Flagship

Trump, MBS strike arms deal

The US and Saudi Arabia signed a $142 billion arms deal on Tuesday, as President Donald Trump said Washington had “no stronger partner” than the Gulf nation. The first day of Trump’s Middle East trip also saw a flurry of deals for US tech companies announced at the Saudi-US investment summit, the biggest of which was Nvidia, which said it would sell thousands of AI chips in Saudi Arabia. Trump scored a “symbolic victory” at the summit with Riyadh’s pledge to invest $1 trillion in the US, Bloomberg wrote, but that staggering number will test Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ability to “match their rhetoric with reality.”

Trump to lift Syria sanctions

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would lift all sanctions on Syria “to give them a chance at greatness,” a major shift in Washington’s policy toward Damascus. Trump’s announcement in Saudi Arabia — which he suggested was influenced by Istanbul and Riyadh — came a day before he is set to meet with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former rebel leader who helped topple Bashar al-Assad. Sharaa has been trying to woo Washington, reportedly telling a Trump ally that he wants a business deal and a Trump Tower in Damascus. Western governments have largely been reluctant to ease restrictions on Damascus before the new leadership meets certain humanitarian and political conditions.

Israel sidelined on Trump MidEast trip

Israel said it targeted Hamas leader Mohammad Sinwar in a strike on a Gaza hospital Tuesday, as the region’s attention was on US President Donald Trump’s arrival in Saudi Arabia. The strike came a day after Hamas released an American hostage in an agreement with the US that reportedly sidelined Israel. That deal, along with Trump’s decision not to visit Israel on his Middle East tour, raised questions about whether the allies are in sync, The Wall Street Journal reported. “It seems everyone is scurrying to build goodwill with Trump except Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Kim Ghattas wrote in the Financial Times, as the US leader appears to be growing impatient with Netanyahu for protracting the Gaza war.

US prices rise less than expected

US inflation cooled in April, with prices seeing their smallest increase since early 2021. Analysts interpreted the data as good news, “primarily because it didn’t reveal bad news,” The Wall Street Journal wrote: The report didn’t fully capture the impact of US President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs that came into effect in April, with experts saying a clear read on that could take months. Trump’s recent suspension of higher tariffs on China adds to the uncertainty. Still, the inflation reading coupled with enthusiasm around US tech equities led to a rally that erased the stock market’s losses for 2025.

Trump’s left-leaning economic policies

The Donald Trump administration is embracing economic policies that Republicans typically ascribe to “radical leftists.” Trump’s proposal to cap prescription drug prices is a price control his secretary of state once called Castro-esque, while the president’s tepid support for a tax hike on millionaires has gotten praise from some on the left. The shift reflects Trump’s tendency toward “performative populism” amid flagging poll numbers, analysts said. It also shows Trump’s efforts to push the notion of a working-class Republican Party, Semafor’s Ben Smith wrote, and opens “an alternate path” for his MAGA movement: “a potential alliance with Democrats on matters of economic policy, where they may have more in common with one another than with the party of the president.”

Global debut for Chinese weapons

The recent conflict between India and Pakistan appeared to feature the battlefield debut of advanced Chinese weapons systems, which analysts said could bolster Beijing’s arms exports. Pakistan said it used Chinese aircraft to shoot down French-made Indian fighters; those reports haven’t been independently confirmed, but the Chinese jet maker’s stock surged following the conflict. The apparent success of the previously untested arms challenged the notion that Chinese weapons are inferior to Western counterparts, raising concerns in places like Taiwan that are wary of Beijing, Bloomberg reported. China mostly sells arms to low- and middle-income countries, but experts predict the India-Pakistan episode could spur more sales to larger economies.

Starlink Wi-Fi on trains and planes

Governments and companies are increasingly eyeing Elon Musk’s satellite internet service for transportation. The billionaire said Tuesday that Saudi Arabia approved Starlink for aviation and maritime purposes, while United Airlines accelerated its timeline to add Starlink-powered Wi-Fi to its fleet, which could effectively end “airplane mode” and “open up yet another space to remote work,” The Verge wrote. Scotland’s rail system is trialing the satellite technology to offer internet access to passengers: Wi-Fi on trains, especially in the US and Europe, is notoriously spotty, and officials say Starlink could boost connectivity in more remote areas.

