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The United States and Japan last week staged a coordinated intervention to halt the slide of the yen after the Japanese currency fell to a 40-year low against the US dollar.

While it is unusual for authorities to intervene to help prop up another country’s currency, the yen has an important role in international finance as the world’s third-most-traded currency, meaning its depreciation has repercussions far beyond Japan.

Here is everything you need to know about the currency intervention:

What is a currency intervention and how did the US and Japan coordinate?

A currency intervention occurs when a government or central bank buys or sells large quantities of foreign currency to help stabilise the value of its own currency.

In this case, the US and Japan coordinated an intervention to lift the value of the yen after it slid to 163 against the dollar for the first time since 1986.

The intervention began on July 31 when the US Treasury began selling euros for yen, while Japanese authorities also bought yen.

In the days after the intervention, the yen began to rise and reached 157 to the dollar on Wednesday.

The US last staged a currency intervention with Japan in 2011 when the yen began appreciating rapidly following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

It also stepped in to support the Japanese currency during the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998.

How did the yen get so weak?

The yen’s collapse is the result of longstanding economic challenges combined with new pressures from the US-Israel war on Iran.

Japan has struggled with economic stagnation since the early 1990s.

The Bank of Japan has for decades attempted to stimulate growth with ultra-low and even negative interest rates, a policy that has exerted downward pressure on the yen.

While Japan’s weak currency has helped draw record numbers of tourists and kept exports cheap, it has also placed a strain on households by raising the cost of imported goods.

Tokyo has spent tens of billions of dollars since 2022 trying to defend the yen, but the economic policies of successive Japanese leaders, including current Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, have partly offset these efforts.

“Takaichi wants it all: Growth, loose fiscal policy, loose monetary policy and a stable yen – but their policy mix is leading to a weak yen, which is causing an inflation problem,” Chris Turner, global head of markets at ING, told Al Jazeera.

Why does the US want a stronger yen?

While Japan is a close US ally, Washington stepped in for its own benefit as much as Tokyo’s, said Masahiko Loo, a senior fixed income strategist at State Street Investment Management in Tokyo.

“Washington isn’t trying to strengthen the yen for Japan’s sake. It’s trying to prevent a disorderly decline that could spill over into Treasury markets, global funding conditions, and broader financial stability,” Loo told Al Jazeera.

“A free-falling yen isn’t just Japan’s problem. At some point it becomes a global liquidity and financial stability issue, which is why Washington stepped in.”

The yen is the most traded currency after the US dollar and the euro, which means dramatic changes in its value can have ripple effects across the global financial system.

One of Washington’s biggest concerns is the prospect of Japan selling off its holdings of US Treasury securities, which were valued at $1.114 trillion in May.

If the yen continued to fall, Tokyo would be encouraged to sell large quantities of US Treasuries to raise cash it can use to defend the currency.

That would put upward pressure on interest rates in the US, raising the cost of servicing the country’s rapidly growing national debt, which already exceeds $39 trillion.

“The financial cost of intervention for the US is low and, given that President Donald Trump favours a weaker US dollar, the domestic political cost is minimal,” Shigeto Nagai, head of Japan economics at Oxford Economics, wrote in a research briefing on Monday.

“Coordinated intervention is a cost-effective method as it allows the US to do a significant favour for Japan, a precious loyal ally in Asia, and take some pressure off US interest rates.”

Will the intervention work?

While the joint intervention has provided short-term support for the yen, Japan will need to take more fundamental measures, such as raising interest rates, to raise the value of the currency in the long term, according to experts.

Japan’s benchmark interest rate currently stands at 1.0 percent, its highest since 1995 but far lower than other advanced economies, including the US.

The large gap between interest rates in the US and Japan is a primary driver of the yen’s persistent weakness.

Without a change in Japan’s low-interest-rate environment, the latest currency intervention is just “throwing good money after bad,” said Derek Tang, an economist and CEO of Monetary Policy Analytics, a US research advisory firm.

