Not long ago he was regarded as virtually Ukraine’s co-president, said Jamie Dettmer on Politico. Now, less than six months after being forced to resign as President Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak finds himself in custody.

He was arrested last Thursday on suspicion of helping to launder $10.5 million (£7.7 million) via the construction of four luxury homes near Kyiv, some of the funds reportedly being part of the proceeds of a $100 million (£77 million) kickback scheme on contracts signed at Energoatom, the state’s atomic energy agency.

A man with outsize influence

Many of Zelenskyy’s allies have already been implicated in the wider case, including his former business partner Timur Mindich, who fled to Israel last year, and the former energy minister German Galushchenko, who was arrested in February while trying to flee the country. But Yermak’s arrest brings the matter to the very heart of the president’s inner circle, fuelling speculation about what Zelenskyy himself “may have known – or ought to have known”.

Yermak’s arrest could prove disastrous for Zelenskyy, said Steve Gutterman on Radio Free Europe (Prague). In voters’ minds, there’s an “inseparable” link between the two men. They met in 2011 when both were working in television, and their close friendship and Yermak’s “outsize influence” as an unelected adviser mean that any stain on him could well “bleed over onto Zelenskyy”. The scandal also puts at risk Kyiv’s bid for fast-track EU membership, as one of Brussels’ key demands has been that Ukraine’s notorious corruption must be curbed.

Room for optimism

Zelenskyy has stayed “tight-lipped” since the Energoatom scandal broke in November, said Kateryna Denisova in The Kyiv Independent, but it may prove harder to downplay things this time round. He hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing himself, but ever since the name Vova (a diminutive for Volodymyr) popped up in a recently leaked audiotape conversation of two corruption suspects discussing a property development outside Kyiv, rumours about him have started to swirl.

Given the ongoing war with Russia, all these allegations feel particularly egregious, said Paul Niland in the Kyiv Post. However, there is room for optimism. The $10.5 million (£7.7 million) mentioned in the Yermak case is a “far cry” from the $10 billion (£7 billion) thought to have been stolen each year from 2010-14 under the former president, Viktor Yanukovych. Ukraine’s two anti-corruption agencies have been so determined to win the fight against graft that theft on that sort of scale is no longer possible. And there’s no clearer sign of that than the arrest of someone as powerful as Yermak.

On 28 April, the UAE, which produces about 4% of the world’s oil, thanked the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) for “five decades of cooperation”, then resigned.

Opec is an intergovernmental group that imposes production quotas on members to keep oil prices “fair and stable”, it says; economists see it as a classic example of a cartel, a group that collaborates to reduce competition and raise prices.

Why did the UAE leave Opec?

The UAE is thought to have left because it wants to increase production, against the wishes of Saudi Arabia, Opec’s de facto leader, but it had also recently been attacked by another member, Iran. In theory, the UAE could now export more oil, lowering the commodity’s soaring price. But thanks to the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz (through which over half of the UAE’s oil and all of its gas usually passes), and the chaotic state of the peace negotiations between the US and Iran, energy markets barely moved. Some analysts, however, called it “the beginning of the end of Opec”.

Why was Opec created?

From the 1930s until the 1970s, a group of seven Anglo-American companies known as the “Seven Sisters” – the ancestors of today’s BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell – dominated the world oil market. They had secured long-term concessions across the Middle East, as well as in Venezuela and Indonesia, which meant they controlled over 80% of world supplies.

Producer nations were initially given only modest payments in return. After the Second World War, oil-producing countries increasingly chafed under the Seven Sisters’ grip, often demanding a larger share of revenues. In 1951, Iran nationalised its oilfields, which was reversed by a US- and British-orchestrated coup.

Around the same time, Saudi Arabia negotiated a 50:50 revenue-sharing deal with Aramco, the (then) US-owned Saudi oil company; this model soon spread. Even so, the Seven Sisters retained control over prices and production, as well as refining and distribution. Opec was created in response.

How did it come into existence?

In early 1959, in response to growing Soviet oil production, the Seven Sisters cut prices by 10%, infuriating the oil ministers of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, who started making plans that year in Cairo. In September 1960, shortly after another price cut, Opec was founded in Baghdad by Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, in an effort to reshape the system in the producers’ interests.

The first international organisation led by what was then called the Third World, Opec worked incrementally at first, driving “participation agreements”, which gradually transferred ownership of oil companies to host governments. But it also expanded its membership: Qatar, Libya, Indonesia, Algeria and Abu Dhabi (the largest emirate) joined in the 1960s; Nigeria joined in 1971. By 1973, when an oil crisis shook the world, Opec controlled more than half of global oil production.

What happened in 1973?

In October, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and his Arab allies – enraged by US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War against Syria and Egypt, and Israel’s continuing occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank – convinced Opec to hike the price of oil from around $3.01 to $5.12 per barrel; the Arab nations also imposed an oil embargo on the US and other nations that backed Israel.

By early 1974, the price had risen above $12 per barrel – a 300% increase. Although the embargo only lasted until March 1974, it triggered a two-year global economic crisis, creating oil shortages and spiralling inflation, and bringing the West’s postwar boom to an end, with all manner of long-term consequences.

The long tail of the 1973 oil crisis

It’s hard to overstate the effects of the 1973 crisis and the “stagflation” that ensued, which exposed the great vulnerability of Western nations, raised unemployment sharply and accelerated deindustrialisation. It has been plausibly linked to everything from a great shift in the world financial order to the invention of punk rock.

In the UK, it speeded up the development of North Sea oil and gas fields (discovered in 1965), and the adoption of natural gas for home heating; France pivoted sharply to nuclear power. Energy conservation only became a priority as a result of the crisis.

In the US, it permanently changed the car industry, opening up the market for lighter, more fuel-efficient – often Japanese – vehicles. This, in the long run, helped make the Toyota Corolla the bestselling car of all time.

There were also unanticipated consequences in Saudi Arabia, where the monarchy used the great oil wealth created to promote a puritanical, fundamentalist version of Islam. (Among the beneficiaries of the ensuing construction boom around holy sites were the bin Laden family.) This was partly to counter the spread of left-wing ideas in the Arab world, though King Faisal, a pious man, was said to be sincerely horrified by “the spiritual dangers of easy affluence”.

Did the strategy work?

The embargo’s main objective was to pressure the US into making Israel leave the Palestinian territories it had occupied in 1967. This didn’t happen, but Opec kept prices high through the 1970s: the decade saw one of the largest transfers of wealth in history, as “petrodollar” infusions from industrialised nations to nationalised oil firms allowed Opec members to fund massive infrastructure projects, build up their militaries, and establish welfare states.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 also kept prices up. At the same time, rich countries took steps to become less dependent on oil; while soaring prices encouraged new exploration, from Alaska to the North Sea, and the Soviet Union became a major producer.

What effects did this have?

The resulting “oil glut” in the 1980s meant that Opec’s power drained away. Opec decreased oil production quotas to stabilise prices, but members failed to comply, producing above their limits; while non-Opec producers pumped out more to fill the gap. Saudi Arabia, frustrated and losing market share, opened the spigots in 1986, crashing the oil price. In the years after, quotas were largely restored – but Opec’s ability to affect world prices was relatively limited, and poorer members often chafed at the restrictions.

What is the situation today?

US shale fracking technology meant that, in 2018, it overtook Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s largest producer. Partly in response to these changes, Opec+ had been formed in 2016. A looser group that includes big producers such as Russia and Mexico, it controls about 40% of the world’s output; but the complex, diversified global system limits its power, while smaller Opec members complain that policy is decided by the “Big Two”, Saudi Arabia and Russia. This was one reason why Qatar left Opec in 2019, damaging the image of a unified Middle Eastern bloc; Angola and Ecuador have also left.

The UAE’s departure is on a different scale: it was the cartel’s third-largest producer. The immediate effects are limited by the Iran crisis. But without its “swing” capacity to increase production fast, Opec’s ability to act as a “global central bank for oil” is diminished.

A rare event occurred last week, said Fred Kaplan on Slate: President Trump posted a completely accurate observation on social media. Commenting on Iran’s response to a US ceasefire proposal, he declared it “totally unacceptable”.

He’s right about that. Iran’s statement – which included no concessions and a long list of demands, including war reparations, the lifting of all sanctions and Iran’s continued control over the Strait of Hormuz – read like something “the winner of a war would issue”. The question is, what can Trump do about it?

He has repeatedly threatened to resume bombing Iran if the regime rejects his peace proposals, but it’s hard to see what that would achieve. If the 38 days of devastating air strikes that began on 28 February failed to bring Tehran to heel, what difference would obliterating a few more targets make?

‘Wiggle out of this conflict’

“If this isn’t checkmate, it’s close,” said Robert Kagan in The Atlantic. Trump halted the bombing campaign on Iran “not because he was bored, but because Iran was striking the region’s vital oil and gas facilities”. If he’s not willing to accept the risk of more such retaliation, or to mount a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the Iranian regime, “walking away now could seem like the least bad option”.

Trump, to his credit, shows no sign of wanting to “wiggle out of this conflict” or sign some meaningless deal, said Noah Rothman in National Review. He’s rightly determined to stop Tehran getting a nuclear weapon. But to succeed, he’ll need to solicit the public’s support for this project, which requires showing a bit more patience and “humility”. He’s not going to win people over by branding all critics “stupid”, or dismissing the inflationary effects of the war. He recently claimed that he was motivated only by the nuclear issue, saying “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation at all”. That quote is going to be used against him in countless Democratic campaign adverts.

‘We will all reap the whirlwind if Iran comes out of this stronger’

Trump’s rudeness and arrogance has also made Nato allies very disinclined to come to America’s aid, said Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times. Which is too bad, as the administration could really do with their help. The reality is that it’s in all of our interests to fix the Iran situation. It will be terrible for Europe if Tehran is allowed to decide who can and who can’t pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

And it will be worse still for the Arab Gulf states that rely on the channel, endangering their modernising, pluralistic reforms. “The Dubai model is precisely the one Tehran wants to destroy.” It’s understandable that Nato allies are loath to help Trump, but make no mistake: “we will all reap the whirlwind if Iran comes out of this stronger”.

While there are still some holdouts against the idea that animated entertainment can be perfectly suitable for adults, even hardened skeptics would be moved to open their minds to these tremendous series. Though many fully grown adults enjoy shows like “SpongeBob SquarePants,” our list includes only shows explicitly designed for them.

‘The Simpsons’ (1989-)

The longest-running scripted series in television history, “The Simpsons” has become a ubiquitous piece of popular culture, making it easy to forget how groundbreaking it was in 1989. A zany sitcom about a family of five in a town called Springfield (no, we will never know which state), where Homer (Dan Castellaneta), a nuclear plant technician with anger management issues and no-nonsense Marge (Julie Kavner) are raising their kids, Bart (Nancy Cartwright), Lisa (Yeardley Smith) and baby Maggie. Over the course of more than 800 episodes, the series maintains a “joke-a-minute spectacle that veered between absurdist physical gags and heartfelt family squabbles” and still “functions as an education in American culture,” said Jesse David Fox at Vulture. (Disney+)

‘South Park’ (1997-)

One of several groundbreaking ’90s-era animated series still in production, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s ultra-cynical comedy remains centered around a group of dyspeptic, cursing fourth-graders, one of whom (Kenny, voiced by Stone) dies during almost every single episode of the first five seasons, with his friends exclaiming, “Oh my God, they killed Kenny!”

Irreverent and provocative, the series offers a long-running satirical take on pop culture and American politics. The show’s “bestiary of Main Street America, its hapless parents and inept leaders, its weird small businesses and petty local politics, its moral pretensions and amoral vanities do ring true, however exaggerated,” said Jacob Bacharach at The New Republic. (Paramount+)

‘Family Guy’ (1999-)

As historically significant as “The Simpsons” in making animated series appeal to grown-ups, creator Seth MacFarlane’s pointed farce about the misadventures of a dysfunctional family that includes a malevolent baby named Stewie (MacFarlane) is still going strong. MacFarlane also voices the bumbling patriarch, Peter Griffin, with Alex Borstein as his wife, Lois, and Seth Green and Mila Kunis as their older kids, Meg and Chris. The show “has laughs, and lots of them, poking fun at targets as diverse as prison perversion, Hitler’s inferiority and football announcers,” said Barry Garron at The Hollywood Reporter. It is “bright, entertaining and often witty and warm.” (Hulu)

‘The Boondocks’ (2005-2014)

“The Boondocks,” adapted from Aaron McGruder’s popular comic strip, is one of the few animated series to make a serious effort to tackle issues of race and privilege in contemporary America, albeit in an often intentionally crass fashion. When Robert "Granddad" Freeman (John Witherspoon) and his grandsons, Huey and Riley (Regina King on both counts), move from Chicago to a predominantly white suburb, they struggle to maintain their connection to their roots and situate themselves in a radically different culture. The writing is “funny and pungent from the start,” and the “Asian-influenced animation” makes it the “American show truest to the look and feel of serious Japanese anime,” said Mike Hale at The New York Times. (HBO Max)

‘Archer’ (2009-2023)

H. Jon Benjamin is Sterling Archer, an agent with a spy agency that was called International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS) in the early seasons before that became untenable. Archer is a jerk, a well-worn conceit made fresh by his dynamics with his colleagues.