As AI continues to evolve at a rapid pace, companies are shifting from experimentation to real-world deployment and practical use within their businesses.

Join Anthropic Co-Founder Jack Clark, World Labs Co-Founder and CEO Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Booking Holdings President and CEO Glenn Fogel, and Singapore Economic Development Board Executive Vice President Ih-Ming Chan for a discussion on the breakthroughs driving AI. Discussions will dive into how global, national, and regional AI ecosystems are shaping the technology’s future, and why building the policy frameworks governing them is more critical than ever for its potential.

May 21, 2025 | San Francisco, CA | Request Invitation

Ga. protects Bayer from cancer claims

The US state of Georgia passed legislation protecting agrochemical giant Bayer from lawsuits accusing it of failing to warn customers that its weedkiller could cause cancer. A gardener who alleged glyphosate, aka Roundup, caused his cancer won $250 million in a high profile 2018 case. Many lawsuits followed: As of February there were 4,400. But courtrooms are not the place to settle scientific questions, and the idea that glyphosate is carcinogenic is scientifically controversial. There is no evidence that humans exposed to it are at higher risk, and animal studies have only shown a possible link at doses far beyond what any user would be exposed to. Georgia follows North Dakota in protecting pesticide manufacturers from federal labeling requirements.

Origin of genetic condition identified

High rates of cousin marriage in a remote Brazilian town led to the discovery of a rare genetic condition. Hundreds of children in tiny Serrinha dos Pintos are unable to walk: For years, no one knew why. But geneticist Silvana Santos moved there 20 years ago, and discovered that “almost everyone is a cousin.” Inbreeding raises the risk of having two harmful copies of a given gene, and thus having genetic disorders. Santos described the condition, named it “Spoan syndrome,” and found 82 cases elsewhere in the world; her work has changed perceptions of Spoan sufferers, who were previously considered “cripples,” one local said. Cousin marriage is rare in the West, but in some countries it reaches more than 50%.

LHC accidentally creates gold

The Large Hadron Collider performed accidental alchemy. Chemical reactions cannot turn lead into gold, medieval alchemists’ hopes notwithstanding. But nuclear processes can, by adding or removing protons from the nucleus of an atom: Uranium decays eventually into lead, for instance. Lead has three more protons than gold. The LHC smashes lead particles together at near lightspeed, sometimes blasting the atoms apart, and in a recent experiment, tiny traces — 86 billion atoms, or just 29 trillionths of a gram — of gold were detected. No one is likely to get rich, not least because the gold lasted only a fraction of a second before breaking apart itself, but LHC scientists were pleased because it demonstrated the sensitivity of their instruments.

May 14:

• Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in Jakarta.
• Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Sony, and Cisco report earnings.
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrates his 41st birthday.

A new London exhibit explores female archetypes across mythology and folklore through wearable humanoid sculptures made of carpet. Opening this week at the Richard Saltoun Gallery, Anna Perach’s A Leap of Faith is part traditional exhibition, part live performance: It features two identical sculptures made to look like Victorian dresses, with one occupied by a human and the other by a robot, inspired by a 19th century Gothic short story. Part of the experience is to discover which is which, raising broader questions about automation and artificial intelligence: “The terror of automatons or AI is the way they play with your assumptions of humanity,” Perach told The Guardian. “Which in turn makes you question your own humanity.”

One of the most consequential new proposals in the House GOP’s massive tax plan — a “MAGA” investment account for kids — may carry a Donald Trump-inspired name, but it’s Sen. Ted Cruz’s brainchild, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reported.

“You can call it anything you like,” Cruz told Semafor, describing his plan to seed tax-advantaged accounts with $1,000 for every newborn baby with a Social Security number as “essentially a 401k for every newborn in America.” Now it needs to survive votes in both chambers of Congress.