“Ultimately… the gravitational force of economic fundamentals will overwhelm intervention efforts,” Tang told Al Jazeera.

“Nevertheless, Japan seems very reluctant to tighten monetary policy to raise its own interest rates and allow the currency to appreciate in that manner,” Tang said.

“So this situation will persist for the time being.”

More than 1,150 cases have been referred to the National Crime Agency (NCA)’s Cyber Choices scheme in the last eight years – nearly 600 of those were in the last three years.

Authorities warn teenage hacking groups are playing an increasingly prominent role in serious cyber-attacks.

Young, English-speaking hackers have been linked to attacks on major organisations including Transport for London (TfL) and MGM Grand in 2024, and Marks and Spencer and the Co-op in 2025.

Individuals are also being increasingly targeted in hacks for their cryptocurrency holdings.

“It certainly has become more of a problem,” said Paul Foster, who leads cyber prevention work at the NCA.

“Certainly English-speaking, western world individuals that we know are now more active in cyber-crime.”

He said young people were engaged with online activity and devices at increasingly young ages exposing them to criminal communities and influences.

Police say many young offenders do not initially set out to become criminals.

Instead, they often begin by experimenting with technology, testing systems or trying to bypass restrictions before becoming drawn into online communities where hacking is encouraged.

Son Heung-min scored a goal for the second consecutive game, Denis Bouanga added a goal, and LAFC beat Real Salt Lake 3-1 on Wednesday night.

Hugo Lloris, who leads MLS with nine shutouts this season, had six saves for LAFC (9-5-3).

Son, who scored his first goal this season Friday in a 3-0 win over the Galaxy, opened the scoring in the 11th minute. The 34-year-old forward pushed the ball wide to his left to create space from a defender and then blasted his next touch inside the near post from the end of the penalty arc.

Mathieu Choiniere played a ball ahead, the last of four consecutive first-touch passes by LAFC, to Bouanga, who raced to the center of the area, cut back to evade a defender and fired a shot into the net to make it 2-0 in the 40th.

DeAndre Yedlin’s own goal capped the scoring in the 68th minute.

Lukas Engel, a 30-year-old defender in his second MLS season, scored his first career goal in the 86th minute for RSL (8-5-2). Rafael Cabral had one save.

TAYLOR Ryan has spoken out about going to therapy after her public break up from Gladiators star Giant.

The OnlyFans model took to Instagram to chat about how strange it has been going through a split in the public eye, and the wonders therapy has done for her so far.

In a video filmed inside her house, Taylor said: “Got a therapy session in ten minutes.

“She is working for her cash today. Sit down, got things to tell you. A woman’s intuition always knows.

“I’ve been going to therapy for a lot of years. Like this last month, the sessions are crucial.”

The clip then cuts to show a snippet of Taylor saying: “Yeah, I know now I wouldn’t do that again.

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“I wouldn’t shrink myself to make someone comfortable. I need help working through this betrayal.”

Taylor then got in her car after the therapy session and took her dog for a walk.

She then returned back home looking tearful as she debriefed to a friend who hugged her.

In the post’s caption, Taylor shared how hard a break-up can be in the public eye, saying: “Come to Dylan Gossett with me and a proper day in the life vlog.

“The experience of a public break up is so, SO weird. Because you’re trying to grieve the future you thought you were going to have and was promised, in real time; with every other persons 2 pence included.

“I’m very thankful for social media and what I’ve been able to achieve so far because of it (rehoming a lot of dogs in shelters, building my business, advocating topics I really care about), but experiencing the downsides is, well, savage.”

On June 29, Giant, real name Jamie, announced his split from Taylor.

He had previously been given an ultimatum to either stay with her or leave the show due to her being on OnlyFans.

However, he’s now done a U-turn and called time on their romance despite being axed by the BBC.

Jamie took to Instagram to address the speculation that his relationship had ended.

He said: “I’m not in a relationship anymore. I’m working on myself, the most important person right now to serve the people that I love is working on me.

