CNN
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President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened duties of 30% on products from Mexico and the European Union, two of America’s biggest trading partners, in an ongoing tariff campaign that’s upended global trade since he retook office in January.

“The United States of America has agreed to continue working with the European Union, despite having one of our largest Trade Deficits with you. Nevertheless, we have decided to move forward, but only with more balanced and fair TRADE,” Trump wrote in the letter to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, which he posted to Truth Social.

Trump has imposed a slate of tariffs on US trading partners this year – then paused, modified, raised or lowered them, in a chaotic barrage of policy actions that’s left everyone from major nations to individual Americans trying to figure out how to plan for the future even as economic uncertainty grows.

The EU and Mexico join a growing list of countries whose imports will face updated duties on August 1, since Trump began posting tariff letters on Monday with rates of up to 40%.

In his letters to the EU and Mexico, Trump said that all imports were subject to the 30% tariff, excluding “Sectoral Tariffs,” such as the 25% auto tariff.

Von der Leyen said in a statement that the EU remains “ready to continue working towards an agreement” by the August 1 deadline.

But, she said, a 30% tariff on EU exports would hurt supply chains, businesses and consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. The EU “will take all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests, including the adoption of proportionate countermeasures if required,” von der Leyen wrote.

Products from Mexico, meanwhile, have mostly been able to enter the country duty-free, granted they were compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Trump negotiated in his first term. In his letter addressed to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump said that tariff barriers were imposed to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States, which he has previously used to justify earlier tariffs on Mexico as well.

“Mexico has been helping me secure the border, BUT, what Mexico has done, is not enough,” Trump wrote.

Mexico’s economy minister Marcelo Ebrard posted on X that a Mexican delegation told United States officials during a Friday meeting that plans to establish a new tariff rate would be “unfair treatment and that we did not agree.” But the United States and Mexico are negotiating to find an “alternative to protect businesses and jobs on both sides of the border.”

In the tariff letters, which were dated on Friday, Trump said that any retaliation of tariffs charged on US imports would be met with pushback from the United States. Trump said that “whatever the number you choose to raise (tariffs) by, will be added onto the 30% that we charge.”

He blamed both tariff and non-tariff trade barriers as additional reasons for imposing tariffs on the EU and Mexico.

The Trump administration has taken particular issue with value-added and digital services taxes, which are prominent in several EU member countries.

Digital service taxes are levied on the gross revenue that online firms collect from offering services to users. Countries with these taxes would be able to tax all the revenue large companies that operate online collect — even if the business is unprofitable. That can include what they collect from selling data, advertising as well as payments they receive for subscriptions, software and other kinds of online services users pay for.

Trump and members of his administration said on multiple occasions that the EU was not negotiating in good faith. And two months ago, Trump was so enraged by the lack of progress in trade talks that he was prepared to slap a 50% tariff on goods from the EU come June 1. “I’m not looking for a deal,” he said at the time.

A 30% tariff on the EU is more than the 20% “reciprocal” tariff which goods from there faced before Trump paused them in mid-April.

After Trump made the threat in May, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Fox News interview that the “EU proposals have not been of the same quality that we’ve seen from our other important trading partners.”

The letters to the EU and Mexico come after Trump threatened 35% tariffs on some Canadian goods on Thursday.

This story has been updated with additional content.

CNN
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An ancient Roman mystery is afoot in the rolling hills of northern Britain.

Archaeologists have unearthed a stash of unusually large shoes at the ruins of a first-century military fort along Hadrian’s Wall, a 73-mile (117-kilometer) stone barrier that famously shielded the Roman Empire’s northwestern perimeter from foreign invaders. The discovery is raising new questions about the lives and origins of the fort’s inhabitants.

The giant leather soles were found at Magna Fort in May among 34 pieces of footwear, including work boots and baby-sized shoes, that are helping to paint a picture of the 4,000 men, women and children who once lived in and around the English site just south of the Scottish border.

Eight of the shoes are over 11.8 inches (30 centimeters) in length — a US men’s size 13.5 or greater based on Nike’s size chart — making them larger than average by today’s standard and sparking suspicions that unusually tall troops may have guarded this particular fortress at the empire’s edge.

By contrast, the average ancient shoe found at a neighboring Roman fort was closer to a US men’s size 8, according to a news release about the discovery.

“When the first large shoe started to come out of the ground, we were looking for many explanations, like maybe it’s their winter shoes, or people were stuffing them, wearing extra socks,” recalled Rachel Frame, a senior archaeologist leading the excavation. “But as we found more of them and different styles, it does seem to be that these (were) just people with really large feet.”

As digging continues at Magna Fort, Frame said she hopes further investigation could answer who exactly wore these giant shoes. A basic sketch of the site’s past is just starting to come together.

When the Magna Fort was in use, multiple different Roman military troops and their families moved into the site every few years after it was built around AD 85, archaeologists suspect.

Inscriptions on the fort’s walls and altars recount settlements of Hamian archers from what is now Syria, Dalmatian mountain soldiers from Croatia and Serbia, and Batavians from the Netherlands, but the length of time each group stayed at the stronghold remains unknown.

Likely following orders from the Roman army, the troops would often leave the fort for distant regions and in their haste, ditch shoes, clothing and other belongings in the surrounding trenches, Frame explained.

Additionally, new occupants requiring more space would have built larger structures on top of the existing fort, packing rubble and clay between the walls and trapping any belongings left by the previous tenants, Frame said.

“As archaeologists, we like trash,” said Dr. Elizabeth Greene, an associate professor of classics at the University of Western Ontario. “You get those habitational layers where things were just left behind, maybe forgotten about, and that tells us more about the space.” Greene has studied thousands of shoes collected from the nearby Vindolanda Roman Fort, which has been excavated since the 1970s and is among the most well-studied of the Roman forts along Hadrian’s Wall.

