Flagship

US, Russia to hold talks in Saudi Arabia

US and Russian officials will reportedly meet in Saudi Arabia this week to discuss ending the Ukraine war, while Kyiv said it hadn’t been invited. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top White House advisers will attend the talks, which could herald a potential meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin soon. European leaders, meanwhile, are gathering Monday after being excluded from the talks: Officials have criticized Moscow and Washington’s bilateral moves, amid rising concern that Europe is being left out of negotiations that will determine the continent’s future. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the old US-Europe relationship is “ending,” and called for the creation of an “army of Europe.”

Netanyahu says he’s ‘reshaping’ MidEast

Hamas returned three Israeli hostages Saturday, while Israel freed hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, a sign that the Gaza ceasefire is holding despite nearly reaching a breaking point just days earlier. The exchange — which followed a Hamas threat to pause hostage releases, putting the ceasefire in jeopardy — came as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. The two men discussed President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to relocate Gaza’s residents and redevelop the enclave: Netanyahu said he and Trump are “reshaping the Middle East.” Meanwhile, negotiations for the ceasefire’s second stage are yet to begin; Netanyahu’s cabinet will meet this week to chart its next steps, following pressure from Trump’s advisers to restart the talks.

US shifts Taiwan language

The US State Department website removed the phrase, “we do not support Taiwan independence,” although whether the edit reflected a deeper policy shift remains unclear. The website also added a reference to Taiwan’s technological collaboration with the Pentagon, but maintained opposition to “changes to the status quo” by either Taiwan or China, which sees the island as a breakaway province it will inevitably absorb. The new language comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Beijing last month that Washington doesn’t back Taiwan’s independence. Taipei has shifted its own stance toward the US, The New York Times reported, with relations becoming more “uncertain and transactional”: Taiwan on Friday made fresh promises to boost US investment to avert tariff hikes.

Xi to host China execs, including Ma

Chinese leader Xi Jinping plans to meet with some of the country’s most influential entrepreneurs this week, in a “potentially momentous show of support for the private sector,” Bloomberg reported. Beijing invited the heads of Tencent and DeepSeek to the symposium, as well as Alibaba’s Jack Ma, who has kept a low profile since criticizing China’s regulatory system in 2020, prompting authorities to halt his fintech firm’s IPO. Amid the country’s economic slowdown, the gathering could reassure global investors that “another crackdown is not around the corner,” one analyst said; Tencent, Xiaomi, and Alibaba stocks rose on the news. However, experts at Trivium China warned that sentiment will worsen if Xi seeks “to emphasize that private companies prosper at the will of the state.”

EU suffers from self-imposed trade barriers

The European Union should worry less about potential US tariffs and more about existing, self-imposed trade barriers, the former president of the European Central Bank argued in the Financial Times. Italian economist Mario Draghi, who last year authored a report on boosting EU competitiveness, wrote that the eurozone’s tepid growth is a result of the bloc’s own constraints: Internal barriers “shrink the market in which European companies operate,” and trade between EU nations is less than half of that between US states. Meanwhile, consumer demand is weak thanks to tight fiscal policy. The bloc’s shortcomings are “within its power to change,” Draghi wrote, but that will require “a fundamental change in mindset.”

Milei backtracks after promoting crypto coin

Argentina’s President Javier Milei quickly backtracked after promoting a cryptocurrency coin Friday that the self-described “anarcho-capitalist” said could boost the country’s flagging economy. After Milei touted the Libra token, its value skyrocketed by more than 2,000% in just 40 minutes, before cratering. Milei, who has been credited with taming Argentina’s rampant inflation since his 2023 election, said he had ordered an investigation into the incident, which opposition lawmakers have decried as “a scandal without precedent.” Libra’s trajectory mirrors the various crypto coins associated with US President Donald Trump and his family, which also saw stratospheric initial rises and early investors cash out, while late adopters were left with billions in cumulative losses, The New York Times reported.

Deadly stampede at Delhi train station

At least 18 people were killed in a stampede at a train station in New Delhi. Many of the victims were traveling to the Maha Kumbh Mela, making it the second deadly crush associated with the massive six-week Hindu gathering, which this year has attracted more than 500 million attendees. Last month, 30 people were killed in a stampede at the festival itself. Authorities said they would investigate the station incident, which prompted criticism of the government’s crowd control efforts. As the world’s most populous nation, India is “a country of crowds,” an India Today columnist wrote. But officials haven’t “stepped up to train its personnel in crowd management. Even in predictable situations.”

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What does it mean to be alive?

A growing body of research is challenging scientists’ understanding of what it means to be alive. First discovered in 1967, viroids — molecules that consist of a single strand of RNA and behave somewhat like viruses — were largely overlooked for years. But a flurry of discoveries since 2020 has revealed that there are many thousands of these entities, at least. Some viroid-like molecules behave in wildly different ways from others, suggesting they may be something else entirely. Altogether, these tiny things could indicate “that the definition of life should be dramatically expanded,” one researcher told New Scientist. The “deeper issue,” the outlet noted, “is that nobody has yet managed to come up with a definition of life that a majority of biologists can get behind.”

‘Woke’ research grants may be red herrings

A database of US federal research grants flagged by the Trump administration for “push[ing] a far-left ideology” included many that were apolitical, a prominent science writer argued. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said the list of 3,400 grants, totaling about $2 billion, “promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” But an analysis by psychiatrist Scott Alexander found that the majority had nothing to do with DEI. In some cases, the flagged grants included “a meaningless sentence saying ‘this could help women and minorities,’” possibly because, under Biden-era rules, that kind of context helped secure funding. Others included words like “disability” and “trans-disciplinary,” which might have triggered a word filter. Some of the grants labeled “woke nonsense” included studies on beetle horns and cancer treatments.

Japan looks to anime, manga to draw tourists

Local governments in Japan are looking to leverage lucrative anime and manga fandoms for tourism, spotlighting sites featured in shows and comics. Situated on the island of Kyushu, Miyazaki prefecture is among the regions trying to tap into oshikatsu, or fan activities, to attract anime and manga devotees, Nikkei Asia reported, a bid to draw in younger and more international tourists: A scenic gorge in the area, for example, was the setting for a popular anime. In another town, the government plans to feature a popular manga about a hamster that lives in the city in its social media and in a special exhibition at a local museum.

Feb. 17:

• The US celebrates Presidents Day.
• Japan releases its fourth-quarter GDP figures for 2024.
• Filmmaker Michael Bay celebrates his 60th birthday.

A pioneering photography collection, now housed in the Smithsonian Institution Archives, captures how early innovations in microphotography helped shape our understanding of snowflakes. Wilson Bentley, a “bona-fide snowflake obsessive,” essentially jerry-rigged a microscope to a camera to snap close-ups of flakes in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Bentley’s work inspired the notion that snowflakes “provide many of us with our earliest impressions of what it means to be unique,” The New Yorker noted. “Every crystal was a masterpiece of design,” he wrote. After Bentley’s death, the photographs helped scientists craft the first lab-grown snowflakes — work that still continues today.

Mark Read has pledged that 2025 will be WPP’s “year of execution,” pitching the UK advertising giant he leads as having finally cracked the challenge of balancing the two skills that clients value most in the AI era: creativity and technology, Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson wrote.