Flagship

Carney’s Liberals win Canada poll

Canada’s center-left Liberal Party won the country’s general election and may secure a majority, a stunning turnaround after trailing in the polls for months. The opposition Conservative leader lost his own seat, and conceded to Prime Minister Mark Carney. But Carney, appointed in March, faces a tough in-tray: He takes power during a trade war with Washington and with the Western military alliance fracturing over Ukraine. He took aim at Donald Trump in his speech, saying the US president was “trying to break us,” but Carney may owe his victory to Trump, who is staggeringly unpopular with Canadians: Trump himself acknowledged in an Atlantic interview that he had “thrown the election into a close call” by threatening to annex Canada.

Trump popularity hits low

Donald Trump’s popularity fell to historic lows as he marked 100 days in office, with Americans frustrated over whipsawing trade policy, an immigration crackdown, and foreign-policy stumbles. Trump’s fast-changing tariffs in particular have repeatedly roiled markets, with economists warning of looming product shortages and price rises in the US: Trump’s approval rating is the lowest at this stage of a presidential term in at least 80 years. The Wall Street Journal editorial board — which, although conservative, is critical of Trump — said simply: “The President needs a major reset if he wants to rescue his final years from the economic and foreign-policy shocks he has unleashed.”

Goldman advises SAfrica on Trump

South Africa is among the nations that have sought counsel from Goldman Sachs on how to improve ties with Washington. According to The Wall Street Journal, the bank advised Pretoria — which has been in the White House’s crosshairs for months over its close ties to Russia and its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice — to scrap a law that requires Black ownership of some businesses as a way to get into the Trump administration’s good graces. It also recommended Pretoria walk back a land-seizure law that angered Elon Musk, who claimed it discriminated against White farmers. Japan and Saudi Arabia have also consulted with the Wall Street giant.

Spain, Portugal grids back up

Spain and Portugal restored virtually all power after a mass blackout, but the episode signaled deeper worries about countries’ dependence on struggling power grids as they electrify their economies. The sweeping power failure shut down public transport, telecoms, and major infrastructure including airports, with one Madrid-based Flagship writer having to ask a passing van to turn up its radio in order to get a news update. The blackout — just weeks after London’s Heathrow Airport was shut down over its own power failure — highlighted the mammoth risks of electricity outages and cast a particular spotlight on systemic underinvestments in power grids that have vast supplies coming online but lack added transmission infrastructure.

Mexican TV makes fake news

Mexico’s largest TV network was reportedly paid to fabricate news aimed at boosting or destroying politicians’ reputations. According to Aristegui Noticias, Televisa took money from state officials — allegedly including around $3 million from a former president of the Supreme Court — in exchange for attacks on rivals. The influential broadcaster, which denies the accusations, runs the most-watched news shows in Mexico. The scandal comes with concern growing over both the politicization of Mexico’s judiciary as well as the extent of corruption in the country: According to a recent study, graft costs Mexico around 5% of its GDP annually. “Corruption … undermines the rule of law and irreversibly damages institutions, which in turn takes a grave toll on the economy,” the report’s authors wrote.

Amazon deploys Kuiper

Amazon deployed the first spacecraft in its space-based internet constellation Project Kuiper, and said it would start providing broadband later this year. The 27 satellites that took off from Florida marked the first of 80 planned launches: The company hopes to eventually put 3,200 satellites in space to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, which has 7,200 and counting. Satellite internet is expected to be huge: Amazon has invested close to $20 billion, one analyst told Scientific American, and the ability to provide unblockable, high-speed wireless broadband around the world “can benefit many people on the planet,” despite some concerns over space debris and the satellites’ effect on astronomical observations.

China zeroes in on AI

A meeting of China’s Communist leadership underscored its intense focus on developing homegrown artificial intelligence, analysts said. April’s monthly “study session” concentrated on AI, the first time the Party’s top brass has featured a specific technology more than once, research firm Trivium noted, adding that the decision to zero in on AI likely meant “a wave of central and local government support is in the pipeline.” Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s insistence that officials work to build “independent, controllable, and collaboratively functioning AI” systems is bad news for US chip giant Nvidia in particular, the China-watcher Bill Bishop wrote in his Sinocism newsletter, as the comments signal an ever-more intensive focus on domestic development.

