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Zelenskyy offers to meet Putin this week

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Turkey this week, in what could mark a turning point for the war. Zelenskyy’s announcement that he will “be waiting for Putin… Personally,” came a day after European leaders gathered in Kyiv to pressure Moscow to accept an unconditional 30-day ceasefire. Ukraine had previously said it wouldn’t enter into direct talks without a truce already in place; to do otherwise was seen as “a show of weakness; of Ukraine and its partners blinking first,” The Economist wrote. But the Ukrainian leader likely does not want to lose favor with US President Donald Trump: Hours before Zelenskyy’s announcement Sunday, Trump had again urged him to meet with Putin.

India, Pakistan truce takes hold

A ceasefire between India and Pakistan appeared to hold Sunday, even as Islamabad and New Delhi accused each other of breaching the deal. Saturday’s agreement, brokered by the US, halted what had become the worst outbreak in fighting between the two nuclear-armed countries in decades; Washington had initially remained hands-off, but stepped in after receiving intelligence that raised concerns that the conflict “might quickly go nuclear,” The New York Times wrote. Despite the truce, analysts warned that the conditions for another flareup remain, partly because of both countries’ long-standing animosity and their entrenched religious nationalism. “Without sustained global pressure,” an Atlantic Council expert wrote, “the cycle of escalation will persist. The world cannot afford to wait until the brink again.”

US, China tease trade deal

The US touted “substantial progress” following two days of trade talks with China in Switzerland, with details of a possible deal set to be announced Monday. The outcome of the meeting — which US President Donald Trump characterized as “a total reset,” without going into specifics — could have vast ramifications for the global economy: Trump’s China tariffs have upended international trade, disrupted supply chains, and sent shockwaves through markets. Yet even if Washington does reduce duties on Beijing from 145% to 80%, as Trump has suggested, many companies would still struggle to return to business as usual, experts warned.

SKorea presidential campaigns begin

South Korea’s presidential campaign formally kicks off Monday as fresh political divisions and turmoil grip Seoul. The country’s conservative party on Saturday tried and failed to switch its candidate at the last minute, marking just the latest twist in the run-up to the June 3 election, which was triggered by former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment over his botched martial law declaration. The economy is South Koreans’ top concern, polls show, but the main parties have so far elided on how they would address the cost of living, The Korea Herald wrote. Instead, the conservatives’ chaotic campaign start signaled “opacity, confusion and personal ambition — a betrayal… of the electorate at large.”

Newark to limit flights after outages

Newark Liberty International Airport was mired in chaos again Sunday after another air traffic control equipment outage briefly grounded flights. The incident at the New York City-area airport, one of America’s busiest, marked the third air traffic problem there in just two weeks, including an outage on Friday that left workers unable to talk to planes arriving and departing for 90 seconds. Speaking to NBC Sunday, the US Transportation secretary said the “glitch” would soon be fixed, but added that Newark will see “reduced capacity” as a result. Airline bosses have previously voiced concerns about Newark: United Airlines’ CEO last week told employees that the Federal Aviation Administration regularly approves more flights per hour than the airport can handle.

China’s army hiring more media staff

China’s army is staffing up its media department. The People’s Liberation Army had more than 45 job listings open this week for editors, camera operators, presenters, animators, and musicians — a “full capacity upgrade,” according to a newsletter written by a former Chinese state media staffer. The hiring spree — which could help the army expand its propaganda campaigns and more tightly control the spread of information — comes as China’s military is expanding its physical scope, too. Beijing in recent months has held drills off Australia, Vietnam, and Taiwan. Some analysts have warned that the increased activity may be preparation for a possible invasion of Taiwan, which Beijing views as a breakaway province.

Teaching AI to know what it doesn’t know

Artificial intelligence’s next big breakthrough could come by making the models think more like humans. Much of the recent progress in AI has been due to scaling — bigger training datasets, larger neural networks, and more powerful computers. But some experts have become increasingly convinced improvements are stalling, IEEE Spectrum reported, and researchers are looking to improve AI in more subtle ways. One such method is “meta-cognition,” or teaching AI to think about its own reasoning. Current AI models are “professional bullshit generators,” one scientist said, because they lack the ability to recognize their own uncertainty: Adding meta-cognition could help them know when they don’t know.

World’s deep seabeds remain unexplored

About 99.999% of the deep seabed remains unexplored, a lack of knowledge that could mean scientists are overlooking vital marine ecosystems. Oceans cover 71% of the Earth’s surface, and 93% of those seas are considered “deep.” While much of the deep seabed has been mapped using sonar and satellites, only a tiny fraction — an area roughly the size of Luxembourg — has been directly observed by humans. Most of those expeditions have taken place in the waters off Japan, New Zealand, and the US, leaving vast swathes of ocean entirely unexplored. Vital deepwater ecosystems such as hydrothermal vents went undiscovered for centuries, one researcher told New Scientist: “It really shows how little we know.”

Pope’s identity divides Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s army of editors is at war over how to best define the new pope. Volunteer contributors to the online encyclopedia are divided over whether to call the Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV the “first American pope” — Francis was from South America — and whether Leo can be called Peruvian, because he has citizenship and lived there for years: “Stop treating this like some competition and stick to the facts,” one editor wrote. They also disagreed over how to address the new pontiff’s views on issues he has not publicly discussed in detail. Indeed, Leo has long “been skilled at placing himself in the middle whenever there are warring factions,” Irish author Colm Tóibín argued. “He can’t be called conservative and he can’t be called too liberal.”

France’s great inheritance

France’s baby boomers will leave $10 trillion in inheritance to their children by 2040. Inherited wealth represents 60% of France’s national wealth, nearly double what it was in the 1970s, and is concentrated in the elites: The richest 10% account for 54% of the country’s total value. This massive inheritance could be “the largest wealth transfer in history,” one report found: Le Monde argued that it showed France has become “a nation of heirs,” where passed-down riches are more important than work. One expert compared contemporary France to the “ultra-inequitable society” depicted in Honoré de Balzac’s 1835 novel Father Goriot. Inheritance is “economically inefficient,” The Economist argued, adding that while a tax could help solve the problem, such levies are both complicated and unpopular.

May 12:

• Fox reports its latest quarterly earnings.
• A US Securities and Exchange Commission holds a Crypto Task Force roundtable in Washington.
• Singapore markets close for the Buddhist holiday of Vesak Day.

Mothers have long served as muses to artists through the ages, even as most acts of nurturing and caregiving often go unseen and unrequited. That tension is the inspiration for a towering new bronze sculpture erected in New York’s Prospect Park. Part of artist Molly Gochman’s Monuments to Motherhood series, the twisting, intertwining lines of the installation are meant to evoke an embrace, Gochman said, while the use of bronze is supposed to call to mind memorials for people whose lives were lost in battle or another conflict. The work serves to “express the structure and persistence of caregiving and motherhood — the continuous, often unrecognized actions that uphold our daily lives,” Gochman told Hyperallergic.

There was never much doubt that Pat Gallagher would join his family’s insurance brokerage, Arthur J Gallagher. He started there as an intern in 1972, and remembers his father’s and uncle’s directive as he rose up through the company: “Don’t screw it up.”

Today, Arthur J Gallagher is a public company with some 56,000 employees. So why, Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson asked, has it stuck with a family member as CEO? Gallagher’s answer: “Did you look at our [stock] chart?”