.S. inflation picked up a bit last month as food costs rose, though overall inflation remained mostly tame.

Consumer prices increased 2.4% in May compared with a year ago, according to a Labor Department report released Wednesday. That is up from a 2.3% yearly increase in April. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 2.8% for the third straight month. Economists pay close attention to core prices because they generally provide a better sense of where inflation is headed.

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the United States will get magnets and rare earth minerals from China under a new trade deal and that tariffs on Chinese goods will rise to 55%.

In return, Trump said, the U.S. will provide China "what was agreed to," including allowing Chinese students to attend American colleges and universities. The Republican president had recently begun to clamp down on the presence of Chinese nationals on U.S. college campuses.

Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway said Tuesday they have imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli government ministers for allegedly "inciting extremist violence" against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The decision by Western governments friendly to Israel was a sharp rebuke of Israel's settlement policies in the West Bank and of settler violence, which has spiked since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack ignited the war in the Gaza Strip.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a major Palestinian legal group for prisoners and detainees along with 4 other charitable entities across the Middle East, Africa and Europe, accusing them of supporting Hamas' military wing under the pretense of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Those sanctioned include Addameer, a nongovernmental organization that was founded in 1991 and is based in the city of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The EU on Tuesday announced the removal of the United Arab Emirates from its money-laundering "high-risk" list but added Lebanon alongside nine other jurisdictions.

The European Commission said it added Algeria, Angola, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Laos, Lebanon, Namibia, Nepal and Venezuela, along with Monaco, to the list of countries that need extra monitoring of their money laundering controls.

Early trading on Wall Street is thin with all eyes on China-U.S. trade talks in London that could have a huge impact on the global economy.

Futures for the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq each inched up 0.1% before the bell Tuesday, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were essentially flat.

It's one of crypto's hottest trends: publicly traded companies buying bitcoin and then buying even more.

President Donald Trump's media company just announced a plan to raise $2.5 billion to buy bitcoin, joining a growing number of so-called "bitcoin treasury companies" as the world's most popular cryptocurrency hits all-time highs.

As President Donald Trump builds a crypto empire — including hosting a private dinner with top investors at his golf club — Democrats have united in condemning what they call blatant corruption from the White House.

But the Democratic Party's own relationship with the emerging crypto industry is far less cut and dried.

China and the United States Tuesday held a second day of trade talks in London seeking to ease a bitter row over tariffs, a U.S. Treasury spokesman said.

"Confirming talks resumed earlier this" morning, the spokesman said in a statement sent to AFP.

Fireworks lit up the night sky over Beirut's famous St. Georges Hotel as hit songs from the 1960s and 70s filled the air in a courtyard overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

The retro-themed event was hosted last month by Lebanon's Tourism Ministry to promote the upcoming summer season and perhaps recapture some of the good vibes from an era viewed as a golden one for the country. In the years before a civil war began in 1975, Lebanon was the go-to destination for wealthy tourists from neighboring Gulf countries seeking beaches in summer, snow-capped mountains in winter and urban nightlife year-round.