Thousands of vehicles sit idle at EU port as Trump’s tariffs leave their mark

The Port of Antwerp-Bruges has been turned into a giant car park with thousands of cars, vans, trucks and tractors bound for the US sitting idle as manufacturers try to avert the worst of Donald Trump’s tariffs.Figures released by the port show a 15.9% drop in the transport of new passenger cars and vans to the US in the first six months of 2025 compared with the same period last year, with a sharp decline emerging in May – one month after the US president announced his “liberation day” tariffs.Exports of trucks and what they call “high and heavy equipment” is down by almost a third at 31.5%

Fear of being ordered back to office affecting UK staff wellbeing, poll finds

A fear of being ordered back to the office is having an impact on workers’ wellbeing, according to a poll, after a string of companies issued return-to-office mandates.More than a third (38%) of workers surveyed said recent news stories about companies hardening their stance on office attendance had negatively affected their wellbeing, highlighting the tug-of-war between employers and their employees.More than four in five (84%) employees who work in a hybrid way – splitting their time between the office and a remote location, such as home – said it had a positive effect on their overall wellbeing, including their mental, physical, social and financial wellbeing.More women (87%) than men (80%) said they believed hybrid working had improved their wellbeing in the survey of 3,600 UK employers and employees across a range of industries in the public and private sectors between late April and early May by the recruitment company Hays.The main worry about returning to the office more frequently was cost, potentially additional commuting expenses, as almost six in 10 (59%) of those polled said worries about their finances would affect their willingness to spend more time in the office

Elmo’s X account posts racist and antisemitic messages after being hacked

Hackers gained access to the X account of the puppet Elmo over the weekend and used it to post racist and antisemitic threats as well as make profane references to Jeffrey Epstein. Sesame Workshop was still trying to regain full control on Monday over the red character’s account.“Elmo’s X account was compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts. We are working to restore full control of the account,” a Sesame Workshop spokesperson said on Monday. Sesame Workshop is the non-profit behind Sesame Street and Elmo

Musk’s giant Tesla factory casts shadow on lives in a quiet corner of Germany

Politics of carmaker’s owner has soured sentiments in Grünheide, south-east of Berlin, where the factory promised jobs and revitalisationWhen Elon Musk advised Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in elections last year, Manu Hoyer – who lives in the small town where the billionaire had built Tesla’s European production hub – wrote to the state premier to complain.“How can you do business with someone who supports rightwing extremism?” she asked Dietmar Woidke, the Social Democrat leader of the eastern state of Brandenburg, who had backed the setting up of the Tesla Giga factory in Grünheide.Hoyer said that in Woidke’s “disappointing, but predictable” answer, he denied the charge. “He said he didn’t know him personally. As if that excused him

Brutal Mitchell Starc spell one to remember amid Australia batters’ tour to forget | Geoff Lemon

Modern sport reporting casually reaches for words like “brutality” and “carnage” where their usage even as metaphor is overblown. The end of the third Test in Kingston, though, warranted both. Australia’s fast bowlers destroyed West Indies for 27, a single run higher than the lowest innings score in Test history.The batting lasted 14.3 overs, the third-shortest innings on record

Ben Stokes left drained after pushing through ‘dark places’ in England win

Ben Stokes said he expended every last ounce of his energy in pursuit of victory after England brought an end to a day of slow-building drama and mounting tension with the defeat of India by the wafer-thin margin of 22 runs in the third Test. “I thought I had taken myself to some pretty dark places before,” he said, “but today …”A game in which both sets of players sometimes allowed their emotions to boil over – behaviour that Stokes said he was “all for” – ended when Shoaib Bashir, playing through the pain of a broken finger that will rule him out for the final two Tests, dismissed Mohammed Siraj to put England 2-1 up in the series.“Obviously it was a great game, a close game,” said Stokes, who hauled himself through mammoth spells of 9.2 and 10 overs across the final day. “You’d think I should be saying it was [one of my best wins], but it’s just quite hard to get my head around it at the moment