Like “Parks and Recreation,” this is essentially an office comedy with a serving of espionage adventure on the side. A superb ensemble includes his mother, Malory (Jessica Walter), agent Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler) and nerdy Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell) among many others. An “extremely silly show that consistently reveals itself as surprisingly mature via the thoughtfulness and expertise infused throughout all of its other production aspects,” it manages to be “at once categorically preposterous and occasionally brilliant,” said Mike LeChavillier at Slant Magazine. (Disney+)

‘Adventure Time’ (2010-2018)

Perhaps some might quibble with the inclusion of The Cartoon Network’s trippy, post-apocalyptic coming-of-age story on a list for adults, but Pendleton Ward’s endlessly inventive, uproarious and frequently touching series is for all ages. The show follows the adventures of a boy named Finn (Jeremy Shada) and his shape-shifting dog, Jake (John DiMaggio), who can bend and twist his body into anything from a brick house to a “Gut Grinder,” a monster who steals gold from local villages. “Adventure Time” is steeped in a “deeper, more earnest kind of surrealism that is distinct from some inchoate sense of oddity,” and the series “treats subjects like loss, romance and aging with great tact and feeling,” said Juliet Kleber at The New Republic. (Disney+)

‘Bob’s Burgers’ (2011-)

“Bob’s Burgers” is frequently contrasted with its more cynical fellow-travelers, like “South Park” and “The Simpsons.” Its bedrock appeal has always been its depiction of a more or less happy family struggling to get by while running a Jersey Shore burger joint.

H. Jon Benjamin voices Bob, with his wife, Linda (John Roberts), and their three goofy offspring, Tina (Dan Mintz), Gene (Eugene Mirman) and Louise (Kristen Schaal). Its “offbeat family dynamic is the show’s greatest asset,” and their often cringe-worthy foibles “remind us that families are often most tightly knit when they’re at their most pathetic,” said Joseph Jon Lanthier at Slant Magazine. (Disney+)

‘BoJack Horseman’ (2014-2020)

BoJack (Will Arnett) is a down-on-his-luck, hard-drinking horse and former sitcom star experiencing the familiar beats of post-stardom, including addiction and depression, in a lovingly realized alternate Hollywood in which animals and humans live side-by-side. That alone makes “BoJack Horseman,” which was the first adult animated series from Netflix, unique in the space.

In the first season, BoJack is on the comeback trail, half-heartedly working on a memoir with his biographer, Diane (Alison Brie), and possibly breaking up her marriage to Mr. Peanutbutter (Paul F. Tompkins). It’s “one of the wisest, most emotionally ambitious and — this is not a contradiction — spectacularly goofy series on television,” said Emily Nussbaum at The New Yorker. (Netflix)

‘Arcane’ (2021-2024)

With so much animated content out there, it’s not easy to make something that feels genuinely fresh and that looks like nothing else on TV, but that’s exactly what showrunners Christian Linke and Alex Yee deliver with “Arcane.” Based in the universe of the game League of Legends, it revolves around sisters Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (Ella Purnell) and a haves and have-nots struggle between the gleaming city of Piltover and the run-down, oppressed “undercity” of Zaun.

As children, Vi and Jinx lose their parents in an abortive revolution in Zaun, and years later find themselves on opposite sides of an unfolding power struggle between the two city-states. Easily “one of the most lavishly acclaimed animated series of the past decade,” it is carried out with a “fascinating collision of style,” in which “various forms of traditional animation are spliced together with computer-generated 3D,” said Kambole Campbell at Empire. (Netflix)

Among the many crusades in his quest to “Make America Healthy Again,” one target of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is antidepressants. Kennedy has long said that psychiatric drugs like SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) are harmful, including claiming they cause mass shootings.

Kennedy recently announced at a MAHA Institute mental health summit an initiative to help wean Americans off antidepressants. The announcement sparked a debate among experts over the campaign’s pros and cons.

Stigmatization and lack of access

Kennedy’s perspective on deprescribing SSRIs “really is an oversimplification,” Theresa Miskimen Rivera, the president of the American Psychiatric Association, said to NPR. The health secretary’s view “ignores the larger reality,” which is that “too many patients really cannot access timely, comprehensive care.” Rivera and the American Psychiatric Association support “any plans to better train healthcare providers to safely prescribe and wean patients off antidepressants.”

The health secretary has “no real interest in fixing structural problems that leave people with no choice but to use SSRIs,” Amanda Marcotte said at Salon. On the contrary, Kennedy has a “long history of talking about people on SSRIs in dehumanizing, often racist language” that implies “their actual problem is they’re lazy and need to just work harder — or even work for free.” The problem isn’t “lack of will but lack of access.” The only purpose of Kennedy’s rhetoric is to make it “easier to justify taking away their healthcare.” It is the “same old Republican playbook, just dressed up in a phony mask of compassion.”

There is a “legitimate clinical problem” at the center of Kennedy’s initiative to help Americans stop taking antidepressants, Jonathan Slater, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, said at Stat News. Deprescribing is indeed “understudied, undertaught and under-reimbursed.”

But the health secretary’s campaign “conflates that genuine clinical need with claims unsupported by evidence, and some that are actively dangerous,” said Slater. Redirecting patients away from medications is “only clinically responsible if the alternatives are accessible. They are not.” Patients on antidepressants deserve two things: an “honest conversation about whether they still need their medication” and a “system equipped to help them stop safely if they do not.” Right now, “we have neither the data nor the infrastructure to deliver that.”

Turning a blind eye to weaning difficulties

For decades, mainstream psychiatry “willfully blinded itself” to the “burden and severity of withdrawal and discontinuation-related difficulties” from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, Awais Aftab, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry, said to The New York Times. American Society for Clinical Pathology guidelines only “tinker” toward solutions and “generally recommend maintenance treatment for recurrent depression, bipolar I disorder and schizophrenia, ignoring controversies in these areas.” The guidelines assume that most people are “correctly diagnosed,” when in reality there is “widespread diagnostic chaos and decisions about maintenance are made under considerable uncertainty.”

Kennedy is correct that more “evidence-based care and therapies” should be available, Vera Feuer, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, said to NPR. Some of the health secretary’s recommendations are “completely reasonable.” Everybody should have access to a “detailed, careful assessment.” Prescribers should also not “feel pressured by parents and schools to instantly medicate behaviors that are due to other issues.”

In diagnosing “overmedicalization as a major problem,” the MAHA movement “gets something right,” Khameer Kidia, a physician and anthropologist at Harvard Medical School, said at The Boston Globe. However, the issue “doesn’t begin with physicians and our prescription pads.” As the opioid epidemic has shown, the “problem starts higher up.”

Drug companies have led the public to believe the “drugs corrected a chemical imbalance in the brain,” said Kidia. No such imbalance has been proven, and “many research studies show the drugs are only modestly better than placebos.” Now that so many patients are on SSRIs, “pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to get them to stop.” The problem with “MAHA’s approach to mental health” is the “overarching placement of responsibility with individuals” rather than the “exploitative systems that create poor mental health.” MAHA is “half right with the diagnosis,” but its “prescription conveniently ignores the root causes of the problems it has identified.”

After months of stoking speculation over which Republican he would endorse in the acrimonious Texas Senate primary runoff race, President Donald Trump on Wednesday finally made his choice between Attorney General Ken Paxton and incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. But by throwing his political heft behind Paxton, a candidate whose skeleton-filled closet risks turning off general election voters, Trump may have instigated a major GOP schism in a reliably red state.

What did the commentators say?

Trump’s “eleventh-hour decision” to endorse Paxton, a “longtime MAGA ally,” gives the embattled attorney general a “late boost over establishment Republicans’ preferred candidate,” said Politico. Cornyn’s camp, however, fears that nominating the “scandal-plagued Paxton” could “put control of the Senate at risk and cost the party hundreds of millions of dollars to defend the seat this fall.” Paxton “would be an albatross around the neck of our candidates,” said Cornyn at a campaign event just hours after Trump’s endorsement, per KTSM 9 News. If nominated, Paxton “would likely lose” to Democrat James Talarico in November.

Republican senators “appeared stunned and livid” as news of Trump’s endorsement reverberated across Washington, said The New York Times. Many in the caucus “had been urging” the White House to back Cornyn, “whom they saw as a stronger candidate in a general election.” Trump’s “decision to do otherwise amounted to a slap at” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who is “an institutionalist like” Cornyn.

“I’m sad personally for John Cornyn, and I hope he’s successful in his election regardless,” said one Republican senator to The Hill. “I’m sad for the institution.” It is “as much about President Trump sending a message to John Thune as the leader of the Senate as it is about an endorsement of Ken Paxton,” said longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon to The Wall Street Journal.

Made after “months of waffling,” Trump’s decision to endorse Paxton reflected the president’s “renewed conviction” that he “maintains an iron grip on the party following recent electoral victories,” said the Journal. Trump likely saw “recent internal polling,” was “convinced Paxton was pulling ahead with GOP primary voters” and “wanted to be on the winning side,” said Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, to the Houston Chronicle. Trump picking Paxton “isn’t a shock given their history,” said the outlet. Not only has Paxton “golfed with Trump,” but he attended Trump’s 2021 “Stop The Steal” rally that preceded the January 6 insurrection and had “filed a petition with the Supreme Court to challenge the 2020 presidential election results in swing states for Trump.”

“Already the most expensive primary in history,” the Paxton-Cornyn race is also the “most expensive runoff ever,” said MS NOW. Some Republicans worry that it will “cost the GOP even more to keep the Senate seat red,” as the broader race, thanks to Trump’s intervention, has now grown “more competitive.”

Texas has “long been a great white whale” for Democrats, said The Hill. With a “uniquely strong nominee in James Talarico,” the party hopes that Trump’s “boost of Paxton could leave them with a vulnerable opponent” in November.

What next?

“Prolonged Republican infighting,” coupled with “growing anti-Trump sentiment,” has created a Texas race “more competitive than anyone would have predicted a year ago,” said The New Yorker. Democrats, “wary after years of predictions” that statewide wins are “just around the corner,” are now “allowing themselves to hope again, cautiously.”

We’ll learn “soon enough how GOP voters in Texas respond” to Trump’s backing of Paxton, said MS NOW. It’s “worth appreciating” that many Texas conservatives “believe Paxton can win.” But if he clinches the nomination over Cornyn next week, the GOP will “have to spend heavily” on Paxton’s behalf with “money they won’t have to spend elsewhere.”

Should Cornyn lose to Paxton, Trump will “face the prospect” of his joining a group of “lame duck senators more willing to buck his demands,” said the Times. Still, some Republicans are sticking with Trump’s choice, at least publicly. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out the pathway for Paxton is there,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to the outlet. “What we’ve got to do is raise a lot more money now.”

What happened

Stephen Colbert on Thursday night hosted the final CBS “Late Show,” nearly 33 years after David Letterman launched the franchise. Paramount canceled the top-rated late-night show last year while seeking approval for a merger from the Trump administration. But “despite all the controversy, Colbert chose to go out on a joyful, celebratory note, with help from Paul McCartney” and other celebrity guests, USA Today said.

Who said what

“We were lucky enough to be here for the last 11 years,” Colbert told his audience when they booed his reminder it was the final episode. He closed the show with his fellow late-night hosts, beside an “interdimensional wormhole” threatening to swallow all of late-night TV. The premature death of Colbert’s show isn’t exactly “‘the death of late night’ — that funeral has been going on for decades,” James Poniewozik said at The New York Times. But it “feels like the end of a cultural era,” or “actually, two eras”: His “Colbert Report” skillfully “parodied politics,” and his “Late Show” unspooled through a “time when politics became a parody of itself.”

What next?

“The Late Show” is being replaced, starting Friday, with Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed,” which “features a rotating roundtable of comics” and is “purposefully evergreen in nature,” CNN said, meaning it “noticeably lacks any political humor.”

What happened

A federal judge in Chicago on Thursday permanently dropped all charges against the four remaining “Broadview Six” anti-ICE demonstrators. U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros requested the controversial, high-profile case be dismissed after a “stunning hearing that revealed apparent misconduct” by his office’s prosecutors, the Chicago Sun-Times said. The “rare federal trial for misdemeanor charges” had been slated to start next week, CBS News said.

Who said what

U.S. District Judge April Perry told Boutros she was “incredibly shocked” by the “prosecutorial behavior” in the grand jury proceedings, according to transcripts of the closed hearing. Boutros acknowledged the errors, said he didn’t think it was “deliberate misconduct,” then defended charging the defendants for protesting outside the Broadview detention center during last year’s “Midway Blitz” deportation campaign. Perry told him he was “significantly undercutting” his “mea culpa here by standing behind the charges and continuing to vilify these particular defendants.”

