Flagship

US refuses to call Russia ‘aggressor’

The US refused to join international efforts to back Ukraine and condemn Russian aggression ahead of the war’s third anniversary. Unlike previous years, the US reportedly declined to sponsor a United Nations resolution to support Ukraine against Russia’s 2022 invasion. US officials also objected to using the phrase “Russian aggression” in a G7 statement, a departure from the Biden administration that further solidified Washington’s softening toward the Kremlin. US President Donald Trump is seeking a broader reset with Moscow, a Bloomberg columnist argued, and Ukraine’s future is “the most valuable card” that he has up his sleeve. Trump’s Russia pivot has made the ruble the best performing currency in the emerging market.

European stocks outperform the US

European stocks have outpaced Wall Street since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, driven by the lack of early US tariffs and prospects of a Ukraine peace deal. “For Europe, the trade war bark has so far been worse than the bite,” an economist told the Financial Times. While Europe has scrambled to respond to Trump’s push to rapidly end the war in Ukraine, the peace talks have boosted European defense stocks, with Rheinmetall, the continent’s largest ammunition maker, up 31% in the last month. UBS analysts said that lower energy prices in the event of a Ukraine ceasefire, as well as loosening fiscal policy and strong corporate earnings could further boost Europe’s economic performance after years of US dominance.

Trump loyalist will lead the FBI

The US Senate confirmed former federal prosecutor Kash Patel as FBI director, installing the long-time Donald Trump loyalist to oversee the country’s top law enforcement agency. One of the two Republicans who voted with Democrats against Patel’s nomination said she doubted he could lead the bureau “in a way that is free from the appearance of political motivation.” Patel has vowed to radically overhaul the agency, and previously suggested using the FBI to investigate “the people in the media… who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” Patel’s confirmation comes as he is set to make several million dollars from shares he holds in the parent company that owns Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein, which is expected to go public this year.

Trump’s honeymoon phase comes to an end

US President Donald Trump’s approval ratings are slipping as more Americans grow concerned about his early actions to transform the federal government, several polls showed. A CNN poll Thursday found that 52% of Americans believe Trump has “gone too far” in exerting presidential power, with a similar majority wary of tech billionaire Elon Musk’s elevated role in government. A Washington Post poll found 57% thought Trump had exceeded his authority, signaling the end of what one Post reporter called the president’s “honeymoon” phase, after his approval rating peaked around 50% during his inauguration. Trump’s “greatest vulnerability” is the economy, an Intelligencer columnist wrote: Polling showed voters are worried he hasn’t done enough to combat inflation, which unexpectedly rose in January. 

DOGE errors instill fear in federal workers

The Elon Musk-led US Department of Government Efficiency has instilled fear and uncertainty across the government with a litany of arbitrary decisions and errors. DOGE has sought to fire thousands of federal workers — including nuclear staffers it has already scrambled to rehire — and put entire departments in jeopardy, “the consequences of which will reverberate in both obvious and unexpected ways for a generation,” Wired argued. Meanwhile, federal employees’ interactions with DOGE have left many “wondering if casual cruelty was as much the point as the… overhaul,” The Atlantic wrote. Polls show that Americans are growing suspicious of Musk’s prominence in the government, and perhaps sensing unease, President Donald Trump suggested some DOGE savings could be paid back to US citizens.

India pharma mulls Trump tariff threat

India’s drugmakers are calling for bilateral talks with the US to avert President Donald Trump’s proposed 25% tariff on pharmaceutical imports. India — the self-proclaimed “pharmacy of the world” — sold $8.7 billion worth of drugs to the US in 2024, about 31% of the South Asian country’s total pharma export market, The Economic Times reported. Trump’s tariff proposal knocked Indian drugmakers’ stocks on Wednesday. Tariffs could disproportionately hurt US consumers: India supplied almost half of all generic prescriptions in the US in 2022. “This move is going to be inflationary to the US,” an India-based analyst said, because it lacks “the requisite manufacturing infrastructure in-house to replace the scale of supply that India does.”

DeepSeek fuels China AI talent demand

The global prominence of Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has thrown the country’s research-to-industry ecosystem into sharp focus. China has long led the world in producing top AI talent, but retention remains a challenge. Recruiters are increasingly going overseas to hire back Chinese AI engineers who left, many for the US, and DeepSeek’s success has spurred the talent shortage in China: “There is now a mismatch between AI talent demand and supply,” The Straits Times reported. On the frontier of meeting the need is the university of Zhe Da in the tech hub of Hangzhou, The Economist wrote. Three of China’s hottest tech startups, including DeepSeek, began there, with the university positioning itself as China’s answer to Silicon Valley’s Stanford.

Amazon in control of James Bond

Amazon will decide the next James Bond after reaching a deal to take creative control of the 007 franchise, capping years of uncertainty about the secret agent’s future. The company’s agreement ended its longtime feud with the British Broccoli family that had tightly controlled the Bond brand for more than 60 years; they will remain co-owners in a new joint venture that will house the iconic franchise. One Bond expert suggested that Amazon’s control could lead to a change in the agent’s British background, and some have speculated the character could get his own cinematic universe. Turning to the fans, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos wrote on X, “Who’d you pick as the next Bond?”

Tech ushers in golden age of crime

We are entering a golden age of organized crime fueled by digital technology, and international systems are ill-prepared to handle it, two analysts argued. Misha Glenny and Robert Muggah wrote in Foreign Policy that “virtually every category of criminal activity is leveraging technology to create economies of scale,” including using drones for assassinations, drug delivery, and smuggling, while cryptocurrency facilitates money laundering and ransom payments. Mobs are moving into cybercrime as digital natives replace older, less tech-savvy bosses. As ever, there is an arms race between criminal groups and law enforcement: Mexico’s president noted that US drones have been used to monitor drug cartels “for many years” as part of a coordinated campaign between the two countries.

Fog harvesting for dry cities

Capturing water from fog could provide drinking water for some of the world’s driest cities. The Chilean desert city of Alto Hospicio receives 0.19 inches of rain in the average year, and relies on truck deliveries of water. But it is regularly covered in clouds of fog from the humidity coming off the Pacific Ocean. Fog harvesting — using mesh traps that gather dew and then channel it into pipes — has been used at small scale elsewhere, but scientists said that a large operation, targeted at the most reliably foggy areas, could produce enough water to meet Alto Hospicio’s water shortfall, as well as in other dry but foggy cities.

Feb. 21:

• The eurozone, Germany, India, Japan, and the US release purchasing managers’ index data.
• Standard Chartered reports its latest quarterly earnings.
• American actor Kelsey Grammer celebrates his 70th birthday.

India is hosting its first major showcase of Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí’s art. The New Delhi exhibit includes more than 200 works drawn from the collection of Dalí’s longtime friend and collaborator Pierre Argillet. Argillet’s daughter told the BBC that while Dalí never traveled to India, he was “fascinated” by the country, “especially the West’s fascination with Indian mysticism in the 1960s and 1970s.” During that period, Air India, the country’s national airline, hired Dalí to design its first class cabin’s ashtrays, Artnet wrote: The artist received an elephant as payment, saying he wanted to keep it in his garden — it actually lived at the Barcelona zoo until it died in 2018.

A growing number of Republican senators say US President Donald Trump will need to work more closely with Congress as DOGE gears up, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller and Burgess Everett reported.

“The president’s within his purview of doing what he’s doing on personnel,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told Semafor. But structural reform is “a whole different story.” Though most Republicans in Congress are happy to cheer the new administration’s elbow-throwing approach so far, some are throwing up a yellow light.