Consumers picked up their spending in June after an earlier pullback, despite anxiety over tariffs and the state of the U.S. economy. Retail sales rose a better-than-expected 0.6% in June, the Commerce Department said Thursday, after two consecutive months of spending declines, a 0.1% pullback in April, and a 0.9% slowdown in May. Retail was buoyed earlier in the year by car sales as Americans attempted to get ahead of President Donald Trump’s 25% duty on imported cars and car parts.

Myanmar’s military now controls a strategic gateway town, wresting it away from rebel forces after nearly a year, as state media reported on Thursday. The shift is considered a rare turnaround in the country’s northeast, where the military government had been seen as being on the defensive against rebel forces. Nawnghkio, which sits on a major highway trading route linking central Myanmar to China, had been under the control of the rebel groups that captured the town last June.

The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth sold for over $5 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. But a rare skeleton of a young dinosaur stole the show, fetching more than $30 million in a bidding war during Wednesday’s sale. The skeleton is one of four known Ceratosaurus nasicornis skeletons and the only juvenile one. The auction house said the buyer plans to loan the skeleton to an institution. The 54-pound meteorite is believed to have been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike. It was found in the Sahara Desert in Niger in 2023.

Prime Minister Hun Manet ordered a crackdown on cybercrime operators. The United Nations and other agencies estimate that cyberscams, most of them originating from Southeast Asia, earn billions of dollars for criminal gangs around the world.