News is a significant part of Google's business, according to a study to be released on Monday by the News Media Alliance (NMA) which represents more than 2,000 newspapers across the US.

Google made a whopping $4.7 billion from the work of journalists last year via search and Google News, taking a huge cut from the online ad revenue of media houses which lost a crucial source of income, resulting in many of them getting shrunk or closed, a media report said.

News is a significant part of Google's business, according to a study to be released on Monday by the News Media Alliance (NMA) which represents more than 2,000 newspapers across the US.

China said on Monday its overall trade surplus was $41.65 billion last month, significantly more than expected as the trade impasse between Washington and Beijing drags on.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected China to post an overall trade surplus of $20.5 billion in May.

The larger trade surplus came as the country's dollar-denominated exports surprisingly increased last month, while imports came in worse than expected. China's General Administration of Customs said on Monday that exports in May inched up 1.1% year-on-year, while imports fell 8.5% during the same period.

Steps must be taken to avoid war between Tehran and Washington, Germany's foreign minister warned, echoing broader concern in Europe over the fallout of the new standoff in the Middle East.

Following stops in Jordan and Iraq, German FM Heiko Maas met with his counterpart in Iran on Monday to discuss ways to breathe new life into the 2015 nuclear pact, hoping to avert further escalation with Washington amid a flurry of accusations and threats.

"The situation in the region here is highly explosive and extremely serious," Maas told reporters after meeting with Iranian FM Javad Zarif. "A dangerous escalation of existing tensions can also lead to a military escalation."

It looks like that much-lauded "special relationship" between the UK and US is so special that the latter now appears to believe it should be offered a significant say in who leads the former.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been caught admitting that Washington will do its "level best" to prevent UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn from becoming Britain's prime minister - but what's a bit of meddling between special friends?

In a recording leaked to the Washington Post, Pompeo told a gathering of Jewish leaders that a Corbyn premiership is a real possibility and that he could manage to "run the gauntlet and get elected" - something which the Trump administration seems to be dead set against.

Pompeo was apparently responding to claims of "anti-semitism" that have been levelled at the Labour leader. He promised that the US "won't wait" until Corbyn is elected to "push back," because things can get a little tricky once an election has already inconveniently taken place. "It's too risky and too important and too hard [to interfere] once it's already happened," he said.

Since he became Israel's ambassador to the U.S. in 2014, Ron Dermer has said several times that "Israel will be the most important ally of the United States in the 21st century." Speaking to the American Jewish Committee last week, the ambassador spelled that out, saying that Israel is more important than Britain because it exceeds Britain in the technology department:

"The reason why I believe that Israel is going to be the most important ally is for two reasons, security and technology...

"If you are the president of the United States and you have to pick one country in the world to choose as your security partner for the next 50 years, who is it going to be? ... Think about where the threats are going to be emanating from for the next half century or so, at least for the next few decades. Think about a country that has a powerful military where you won't have to send your sons and daughters and put boots on the ground to defend her. Think about a country with a powerful and first-class intelligence agency that can not only provide intelligence to protect its own country but can pass intelligence to you to help keep your people safe and keep your allies safe. Think about a country with a serious cyber capability cause we're going into a world where more and more of those threats are happening in cyber space- and who are you going to choose?

North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows said Friday night that the FBI knew within 60 days of opening the Trump-Russia probe that the investigation was "built on a foundation of sand."

"Within 60 days of them opening the investigation, prior to [Robert] Mueller coming on, the FBI and the [Department of Justice] knew that Christopher Steele was not credible, the dossier was not true, George Papadopoulos was innocent," Meadows said on Fox News's Hannity. "When you look at that foundation, it's all built on a foundation of sand. That's going to start to show up soon," the Republican said.

We've been so busy sifting through the ashes that too few of us have noticed what's been staring us in the face all along.

Let's change that.

The Big Picture

With millions of words written about Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and its associates, swirling all around us daily, it's easy not to see the wood for the trees.

