Flagship

Trump calls Putin ‘crazy’

US President Donald Trump accused Russia’s Vladimir Putin of going “absolutely CRAZY” and threatened further sanctions, after Moscow launched the largest aerial attack on Ukraine so far. Hundreds of drones and missiles hit Ukrainian cities on Sunday night, killing at least 12, including three children. Trump has rarely criticized Putin directly, with European leaders surprised by his deference to the Russian leader, Axios reported recently. That makes Sunday’s comments — including his suggestion that the Kremlin’s aggression could “lead to the downfall of Russia” — all the more noteworthy. However, Trump still reserved criticism for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had complained about “US silence” over the attacks.

Israel pounds Gaza overnight

Israeli air strikes killed at least 54 in Gaza overnight, according to Hamas-run authorities, with one attack hitting a school sheltering displaced families. The Israel Defense Forces said it had hit 200 targets across the enclave in 48 hours, including what it called a Hamas “command and control centre,” and accused the group of using civilians as “human shields.” The UN aid agency said “no place is safe” within Gaza, with shelters overwhelmed with displaced people. An aid blockade since March, now partially lifted, has left the territory desperately short of food, according to aid workers: The BBC reported starving babies and mothers so malnourished that they could not breastfeed. Israel said “significant quantities of baby food and flour” were arriving.

Trump postpones higher EU tariffs

US President Donald Trump postponed imposing tariffs of 50% on European Union goods until July. Trump threatened the higher duties Friday after becoming frustrated over stalled negotiations with the bloc, but after what he called a “very nice” call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, said he was pushing them back. Trump’s rapid flipflop unnerved investors, who had grown optimistic that the trade war was starting to cool. The “latest tariff broadsides quickly disabused them of that notion,” Bloomberg reported, saying the moves put “Trump’s volatile policymaking and penchant for brinkmanship” back on display; the president previously announced a 20% import duty on goods from the bloc, before cutting it to 10%.

China’s BYD slashes prices

Chinese electric vehicle stocks plummeted after BYD, the world’s biggest EV maker, announced that it would slash prices by up to 34% amid a global price war. EV sales have recently reached an all-time high, but growth is slowing. A backlash against Tesla over CEO Elon Musk’s controversial role in the White House, the scrapping of government incentives globally, and rising tariffs on Chinese-made EVs have further kneecapped demand: Last week, producers in Brazil — one of the world’s biggest car manufacturing countries — called for sanctions on BYD in response to the company’s dominance, Nikkei Asia reported. BYD accounted for 70% of EVs sold in Brazil in the first quarter.

AfDB to select new leader

The African Development Bank begins meetings to select a new leader as the continent’s biggest finance institution looks to confront US funding cuts. The multilateral lender faces unprecedented challenges: Washington wants to cut more than $550 million in funding — almost a tenth of what the bank disbursed in 2023 — just as the AfDB prepares for its next three-year funding cycle. Private capital has so far failed to fill the gaps, while the bank’s board remains divided over the institution’s future. “This is going to be a major task and it is effectively the new president’s first test,” the founder of an Africa-focused consultancy told Reuters.

Venezuela votes in Essequibo ‘ruler’

Venezuela held an election for governor of the disputed Essequibo region, despite it belonging to a different country. Caracas has long claimed the oil-rich region — internationally recognized as part of Guyana — and has in recent years ramped up its ambition to govern the territory, including with a military buildup at the border last year. Recent oil discoveries off the coast of Essequibo have boosted Guyana’s economy, which expanded by more than 40% last year. The region’s vast oil riches have also sparked a bitter feud between two of the world’s biggest producers: Chevron and ExxonMobil will today start an arbitration hearing over oilfields worth as much as $1 trillion.

Texas to ban social media for minors

Texas is on the verge of becoming the second US state to ban social media for minors. A proposed bill would require all social media platforms to verify users’ ages. Florida has prohibited social media for under-14s, and several other states are pursuing similar moves, as are countries outside the US: Brussels wants a European Union-wide “age of digital adulthood,” according to Politico. Social media’s impact on mental health is debated, but young people seem to want to reduce their use: Several polls find young people wish social media didn’t exist and support “digital curfews” limiting their access. “Offline clubs,” in which youths meet in spaces where smartphones and laptops are banned, are growing across Europe, DW reported.

Scientific progress slows down

Scientific progress is becoming harder to achieve and the pace of discoveries has slowed, some researchers argue. Innovation appears to have dropped in fields as diverse as semiconductor research, drug development, and agricultural productivity. One widely cited paper arguing that research is now less “disruptive” gained huge attention, even sparking a US congressional hearing. If the effect is real, there are several possible culprits, Nature reported: The bureaucratization of science means researchers spend more time on paperwork, and intense pressure to publish papers pushes scientists to “salami slice” their work, spreading one idea across several studies and reducing their individual impact. In some fields, too, progress requires expensive equipment, such as particle accelerators, which was not true in the past.