“Working out who it is I want be, which direction I want to go in because the ego has been put in a box, I want to move forwards and I want people to know me for me.”

He claimed he doesn’t know what’s next for him but he knows he want to be a “better person.”

Jamie split from his ex wife in November and shortly after began dating Taylor.

MADISON, Wis. — A federal judge on Tuesday declined to overturn a Wisconsin judge’s obstruction of justice conviction for helping a man evade immigration officers who showed up at a courtroom looking to detain him.

The case against Hannah Dugan, who resigned from the Milwaukee County Circuit Court following her conviction, was an early test of how the courts would respond to President Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown.

Trump allies branded Dugan as an activist judge, while her supporters said she was unfairly targeted.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman postponed Dugan’s sentencing June 3 to consider arguments about whether he should overturn her conviction. But in his ruling Tuesday, Adelman said Dugan’s conviction would stand. He did not immediately set a sentencing date.

“The court’s decision is wrong,” Dugan’s legal defense team said in a statement.

Questions about a similar case in Virginia

Dugan’s attorney had argued that her conviction in helping Eduardo Flores-Ruiz leave the courthouse was invalid and should be overturned. He said that was necessary because a federal appeals court in April overturned a key Virginia immigration case that the judge and prosecutors had cited in Dugan’s case.

In the Virginia case, an immigrant who was in the country illegally was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and later escaped. He was recaptured and indicted on a charge of obstructing a pending immigration proceeding.

The federal appeals court found that the ICE action did not constitute a “pending proceeding,” as is required under the federal obstruction law.

Dugan’s attorneys argue that she should not have been charged because there was no “pending proceeding” against the immigrant in her courtroom being sought by ICE agents, only a warrant filed for his arrest. The filing of a warrant does not constitute a “proceeding” under the law, Dugan’s attorneys argued.

Prosecutors countered that the facts in the Virginia case are different and don’t apply to Dugan’s. They also argued that other cases support Dugan’s conviction.

Adelman said the attempted arrest of Flores-Ruiz did count as a “pending proceeding,” in part because it was a planned and targeted operation rather than an arrest resulting from a random encounter.

“Defendant argues that ICE was acting as a law enforcement agency here,” Adelman wrote. “But this ignores the fact that, unlike, say, the FBI, ICE can issue its own warrants and adjudicate and effectuate a removal, as it did with Flores-Ruiz, without the involvement of a court. This makes a difference.”

Dugan faces 5 years in prison, but will likely get probation

Dugan, 67, faces up to five years in prison after a jury convicted her Dec. 19, 2025, but she is unlikely to be sentenced to time behind bars. Federal sentencing guidelines generally call for probation for defendants like her, who have no criminal history and are convicted of a nonviolent crime.

Dugan resigned from her position as a Milwaukee County circuit judge two weeks after her conviction amid threats of impeachment from Republican state lawmakers. She had been a judge for nine years.

The Trump administration brought the case against Dugan as the president pressed ahead with his sweeping immigration crackdown. Trump’s administration and his allies branded Dugan as an activist judge, while Dugan’s attorneys said she was being unfairly targeted and argued, unsuccessfully, that she was immune from being charged because she was a judge.

Dugan’s case marked the first time that a state judge in Wisconsin went to trial on charges of obstructing immigration agents. She was acquitted of concealing an individual to prevent arrest, which is considered a misdemeanor.

Dugan helped an immigrant wanted by ICE agents

On April 18, 2025, immigration officers went to the Milwaukee County courthouse after learning Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.

Dugan confronted agents outside her courtroom and directed them to the chief judge’s office because she told them their administrative warrant wasn’t sufficient grounds to arrest Flores-Ruiz.

After the agents left, she led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. A week later, FBI agents arrested Dugan in the courthouse, leading her outside in handcuffs.

Flores-Ruiz was deported in November.

Bauer writes for The Associated Press.

Sorry to rain on your all-analog parade.

