Flagship

Leo XIV is first American pope

The world’s 1.4 billion Catholics will now be led by the first American pope. Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, 69, was chosen as Pope Francis’ successor Thursday, after one of the shortest conclaves ever. Prevost, who took the name Pope Leo XIV and called for peace in his first public words, wasn’t considered a frontrunner: His election bucks the long-held belief that cardinals wouldn’t elect a pontiff from a country that already wields immense global influence. But Leo’s language skills and international experience — he has spent much of his life in South America — combined with his role of overseeing global bishops likely helped him, the National Catholic Reporter noted, calling Leo a “private man with a reserved style.”

India, Pakistan trade blame for escalation

India and Pakistan blamed each other for military escalations Thursday, the second day of what is seen as their worst confrontation in 20 years. New Delhi said it foiled a drone and missile attack in the Kashmir region, while Pakistan denied responsibility. India first launched missile strikes against Pakistan in retaliation for a recent attack on tourists, but New Delhi is also pursuing “bloodless and more refined” ways to target Islamabad, The New York Times wrote: Officials are pushing to cut foreign aid to Pakistan, and have suspended a crucial water treaty. India’s “multifaceted attempt to squeeze Pakistan” is likely because New Delhi believes that its earlier tactics were insufficient in curbing cross-border terrorism, Foreign Policy wrote.

US, UK announce trade deal

The US and UK announced a trade pact Thursday, the first deal Washington has struck since President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs were unveiled. Britain agreed to ease market access for American exports including beef and ethanol, while the US will lower tariffs on British steel, aluminum, and automobiles. Notably, the 10% baseline tariff that Trump imposed last month will remain in place for the UK. As other countries hunt for clues on what the US president wants out of a deal, the agreement — which sent Wall Street stocks surging — signals it may be difficult to eliminate duties entirely. “The US is a high tariff country for the foreseeable future, and the trade war continues,” one expert said.

Xi, Putin pledge deeper ties

China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin reinforced their close ties Thursday, casting themselves as “friends of steel” against US attempts to contain them. Xi is the most powerful world leader to attend Moscow’s parade Friday marking Nazi Germany’s World War II defeat. He and Putin touted their deepening relationship as crucial to opposing a world order defined by US hegemony: They condemned US President Donald Trump’s plan to build a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, warning the initiative could transform space into “an arena for armed confrontation.” The Moscow “bro-fest,” Politico’s Phelim Kine wrote, counters the idea that Trump could pull a “reverse Kissinger” by growing closer to Putin and pulling Russia away from China.

Parallels between MAGA, Mao

US President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again movement hold parallels to Mao Zedong and China’s Cultural Revolution, analysts argued this week. Both men amassed power through a cult of personality and looked to reshape their countries, The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson wrote, noting that MAGA “dreams of sending the liberal elites to the factories and the fields to teach them a lesson.” Trump recently defended tariffs by suggesting Americans should learn to live with fewer dolls; Mao demanded Chinese families sacrifice for the greater good. Like Mao, Trump “relishes disruption and chaos,” a China expert told the Lingua Sinica newsletter. Trump’s efforts to consolidate power mirror how Mao entered “a stage of… extreme power with the Cultural Revolution.”

Gates to give away nearly all of his wealth

Bill Gates plans to give away virtually all of his wealth — about $200 billion — over the next 20 years, and sunset the Gates Foundation in 2045. The billionaire philanthropist told Semafor that he is “horrified” by the Trump administration’s cuts to global humanitarian aid programs. “I’d say in the next five years, some of our key figures, like the number of children who die or vaccine coverage levels, some of those will actually go backwards,” Gates said. While the White House’s gutting of USAID could “truly be the end of foreign aid as we know it,” a political economist wrote in Foreign Affairs, it also offers an opportunity to reimagine global development by prioritizing industrialization over charity.

Gaza conflict still roils NYC

Dozens of pro-Palestine protesters at Columbia University were arrested Wednesday as the war in Gaza continues to loom over New York City’s institutions and politics. The “pace and forcefulness” of Columbia’s response drew praise from the White House, marking a shift from last year, when the school was accused of inaction over protests, Bloomberg wrote. The conflict is also shaping the city’s mayoral race: Democratic candidate Andrew Cuomo accused his rivals, including a Jewish opponent Brad Lander, of aligning with the “forces of antisemitism,” while Lander said “politicians who aren’t even Jewish” are “using Jews as pawns to advance their own interests.” And another candidate, Zohran Mamdani, is looking to reconcile his past criticism of Israel with outreach to Jewish voters.

Dementia cases rise in China

Dementia case numbers in China are growing faster than almost anywhere else in the world, research found. Cases worldwide went from 22 million in 1990 to 57 million in 2021, a 150% increase, but in China they leapt from 4 million to nearly 17 million, almost a quadrupling. The rise could be largely attributed to demographics — China’s birth rates spiked in the 1950s in a huge baby boom, meaning a large generation is now getting old. A global decline in tobacco use, a major factor in dementia, has not been seen in China, where roughly half of men (though only 2% of women) smoke. Meanwhile, Western lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and obesity are on the rise, New Scientist reported.

