Flagship

Trade war hits economies

The OECD cut its forecast for global growth for this year and next, citing the impact of Washington’s trade war. The slowdown will be concentrated in the US and its biggest trading partners Canada, China, and Mexico, and growth could fall short of even the latest predictions: The rich-country grouping based its projections on tariffs remaining at their current level, though many economists expect them to rise. “Weakened economic prospects will be felt around the world, with almost no exception,” the OECD chief economist said. Other recent data paints a similar picture. A gauge of Chinese factory activity fell to its lowest level since Sept. 2022, while manufacturing indexes in South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the US also declined.

Poland’s post-election turmoil

Poland’s pro-Brussels prime minister called a vote of confidence, aiming to strengthen his coalition’s authority after a nationalist won the presidency. The election of the right-wing Karol Nawrocki has left Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s liberal domestic agenda largely in tatters — the new president can veto or delay legislation — and upended his plans to strengthen ties with the European Union. The country now faces years of gridlock, with its foreign policy likely to be caught between a pro-EU direction and an anti-alliance, isolationist turn. “For countries like Poland, there are two wests: the liberal one in Brussels and the illiberal one in Washington,” a leading Polish journalist wrote.

Migration upends Europe politics

Anti-immigration politics threw the Dutch and German governments into upheaval amid growing nationalist sentiment in Europe. In the Netherlands, nationalist leader Geert Wilders pulled his party out of the country’s ruling coalition after ministers failed to agree on tougher asylum measures. Meanwhile, a German court ruled that Berlin’s effort to turn asylum seekers away at the border was unlawful, a blow to government efforts to fend off a challenge from the far right. European countries have increasingly pushed to curtail migration — nine EU member states last month called for greater restrictions — with one notable exception: Spain aims to welcome a million new migrants in the next three years, hoping to boost plummeting birth rates and bolster its economy.

Musk gets back to business

Elon Musk renewed fundraising efforts for his business empire after relinquishing his White House role. The tech tycoon’s artificial intelligence company xAI launched a $300 million investment drive, while his brain-computer interface startup Neuralink, raised $650 million in a funding round, first reported by Semafor. Musk said he was once again spending “24/7 at work” after months spent in government that proved “a decidedly mixed bag” for his business interests, The New York Times reported: Tesla sales nosedived, although SpaceX benefited from his political influence. The billionaire recently acknowledged that his firms had suffered “blowback” from his connections to US President Donald Trump, and has stepped up his media work to emphasize his focus on his businesses.

‘Unprecedented’ AI revolution

Artificial intelligence is driving more rapid technological and societal change than any previous tech revolution, a leading venture capitalist said. Mary Meeker, nicknamed the “Queen of the Internet,” said in her highly regarded presentation on technology trends that the pace and scope of change driven by AI was “unprecedented,” a term she used 51 times. The adoption of AI far outpaces that of earlier technologies, with ChatGPT gaining 800 million users in 17 months and companies entering the market at never-before-seen rates. However, financial returns brought by AI still lag previous shifts, as firms race to build infrastructure to support their models. “If the adoption of AI feels different,” said TechCrunch, “it actually is.”

Gates focuses spending on Africa

Bill Gates said most of his estimated $200 billion fortune will be spent on improving education and health in Africa over the next two decades. The Microsoft founder — who has already donated around $100 billion to philanthropic causes — acknowledged that his pledge is unlikely to plug the hole left by Washington, which this year slashed aid to the continent, a decision that “horrified” Gates: The White House’s cuts to overseas aid agency USAID have already caused an estimated 300,000 deaths, most of them children, according to a Boston University analysis. Gates hopes his donation, which amounts to roughly 10% of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP, will “unleash human potential” on the continent.

