Flagship

India, Pakistan on brink of war

India and Pakistan edged closer to the brink of war, with Islamabad vowing to retaliate against deadly Indian strikes Wednesday, as the international community urged restraint. Pakistan said 26 civilians died in military strikes inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir that India said were precision operations targeting “known terror camps.” Pakistan also claimed to have shot down five Indian aircraft. The threat of conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors underscores shifting global alliances: India used to buy arms mainly from Russia, but increasingly is doing so from the West, while Pakistan is shifting its supply from the US to China. The connections inject “superpower politics into South Asia’s longest-running and most intractable conflict,” The New York Times reported.

US-China trade talks coming

Top American and Chinese officials will meet in Switzerland this week in an attempt to defuse their trade war, with punishing tariffs hurting both sides. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has repeatedly described the tit-for-tat duties as unsustainable, will hold talks with He Lifeng, China’s trade czar and a confidant of the country’s leader — but said they would not result in a deal. Each country has already suffered as a result of the trade war, with measures of China’s services and manufacturing sectors falling to multiyear lows, while the US dollar remains weak, long-term Treasury bonds now command a higher risk premium, and economists increasingly project a US recession.

Latam-China ties deepen

Latin American leaders will head to China for a summit as Beijing seeks to increase its influence — and reduce Washington’s — in the region. Chile’s president has “intensified multilateralism as a shield” against US protectionism, El País reported, while Brazil’s is expected to court Chinese investment and secure purchases of raw materials. Colombia’s leader also said yesterday he would sign his country up for China’s Belt and Road infrastructure-building campaign. Still, Beijing’s hopes of displacing Washington as the dominant power in the region are likely misplaced, the Financial Times’ Latin America editor noted: Continental leaders share a cultural affinity with the US, worry about growing dependent on China, and fear retaliation from Washington if they stray.

US looks to Africa for deportations

The US is looking to send deportees to Africa as part of its wide-ranging immigration crackdown. Rwanda’s foreign minister said this week that Kigali was in “early talks” over taking in so-called third-country nationals from the US, while Reuters reported that American officials were planning to use a military plane to send migrants to Libya. US President Donald Trump campaigned on reducing immigration, and has sought to deport those who have entered the US illegally, including to countries where they have never lived — his team at one point asked Kyiv to take in deportees, The Washington Post reported — and where they may face tough conditions: An earlier deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador has sparked a judicial controversy.

Vatican conclave begins

Cardinals will gather today at the Sistine Chapel to begin the process of choosing the next leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. There is no clear frontrunner to succeed Pope Francis, but his legacy looms large, not least because he appointed the vast majority of the electorate: An Italian and a Filipino are among the names most often mentioned as possible future pontiffs. The 133 cardinals eligible to vote will hold one round today, and then up to four on subsequent days; no conclave in the past nearly 200 years has taken more than four days. The cardinals will eschew digital technology to avoid outside influence, while mobile-signal jammers have been installed and the halls have been swept for bugs to combat leaks and hacks.

SpaceX rocket to see more launches

The world’s largest and most powerful rocket could launch every two weeks after US regulators greenlit a more regular schedule for the SpaceX spacecraft. Existing rules limit Starship to five launches a year, but a Federal Aviation Administration review determined that SpaceX’s Texas facilities could support up to 25. Starship’s two most recent launches ended in “rapid unscheduled disassemblies” — rocket firm slang for blowing up — but progress has generally been good, with earlier efforts successfully landing. If testing goes well, its next launch could come as soon as this month. If Starship is successful, it could significantly change spaceflight: It will have a much larger payload than existing rockets, allowing heavier equipment or up to 100 humans to be carried at once.

Tesla woes mount

Tesla’s revenues dropped still further, especially in Europe, adding to an already calamitous 2025 so far. The number of vehicles sold by the Elon Musk-led firm fell 81% year-on-year in April in Sweden and 73.8% in the Netherlands, with steep falls in Denmark, France, and the UK, despite demand for electric vehicles going up. The US saw a smaller but still noteworthy fall, Inside EVs reported. Europe is a particular issue since Tesla opened a “gigafactory” in Germany in 2021, capable of building 375,000 cars annually but “likely to be underutilized for some time,” Ars Technica reported. Competition from China is part of the problem, but Musk’s embrace of right-wing politics also appears to be toxic to many EV buyers.

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App store changes

Court-enforced changes to Apple’s App Store are reshaping the app ecosystem and changing how iPhone users make purchases. A US judge ruled last week that Apple was in breach of antitrust laws by not allowing purchases through other apps, forcing the tech giant to change its guidelines. Developers have quickly moved to take advantage: For the first time since its launch in 2009, it is now possible to buy books directly from the iOS Kindle app, rather than having to go to a web browser, and monetization platform Patreon now allows users to pay for subscriptions within the app. Spotify will soon follow suit.

Britons self-diagnose neurodivergence

A majority of British people may now self-identify as neurodivergent, a leading neuroscientist estimated. Autism diagnoses went up 787% in England between 1998 and 2018: The US has also seen huge increases. Some campaigners say there is an environmental cause, but most scientists suspect changing diagnostic criteria and growing awareness of the condition. Rebecca Happé told the BBC that there may be “more neurodivergent self-identified people than neurotypical people” now, as reduced stigma led people both to seek official diagnosis and to self-diagnose. That may not be a straightforwardly good thing: A researcher told Flagship writer Tom Chivers’ podcast that services are overwhelmed by people seeking diagnoses. One assessment center stopped taking applications because there was an 18-year waiting list.

Shingles vaccine benefits

The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of heart problems. An observational study of more than a million people found that those who had been vaccinated against the herpes zoster virus were 26% less likely to suffer strokes, heart attacks, and heart failure. Observational studies cannot prove causal rather than correlatory links, but there is growing evidence that apparently mild viral infections can cause more serious disease later in life: The Epstein-Barr virus, which infects 90% of people at some point, was linked in 2022 with raised risk of multiple sclerosis. Human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer. And shingles itself seems to be associated with dementia risk, which vaccination may reduce.

• The US Federal Reserve is expected to hold interest rates steady.
• Russia’s military holds a full dress rehearsal for a Victory Day parade in Moscow marking 80 years since the end of World War II.
• A Kenyan court is set to sentence four people found guilty of trafficking thousands of ants.

The value of share buybacks announced by companies listed on the S&P 500 and Nikkei 225 indexes in the three months to April. The figures, compiled by Deutsche Bank and I-N Information Systems respectively, point to firms — rich with cash thanks to better-than-expected earnings — trying to prop up their share prices, which have been hit by fears of a global slowdown triggered by US President Donald Trump’s trade war. “The numbers are spectacular,” a market strategist told the Financial Times.

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Trump’s proposal to reopen Alcatraz is gaining some steam with Congressional Republicans, reported Semafor’s Burgess Everett and Shelby Talcott.

“The president said it … we’ll look into it,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., told Semafor, adding that he wasn’t sure if Congress would need to send more funding to get it done. US President Donald Trump aides say the idea isn’t new, but it’s unclear where it originated — even less clear, for the moment, is how it would work.