What next?

Perry “said she plans to consider possible sanctions against the prosecutors,” The Wall Street Journal said. “Federal judges don’t talk like this unless it’s REALLY bad, and it is,” former federal litigator Ken “Popehat” White said on social media. “Heads should roll. Careers should end.”

What happened

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Thursday abruptly adjourned the Senate for a weeklong break, scuttling plans to get a $72 billion filibuster-proof ICE–Border Patrol funding bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by a self-imposed June 1 deadline. The “most urgent reason for the delay” was the Senate GOP’s “boiling anger” over Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, Semafor said. In another “striking setback that exposed fractures within the GOP,” The New York Times said, House GOP leaders canceled a vote to compel the end of the Iran war after it became clear it would pass.

Who said what

The GOP “retreats on both the budget bill and the war powers resolution reflected a pivot” away from “unquestioningly” deferring to Trump, the Times said. The opaque $1.8 billion fund is a “Trump priority,” but it faces “widespread opposition” from Senate Republicans, The Wall Street Journal said, alongside near-universal condemnation from Democrats, so the must-pass reconciliation bill “gave senators leverage to dig in their heels.”

The special budget process Republicans are using to pass the bill “allows a long series of amendment votes,” The Associated Press said, and “as it became clear” that Democratic amendments to kill or curtail the fund would pass with bipartisan support, Thune called a timeout. The fund “is in real trouble — and it should be,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told the Times on Thursday.

What next?

“By leaving Washington,” Republicans left the “anti-weaponization” fund “intact and without any of the guardrails they might want to impose,” the Journal said. Thune said his party “will pick up where we left off” when they return from vacation.

‘Here’s the easy way to tax the rich’

Zachary Liscow at The New York Times

The U.S. is “seeing an increasing concentration of wealth,” and “for many Americans, taxing the rich more is an obvious move,” says Zachary Liscow. Ask “tax policy experts how to do this, and you will often hear novel proposals,” but Congress “has a simpler, tried-and-true tax policy to choose from: raising the rates.” The ultra-rich “mostly aren’t escaping the tax system through exotic loopholes,” so increasing rates “would generate hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade.”

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‘Aboriginal violence is Australia’s blind spot’

Julie Szego at UnHerd

An Aboriginal Australian girl’s murder has “reignited” the “fraught argument about Aboriginal disadvantage and collective guilt,” says Julie Szego. But it’s “apparently the hardest thing in the world to speak plainly about violence in Aboriginal communities — and how that violence too often endures under the cover of preserving Indigenous ‘culture.’” More “frustrating still is that these debates are increasingly engulfed in meta debates about the moral legitimacy of Australia — and indeed Western civilization more generally.”

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‘Why is it so hard to be ordinary?’

Joshua Rothman at The New Yorker

What is “true for Little League holds for the rest of life,” says Joshua Rothman. In “some contexts, at some times, we strive for excellence, pushing ourselves. Elsewhere, we shrug, accepting our own ordinariness or mediocrity.” The “excellent and the ordinary coexist, but have an uneasy relationship.” Society is “shaped by the relentless pursuit of excellence,” and “against the backdrop of constant progress, ordinariness feels like backsliding.” Without “improvement, we get nowhere; without excellence, we wallow.”

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‘India is being left to die in the heat’

Vidya Krishnan at Al Jazeera

India is “experiencing an extraordinary summer,” as extreme heat is “causing not just heart attacks, but also kidney injury, affecting sleep quality and exacerbating numerous chronic conditions,” says Vidya Krishnan. The “majority of heat-related deaths go unrecorded in India.” The heat is “reinforcing longstanding inequalities of caste, class and gender in poor and marginalized communities.” A “prime minister who does not believe in climate change will not be an ally in the fight against extreme weather events.”

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Forty-two athletes, including swimmers, weightlifters and sprinters, will compete in Las Vegas on Sunday in the first Enhanced Games.

Little in sport has “caused as much controversy – nor provoked as many questions – as the Enhanced Games”, said BBC sports editor Dan Roan. “Those behind it claim it is here to stay, and could soon expand to more events and other disciplines.”

But there is another side to the spectacle of juiced-up competitors trying to beat the world record in their discipline. Earlier this year, the company behind the event, Enhanced, launched a range of personalised performance and longevity medicines to sell to the public.

What did the commentators say?

Proponents of the games say the aim is “to challenge sporting norms by allowing athletes to push their potential with legal drugs under strict medical oversight”, said Chris Kenning in USA Today. “The approach is, let’s not be naive and pretend it’s not happening,” said Enhanced CEO Max Martin. “Let’s just take what’s happening in the shadows, put it out in the open.”

But that’s not sensible, say some sports medicine experts. “It’s akin to me saying I’m going to make smoking safe by supervising you while you’re smoking,” Aaron Baggish, professor of medicine at the University of Lausanne, told Yahoo Sports.

Most critics though “overlook the fact that the Enhanced Games is making obvious what society has always quietly accepted”, said Byron Hyde, philosopher of science and public policy at Bristol University, on The Conversation – namely “that most people are willing to watch athletes risk harm when the entertainment is good enough”. Brain trauma is the “potential price of boxing entertainment”, so “why the outrage about pharmaceutical enhancement risks?”

For Baggish, the “primary concern” is the message the event sends to the public that using these substances when taking part in sports “is in any way, shape or form OK. That’s the really scary thing.”

That appears to be one of the goals of the organisers. Aron D’Souza, founder of the Enhanced Games, told The Independent in 2024: “This is the route towards eternal life.” The games will “bring about performance-medicine technologies that then create a feedback cycle of good technologies, selling to the world, more revenue, more R&D, to develop better and better technologies”. Ultimately, “it’s about being a better, stronger, faster, younger athlete for longer. And who doesn’t want to be younger for longer?”

But, said The Economist, “the real purpose of the games is to push the limits of what the public sees as the acceptable use of performance-enhancing drugs”. The event is taking place “at a time when concerns are being raised over the medicalisation of Western society”, said Roan. Social media and ‘looksmaxxing’ are being “blamed for fuelling demand for weight-loss injections, cosmetic treatments and performance substances”.

What next?

The Enhanced Games “speak to a vision of the future in which medicines, rather than being simply used to treat disease, can extend human longevity and enhance well-being”, said The Economist.

But on Sunday, the athletes involved will effectively be the guinea pigs for this idea, albeit ones who have “burned bridges, risked their future livelihoods or their health”. And with the launch of Enhanced’s consumer business, “more and more people may soon be wagering their bodies on a chance to roll back the clock”.

“Maxed out on matcha lattes?” said the Financial Times. Try swapping the trendy, green-hued drink for its “toasty cousin”.

Hojicha has many of the same benefits as matcha but with much less caffeine. Made from green tea leaves roasted at a high temperature over charcoal, it has a distinctive “nutty” flavour. While it’s not traditionally paired with milk in Japan, in the UK hojicha lattes are starting to appear in cafes up and down the country.

At London matcha chain Jenki, for example, sales of hojicha lattes were 55% higher between January and April than the same period last year, said the BBC. The popularity of hojicha “feels like where matcha was two or three years ago”, Rashique Saddique, director of How Matcha, told the broadcaster. “It’s moving from niche to mainstream quite quickly.”

Less bitter and more earthy than matcha, hojicha also contains “significantly lower” levels of caffeine, with around 7.7mg per cup, compared to matcha’s 70mg, said Country & Town House. But it still boasts a range of health benefits; hojicha is “packed with antioxidants” like catechins and polyphenols which help to protect cells from damage, and the amino acid L-theanine which may help to calm the nervous system and improve sleep quality while enhancing focus.

The roasting process also breaks down the tannins and lowers the acidity, making it perfect for aiding digestion after a meal as it’s “gentler on the stomach than raw green tea”.

Traditional hojicha is “steeped like a loose-leaf tea” but it can also be mixed with milk and served hot or cold in a latte, said Vogue. “Look out for organic, shade-grown hojicha from Japan to avoid contaminants and ensure purity”, nutritionist Rhian Stephenson told the publication. And if you don’t fancy a latte, try adding the powder to smoothies or mix it into cakes, cookies or even ice cream.

Find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest news and other global events by putting your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

For months, the Trump administration has increased pressure on Cuba through harsher sanctions, a crippling oil blockade and threats to “take” the island.

Now Washington has sharply escalated tensions by indicting the 94-year-old former Cuban president, Raúl Castro (brother of Fidel). The US Justice Department said the charges relate to the 1996 downing of two unarmed civilian planes by the Cuban military, when Raúl was armed forces minister. The incident, which killed four people, triggered one of the worst crises in US-Cuban relations since the Cold War.

Following the US capture and ousting of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro following a similar indictment, which deprived the Cuban Communist Party of a key ally, many fear the indictment suggests Donald Trump’s desire for regime change in Havana is intensifying.

Who is Raúl Castro?

Alongside Fidel, Raúl helped lead the guerrilla war that toppled the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, and launched the Cuban communist revolution.

As Fidel’s defence minister for decades, Raúl built a “powerful base within the military and Cuban state”, said Reuters. He also helped defeat the US-organised Bay of Pigs invasion. After Fidel became ill in 2006, Raúl stepped in as acting president before formally taking over in 2008. Although he resigned as president in 2018 and leader of the Communist Party in 2021, he is widely considered one of the most powerful men in the country, and one of the fathers of the revolution.

He retains the official title of “army general” and holds “significant influence” over the Communist Party and armed forces. The current president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, is “widely seen as relying on ​Castro’s guidance for major decisions”.

What happened to the planes in 1996?

After the collapse of its main financial supporter, the Soviet Union, Cuba suffered an “extreme economic emergency” of blackouts, and shortages of food and fuel, said BBC News Mundo – much like today. Thousands fled to Florida on rafts. A Miami-based group of Cuban exiles, Brothers to the Rescue, tried to help the migrants, and dropped anti-regime leaflets over the island. Havana “began denouncing the air incursions”, branding the group “terrorists”.

In 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two of the group’s planes, killing all four men on board – three of whom were US citizens. The attack sparked “strong international condemnation”, including against Raúl, and the US “significantly tightened” sanctions. Most organisations say the planes were in international airspace, although Cuba has always insisted otherwise. Many analysts believe Fidel was trying to “prevent a possible rapprochement with the US”, which could “spur political and economic reforms” that would “jeopardise his absolute power”. The case still “retains enormous symbolic and political weight” for Cubans, on and off the island.

What is the significance of the indictments?

Families of the four pilots who were killed “cheered the indictments, which they had been demanding for three decades”, said NBC News. It is a “politically powerful decision”; Florida’s large, politically active population of Cuban émigrés exert “outsized leverage” on US presidents, particularly Trump. Miami’s members of Congress would have the White House “do the same to Castro” as it did to Maduro, said The Miami Herald.

And the decision to unseal the indictments on 20 May “carries particular significance”, said The New York Times. On the same date in 1902, the US formally ended its years-long military occupation of the former Spanish colony. Many in the US still celebrate it as Cuban independence day. But for others, said Michael Bustamante, director of Cuban American studies at the University of Miami, the Trump administration is “hearkening back to this moment when the US did treat Cuba as its backyard”.

Will it lead to war between the US and Cuba?

This indictment could “doom any lingering chance of a deal to avoid armed conflict”, said CNN’s Havana Bureau Chief Patrick Oppmann. Trump claims Cuba is “desperate” to make a deal, but “he said the same about Venezuela and Iran”.

The charges have “fired up” the anti-Castro Cuban exile community in Miami. Many hope Fidel’s revolution is “crumbling”, with Trump’s oil blockade pushing the island “closer to the brink”. They are arguing “against any accommodation with Havana”. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American and “staunch foe of the Castros”, said the leadership “needs to go”.

The charges “lay the groundwork for a possible military operation by the US to extradite him”. But unlike in Venezuela, where Maduro’s military “quickly fell in line with Trump’s demands”, Cubans are “likely to react far more belligerently”. There is “little chance” that Raúl will be going anywhere, “much less a Miami courtroom”. Díaz-Canel has said US action would trigger a “blood bath”; the regime “may choose to go down fighting”. After all, in Cuba, every official speech “ends with the cry of ‘Fatherland or death!’”

“The Venice Biennale is the world’s most prestigious international art exhibition,” said Katrin Bennhold in The New York Times. Every other year, a colossal central show aspires to distil the current state of contemporary art, while the nations of the world stage individual exhibitions in designated pavilions, each competing for the coveted top prize. Elsewhere, a host of satellite exhibitions take over the city’s museums and public spaces.