It’s no secret that vinyl records’ resurgence has hit a new plateau, outselling CDs for the first time since 1987 as of 2022, according to a report from the Recording Industry Assn. of America. Three years later, its year-end report flaunts another statistic: Vinyl record sales surpassed $1 billion in 2025 — the first time since 1983.

But there’s an inevitable downside to anything that’s partially made of liquid dinosaur bones. Modern vinyl records are crafted with PVC resin, which makes up more than 75% of an average disk The synthetic polymer itself is made of chlorine and fossil fuel-derived feed stock.

To put its harm in perspective, a first-of-its-kind report from Vinyl Alliance, published in June 2024, found that 50% of a record’s carbon emissions come from this resin. The carbon footprint of a single LP was estimated to be roughly equal to the pollution a gas-powered vehicle emits over a three-mile trip. It adds up quick, considering that 46.8 million new records were sold last year.

Thankfully, it’s not all grim.

Organizations like Music Declares Emergency and the Music Climate Pact initiative are coming together to address the issue. A campaign by the groups — in collaboration with record labels and distribution teams at Secretly Group, Exceleration Music, Warp Records, Ninja Tune and Beggars Group — features titles pressed on 100% reclaimed material.

The release, set in tandem with World Environment Day on Friday, boasts marquee titles such as Elliott Smith’s “Roman Candle,” Bon Iver’s “For Emma, Forever Ago” and Dinosaur Jr.’s “You’re Living All Over Me.”

“What we found talking to a lot of our artists and to customers is that … they are concerned about the environment, and they want to find ways to reduce their footprint,” says Ben Swanson, co-founder of both Secretly Group and the Independent Record Pressing plant in Bordentown, N.J., where the LPs are made. “It’s about 16% less footprint than the traditional piece of vinyl.”

Soren Smith working at Independent Record Pressing in Bordentown, N.J., on May 26, 2026.

(Dutch Doscher / For The Times)

Largely, it’s been people like Swanson who have fully committed to the cause. He says that during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, in an “activist moment,” several labels signed onto the Music Climate Pact, declaring their intention to reduce their emissions and be better stewards of Earth.

“It had almost no teeth to it,” Swanson explains. “A lot of people signed it, posted something on Instagram, and it sat there for a few years. For us, it was pretty frustrating … it felt very perfunctory.”

His work continued, along with a few others, thanks to support from Murmur, an organization designed to support labels and industry names, effectuating the commitments made when the Music Climate Pact was signed.

“We’re more doers than sayers,” Swanson says. “We’ve really been experimenting with what we’re calling ‘Revinyl’ — post-industrial, pre-consumer, recycled vinyl as a means to reduce our footprint at IRP.”

This is what some of Friday’s release is made of — all the trimmings, tidbits and overstock that would otherwise end up in landfills or on the factory floor. For the time being, it certainly won’t solve the climate cost of vinyl records, but it helps to mitigate it.

Between 2024 and 2025, total units produced at Independent Record Pressing increased by 41% while emissions — which also benefited from lower-carbon transportation — decreased by 34%.

“The idea is, if you can make those records 16% more efficient and also show fans of those records … that it is viable, maybe it makes it a little bit easier next year when we go out to ask other artists to jump on board,” Swanson explains. “We’re not making records that are just going to go sit on the shelf — these are records we’re continually repressing all the time anyway.”

Similarly, Ian Stanton, head of sustainability at Beggars Group, was among the first to sign the pact in 2021. His role was created five years ago to give indie labels a voice in light of minimal resources and capabilities. Though these roles do exist at larger labels, he says they have “slightly different drivers.”

When it comes to records, the pure plastic pollution that comes from them is also a concern. When old records make it to a landfill, they’re not only likely to outlive the site, but can also leach plasticizers, a Keele University report found.

“Vinyl is not like a single-use plastic; we don’t throw it away after one listen. We treasure it, we pass it on through generations, and people have a real connection with it,” he says. “But like any other product, there are ways of making it more sustainable.”

