that the Treasury’s offer could not fund the strategy. His successor, Dan Jarvis, told MPs that the plan was worth £298bn over four years, which is £15bn above last year’s spending review settlement. Mr Jarvis said that he had secured £1.5bn more than was on offer when he arrived. Against the defence ministry’s demands, that looks less like a breakthrough than proof of why Mr Healey walked.

In a chilling new book, theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli says we’re back on the brink – and this time, leaders chronically lack the nous of Kennedy and Khrushchev. So why is he against rearming?

Should European members of Nato be rearming in the face of the Russian threat? And if not, I ask Carlo Rovelli, why not? The Italian theoretical physicist seems a good person to answer these questions since his timely new book, 85 Seconds to Midnight, is subtitled A Physicist’s Argument against Rearmament.

Rovelli, 70, brown eyed, genial, with enviably luxuriant grey locks, removes his glasses before answering. “The idea of the Russian military being a threat to Europe is ridiculous. Russia can’t even get to Kyiv! A few years ago, Russia had 4% of the world’s military spending and Nato had 40%.”

The heightened rhetoric from Pyongyang has left analysts asking why North Korea appears to need so many nuclear weapons

At a ruling Workers’ party meeting that concluded this week, Kim Jong-un declared that steadily expanding North Korea’s nuclear forces was the “most correct and unique way” to cope with an increasingly unstable world, citing what he described as growing threats from the US and its allies.

The remarks were just the latest in a recent stream of commentary from North Korea’s leadership that has seen Kim pledge to equip warships with nuclear missiles, double weapons grade production and expand the country’s nuclear arsenal at “an exponential rate”.

Written in 1947, Kiyoshi Tanimoto’s account of the horrors of the atomic bomb attack will be published in August and is being made into a film

The memoir of a man who survived the horrors of Hiroshima is to be published for the first time this summer after its discovery in a US archive.

The 230-page memoir was written almost 80 years ago by Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who witnessed the city’s destruction after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. He will now be portrayed in a feature film by Takehiro Hira, whose acclaimed roles include the detective in the Netflix Japanese-British drama Giri/Haji. Pre-production begins in November, ahead of the shoot in February 2027.

The memorandum of understanding signed in Versailles lays bare US failure and the pointlessness of this illegal war

Donald Trump’s wishful thinking, as much as Benjamin Netanyahu’s persuasion, was responsible for their illegal war on Iran. The US president wanted regime change, the eradication of Tehran’s ballistic missiles programme, to prevent it from ever building a nuclear bomb, and demilitarisation of its proxies. He announced that he would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender.

The memorandum of understanding with Iran which Mr Trump signed on Wednesday – in Versailles; perhaps not the best augury of lasting diplomatic achievement – was evidence that even he can only deny reality for so long. Given the human and broader costs of the war, a deal to end it has been long overdue. But the text exposes the sheer pointlessness of this conflict. Continuing the war might have led to “worldwide depression”, the US president said, though his concern is for the impact on the pockets of his voters rather than the poorest and hungriest globally. A disgruntled base and the looming midterms have forced him into compromises loathed by Republican hawks. Mike Pence, his former vice‑president, said that it “smacks of appeasement”.

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US entered war with maximalist goals and exits it with pragmatic decision to end conflict despite political cost

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As the adage goes: no plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy.

Donald Trump entered the war with Iran with maximalist goals: eliminating the country’s nuclear programme, destroying its ballistic missile programme and ending its support for regional military groups including Hezbollah and Hamas.