In 2026, however, the art has been overshadowed by “everything else”. For one thing, the main event’s curator, Cameroon-born Koyo Kouoh, died unexpectedly last May. Then Russia – absent since 2022 – returned to the fold. In response, the biennale jury said it wouldn’t award prizes to countries accused of war crimes – there were protests against Israel too – and resigned in protest.

Yet some of the exhibits at this “massive mess” of a biennale still deserve a visit, said Eddy Frankel in The Guardian. The national pavilions are often interesting, and “some of them are even quite fun”. Denmark’s offering incorporates “a hi-tech sperm bank”; “a singing turd” is featured at Luxembourg’s; the Japanese show encourages visitors to carry around “fake babies”; and Malta’s features “a life-size chocolate Russell Crowe”.

Weirdest of all is Florentina Holzinger’s Austria pavilion, “a confrontational, stomach-turning” performance piece, in which naked female performers swim in urine and circle an artificial lake on jet skis. Ridiculous as it sounds, it’s “brilliantly obscene and vile” – and, beneath the wackiness, a scary portent of ecological catastrophe.

Russia’s display, on the other hand, is “wretched”, said Jackie Wullschläger in the Financial Times. I went in expecting a “whitewash” and was greeted with a “limp” display of flowers, some “embarrassed folk music performers” and insistent “offers of alcohol”. Nor is Lubaina Himid’s British pavilion up to much. Her paintings of “generic black figures characterised by profession (chef, tailor, gardener)” feel “lacklustre” and “predictable”.

The central exhibition, In Minor Keys, which foregrounds artists from the “global south”, aims to celebrate quiet pleasures and beauty in the face of tragedy, said Wullschläger. The idea is nice, but the overall quality is “poor”. Some exceptions aside – not least Theo Eshetu’s uprooted olive tree mounted on a revolving plinth, “superimposed with a film showing its earlier fullness” – it’s the same old melange of “identikit hanging textiles” and anti-colonial railing. I left feeling “alienated, hectored, patronised and bored”.

It’s not all bad, said Hettie Judah in Apollo. The Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar has his own room, “a vast lozenge of space flooded with disorienting red light”; at its end is a tiny metal cube forged from rare minerals necessary for modern technological gadgets. It’s “a temple to callous, extractive greed” and its “catastrophic human cost”. There are other highlights – but, true to its title, this is a show of “minor encounters” not “revelations”. And its very scale, alas, drowns out the “subtleties”. The show could have done with more “editorial rigour”.

Billed as “humanity’s fastest shoe”, Adidas’s Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3s represent “the cutting edge of trainer technology”, said The Guardian. “Lighter and bouncier” than any other “super shoe” on the market, they are designed to help runners “chase records”, and the shoes, which weigh under 100g – less than a bar of soap – did exactly that at the London Marathon last month.

Sabastian Sawe was wearing them when he became the first person to run a sub-two-hour marathon, and Tigst Assefa wore them as she beat the women-only record.

Adidas has pushed the limits of racing shoes once again in its mission to create “the lightest, fastest marathon racer possible”, said Women’s Running. With new, more responsive foam, a carbon-fibre infused rim around the edge of the sole, and “obsessive” weight savings, the Evo 3 is aimed at “elite runners chasing every possible advantage”, not for training or park runners, let alone everyday use.

Inspired by kitesurfing materials, the upper is so ultra-lightweight it “feels almost non-existent”; there’s just enough structure to keep the foot in place, but some runners might find the feel “minimal to the point of harsh”.

Support is focused on the forefoot where high-level runners need it most, said Harry Bullmore in The Independent, and the front offers a lot of bounce. My first few steps in the shoes felt awkward, like “driving a Formula 1 car through a city centre”. But when I started to run on a self-powered treadmill, they came into their own. My feet delivered decent energy and turnover was “snappy”– so snappy I thought I might get thrown off. “The shoe does not make the runner”, but at the elite level, when every millisecond counts, this £450 pair could make a vital, marginal difference.

Colombia is home to 1,900 identified bird species, a whopping 20% of all known bird species, said The Bogotá Post. And on May 9, Colombia won this year’s Global Big Day, an annual worldwide birdwatching event in which citizen scientists document the birds they have seen. Over the course of the day, 1,566 bird species were recorded by observers in the country, making Colombia the world’s most bird-diverse nation.

This avian supremacy is the result of geography and a complicated history of political violence. Today, the birds’ presence both promotes ecotourism and emphasizes the importance of conserving ecosystems.

Flying colors

Colombia’s Global Big Day triumph puts the South American country in a five-year winning streak. “This achievement confirms the Country of Beauty as a global benchmark for biodiversity and nature tourism,” said Carmen Caballero, the president of the promotion agency ProColombia, in a release. Birdwatching has become a “powerful platform to showcase Colombia’s extraordinary ecosystems, promote sustainable regional development and attract travelers seeking authentic and responsible experiences.”

Colombia is home to the “highest number of identified bird species on the planet: 1,900,” which is a whopping 20% of all known bird species, said The Bogotá Post. It’s also a “temporary home to over 200 migratory species each year.”

Colombia’s “global ranking is opening doors for regions that were once isolated but still hold incredible natural resources,” said Luisa Aguirre, a technical director at the Colombian environmental authority Regional Autonomous Corporation of Cundinamarca, a department in Colombia, said to The Bogotá Post.

Colombia’s biodiversity has given rise to “avitourism,” said The New York Times. Visitors come to see the birds and “generate needed income,” making it more “profitable to protect, rather than destroy, habitats.” The country “stands out as a destination where biodiversity, conservation and community-driven tourism converge to define the future of travel,” said Caballero in the release.

Nature vs. nurture

Colombia is only the 25th largest country in the world by land mass, but it “contains immense ecological diversity, from the Amazon rainforest to glacier-topped Andean peaks to palm-fringed Caribbean beaches,” said the Times. These geographic features have allowed myriad bird species to thrive.

Decades of political conflict have also contributed. The “conflict between the government, left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and narco-traffickers made many parts of Colombia too dangerous for development,” said CBS News. “Many bird habitats were preserved as a result.”

There being “illegal armed groups in this area for so long prevented” people from “coming and slashing and burning the habitats,” said Diego Calderón Franco, a researcher and birding guide, to CBS News. Thanks to the country’s troubled past, you can “look at that isolated mountain range and you might find a new species of bird for science.”

These unique species have turned birdwatching into a “great opportunity to support local businesses and promote the country’s biological heritage fairly and responsibly,” said Aguirre to The Bogotá Post. Colombia’s Global Big Day win is a “huge recognition of the hard work that local communities, guides and researchers do for nature conservation.”

Two things are true: Cruise ships can be breeding grounds for disease. Americans love cruises anyway.

Expedition cruise lines “haven’t experienced any slowdown in bookings” following the deadly hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius, said The Wall Street Journal. Oceangoing travelers “generally understand the realities” of long boat journeys, Expedition Cruise Network CEO Akvile Marozaite said to the newspaper. Despite the scary headlines, industry experts “expect a record number of people” to take cruises this year, said The Associated Press. The sector “seems to be somewhat Teflon” to the bad publicity, Cornell University’s Robert Kwortnik said to the outlet.

What did the commentators say?

“Why would anyone go on a cruise?” Dave Schilling said at The Guardian. The Hondius drew worldwide attention, but a separate ship that was briefly quarantined with a rash of stomach flu cases was largely overlooked by the media. The stories are “piling up” about cruise ships being ocean-bound “fetid petri dishes.” There is not “one thing” a cruise offers “that isn’t available in the safe bosom of dry land.” Cruises will remain popular anyway. If Covid-19 “didn’t kill” enthusiasm for the excursions, “I think the industry is safe.”

People who criticize cruises are “wrong about nearly everything,” Nicole Russell said at USA Today. The hantavirus outbreak “won’t dampen my desire to go on a cruise.” There may be many stories of “terrible things happening on cruise ships,” but they are “worth the risk” because they can provide an “affordable, joy-filled family vacation.” Cruises, like life, are a “trade-off.” And life is “meant to be lived.“

“Do I think cruises are worth it, health-wise?” epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz said at Slate. The answer is a “bit complicated.” Cruises are “absolutely great places for illnesses to thrive,” but there is not a “great deal of evidence showing that infections are more likely” than on land. It is possible that people “just generally come into contact with lots of others on vacation.” Meyerowitz-Katz is considering taking his own family on a cruise. After weighing both the risks and benefits, “it doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.“

What next?

People planning to take a cruise should “practice great hand hygiene,” said CNBC. They should also “get up-to-date on your vaccines” before departing. And they should “keep a safe social distance” if illness rears its head. Best to stay clear of anyone who is coughing, “has difficulty breathing or is exhibiting fever,” Wellness Equity Alliance’s Dr. Tyler B. Evans said to the outlet.

The Hondius’ next voyage is already planned, said Forbes. After arriving in the Netherlands, the ship is to be “disinfected using chlorine and peroxide,” and the crew quarantined. Two scheduled voyages for the Hondius were canceled, but the plan “pending successful cleaning” is to sail in June from the Svalbard islands to the North Pole.

Good news for college grads, who “are finally catching a break in this job market,” said Ray A. Smith and Te-Ping Chen in The Wall Street Journal. After years of difficult hiring prospects for those leaving the comfort of campus, recent data suggests the tide may be turning. Unemployment among 20-to-24-year-olds with degrees dropped to 5.3% in March, down from a decade high—excluding the pandemic’s early months—of 8.9% last fall. “A widely watched survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers” (NACE) recently showed that employers are expected “to boost new-graduate hires by 5.6% this spring,” well above the 1.6% expected. And another survey from ZipRecruiter found that “nearly a third of employers planned to hire a greater number of entry-level workers this year,” perhaps a sign that after years of cuts to the lowest rungs of the labor market, more businesses “feel the need to replenish their pipelines.”

Notably, 90% of the NACE survey respondents said hiring college grads was now “important to their success,” said Bruce Crumley in Inc. Businesses may be starting to learn a hard lesson after turning over their entry-level jobs to artificial intelligence that isn’t yet up to the task. “Many are now more inclined to use the tools to improve the performance of new hires in those positions rather than replace them.” Small businesses are leading the way with college grad hiring, said Sherin Shibu in Entrepreneur. Owners say they are “looking for recent graduates specifically for their digital fluency,” and hands-on roles, like field manager and service technician, are growing fast “as demand shifts toward work that’s harder to automate.”

There’s no shortage of available jobs for young people, said Jason Altmire in The Washington Post. There were 6.9 million job openings in February, even as 7.6 million Americans were filing for unemployment. What gives? Most of the openings were in trades that today’s young workers aren’t equipped to fill. “Placing the four-year degree on a pedestal for decades has limited the interests of students and misaligned workers and jobs, exacerbating workforce shortages across trade professions.” This problem will only worsen as older electricians, mechanics, welders, and many others retire. These jobs “keep the economy running.” Why can’t more young people do them?

Don’t blame the kids, said Ryu Spaeth in New York. They’ve been “cursed.” Not only was their high school experience “wrecked” by the coronavirus but now they’re entering the labor market during “AI’s job-killing, human-replacing revolution.” A school of thought holds that, “whatever challenges lie in the future, people will manage to adapt and flourish.” But let’s take some pity on those trying to start a career now.

For many people, taxes come due just once a year. But for others, it is necessary to make payments every quarter alongside the requisite filing due April 15.

Known as quarterly estimated tax payments, these are “taxes paid to the IRS throughout the year on earnings that are not subject to federal tax withholding,” said NerdWallet. Failing to make quarterly estimated tax payments when you owe them can result in a penalty, which is why it is important to know whether this applies to you. Here are the common situations in which quarterly taxes are owed.

People who do not have enough withheld

The general rule of thumb for owing quarterly estimated taxes is if “you’ll owe $1,000 or more in federal income taxes this year, even after accounting for your withholding and refundable credits,” said NerdWallet. You will also need to pay them if “your withholding and refundable credits will cover less than 90% of your tax liability for this year, or 100% of your liability last year, whichever is smaller.” That threshold increases to 110% for those with incomes over a certain amount.

This situation could apply even to those whose employers withhold a portion of their income if not enough is held back to fully cover the tax owed. The amount of money that is withheld largely depends on the information employees provide on their W-4 form.

Those who are self-employed or earn business income

Taxes “typically aren’t withheld from self-employment income, so if you do any freelance, consulting or gig work, you should either pay quarterly income taxes or increase your withholding on other types of income to cover the shortfall,” said U.S. News & World Report.

If you own a small business, you should also anticipate needing to make these payments. “Individuals, including sole proprietors, partners and shareholders of S corporations, must make estimated tax payments on business ownership earnings if the total tax on built-in gains, excess net passive income tax and investment credit recapture tax is $1,000 or more,” said Investopedia.

Investors who realize large capital gains or receive other investment income

Capital gains, which occur when you sell an investment for a profit, can result in owing quarterly tax payments. “Any realized capital gains that can’t be offset by exclusions or capital losses are generally taxable and can be a trigger for making quarterly tax payments,” said Natalie Taylor, a certified financial planner and behavioral financial advisor in Santa Barbara, California, per U.S. News & World Report.