India streaming giant soars

India’s love for cricket has driven the success of a new streaming giant with more than 280 million subscribers, almost as many as Netflix has worldwide. Two companies previously shared the rights to broadcast the Indian Premier League’s cricket matches but struggled to make it profitable: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance and Disney. Six months ago, the two merged to become JioHotStar, and when the IPL season started last month, subscriptions to the paid-only streamer leapt 460%, the Financial Times reported. India’s passion for the sport shows no sign of waning: An India-Pakistan match this year attracted more than 600 million views on the platform, and while subscription costs are as low as $0.60/month, the sheer numbers make it hugely lucrative.

Brazil photographer dies

Sebastião Salgado, a Brazilian photographer whose stark images drew the world’s attention to environmental destruction and human suffering, died aged 81. Salgado took up photography in the 1970s after training as an economist and went on to travel to 130 countries, documenting “famine in the Sahel, poverty in Ethiopia and genocide in Rwanda,” The Times of London said, always in high-contrast black and white. He began his career in Africa, but he is best known for his work in his native Brazil, where his images of devastation led to him being described as an “aesthete of misery.” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called his work “a warning for the conscience of all of humanity.”

• Southeast Asian foreign ministers will meet in Kuala Lumpur for an ASEAN summit, where talks will likely focus on the Myanmar civil war.
• Finland will host heads of state from major Nordic countries, including Greenland, for a summer meeting to discuss competitiveness and security.
• The US city of Minneapolis marks five years since the killing of George Floyd.

No quarter given

In 1925, a quarter could buy about five quarts of gasoline in California. In 2025, that same quarter can still purchase about five quarts of gasoline, says the economist Scott Sumner in The Pursuit of Happiness. Is that surprising? US readers may note that a regular quarter these days buys a lot less gas than that. But Sumner is talking about the 1925 coin itself, which contains about 0.18 troy ounces of silver. Silver costs about $30 an ounce, so the 1925 quarter is worth about $5.40. With gas prices around $4.32 a gallon, you can buy about five quarts for $5.40..

You might think that both silver and gasoline have gone up in value. “But that’s just a cognitive illusion,” says Sumner. “In reality, it is fiat money that has become much less valuable.” That’s inflation, and we’re all used to it, but it’s historically unusual, he adds: The “cost of living” in monetary terms changed little from 1776 to 1933, when gold was devalued and something akin to modern monetary policy began. The only reason money loses value is because central banks allow it to depreciate.

Questions and answers

Aella, a sex worker and blogger, went on a date. Several, in fact: “I’m supposed to find someone who makes me happy,” she writes in Knowingness. “I’m 33, I’m weird, and I’ve got some eggs frozen. Let’s go.” But it’s proving difficult. Not because of the sex work, she doesn’t think. “I live in SF and in the cultures willing to invite me to their parties, it’s normal.” But she has noticed something. She asks the man lots of questions, but “I eventually realize with growing disappointment that he just… isn’t asking any questions at all.”

Similar things happen on other dates. “Have I been misled by some romance-movie ideal,” she wonders, “of becoming As One, where two people deeply understand each other down to their cores? I sort of think that’s what love is.” But maybe that’s a fantasy for women, she says, like porn is a fantasy for men. So she remains, for now, single. Although it is worth noting that she’s offering a $100,000 bounty “if you introduce me to someone who I end up marrying,” so perhaps that will change.

What a sad little life, Jane

Adam Mastroianni is a psychologist and meta-scientist who writes a fascinating blog, Experimental History, on how to improve scientific research. So he may find it galling that he is best known for appearing in a British daytime TV cooking show in 2016 which became a meme.

In Come Dine With Me, four strangers take turns at throwing a dinner party, and later rate each other’s cooking and hosting skills. It’s “low stakes,” Mastroianni says, “the kind of trashy, easy-viewing TV you might watch while you’re recovering from having your appendix removed.” But in his episode, one contestant had a memorable meltdown at another after losing, while Mastroianni cringed awkwardly on the sofa next to them: “You won, Jane. Enjoy the money… I hope you now spend it on some lessons in grace and decorum.” It became a sensation. “‘You won, Jane’ became a permanent part of British memetic vernacular, right up there with ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’,” Mastroianni writes. To this day, he says, “although I no longer live in the UK, every once in a while I’ll see some stranger squinting at me.” As they walk over, “I’ll secretly be hoping that they’ll say ‘Hey, I read your blog’ but instead they will say, ‘Hey, were you on that one episode of Come Dine with Me?’”

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No 3, performed by Yunchan Lim. South Korean prodigy Lim is “the real thing, a once-in-a-generation talent,” according to The Guardian’s Andrew Clements, and it was this 2022 performance at a Texas piano competition — when he was just 18 — made him a star. “Every technical challenge in the keyboard writing seems to be effortlessly negotiated,” says Clements, “yet the brilliance is never an end in itself; it is always part of a bigger picture.” Listen to Piano Concerto No.3 on Spotify.

Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S expects artificial intelligence to have profound implications for his 350,000 employees — and for those he hasn’t hired yet.

Kumar, a former nuclear scientist-turned-executive who joined the IT giant in 2023, is a big believer in upskilling, he told Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson: Cognizant is training its developers on new AI tools, while funding a global initiative that aims to teach a million people how to use AI by 2026.