Academic bullying rampant in Germany

Germany has a problem with academic bullying. While it’s a common issue plaguing countries’ universities, the structure of the German higher education system, in which tenured professors are near-untouchable but early career researchers’ positions are precarious, “enables and emboldens abusers,” Nature reported. One report noted that the German system is highly hierarchical and deferential to seniority, creating an extreme power differential. Strict defamation laws, as well as labor laws denying anonymity to whistleblowers, make it difficult to investigate allegations. Reports of academics continuing to work for years despite dozens of credible allegations of abuse, or even documented physical assaults, are rife. “There is far too much power in the hands of professors in the German system,” one researcher said.

Breakthrough in scroll deciphering

Researchers deciphered the title and author of a still-sealed papyrus scroll burnt to a cinder by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Hundreds of scrolls were discovered in 1752 in Herculaneum, a Roman town buried by the disaster, but were too fragile to open. The Vesuvius Challenge offered cash to researchers who could decipher them: Breakthroughs have been made, identifying individual words, but this is a “milestone” toward understanding the entire text, Nature reported. The scroll is by the Greek philosopher Philodemus, and the discovery supports claims that the scrolls were part of his personal library. A challenge judge said the pace of discovery was “astounding” and researchers would soon be able to read all of the scroll.

May 9:

• China releases its April trade figures.
• Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, Macquarie, and Nippon Steel report earnings.
• The 108th annual Giro d’Italia men’s cycling race, the first Grand Tour of the season, begins in Albania.

Rojak is a colloquial Malay word for “eclectic mix,” and is the name for a Javanese dish that typically combines sliced fruit and vegetables with a spicy dressing.

Man-no-sphere

Japan has shaped culture in the US for decades and vice versa, but they diverge starkly on the “manosphere” — the online ecosystem of male content creators promoting masculinity. Japan has bucked the growing global manosphere trend despite misogyny and pessimism being “alive and well” there, Matt Alt argued in his Pure Invention newsletter.

The reason may be ironic: Because Japan has not made the same strides as the US in gender equality, a manosphere has not emerged to push back on a perceived threat to masculinity and power. At the same time, Japanese pop culture has always featured women and queer characters, so “young male consumers don’t seem to be as rattled by the sight of a female character in the same way that Western culture-warriors are,” Alt wrote. And while the manosphere thrives by blaming others for purported suffering, Japan is less of a blame-based culture: The notion of taking personal responsibility is so ingrained that the word for “I’m sorry” is also used as a synonym for “thank you.”

‘The Japan we thought we knew’

A sexual misconduct scandal at a Japanese media company shows how the country’s attitudes toward #MeToo have evolved. A recent exposé revealed that Fuji TV had apparently been aware of the sexual assault of a female employee by a celebrity during a work trip, but dismissed her initial allegations. Backlash was swift, as viewers boycotted the station and sponsors pulled advertisements.

The reaction was “economically consequential, morally unflinching, and utterly uncharacteristic of the Japan we thought we knew,” the Tokyo Paladin newsletter wrote. Japan has traditionally seen #MeToo scandals as isolated cases in which only those directly involved are to blame. But the Fuji incident allowed the public to see such alleged assaults as the responsibility of “not just a few bad eggs but a poisoned pot altogether.”

Reinventing the wheel

Japan can take credit for inventions that have shifted global culture and commerce — but it’s ineffective at pushing those big ideas on the world stage. Take the QR code: Those scannable squares were born in Japan in 1994, but the technology “lingered in relative obscurity” there. Instead, it was China that broadly adopted QR codes starting in the 2010s, setting the foundation for the country’s ubiquitous digital payment systems, Rei Saito wrote in his KonichiValue newsletter.

Touch-to-pay tech, emojis, and selfie sticks are other Japanese inventions that only achieved global popularity because other nations adopted them. Japanese firms operate in a consensus-based, risk-averse posture, which can “stifle the bold marketing moves needed to capture global audiences,” Saito wrote. As Japan pushes for more high-tech innovations in robotics, AI, and hydrogen power, “the question always is: Will they stick the landing this time?”

A new book traces the origins of hundreds of modern languages to a band of preliterate nomads inhabiting the Asian steppe 5,000 years ago. In Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, journalist Laura Spinney uncovers the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) tongue, which evolved as it spread outwards from a prosperous commercial center on the Black Sea. Our PIE ancestry may be most evident in a modern word like “daughter,” with its cousins thugátēr (Greek) and duhitár (Sanskrit). The nomads left no written works or monuments, “yet their legacy persists,” The Wall Street Journal wrote, hidden in “the languages spoken by more than three billion people today.”

“It’s like living in hell,” one Virginia resident said recently of living in a data center development area, Semafor’s Rachyl Jones reported.

Tech companies are moving mountains to procure elusive GPUs required to calculate the largest math equations humanity has ever seen, and straining their balance sheets to pay for them. But the biggest hurdle, Jones wrote, may be the same obstacle that has long stymied builders: the neighbors.