Other types of investment income can similarly trigger estimated taxes. This may include dividend and interest income, and rental income for landlords with rental properties.

Individuals who have made taxable retirement withdrawals

If you’ve been “saving in a tax-deferred retirement account, like a traditional IRA, and you make taxable withdrawals,” you can also end up owing quarterly taxes, said U.S. News & World Report. The same applies “if you earn enough income while on Social Security.”

You can, however, avoid making quarterly estimated tax payments in this case if you request that enough to cover taxes gets withheld from either your retirement account withdrawal or Social Security benefits.

The MAHA movement, led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been pushing for healthier food for schoolchildren, but the Trump administration’s budget cuts might make this difficult. Combined with a series of changing MAHA-adjacent nutritional guidelines, some schools are reportedly finding it hard to fund kids’ lunches.

Why are schools having trouble providing lunches?

A large part of the issue lies with the new MAHA health guidelines, which encourages people to “avoid highly processed foods and prioritize ‘high-quality, nutrient-dense’ protein at every meal,” said NPR. These guidelines form the “basis of federal nutrition standards that schools participating in federal meal programs must follow.” But many school districts “rely on processed, premade foods to feed their students, and protein is already the most expensive ingredient on the cafeteria plate.”

Currently, the government’s federal reimbursement rate for a free school lunch is about $4.70, which “must cover the food and the supplies, our labor and our equipment, deliveries and utilities, and the list goes on,” Stephanie Dillard, the president of the nonprofit School Nutrition Association (SNA), said in a congressional hearing. Many have “lauded the push toward scratch-made meals and more whole food options,” said Fortune. But these healthier foods are typically more expensive, and experts worry that trying to fit them into just $4.70 will “further strain schools already concerned with the future of their school lunch programs.”

The push for healthier meals is being juxtaposed with the White House’s decision to “cut funding programs that allowed schools to buy local food from farmers,” said NPR. The USDA has reportedly ended the “Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program, erasing an estimated $660 million in funding” that was used to buy “unprocessed or minimally processed foods” for schools. The cuts come as nearly seven in 10 school administrators, 69.6%, don’t think the $4.70 reimbursement rate is “sufficient to cover the costs” of school lunches, according to an SNA survey.

Is there a solution?

Many experts are pushing for increased funding for school lunches, which could help offset the cost of their increasing expense. The “issue here is the operational reality of getting there with the current level of funding,” David Ortega, a professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University, said to Fortune. “Not having enough staff, culinary training that comes with trying to do a lot of that more whole-food scratch cooking, the need for equipment and infrastructure — these are really operational issues that have to be addressed from a funding perspective.”

Enabling school districts to serve healthier foods is “what we’re trying to do,” Mara Fleishman, the CEO of the Chef Ann Foundation, a school-food-reform organization, told The Christian Science Monitor. But doing so “requires support. It requires the right equipment. It requires funding.” Districts should be “shown how to create varied menus, identify where they can spend more on higher-quality ingredients, reassess labor costs and acquire the proper equipment.”

Government officials deny that budget cuts are hurting school lunch programs. “Out of a multitrillion-dollar government budget, it’s not surprising the media can find examples of cuts instead of ignoring the larger issue that the Trump administration is fighting for farmers and real food more than any administration in history,” senior White House adviser Calley Means told Bloomberg. The USDA has announced a $20 million farm-to-table program grant for schools, describing it as “record-breaking,” Bloomberg said, even though this still leaves a “$640 million gap compared to what was cut last year.”

Mother Nature shines at these seven protected areas, thanks to communities and coalitions that monitor and govern each spot so they remain pristine for generations. Travelers are asked to visit with this intent in mind and explore using official guides, treading lightly and leaving not a trace behind.

Banff National Park, Canada

Canada’s first national park is “brimming with natural beauty,” and its Rocky Mountain peaks and glacial lakes are only some of the “treasures” found in this “alpine wonderland,” said Condé Nast Traveler. The varied landscapes offer “geological drama,” filled with “spectacular” wildlife like moose, black bears and elk. There’s “no bad season to visit,” with canoeing popular in the summer, hiking and biking perfect for spring and fall, and skiing and snowshoeing made for winter.

Fiordland, New Zealand

Stretching across 5,000 square miles of southwestern New Zealand is Fiordland, the country’s largest national park. In a “land renowned for rugged beauty and heavenly wilderness,” Fiordland stands out with its “almost otherworldly splendor,” said Thrillist.

There is a lot to take in. The landscape includes forests, lakes, fjords, massive peaks and “craggy” coastlines, all home to “endangered wildlife found nowhere else on Earth,” said Thrillist. There are a few activities that every visitor should try to do, like take a cruise around Milford Sound. The sound is the park’s “most famous” fjord, and getting there involves a four-hour journey one of the “most scenic routes on the planet.”

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

The Andes’ Salar de Uyuni, at 4,000 square miles, is the world’s largest salt flat, formed by dried prehistoric lakes. Your experience depends on the time of year you visit.

It’s dry from May to November, and the flats are hard and can handle the weight of 4x4 vehicles. But when it rains December through March, the flats “transform into a gargantuan reflective mirror,” said Vogue. Stargazers should head to Salar de Uyuni between June and August, when the skies are at their clearest.

Tainui Atea, French Polynesia

On arrival, visitors to the Tahitian islands immediately notice the clear, clean waters of Tainui Atea. It’s the world’s largest marine protected area, spanning nearly 2 million square miles.

Seabed exploitation and fish-aggregating devices are prohibited, and as a result, the area has healthier reefs and lagoons, and stronger marine ecosystems. Travelers are encouraged to respectfully dive right in and go swimming, or hire local guides for outrigger canoeing and surfing lessons, kayaking trips, and diving and snorkeling excursions.

Trang An Landscape Complex, Vietnam

This “sublime” area is dominated by “hulking” limestone karst peaks and sweeping valleys dotted with pagodas and temples, said Afar. It is situated on the Red River Delta, and no visit is complete without climbing into a boat or kayak and meandering past the steep cliffs.

There are also dozens of ancient caves to explore, with many accessible only from the water. Trang An was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014 as a mixed cultural and natural property.

Vatnajokull National Park, Iceland

The “stunning” Vatnajokull ice cap may be the main draw of Vatnajokull National Park, but there’s “plenty else for visitors to see and delight in,” said Travel and Leisure. Jokulsarlon, a lagoon with “very photogenic” blue waters, is a popular spot, as is Diamond Beach, where “chunks of ice wash up on its black sand shores.”

Visit during the winter to see the Skaftafellsjokull glacier when it “extends to lower elevations,” said Travel and Leisure. Iceland is known for its dramatic landscapes, and Vatnajokull National Park offers the finest examples of “millennia of interplay between fire and ice.”

Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda

Gorilla trekking in Volcanoes National Park is on countless bucket lists — for solid reason. The park is “one of the best places” to spot mountain gorillas, with expert rangers leading groups into the forests, said Travel and Leisure.

Once the animals are found, you can watch at “close range” as they “feed, interact with each other and appraise their human visitors,” said Travel and Leisure. There are “luxurious” accommodations inside the park, where you can unwind after the high of seeing gorillas in the wild.

‘Why Mexico’s cartels are so hard to defeat’

David Mora at Foreign Affairs

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum “has revamped the government’s campaign against criminal organizations,” says David Mora. This is “emblematic of Mexico’s standing in the fight against organized crime,” as “two decades of a military-led ‘war on drugs’ have brought the country no closer to peace.” Sheinbaum is “now trying to strike a difficult balance, still relying on the military as the state’s most effective bulwark against criminal groups but also strengthening the intelligence and investigative bodies.”

Read more

‘iPads in kindergarten? No wonder our kids are falling behind.’

Nicole Russell at USA Today

Some “technology use in schools makes sense, but increasingly, schools seem overly dependent on it to teach subjects that can easily be taught — and learned — without a tablet,” says Nicole Russell. Educational decline “began around 2013,” and “not coincidentally, that’s roughly when iPads began making their way into classrooms.” Technology “isn’t the only reason students are falling behind, but it’s clearly playing a major role.” Technology “should be a tool that supports education, not the foundation.”

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‘MAGA still loves Trump. What does that mean for November?’

Anita Chabria at the Los Angeles Times

America “voted in primary elections and the big winner was President Trump,” as “his enemies — and by that I mean anyone who has ever done anything other than grovel — were defeated in elections across the country,” says Anita Chabria. Is it “now crystal clear that it is a party that will follow its leader, no matter the consequence — even personal ruin?” If Trump “wields this much power over his base, what does it mean for the November general election?”

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‘How an anti-immigrant and antisemitic conspiracy theory became US policy’

Luis F. Carrasco at The Philadelphia Inquirer

The “‘great replacement theory’ posits that a shady cabal of elites (read: Jews) is plotting to flood Western countries with immigrants, effectively ‘replacing’ the native (read: white) population,” says Luis F. Carrasco. That “this anti-immigrant and antisemitic conspiracy theory now undergirds U.S. policy is chilling and should never be normalized.” For “people who may have reasonable objections to unchecked immigration,” the U.S. is “very far from economic or law-and-order arguments here,” and “dangerously so.”

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After decades of maintaining steady numbers of American service members at sites across Eastern Europe, the United States has begun quietly shifting where and how it deploys troops along Russia’s doorstep. This month, the Pentagon “abruptly” halted an already underway deployment of some 4,000 soldiers to Poland as “part of a larger troop reduction,” fueled in part by President Donald Trump’s “anger over Europe’s refusal to aid in the war with Iran,” said The Washington Post. Similar reductions and withdrawals have been ordered for other American military assets in the region, and White House figures are defending the moves as part of Trump’s America First ethos.

‘Growing rift’

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “last-minute decision” to pause the planned Poland deployment took Pentagon officials and European allies “by surprise,” said Politico. It is the latest instance of an “abrupt personnel move” that has “blindsided both sides of the Atlantic.”

The Pentagon has largely employed the easier process of canceling deployments “as opposed to yanking forces already stationed there,” The Associated Press said. In addition to nixing the planned Polish deployment, Hegseth’s orders also “led to the cancellation of an upcoming deployment to Germany of a battalion trained in firing long-range rockets and missiles.” Hegseth “scrapping plans” for a “long-range fires battalion to be stationed in Europe,” marks a “significant loss for the continent,” said the Post.

The change in troop levels comes as Trump has “repeatedly criticized NATO countries for not participating in the Iran war,” said CNN. Trump has also lashed out at German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has said the U.S. is “being ‘humiliated’ by Iran.” The move “reflects a growing rift between the administration and traditional European allies” that has been exacerbated by a “lack of support for the Iran conflict,” the AP said.

‘Overreacting’

Changing the Poland deployment was “not an unexpected, last-minute decision,” said the Pentagon to the Post. However, the military declined to “provide clarification on when the process started and when the order to depart was given,” the outlet said. Pressed on the changes, Vice President JD Vance also downplayed their significance. “We're not talking about pulling every single American troop out ⁠of Europe,” said Vance on ABC News Tuesday. The move merely shifts “some resources around in a way that maximizes ​American security,” and “frankly, a lot of the European media is overreacting to this.”

Polish lawmakers visiting Washington this week “welcomed U.S. statements clarifying” that the troop drawdown was a “temporary measure,” said the Post. Warsaw has also “lobbied to host some of the U.S. troops set to be withdrawn from Germany,” using the argument that “Poland already has the infrastructure needed to accommodate additional American forces,” said Polish broadcaster TVP World.

For now, the White House’s “broader strategy remains unclear,” said Politico. The upcoming German withdrawal is “still in the planning stages.” While it would be a “relatively minor drawdown of the 38,000 U.S. troops in the country,” it also signals to European allies that “they could pay a price for publicly disagreeing with the White House. “

In Steven Soderbergh’s dark comedy, Ian McKellen turns in one of his finest performances, said David Sexton in The New Statesman. He plays Julian Sklar, a once-brilliant painter who hasn’t produced anything for years. A “vain, irascible wreck of a man”, he lives in adjacent townhouses in Bloomsbury, and fills his time by appearing as a “sarcastic” judge on a brutal TV talent show and selling appearances on Cameo.

His artistic reputation relies on a series of portraits of his former male lover, “The Christophers”, that he produced 30 years ago, and which are now highly sought after. At home, he has some unfinished Christopher canvases: he hasn’t looked at them for years, yet they’re on the minds of his “grasping, despised children” (James Corden and Jessica Gunning). They bribe former art forger Lori (the “formidable” Michaela Coel) to become his assistant. The plan is that Lori – who turns out to have a painful backstory of her own with Julian – will finish the paintings, so that the children can sell them for millions after his death.