Iran nuclear talks stall

Nuclear negotiations between the US and Iran appeared to stall. US President Donald Trump insisted on Monday that he would not allow Iran to enrich uranium as part of any nuclear deal, despite reports that Washington had exhibited willingness to tolerate a low level of enrichment, albeit under international supervision. Tehran “is drafting a negative response” to the American proposal, an Iranian diplomat told Reuters, while CNN cited an Iranian official describing the plan as “incoherent and disjointed.” With talks appearing to lose momentum, Iran isn’t standing still: A confidential report by the UN’s nuclear watchdog warned recently that Tehran had substantially increased its stockpiles of weapons-grade enriched uranium.

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Mexico ruling party’s judicial gains

Mexico’s ruling party is on track to control the entirety of the Supreme Court after a controversial judicial election essentially ended the country’s separation of powers. The results of the vote — marked by low turnout and government meddling — mean that the left-wing Morena now controls all three branches of government as well as a majority of state bodies. Experts have warned that the judicial overhaul returns Mexico to the one-party system that defined its national politics throughout the 20th century, with a renowned legal scholar arguing the country is now an “elective dictatorship” where individual rights are at the mercy of the government’s goodwill.

China uses cloud seeding on drought

China stepped up cloud seeding in the face of severe drought. The country’s grain-growing regions in the north have been parched for months, leading to concerns over the harvest. Though some scientists are skeptical over cloud seeding’s effectiveness and environmental impact, several countries have begun deploying it: China is already the world’s leading user of weather modification, firing chemical compounds into clouds to spark precipitation, and has conducted 20% more than by this time last year, Xinhua reported, apparently causing a one-third increase in rainfall. As well as agriculture and drinking water, much of China is reliant on hydropower for electricity: Sichuan, in the southwest, gets 80% of its power from dams, meaning that droughts can lead to electricity shortages.

Lichen that repairs concrete

Genetically modified lichen could help create concrete that “heals” itself. Concrete has been used in construction for millennia, and is extremely resilient to pressure, but has low tensile strength: If stretched, it cracks easily, making it unstable after a few decades. Researchers have long sought ways of making self-repairing concrete. Scientists have tried using modified bacteria to create calcium carbonate — a key ingredient of concrete — when cracks appear, but this requires regular spraying to provide nutrients. Recent lab tests, however, have found that modified lichen, a moss-like symbiosis of fungi and algae, avoids the problem by gathering sustenance from its surroundings. The researchers hope the technology could extend the working life of one of humanity’s most important materials.

• Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni meets with French President Emmanuel Macron in Rome.
• Global airline executives meet at the annual International Air Transport Association conference.
• The three-day data and AI-focused Snowflake Summit continues in San Francisco.

The number of Spotify streams of Rick Astley’s 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up. While that is surely down to the song’s timeless appeal, there is another factor: Since the early 2000s, the song has been used for “rickrolling,” a form of bait-and-switch in which people provide a link purportedly to make some serious point, which then turns out to be the video for Never Gonna Give You Up. The trend has led to a resurgence of his popularity, although it makes him little actual money: Astley didn’t write the song himself, and so only receives a performer’s share of copyright. Through 2010, the hundreds of millions of views of the video on YouTube reportedly earned him a mere $12.

WTF with Marc Maron. The comedian announced yesterday that he would stop recording his podcast in the autumn, after more than 1,600 episodes. Having begun by surreptitiously recording the program in studios he had to sneak into, Maron evolved into one of the world’s most popular podcasters, with his “deceptively simple, slightly rambling interviewing style [encouraging] even the most famous guests to tell stories they’d not shared before,” The Guardian said. There are too many episodes to plough through quickly, so The Guardian recommends five, including one which Maron recorded with the woman he would later fall in love with in which “you can hear them clicking in real time.” Listen to WTF with Marc Maron on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Democrats kicked off the 2028 campaign in South Carolina this weekend, whose first-in-the-nation primary status is part of Joe Biden’s ambiguous legacy to his party, Semafor’s David Weigel reported.

“We had nothing to do with being number one,” Democratic Rep. James Clyburn told Weigel at his “world-famous fish fry,” flanked by the governors of Maryland and Minnesota in matching CLYBURN t-shirts. “That’s something that Joe Biden decided to do, for whatever reason.”