The first port of call for those defending the world's most at-risk publishing organisation and its staff has been tackling the individual narratives of its oppressors. Focusing on Sweden, or Ecuador, or the US Department Of Justice, the Grand Juries or the United Kingdom and debunking their spin seems a necessary task. But we have to face the reality: Years of arguing til we're blue in the face about the intricacies of all the various aspects of the aforementioned - plenty of which I've engaged in myself - hasn't achieved victory. We aren't better off, or stronger for it. Things are slipping, and slipping fast.

A decade into this battle, it's time to reflect upon the sum total of the parts. We need to acknowledge what has happened not just to Julian - but to his organisation as a whole. We need to examine WikiLeaks at an architectural level, just as its opponents have. In doing so, we see that the desecration of Julian's reputation and the attacks against his work, relationships and his physical person were actually never about him - it was always about his organisation, what it is and what it does, all along.

Sweden and the cases against Julian were only ever a distraction, a red herring. To get a crystal clear picture of the situation we must zoom out to an eagle eye's view.

What that lofty vantage point reveals is an obvious and protracted systematic destabilisation of the key pillars of the organisation. The social decapitation of its most effective members. The undermining of their ability to continue to serve and add value to it.

Given the Trust Project's rich-get-richer impact on the online news landscape, it is not surprising to find that it is funded by a confluence of tech oligarchs and powerful forces with a clear stake in controlling the flow of news.

Ater the failure of Newsguard - the news rating system backed by a cadre of prominent neoconservative personalities - to gain traction among American tech and social media companies, another organization has quietly stepped in to direct the news algorithms of tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

Though different from Newsguard, this group, known as "The Trust Project," has a similar goal of restoring "trust" in corporate, mainstream media outlets, relative to independent alternatives, by applying "trust indicators" to social-media news algorithms in a decidedly untransparent way. The funding of "The Trust Project" - coming largely from big tech companies like Google; government-connected tech oligarchs like Pierre Omidyar; and the Knight Foundation, a key Newsguard investor - suggests that an ulterior motive in its tireless promotion of "traditional" mainstream media outlets is to limit the success of dissenting alternatives.

Of particular importance is the fact that the Trust Project's "trust indicators" are already being used to control what news is promoted and suppressed by top search engines like Google and Bing and massive social-media networks like Facebook. Though the descriptions of these "trust indicators" - eight of which are currently in use - are publicly available, the way they are being used by major tech and social media companies is not.

China, the world's largest refiner and supplier of rare earth, cut back on overseas shipments of the elements in the first five months of 2019, amid growing calls by nationalists to use the country's stockpile as a tit-for-tat response in its trade war with the United States.

Exports of rare earth elements fell 16 per cent in May from a month earlier to 3,640 tonnes, according to the General Administration of Customs data. Overseas shipments for the first five months of 2019 fell 7.2 per cent to 19,265 tonnes, compared to the same period last year.

The declines are pointing to the use of export permits over rare earth as leverage in China's trade negotiations with the US, the world's biggest importer of the elements. The US was the world's largest importer of refined rare earth elements, with 59 per cent of imports valued at US$92 million sourced from China, according to data by the US International Trade Commission.

"China should still take an open attitude towards the trade tensions, treating trade deals and foreign companies friendly," said Qiao Yide, vice-chairman of the Shanghai Development Research Foundation, a non-profit institution established with the aim of promoting research on the issues of development. "Even if a trade agreement can't be reached in future, China should reform its markets to make it fair and transparent in the global trading system."

Amid rising tensions with Washington, Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warned the US that their "economic war" will not end in their favor, as talks with Europe on a nuclear deal continue.

With Washington's economic pressure on Iran mounting, the Islamic Republic's outspoken foreign minister warned on Monday that the US "cannot expect to stay safe" as a consequence of their actions. Zarif also directly faulted President Trump in the matter:

"Mr. Trump himself has announced that the US has launched an economic war against Iran. The only solution for reducing tensions in this region is stopping that economic war."