Soderbergh is “a big name”, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator, but with this “deliciously sly” take on the art world, he has “gone small”. In what is effectively a two-hander, we follow Lori and Julian around his cluttered house as they “joust and the power shifts. Who was Christopher? Why does Lori hate Julian? Can fake art be true? It all comes out.” It’s an intimate, talky film and, if the plot doesn’t quite stack up, it hardly matters when the acting is this good. The script isn’t as sharp as it should be, said Tara Brady in The Irish Times, and the film is surprisingly muted, visually. Still, the performances are good enough to keep you watching.

What happened

The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday voted 141-8, with 28 abstentions, to endorse a 2025 International Court of Justice opinion that countries are legally obligated to take steps to fight climate change. That opinion, while “not legally binding,” is “expected to be cited in ‌climate-related ⁠legal cases worldwide,” Reuters said.

Who said what

“The world’s highest court has spoken,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, and the General Assembly “has answered” with a “powerful affirmation of international law, climate justice, science, and the responsibility of states to protect people from the escalating climate crisis.” The U.S. had engaged in “diplomatic efforts” to derail the resolution, The Associated Press said, and joined other big “oil-producing nations and major greenhouse gas emitters” in voting against it. The “highly problematic” text “includes inappropriate political demands relating to fossil fuels,” U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Tammy Bruce said before the vote.

What next?

While the resolution called for limiting global temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, there is “no chance” of meeting that “1.5 to stay alive” goal anymore, the AP said, citing new scientific estimates. But thanks to “increasing use of green energies,” the “worst case scenario” is “no longer plausible,” either.

What happened

Two police officers who helped defend the U.S. Capitol from a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, sued in federal court Wednesday to block anyone, including the rioters who beat them, from receiving payouts from his $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. House Democrats separately proposed legislation challenging the fund and promised a robust investigation if they win control in November.

Who said what

Using Trump’s “taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name” would be “the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century,” former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges said in their lawsuit. “No statute authorizes” this “corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that anybody could apply for compensation, including Jan. 6 rioters. “It’s abhorrent” to harm law enforcement, he told CNN, but “people that hurt police get money all the time” from suing the government.

What next?

Opponents of the fund “face high hurdles” to blocking the payouts if “Congress, controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, stays silent,” Reuters said. But if Hodges and Dunn can “demonstrate they have been harmed in some way,” they have several viable legal paths.

What happened

The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed criminal charges accusing former Cuban President Raúl Castro of murder and conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens. The indictment, approved by a grand jury last month, stems from Cuba’s 1996 downing of two planes operated by the anti-communist Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Castro, now 94, was the defense minister at the time.

Who said what

The charges are an “extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration’s multifaceted pressure campaign” against Cuba, The New York Times said. Without Cuba’s cooperation or “aggressive action” by the U.S., said The Washington Post, the “indictment is likely to remain symbolic.”

There is an arrest warrant for Castro, so “we expect that he will show up here, by his own will or by another way,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said during a ceremony at Miami’s Freedom Tower. Cuba shot down the “narco-terrorist” aircraft “in legitimate self-defense, within its jurisdictional waters,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said on social media Wednesday. The indictment is a “political maneuver” to “justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba.”

What next?

President Donald Trump “has been threatening military action in Cuba” since the military raid in Venezuela that captured Nicolás Maduro, so the “charges pose a real threat” for Castro, The Associated Press said. But with the White House “occupied by the Iran war,” CNN said, there is “little belief that another military operation is imminent.”

It is a little-known fact that although 800,000 British children were evacuated from British cities during the War, two million stayed put as the bombs fell, said James Walton in The Spectator. This “riveting” BBC2 documentary is about those children.

Made to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the end of the Blitz in 1941, it features interviews with the last survivors of that cohort, many of whom are in their 90s or older, and who tell their stories with “extraordinary vividness”. This is the type of programming that shows the BBC at its “still considerable, even nation-unifying best”.

A “huge story is told via dozens of tiny, shattering personal reflections”, said Phil Harrison in The Guardian. Liverpudlian Ernie Gaskell remembers his father’s reassurances that the slate tiles on their roof would be strong enough to protect them. They weren’t. Jean Whitfield recalls the day her mother was killed by a bomb as she hung out her washing in Sheffield. Afterwards, a neighbour plied her with freshly baked lemon tarts. It’s more than just a story about this war; it gives insights into the impact on children of any war, and it’s “priceless”.

The stories are so moving, “varied and vivid” that the 90 minutes “goes by in a flash”, said Ben Dowell in The Times. Many of the interviewees talk about the resilience of the age. Others worry about new wars coming. The final word, though, goes to Patsy from Belfast, who we learn died earlier this year, and who is seen dancing in her kitchen to the strains of “Oh, You Beautiful Doll”. “What a luminescent moment that was.”

The rate of inflation slowed in April despite concerns about the impact of the Iran war and oil shortages on household bills, but this dip may be only temporary.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) was 2.8% in April, down from 3.3% in March. The lower energy price cap introduced in April “helped soften the sharp rise in fuel costs since the start of the Iran war”, said The Guardian.

But the fall is expected to be “short-lived”, said CNBC, as the “economic implications of the Iran war materialise”.

It comes as the government announced that fuel duty will be frozen for a further four months until January 2027. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has laid out extra measures for low-income households to help mitigate the worst of the cost-of-living crisis.

What is inflation?

Inflation measures the changing price of goods and services. It is based on the CPI, which tracks a basket of goods, such as food, energy bills and transport costs, monitored by the ONS.

To see inflation in action, said MoneyHelper, “think about what you could buy with £1 over the past few decades”. A higher inflation rate means you can buy “less this year than you could last year for the same amount of money”.

At 2.8%, the inflation figure is above the Bank of England’s target of 2%, but is “well below” the 11.1% figure reached in October 2022, said the BBC.

Will inflation ever come down?

The latest drop in the rate of inflation was “more substantial than anticipated”, said The Independent, but the ongoing Middle East conflict “could soon reverse this progress”.

The reduction in the energy price cap in April was a “key driver” in the latest figures, said Financial Reporter, but “rising global energy costs” are likely to feed through into a higher Ofgem price cap from 1 July, which would push inflation higher.

It comes as Iran’s continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz means “more than half” of the normal oil supply is not getting through. Unless “something changes”, said Kiplinger, this means gas, fuel and food prices will “start rising in the future”. This can push up the rate of inflation.

Oil markets have been “heavily disrupted due to the Iran war”, said MoneyWeek. The commodity is used in the manufacturing of “a significant portion” of everyday items such as plastic, crayons, shoes, backpacks, iPhones, pillows and much more.

This “simple answer” to the question of whether inflation will come down, said Big Issue, is “probably never” and “almost certainly not by very much”.

Inflation still means prices are rising. The rate would have to be negative for prices to actually fall – known as deflation. This can “actually be a quite a bad thing”, as it means the economy is stagnant. In the past, this has been used as “political cover for austerity”.

The Bank of England has the power to “lift or lower interest rates”, said the BBC, to change how households and businesses use their money and control inflation.

But many of the “current pressures” on inflation are coming from outside the UK, meaning the cost of living is “widely expected to rise from here”.

Ava Pickett’s debut play, “1536”, became the hottest ticket in town when it premiered at the Almeida, said Isobel Lewis in Time Out. Film star Margot Robbie was so impressed, she came on board as co-producer for this West End transfer. As if that wasn’t enough of a flying start, Pickett is also adapting her play for the BBC, and has written a film about Joan of Arc with Baz Luhrmann. Indeed, her rise has been so stellar, I found myself wondering if “1536” – about the lives of three young women in rural Essex, in the month of Anne Boleyn’s arrest, trial and execution – could really live up to the hype.

The answer is that it absolutely does, and then some. A devastating mixture of comedy and chilling horror, superbly acted, directed and designed, it is a “once-in-a-blue-moon theatrical experience. I laughed. I cried. I probably could have screamed too.”

This “sharp-tongued” play is not about Anne Boleyn herself, said Alex Wood on WhatsOnStage. It is “about the trickle-down effect of misogyny and how political events can ripple through society – to impact everything from female friendship to economic survival”.

The three friends hang out in the countryside, gossiping about men, work, and the rumours they hear about goings-on in the distant court, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. But the king’s brutality towards his wife is emboldening the local men in their own acts of violence, and as the women talk in a “very 21st-century way, they risk being cancelled in a very 16th-century way”. In particular, Pickett subtly and skilfully maps Boleyn onto the character of Anna (Siena Kelly), an attractive serving girl whose sexuality is first prized, then punished.

“The building momentum and deepening sophistication are perfectly judged,” said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph, “and the accusatory message about women’s constrained lives, then and now, emerges via consummate craft.” The last breathless line of the play is “Run!” And I recommend you do indeed run, to catch this superb production before it sells out.

Ambassadors Theatre, London WC2. Until 1 August

The UK’s net migration dropped sharply to 171,000 in the year to December 2025, the lowest outside the pandemic since 2012. But nobody seems to care.

A survey commissioned by the think tank British Future found only 16% of people believed net migration had fallen in 2025 compared with the previous year, while 49% thought it had increased. The poll of 3,003 adults in the UK “also suggests public concern is being shaped more by asylum and small boat crossings”, said the BBC Verify’s Rob England.

While net immigration figures have been falling (the number to December 2024 was 331,000), Labour and Conservative MPs “are speaking in a more hostile way about immigration than at almost any other time in the last century”, said The Guardian. The number of far-right and anti-immigration protests “has increased 15-fold since Labour took power in July 2024”, said The Telegraph.

What did the commentators say?

“It’s little wonder voters think net migration is going up when the only debate we have is about how to bring it down,” British Future’s director Sunder Katwala said. “We should be having a conversation about how to manage the pressures and gains of migration to Britain.”

“The difference in tone towards issues relating to asylum, immigration and human rights under this Labour administration compared to previous ones is stark,” said Alexander Horne in The Spectator. “These issues are now portrayed as problems to be solved.” New polling from YouGov also showed that Labour Party members have backed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s tougher immigration policies by a two-to-one majority.

The net migration figures came as Andy Burnham’s allies signalled he would back Mahmood’s controversial immigration policies should he become Labour leader. “For Andy, migration is a moral issue as much as anything, showing people who’ve lost faith in politics that we do have control and we can do good,” one source told The Guardian. “We need to tell a positive story about the contribution of migration to our country, but we cannot do that unless people trust that the people they vote for have control over our borders.”

Mahmood’s closeness to Keir Starmer has led many to believe that she and her reforms will be jettisoned if the PM leaves Downing Street. “This is a pity for the country,” said Andrew Tettenborn in The Critic. Mahmood has thought deeply about immigration and she “overtly embraces the idea that settlement in the UK must be a privilege and not something there almost for the taking”. Despite criticism from within her own party, the voters Labour needs to woo – “the just-about-managing, the fed-up and those from the Red Wall” – care a “great deal for immigration control and a great deal for removing obstacles to it”.

But politicians should be wary of swinging too harshly one way or the other on immigration, said Sarah O’Connor in the Financial Times. “After the 2016 Brexit referendum, public concern about immigration fell”. Then it surged again “when the Conservative government liberalised visa routes for students and care workers between 2019 and 2022”. Now Mahmood has taken a restrictive turn.

What is happening is that successive governments are over-interpreting and over-reacting to a change in public opinion, “which reacts in turn, prompting a sudden swing the other way”. These frequent changes in immigration policy are bad for employers, migrants and the economy but also corrosive of trust between politicians and the public.

And yet “the tragedy of all this is that it’s not happening because politicians ‘aren’t listening’ to the public on immigration”. Rather, “it’s because they are listening too much”.

What next?

Mahmood’s proposed reforms “have caused a slow-bubbling revolt on the backbenches”, said Ethan Croft in The New Statesman, so whether they will survive a Commons vote remains to be seen.

Google has become so synonymous with online search that its name has evolved into a verb in its own right. Now, the company is attempting to “revamp its decades-old business model to fit the era of artificial intelligence”, said CNN. In essence, “Google wants to help you google less”.

‘New era’ for search

Although Google already offers “AI Mode”, it will now integrate the technology across the entire search experience through its new Gemini 3.5 Flash model. Rather than simply typing keywords or short phrases, users will be able to ask conversational questions, share images or voice commands with agentic AI, and even interact through live video.

Instead of generating only the familiar list of blue links, Google Search will give a customised AI-written summary of the topic being researched. This will then open a conversation with AI Mode directly on the main search page, allowing users to ask follow-up questions more naturally.

This marks a “new era for AI search”, according to a Google blog post, bringing “advanced model capabilities” and “new AI features” to Search. The update will allow users to deploy AI agents “just by asking a question”. The company is also introducing a new intelligent, AI-powered search box, which it describes as Google’s “biggest upgrade in over 25 years”.

Crucially, the shift means that search will become more conversational and personalised, reducing the need to click through to web pages. Increasingly, Google will function more like an assistant than a traditional index of third-party information providers.

