Flagship

Iran, Ukraine wars merge

The Ukraine and Iran wars collided over the weekend, as Kyiv attacked an Iranian commercial ship in the Caspian Sea. Tehran accused Ukraine of trying to expand its war with Russia, while Kyiv said the ship contained military cargo headed to Iran. Ukraine also accused Russia of assisting Iran with satellite surveillance of US bases. Ukraine has played a role in the Iran war by providing counter-drone tools to Gulf states, but now the conflicts “have officially merged,” a Wall Street Journal reporter wrote. Some in Tehran believe Iran should expand cooperation with Russia or consider attacks against Ukrainian vessels or infrastructure, an expert wrote, though that could “give NATO members a stronger incentive to participate in military action against Iran.”

Iran battlefield lull tests Trump

A second straight day without US-Iran strikes shifted attention from the battlefield to the White House, where President Donald Trump faces an increasingly narrow set of options. The weekend lull, following nearly two weeks of tit-for-tat attacks, appears to reflect strategic constraints as much as renewed diplomacy: While Trump has publicly floated a return to negotiations, The New York Times reported he shelved plans for a broader offensive after advisers warned of dwindling US interceptor stockpiles. That leaves Trump with few paths, analysts said: revive stalled negotiations, escalate at the risk of more American casualties and skyrocketing energy prices, or settle into a costly stalemate. Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, though, show that the wider regional conflict continues despite the intermittent calm.

Russia’s war narrative falters

Russia is suffering from “narrative collapse” in its war against Ukraine, a journalist said, as Kyiv turns the tide in the conflict — on the front lines and in American right-wing media. Within US President Donald Trump’s MAGA coalition, “fault lines on Ukraine are widening,” The Insider editor Michael Weiss added. In a turnaround, hard-right activist and Trump ally Laura Loomer told The Associated Press in Kyiv that some American leaders “are being influenced by propaganda” from Russia. She said she spoke with Trump after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is set to visit the White House on Tuesday. And in a rare face-to-face remark, the president of Kazakhstan, a Kremlin ally, told Russia’s Vladimir Putin that the war should be “frozen.”

Tech leaders back open-source AI

A wave of US tech executives, led by Nvidia’s CEO, rushed to back the development of open-source AI models as divides in the industry widen. Jensen Huang’s letter, which was signed by Meta, Microsoft, and Palantir, argues that open models, which anyone can download and modify, drive innovation and commerce. It marks an effort to head off potential government restrictions on open-source AI as the White House debates how to respond to the rise of advanced Chinese AI models that are accused of ripping off the top US systems. Closed model maker Anthropic didn’t sign Huang’s letter — rival OpenAI backed it later — reflecting rifts in the fight over “who controls the AI economy,” one tech newsletter wrote.

DeepSeek CEO frustrated by leak

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek reportedly suspended its latest fundraising round after closed-door comments from the company’s CEO went viral. The AI lab, which burst onto the global tech scene last year with the release of its advanced open-source model, has been eyeing an IPO as it looks to compete harder with Silicon Valley. Bloomberg reported that DeepSeek’s notoriously reclusive leader, Liang Wenfeng, was frustrated by the leak of a transcript from a May meeting in which he outlined his vision of corporate restraint, rather than a quest to “maximize profit.” But the comments resonated on Chinese social media in a culture “that traditionally values humility, discipline, and long-term ambition over fast commercial cashouts,” the South China Morning Post wrote.

India’s Modi dealt a rare defeat

Weeks of youth-led protests forced the resignation of India’s education minister, a rare concession from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Fueled by the leak of a national medical school entrance exam, the demonstrations quickly evolved into a broader campaign over youth unemployment and stagnant job prospects, with the satirical Cockroach Janta Party harnessing social media and comedy to tap into youth frustration. After Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, the CJP called off nationwide protests, claiming victory — a public setback for Modi, a leader long seen as politically untouchable. The movement has put Modi on the defensive, but as The Hindu noted, the question now is “whether the humour and anger that built the Cockroach Janta Party can hold together.”

Berlin attack fuels migration debate

A deadly attack on a Pride celebration in Berlin on Saturday inflamed Europe’s fraught debate over migration and extremism. Authorities said a 21-year-old man — a German citizen whose family immigrated from Lebanon — drove a van into the crowd, killing one person and injuring more than 25. It comes weeks ahead of regional elections in which the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which campaigns against migration and casts Islam as a threat to German society, leads in the polls. The suspect, who was killed by police Sunday, was known to authorities and was in deradicalization consultations, Die Welt reported: His next meeting was scheduled for Monday. Such assaults are the “inevitable consequence of a deliberately overburdened system,” Berliner Zeitung’s editor argued.

Wildfires tear through Spain, France

More than 300,000 people were forced to flee their homes as wildfires engulfed swaths of France and Spain. The blazes are at times exceeding “the extinguishing capacity of any fire service in the world,” Spanish firefighters wrote. Spain’s prime minister said “difficult hours lie ahead,” adding that the Iberian Peninsula is experiencing the effects of climate change in a “very specific way”: Europe has had a “summer of extremes,” The New York Times wrote, marked by scorching temperatures and little rain. “Let me call it the drying out of the European continent,” a German researcher said. Elsewhere in the region, the Danube River fell to its lowest levels in 30 years, and the Netherlands declared a water shortage.

Borrowing costs stymie solar in Africa

Africa’s solar revolution is held back by borrowing costs. Solar costs have fallen more than 99% since 1975, and Africa, much of which is sunny, should benefit from that. But renewables are capital-intensive, a former chief economist for the African Development Bank said in the Financial Times: Almost all the cost is upfront and recovered over decades. “When capital is cheap … renewables are the cheapest source of power on Earth,” but debt is often twice as expensive in Africa as in Europe. Lenders are understandably wary — Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Zambia have defaulted, and Malawi, Mozambique, and Senegal are at risk. Companies’ borrowing costs are often worse than governments’, and so they struggle to take advantage of the plummeting price of solar.

Record settlement in S. Korea divorce

A South Korean court ordered SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won to pay his ex-wife a record $640 million settlement after a 10-fold increase in SK Hynix’s value threw a wrench into the country’s “divorce of the century.” The AI boom has roughly doubled Chey’s wealth; his ex-wife, Roh Soh-yeong, the daughter of the country’s former president, had demanded half. Chey may n