He refers to certain plastics, such as shrink wrap, as the most “visible” aspect of vinyl record pollution to consumers. From a collector’s point of view, shrink wrap can actually increase the value of a record. Though there has been discourse over the years around whether this can actually damage the sleeve, many sellers champion an “in the shrink” label as they mark up prices.

Splatter-patterned records arrive at the trim station at Independent Record Pressing in Bordentown, N.J., on May 26, 2026.

(Dutch Doscher / For The Times)

Other visible aspects, such as the paper sleeves in which the records are housed, are also harmful. However, Swanson says that swapping those for recycled materials outputs a relatively negligible difference in emissions impact, largely due to the process behind producing them.

For the time being, vinyl records made from reclaimed materials are the best that companies like Swanson’s can do, though they’re are always on the lookout for other, viable options for improving their footprint. As an example, they’re actively experimenting with how existing record material can help them.

What can the beat-up, worn-out records at your local thrift store do to dodge a landfill and keep the Earth spinning? As it stands, not much.

Stanton lists an array of challenges, including outdated materials, modern production regulations and contaminants.

“I suppose what we need with PVC for records is a really high-quality, contamination-free material to get that sound reproduction,” he explains. “When you bring in stuff from that post-consumer environment, you’ve got to make sure there’s no contamination in there, because you’re going to end up with sound quality issues.

“It’s all in process,” he adds.

For now, they look to fix the most immediate problems first, such as freight emissions, where Beggars Group has converted the vast majority of its shipping operations to sea freight, a far less harmful alternative compared with air freight.

“We want to look at the full life cycle … not only thinking from the cradle to the grave, but from the point where the raw materials are extracted at the beginning,” Stanton says. “This life cycle analysis now looks at all different environmental indicators on this — the chemical usage, the water usage, and the end-of-life impacts on that side of things.”

WASHINGTON — Alabama on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to use a congressional map favoring Republicans in this year’s elections, despite a lower court’s ruling that the redistricting plan intentionally discriminates against Black people.

The state’s Republican leadership filed an emergency appeal with the justices a day after a three-judge court refused to let the state use a map it adopted three years ago that has a majority Black population in just one of its seven congressional districts.

The judges instead required Alabama to continue using a court-ordered map that was put in place for the 2024 elections that includes two districts where Black residents comprise a majority or close to it.

Atty. Gen. Steve Marshall told the court that the state did not intentionally discriminate against Black residents and should be allowed to hold elections this year under a map chosen by lawmakers, not judges.

The appeal is the latest development in the fallout from last month’s Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Black-majority district in Louisiana and weakened the federal Voting Rights Act. That ruling has led Republicans in several Southern states, including Alabama, to take steps to reshape voting districts with large minority populations that have elected Democrats.

The redistricting frenzy is part of a broader push by President Trump to try to hold on to Republicans’ slim House majority in the November elections.

The Alabama cases stretches back several years. The three-judge panel in 2023 ruled that a map drawn by Republican state lawmakers intentionally diluted the voting power of Black citizens. The court said the state, which is about 27% Black, should have two districts where Black voters are the majority or close to it. The court-selected map was used in 2024.

After the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Louisiana case, Alabama officials moved to implement the 2023 state-drawn map. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority agreed to lift the injunction that had blocked the map’s use and sent the case back to the three-judge panel for reconsideration in light of the Louisiana ruling.

In the meantime, voters cast ballots in Alabama’s May 19 primaries, and Republican Gov. Kay Ivey set new special primaries for Aug. 11 in four congressional districts affected by the map switch.

Upon further review, the judicial panel said it was standing behind its initial finding that there was “undisputed evidence” of intentional racial discrimination, a holding that was independent of and unaffected by the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act.

It said the special congressional primaries should instead proceed under the previous court-approved districts.

The use of the court-ordered map led to the 2024 election of U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat. State Republicans are seeking to use a map that would give the GOP an opportunity to reclaim the south Alabama seat.

The state is asking for Supreme Court action by Monday as it makes preparations for the special vote in August.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press.