‘Radical transformation’

For many people, Google’s search box is the “lobby of the internet”, said Time, so this “radical transformation” signals a major shift in how people use the web. It could “disrupt many industries” that rely on search traffic to attract customers, with news publishers and small businesses particularly vulnerable.

The changes will likely “further decimate” referrals from Google to publishers, which have “already been suffering from declining referrals” because of AI Overviews, said TechCrunch. The trend has already “put some ad-dependent media operations out of business, and now things will likely get worse”.

Using AI-based searching could also erode important skills, said Riley MacLeod on internet news site Aftermath. Google Search is “one of the first and primary places that people experiment with and grow their information-searching skills”. While “spoon-feeding” users AI summaries and “obscuring or bypassing the source of the information” may seem convenient, it risks depriving people of the opportunity to build the “vital information literacy skills” they “need more than ever in an AI-obsessed world”.

For Google, however, the ambition is far larger: to move “closer” to its long-term goal of developing artificial general intelligence – a “theoretical stage of AI” where technology becomes as intelligent as humans across a broad range of subjects, said CNN. The competition is intense, with OpenAI, Meta and others all “racing to be the first to get there”.

The “vulnerability” of the civilian energy infrastructure was exposed this week when a drone strike on the United Arab Emirates cut off power to a nuclear reactor, said Bloomberg.

It’s the first time a fully operating nuclear power plant has had to rely on back-up generators because of a military attack, but reactors in Ukraine and Iran have also been threatened by recent conflicts.

Why would a nuclear site be targeted?

A country might target a nuclear power plant to cripple an enemy’s power grid, or to force a surrender through the psychological terror of threatening a radiological disaster. An attack on such facilities could also be used to delay a nation’s ability to enrich nuclear material.

Alternatively, armies may attack, or occupy, a nuclear plant to seize control of a strategic geographic corridor or to prevent defending forces from using the area.

What does international law say?

Under the Geneva Conventions, civilian structures, including nuclear power plants, “are protected against attack”, but the treaties also state that they can be hit “for such time as they are military objectives”. This is a “loophole” that “aggressor states” have “interpreted widely”, said Dan Sabbagh, The Guardian’s defence and security editor.

Attacking a nuclear power plant also breaks legal resolutions passed by the UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors.

What would happen if a site were hit?

An attack on a nuclear site would not necessarily lead to a mushroom cloud or an immediate release of radiation because modern plants are built with multiple safety systems that can shut down reactors and contain damage.

But the reactor’s core could continue to heat up after a strike. This could lead to a build up of hydrogen gas, which could cause further explosions and damage. If the reactor began to degrade, radioactive material could be released and that can remain in the environment for years or even decades. It could potentially spread across borders and enter water systems or settle into the soil.

There are other consequences. Attacks on nuclear installations “risk undermining the emerging nuclear renaissance” in Western economies as an alternative to fossil fuels, said Bloomberg. Politicians and the public are “highly sensitive to radiation emergencies”, so an incident in one country “tends to dampen enthusiasm” for nuclear power elsewhere.

An attack on a nuclear plant would also be a hugely symbolic moment. Although conventional power plants have been “repeatedly bombed” by Russia during the Ukraine war, said Sabbagh, Kyiv’s three functioning nuclear plants have “remained relatively unscathed” because Moscow regarded a direct attack on them to be “taboo”.

The Naegleria fowleri amoeba can cause a rare but fatal brain infection that progresses quickly and can’t be cured. It has been found in several recreational locations in the U.S., with the number of cases likely to increase as global temperatures rise.

Unwelcome inhabitant

Scientists tested 185 water samples from 40 recreational waterways across five National Park Service sites. N. fowleri was found in 34% of the samples, according to a study published in the journal ACS ES&T Water. The amoeba was “detected in well-known and previously untested hot springs, including sites with high recreational use,” including Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park and Lake Mead National Recreation Area, said the study.

The single-celled organism is “very widespread” and “not just in national park hot springs,” said study author Brent Peyton, a professor at Montana State University, to Outside. The amoeba “thrives in soil and warm freshwater lakes, rivers, ponds and hot springs all over the globe,” said USA Today. It flourishes in “warm pools up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit,” as “water across western national parks is getting warmer,” said Outside.

Brain infection most often occurs when someone “goes swimming or diving in a lake, river or other fresh water during summer months” and the amoeba enters the nasal cavity, said the CDC. A few infections have occurred when people “used tap water that contained Naegleria fowleri to rinse their sinuses or cleanse their nasal passages.” However, you cannot get an N. fowleri infection from “swallowing water containing the amoeba,” get it “from someone else” or “pass it on to others.”

The infection, primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), advances quickly, destroying brain tissue and causing massive cerebral swelling, with most people dying “within one to 18 days after symptoms begin,” said USA Today. The amoeba can “infect their brain with a fatality rate of 98%.”

PAM symptoms include “headache, fever, nausea and vomiting,” said the CDC. And as the disease progresses, it can cause a “stiff neck, confusion, lack of attention to people and surroundings, loss of balance and hallucinations.”

Domain expansion

There’s “no need to be alarmed,” said Peyton. Infection can be “prevented by keeping water out of one’s nose.” Experts suggest people “hold their nose or wear a nose clip if they are jumping or diving into fresh water,” keep their “head above water in hot springs,” and avoid splashing around in shallow water, as the amoeba is more likely to be found there, said Fast Company.

Other bodies of water may also become more hospitable to N. fowleri due to warming temperatures. The findings “indicate that N. fowleri is present in thermally impacted areas across the western United States,” said the study. The amoeba’s presence underscores the “use of enhanced monitoring, public awareness and risk management strategies in thermally influenced recreational waters.”

‘It’s Been Awful’ by Isaiah Rashad

★★★

Isaiah Rashad’s new top-20 album is “as concise a statement about men in rap struggling with their sexuality as has ever been made,” said Mosi Reeves in Rolling Stone. Rashad, a longtime labelmate of SZA and Kendrick Lamar, was forced to grapple publicly with his bisexuality in 2022 when he appeared in sex tapes that were leaked not long after his previous album reached Billboard’s top 10. On this record, the Tennessee-raised songwriter and producer is as bracingly honest about his sexual fluidity as he is about his reliance on booze, pills, and powders. But he’s also “subtly pushing the art forward” as he puts his own stamp on “the muddy, melancholy Southern blues of mid-’90s rap.” While some listeners may find the weight of the 35-year-old’s confessions too heavy, said Luke Morgan Britton in NME, “it’s Rashad’s stark specificity that makes the lyrics cut through.” And when the music lands, as it “often does,” it “sounds like Southern rap filtered through a roof-down, summer-drive R&B haze.” That blend hasn’t made its creator a superstar yet. Starting now, “nobody should be sleeping on Isaiah Rashad any longer.”

‘Train on the Island’ by Aldous Harding

★★★★

It’s “a fool’s errand” to try to locate the real Aldous Harding on any of her albums, said Jayson Greene in Pitchfork. On her new LP, a career best, the 35-year-old New Zealander “steps closer than ever to the camera lens without coming into focus” but only because she seems to present a new “I” on every song. Across four previous albums, “each a little deeper and stranger than the last,” Harding has been moving toward Train on the Island, an album of “warm and inviting” piano-and-guitar-driven music that’s also varied enough to serve as her ideal playground. Harding “cuts a divisive figure in the world of alt-rock,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. Devotees find her cryptic lyrics and sometimes mannered vocals fascinating; skeptics find her too self-consciously weird. But “what isn’t really up for question is her skill as a songwriter.” Though the mood on this record “tends to the cozy and languorous,” the most striking thing about its 10 tunes is “how tightly written and, in their own understated way, punchy they are.” All that’s required to enjoy it is an appreciation of “utterly lovely” melodies set atop music “that’s subtle but never bland.”

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Philosopher Slavoj Zizek is the author of more than 50 books, including Liberal Fascisms, a new essay collection that explores authoritarianism packaged as freemarket capitalism. He credits the novels below with presenting catastrophe in ways that changed his thinking.

‘The Drowned World’ by J.G. Ballard (1962)

Ballard depicts a postapocalyptic future in which global warming has rendered much of the planet uninhabitable. In a flooded London, several characters take advantage of societal collapse to fulfill unconscious urges. The idea that a mega catastrophe could create an opportunity to experience jouissance—surrender to bliss—profoundly influenced me. Buy it here.

‘The Three-Body Problem’ by Liu Cixin (2008)

In Liu’s masterpiece, Earth is confronted with a planet whose unpredictable suns cause severe temperature shifts. I see it as Earth in the near future: Are we facing something for which the only appropriate term is “the end of nature”? Buy it here.

‘Never Let Me Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)

This is arguably the most depressing novel I’ve ever read, presenting a society in which human clones are created solely to produce a supply of healthy organs, a practice that requires a major shift in public morals. Is this not our situation today? We cope with new threats by reshaping our ethical principles. Buy it here.

‘I Who Have Never Known Men’ by Jacqueline Harpman (1995)

Perhaps even darker is this novel about a girl and 39 women held prisoner in a bunker. When the male guards flee, the captives emerge into a barren plain, and the girl, the last to survive, writes about her life. Existentially, I feel like the girl: Even in a crowd, I am totally alone. My words will probably never reach their addressee, someone who will read them properly. Buy it here.

‘The Ministry for the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson (2020)

Socialist realism at its most noble and convincing. In the near future, a global heat wave that begins in India kills millions and spreads around the world. But humans decide on cooperation and gradually cope with the threat. Buy it here.

‘Station Eleven’ by Emily St. John Mandel (2014)

An apocalyptic novel with a sort of happy ending. After an epidemic devastates humanity, one group, the Traveling Symphony, connects disparate survivors by performing Shakespeare. I accept that in our catastrophic predicament we need more than art to survive. Buy it here.

‘The Things We Never Say’ by Elizabeth Strout

“The Things We Never Say is classic Elizabeth Strout,” said Adam Begley in The Atlantic. There’s the usual New England setting, some family secrets, and an unhappy marriage. There are a few differences, though. We’re not in Maine, the Pulitzer Prize winner’s usual locale, but in coastal Massachusetts, where we’re following a protagonist very unlike Strout’s most famous creation, the brittle, blunt Olive Kittredge. Artie Dam is a 57-year-old married high-school history teacher who is widely beloved by his students. Still, Artie, “suffers from the most common ailment in Strout’s world: loneliness.” When we meet him, he’s even contemplating suicide. However, it’s not a mortal threat that carries the story; it’s Strout’s usual magic—“harpooning the reader with language as plain as a Congregational church and a cast of characters no more exotic than your neighbors.”

“Strout’s capacious empathy and rigorous attention to the nuances of human behavior and psychology are as evident as ever,” said Priscilla Gilman in The Boston Globe. A decade after a fatal tragedy that Artie had no part in but has believably infected his relationships with his wife and son, Artie feels his isolation growing when his friend Flossie, one of the only people he feels he can confide in, reveals she’s moving away. Unfortunately, “this is by far Strout’s bleakest book,” and it isn’t helped by also being her most political, as she has tied Artie’s despair in part to the imminent 2024 re-election of President Trump. Her story “seems to lose its bearings” because she tries to make it a parable for where America is headed. You can agree that Trump is ruining the country and still not want to hear the 2024 or 2025 details repeated here, said Maggie Shipstead in The New York Times. “On the other hand, there’s a poignancy to the way Strout sets Artie’s personal disillusionment against the backdrop of a larger grief.”

Despite the novel’s accretion of tragedies new or remembered, said Ron Charles in his Substack newsletter, “the story keeps ascending toward a sense of astonishment at the interior complexity of life.” Artie eventually expresses amazement at the hidden layers of every person he knows, including himself. Yet he remains a relative innocent for a man his age, unable to accept the griminess of the world as it is outside his classroom. Strout has said she loves him, and while “such affection would typically be deadly for a serious novel,” hers is “the love of a Protestant God who spares us no agony on the path to beatitude.” At the end of his journey, he finds no simple answers. Still, the universe “feels a little more comprehensible with a novel this good in it.”

‘Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay’ by Mary Lisa Gavenas

“Mary Kay Ash could move product, regardless of what the product was,” said Dan Piepenbring in Harper’s. Long before 1963, when she founded the successful cosmetics company that bears her name, the Texas native established herself as a champion in-person seller of ointments, mitten dusters, and a wide range of other products. Ash wanted housewives everywhere to chase autonomy with similar tenacity, and by the time she died at 83 in 2001, hundreds of thousands of Mary Kay “consultants” were signed up to sell the company’s beauty items from Houston to Beijing. Author Mary Lisa Gavenas acknowledges in her new biography of Ash that most such salespeople fail, but she brushes worry aside, proving “more concerned with Mary Kay’s singular place in the peddler pantheon.”