The recently discovered Magna shoes share some similarities with those in the Vindolanda Fort collection, said Greene, who was not involved in the Magna excavation process, but has viewed the artifacts.

For one, the soles of the shoes from both sites are made from thick layers of cowhide leather held together with iron hobnails, she explained. While only a couple of the shoes discovered at Magna have some of the upper portions still intact, the Vindolanda Fort shoe styles include closed military boots and open work boots, as well as sneaker-like shoes reaching just below the ankle and sandals with leather fasteners.

It’s likely that the leather soles of the Magna shoes survived thousands of years in the ground thanks to ancient tanning techniques that used crushed up vegetative matter to create a water and heat resistant coating, Greene said. Testing is still underway to confirm this hypothesis.

The length of the extra-large Magna shoes suggests the original owners may have been exceptionally tall, Greene said. At Vindolanda, only 16 out of the 3,704 shoes collected measured over 11.8 inches (30 centimeters).

Ancient Roman military manuals often described the ideal recruit as being only 5 feet, 8 inches or 5 feet, 9 inches in height, according to Rob Collins, a professor of frontier archaeology at Newcastle University in England. But the soldiers stationed around Hadrian’s Wall came from all around the far-reaching empire, bringing a wide diversity of physical traits to their settlements, he said.

Still, why Magna specifically might have needed troops of towering stature remains unclear.

To piece together the shoe owners’ identities, researchers will examine the Magna shoes for any signs of wear, Frame said. Any foot impressions left in the shoes could be used to model the feet of the original wearers.

Linking the shoes to real human remains, however, could prove difficult. For one, the Romans near Hadrian’s Wall generally cremated their dead, using a headstone to mark the graves, Collins said. Any bones that remain around the settlements are likely from enemy, illegal or accidental burials.

So far, the few bones that have been found at the Magna site were too soft and crumbly to provide insight, Frame said, but the team continues to search for new burial spots. Pottery and other artifacts found around the site may also help with dating and matching the timelines of the known occupants, she said.

But the researchers worry they could be running out of time.

The 2,000-year-old leather found at both the Vindolanda and Magna sites is preserved by the anaerobic, or low-oxygen, conditions of the soil, Frame said.

The 34 shoes found at the Magna fort, however, are in worse condition than those retrieved from Vindolanda decades ago — a problem Frame attributes to the changing climate.

“The more our climate changes, the more we get heat waves and droughts, or months’ worth of rain in one weekend type (of) scenarios, the more that influences the underground soil conditions and introduces more oxygen into these environments,” Frame explained.

In oxygen-rich soil, microbes thrive, contributing to decay, and acidic pH levels erode natural materials like leather.

Frame said the rapid weather changes only make their excavation of Magna more urgent.

“I’m not saying I don’t get excited about the shiny objects and precious treasures, but for me, archaeology is about the story of everybody else … the stories of the people whose lives weren’t written down, who weren’t kings or emperors or famous heroes,” she said. “These personal objects really put the real human people back into the picture.”

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CNN
 — 

In travel news this week: five Americans living in France and loving it, inside the cockpit of a self-landing plane, plus sweaty secrets of the TSA security checkpoints.

It’s been a sizzling summer so far in the United States and Europe, but there’s one lesser-known side effect of all these high temperatures.

Heavy perspiration can earn you a pat-down at airport security, particularly if it’s pooling in intimate pouches.

Ever had the machine go off and the security officer had to wave over you with the magic wand? Moistness might well have been the problem.

We asked the TSA to explain why this happens.

“Added moisture from a person’s body can alter the density of clothing, so it is possible perspiration may cause our Advanced Imaging Technology machines to alarm,” a spokesperson said.

“If this occurs, the passenger may need to undergo additional screening, such as a pat-down in the area of the body where the AIT alarmed, to ensure there is no threat.”

Sweatiness or otherwise, TSA lines will move a little faster from now on, since on Tuesday TSA removed the requirement for all passengers to take off shoes at airport security checkpoints.

Our video has the details.

The 3.4 ounce liquid rule remains in place, but there is one TSA-approved hack that allows travelers to bring a bottle of water past the scanners.

It takes a little planning, but your beverage will undoubtedly be refreshing. Here’s how it works.

To help you navigate high temperatures this summer — and know when extra hydration is important — CNN has produced a US heat-risk tracker.

See how things are looking in your area right now.

“I had the dream of France … But the dream was not as easy as I thought at all,” says Colorado woman Jennie Vercouteren, who moved with her husband, Ward, to the French Pyrenees in 2016.

The pair entered the property management business and, while things got off to a shaky start, Vercouteren says, “We don’t regret making the decision. I love how beautiful and calm life here is.”

The Zuerchers, a Florida couple in their early 60s who recently moved to Nice, in the south of France, agree.

“Nice is what Florida wishes it was,” is Pennie Zuercher’s take on the French city. “Every country has its issues,” Geoff says, “so we’re not walking around with rose-colored glasses like France is perfect, but it really fits us.”

Proving that a fresh start can be made at any age, California woman Carole Carson says that relocating to France at the age of 80 saved her life.

She now writes for her hometown paper back in Nevada City, California, and has published four novels. “Something about being freed from expectations of who I was based on who I’d always been, allowed me to be the writer I’d always wanted to be …” she says. “I was free to recreate myself once again.”

One word of caution, though, given all our talk of high temperatures.

Western Europe just had its hottest June on record and air conditioning is still very rare in the region’s homes. Here’s why.

A plane that lands itself