Last year, global employee engagement fell, costing the world economy $438 billion in lost productivity.

The primary cause was a drop in manager engagement, but it’s not going to stop there. Manager engagement affects team engagement, which affects productivity. Business performance — and ultimately GDP growth — is at risk if executive leaders do not address manager breakdown.

Examine the recent decline in worker engagement and wellbeing, its likely causes and the most promising solutions through Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report.

Warning over rapid growth of AI

A leading figure in artificial intelligence issued a fresh warning over the technology’s potential for disaster as automation gathers pace. OpenAI added shopping features to ChatGPT, a first step in a coming consumer revolution where AI recommends and picks products, while language-learning app Duolingo said it would become “AI-first,” gradually phasing out contract workers. Geoffrey Hinton, dubbed the “Godfather of AI,” warned that developments like these could be precursors for something dangerous, comparing creating AI to raising a tiger: It’s “cute” now but it may “wanna kill you when it’s grown up.” He warned of a “10 to 20% chance” of disaster in the coming years, adding he was “glad” to be 77, and likely not live to see it.

Male contraceptive effective

A biotech startup said its male contraceptive was effective for at least two years, following a clinical trial. Almost all existing birth control options are for women, but several groups have been researching ways of making men temporarily infertile. The new technique, ADAM, involves injecting men with a water-soluble gel to block the vasa deferentia, the tubes which carry sperm from the testicles. The trial was small, but participants reported no significant side effects. Around 10% of US women of childbearing age use long-term contraceptives such as IUDs, suggesting that a significant percentage of men might do likewise, Gizmodo reported, although one scientist warned that there was no long-term data on the effects of blocking the vasa deferentia.

Peanut allergy hope

Adults with peanut allergies may be able to reduce their risk by slowly acclimatizing to peanut protein. Scientists realized relatively recently that parents could reduce a child’s chance of developing a peanut allergy by exposing them to small amounts during infancy, a discovery that forced a U-turn in parenting advice in much of the world. But it wasn’t known whether the same was true for adults, whose immune systems are more developed. Scientists gave 21 subjects the equivalent of 2.5% of a peanut daily before building the doses up. Some suffered a reaction and dropped out, but 14 ended up able to eat five peanuts safely. One man told the BBC his allergy had almost killed him, but he now eats peanuts every day.

• Foreign ministers from the BRICS bloc meet in Rio de Janeiro.
• Denmark’s King Frederik is expected to visit Greenland, where he will meet the country’s prime minister.
• France marks 80 years since women won the right to vote.

The number of Chinese government departments that hacking company iSoon is alleged to have worked for. A leak of the firm’s operations has given a glimpse of Beijing’s hacking apparatus, which former FBI Director Christopher Wray last year said was “larger than that of every other major nation, combined”. Beijing’s appetite for stolen materials is so large that local hacking firms are becoming “entrepreneurial,” gathering data before a government agency even asks for it, Drum Tower, The Economist’s China-focused podcast reported.

Caravaggio 2025, Palazzo Barberini, Rome. The great Italian painter may be an Old Master, but his work still seems fresh and new, according to Artnews: He went out of fashion after his death, but was rehabilitated after World War II. This exhibition of 23 of his works, including one not shown to the public since it was painted in 1598, “almost baits you with the beauty of [Caravaggio’s] holy subjects,” particularly in his images of Saint John the Baptist and Saint Catherine of Alexandria: The “realism of Caravaggio’s bodies — their complicated expressions, their palpable flesh… renders the sacred paintings truly sacred.” Buy tickets for Caravaggio 2025 here.

A sprawling network of private group chats revolving around the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is the new dark matter of American politics, Semafor’s Ben Smith reported.

“I’ve been amazed at how much this is coordinating our reality,” one past participant of an Andreessen chat told Smith. While comparable private groups exist for Black political elites, anti-Trump liberals, major podcasters, and more, the Andreessen chats represent the origin of the tech-right alliance that currently dominates US politics.