Nothing in Ash’s family background predicted the success she achieved, said Barbara Spindel in The Wall Street Journal. At age 10, she was already running a household because her father was an invalid and her mother needed to work. A mother of two herself by 19, Ash remained ambitious enough that she was quick to sign on with Stanley Home Products shortly after the direct-sales outfit opened its sales force to women. Over the subsequent two decades, doors remained closed to her, but she absorbed enough capitalist scripture to go solo at 45, eventually becoming the first female CEO of a company listed by the New York Stock Exchange. In Gavenas’ “enthralling” account of the growth years, the blond-wigged, aphorism-spouting Ash turns out to be “a vivid presence.”

There are three stories told here, said Mimi Swartz in Texas Monthly. Besides Ash’s biography, readers get a history of the limits put on women’s financial independence and the evolution of in-home sales parties into the multilevel marketing model Mary Kay still employs today. But while Gavenas “has a gift for storytelling,” her book says too little about how that model operates as a kind of pyramid scheme in which early participants reap rewards for recruiting other sales representatives while the latecomers often lose money and hope. Though it’s not Ash’s fault that men still outearn women, “maybe she didn’t do as much as legend would have it to rectify the situation.”

Many people first discovered the martial arts, a loosely related set of hand-to-hand combat practices, most closely associated with China, through the magic of the movies. This rich tradition has been showcased in the plots and action sequences of countless films, including these eight exceptional, beloved classics.

‘Enter the Dragon’ (1973)

“Enter the Dragon” will always be linked with the untimely death of its young star, Bruce Lee, prior to the film’s wide release. Lee plays Lee, a martial artist recruited by British intelligence to infiltrate the island drug and human trafficking ring operated by Han (Shih Kien) under the guise of a martial arts tournament.

Competing alongside two Americans, Roper (John Saxon) and Williams (Jim Kelly), Lee methodically dispatches Han’s henchmen and avenges his sister’s death in the process. Unquestionably the “most influential martial-arts movie ever made,” its profits, likely in excess of $100 million on a budget of less than $1 million, “were astronomical,” and the film has “more than stood the test of time,” said Tom Gray at BBC. (HBO Max)

‘The Karate Kid’ (1984)’

The 1980s were a time of rising Japanese cultural influence in the U.S., from Hondas to hibachi restaurants. And while “The Karate Kid” might not be the kind of martial arts movie that devoted fans consider canonical, it helped make the Japanese art of karate as “ubiquitous on the extracurricular landscape as Little League and piano lessons,” said Newsweek.

Daniel (Ralph Macchio), freshly arrived in Los Angeles with his widowed mother, keeps getting beaten up by Johnny (William Zabka), a karate black belt and the ex-boyfriend of Daniel’s crush, Ali (Elisabeth Shue). Daniel enlists his building’s janitor, Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita), to teach him how to defend himself and compete in karate tournaments. The two develop a deeper bond than either anticipates. The film is an “exciting, sweet-tempered, heart-warming story with one of the most interesting friendships in a long time,” said Roger Ebert. (Prime Video)

‘Once Upon a Time in China’ (1991)

Wong Fei-hung (Jet Li) is a doctor and martial arts master in 19th-century Guangzhou, when the U.S. and other imperial powers were attempting to open China to the outside world by force. The film is a biopic of Fei-hung, a real-life Cantonese folk hero who resists efforts by a villainous American named Jackson (Jonathan Isgar) to create a human trafficking pipeline of sex workers and laborers to the United States.

Fei-hung finds himself fighting against Jackson’s local collaborators, including “Iron Vest” Yim (Yen Shi-kwan). A movie that moves “deftly between romping, fizzy martial arts action and sober depictions of the tense situation of China in the 1860s or ’70s,” it is “as much a grave history lesson as a giddy celebration of its stunt team’s physical prowess,” said Tim Brayton at Alternate Ending. (HBO Max)

‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ (2000)

In Qing Dynasty-era China, a renowned warrior, Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat), tries to track down the bandit who ambushed Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) and made off with Li Mu Bai’s Green Destiny sword. The trail leads him to Jen (Zhang Ziyi), trained by Li Mu Bai’s nemesis, Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-Pei).

Directed by the legendary Ang Lee, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was a global sensation, characterized by mesmerizing fight sequences enhanced with magical realism, including a scene where warriors square off while floating above the treeline. It is still by far the highest-grossing foreign-language film ever released in the U.S. The film is known as “wuxia,” a “subgenre of martial arts cinema” that “finds its roots in seventh-century romantic literature and poetry,” said Matthew Thrift at the British Film Institute. Buoyed by the “undeniable elegance of Ang Lee’s direction,” it is also noteworthy for its “explicitly feminist take on the genre.” (Tubi)

‘Kill Bill Vol. 1’ (2003)

A movie that cemented the status of martial arts as an international cinematic genre, “Kill Bill Vol.1” was the first film from director Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction”) in the six long years after the release of 1997’s “Jackie Brown.” Uma Thurman is Beatrix Kiddo, an assassin known as Black Mamba who tries to escape her life of crime.

On her wedding day, her former boss and lover, Bill (David Carradine), kills the entire wedding party and leaves Beatrix in a coma. When she wakes four years later, she embarks on the titular revenge mission. Its “over-the-top style contributes heavily to the films’ memorability,” said Justin Kim at Loud and Clear Reviews, including the iconic scene in which “Beatrix faces off against 88 assassins in a no-holds-barred katana battle.” The movie was split into two parts, with “Kill Bill Vol. 2” released six months later, in 2004. (Prime Video)

‘Ip Man’ (2008)

Ip Man (Donnie Yen) is a martial arts grandmaster whose life in the Chinese city of Foshan is upended by the 1938 Japanese occupation. He and his family are stripped of their home and possessions, and Ip Man takes work transporting coal.

When Japanese General Miura (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi ) begins organizing brutal matches between his occupying soldiers and Chinese martial artists, Ip Man agrees to a public fight with Miura himself. A loose biopic of a real historical figure who later trained the legendary Bruce Lee, “Ip Man” benefits from “slick, frenetic and plentiful” fighting and “high production values, with stunning set design, locations, camerawork and its atmospheric score making the setting of Foshan come alive,” said Daniel Hooper at Eye For Film. (Peacock)

‘The Raid: Redemption’ (2011)

A film that features and popularizes “pencak silat,” an Indonesian martial art, “The Raid: Redemption” revolves around the efforts of a 20-person police SWAT team including new recruit Rama (Iko Uwais) to storm a squalid apartment complex. Their mission: take down the crime lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy).

The team is quickly trapped, and survivors must fight their way through Tama’s henchmen, floor by floor. It’s a straightforward set-up carried out with unusual panache, although it is not for anyone who can’t tolerate ultraviolence. The result is a “skull-splinteringly violent, uncompromisingly intense and simply brilliant martial arts action movie in a nightmarish and claustrophobic setting,” said Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian. (Pluto TV)

‘Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons’ (2013)

Director Steven Chow (“Kung Fu Hustle”) adapts a prominent Chinese fable in this difficult-to-categorize romp that remains almost completely unknown in the U.S. Tang Sanzang (Wen Zhang) is a demon-hunter who uses nursery rhymes to pacify spirits and return them to their human forms.

He is pursued by Miss Duan (Shu Qi), a rival demon hunter who dispatches them the old-fashioned way—by killing them. Chow’s success in “translating this ancient tale from scroll to screen” is due in large part to the care he takes to “include as much fun, sincerity, and humor in his interpretation as possible,” said Justin Cummings at Critics At Large. (Tubi)

Russian forces last month lost more territory to Ukraine than they were able to capture. The first of such occurrences in nearly two years, this marks an ignominious milestone and potential turning point in Moscow’s years-long invasion effort. At the same time, Russia is losing soldiers faster than it can recruit and deploy them. While the Ukraine front remains an active war zone that has left deep scars on both nations, there is a growing sense among observers that momentum has shifted in Kyiv’s favor.

What did the commentators say?

Russia’s conspicuously “diminished” Victory Day parade this month “signaled its vulnerability,” said The Economist. That sentiment was an “accurate reflection of Russia’s battlefield setbacks,” as well as the country’s “fear of the growing effectiveness of Ukraine’s long-range strikes.”

Russia’s weakened position can be traced to a confluence of three factors, said The Economist, citing research from the Institute for the Study of War: Ukrainian “ground counter-attacks and mid-range strikes,” the end of Russia’s “illicit use of Starlink terminals in Ukraine” and the Kremlin’s “paranoid throttling of the Telegram messaging app at home.” At the same time, Russia’s “exaggerated territorial ambitions and aggressive territorial demands” have run “completely counter to battlefield reality,” said the Institute.

May marks the fifth consecutive month in which Russia has lost “more soldiers than it can replace,” said National Security Journal. Ahead of an expected fifth summer of violence, Russia’s invasion “continues to falter” as the “fortunes of the war” seem to be “trending less and less in Russia’s favor.” Ukraine’s military technological advances have “not been the only key element” in Kyiv’s “recent battlefield gains.” Rather, they come amid Russia’s “growing command-and-control problems within its own military.”

Communications failures “contributed significantly to Russia’s problems” on the battlefield, said the Atlantic Council. After SpaceX “cut the Russian army’s illicit access to the satellite-based Starlink system” this spring, some Russian commanders were “forced to rely on inaccurate maps” showing “exaggerated gains.” In other cases, clusters of Russian troops were deployed “without adequate communication tools or coordination,” leaving them “highly vulnerable to Ukrainian counterattacks.”

All this comes as the public mood within Russia is “souring,” said Alexander Baunov at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. The Putin government has “unceremoniously violated” the terms of its social trade-off offered to the public — that “you can live outside of the war, but you cannot be against it” — and now “society is angry.” Russian authorities have also banned the use of “popular foreign messaging apps” because they are “nontransparent” and boosted the “homegrown” Max app as an alternative. But the “implication” of Max’s transparency “has not gone unnoticed, and people feel their privacy has been rudely invaded.”

Russians “increasingly chafe” at the “restrictions on their liberties” imposed “in pursuit of a battlefield victory that now appears to be unattainable,” said Noah Rothman at the National Review. Moscow lacks “freedom of action” in the theater of battle and has “lost the ability to dictate the tempo of events,” while its economy contracts “following several years of war-driven growth.”

What next?

The Russian military’s “recent communications problems” are “unlikely to persist in their current form indefinitely,” said the Atlantic Council. Moscow has already explored a “range of alternatives, including relay drones and satellite links.” But it will probably take a “number of years for the Russian military to replicate the same level of efficiency previously provided by Starlink.”

Russia’s flagging battlefield progress is a problem for Putin, who has “insisted that Russia’s victory in the war is inevitable,” said CNN. That promise has “always been flawed,” given how “slow and incredibly costly the Russian advances have been.” Still, the momentum shift of late “feels like an inflection point in the war,” said Sir Lawrence Freedman, an emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, to The Economist. “If the Russians have nothing to show for their efforts, I would not be surprised if in some places things start crumbling.”

‘Can geoengineering avert a climate catastrophe?’

Anjana Ahuja at the Financial Times

Researchers have “floated the idea of building a dam across the Bering Strait,” which “could help to stabilize ocean currents crucial for regulating the climate,” says Anjana Ahuja. The “proposal is not orders of magnitude adrift of other marine megaprojects,” but in “geopolitical terms, with its need for long-term American and Russian cooperation, it seems preposterous.” Still, the “speculative and politically impossible megaproject” can “remind us how vital it is to keep existing climate commitments afloat.”

Read more

‘This Ebola outbreak will be hard to contain’

Katherine J. Wu and Hana Kiros at The Atlantic

Africa has “weathered dozens of Ebola outbreaks before,” say Katherine J. Wu and Hana Kiros. But the “global health backdrop is simply different in 2026, largely the result of a series of public health decisions made by the United States,” including “dismantling USAID, withdrawing from the WHO and ousting infectious disease experts en masse from the CDC.” The “world’s fractured global health community is now playing a lethal game of catch-up with an extremely dangerous virus.”

Read more

‘Congress must not walk away from the addiction crisis’

Paul Tonko at Newsweek

Before Congress “found the will to act on the addiction crisis, the recovery community was already doing the hard work,” says Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.). They were “organizing, marching, testifying and demanding that their government see what they already knew: Addiction is a disease, and recovery is not only possible — it is happening every single day.” At a “time when the president’s fiscal 2027 budget again proposes large funding cuts,” don’t “cut addiction and mental health services.”

Read more

‘Does it matter what Helen of Troy looked like?’

Rich Lowry at the National Review

Elon Musk has “kicked up a fuss by objecting to filmmaker Christopher Nolan casting the black actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy in his forthcoming movie version of ‘The Odyssey,’” says Rich Lowry. But “what the role most requires is luminous beauty, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with casting actors in roles that don’t match their ethnicity.” If Nolan “has done his job, this controversy will be overwhelmed by the power of Homer’s work.”

Read more

Years of drought and growing demand have taken their toll on the Colorado River, which supplies water and hydropower to 40 million people in seven Western states. Now the moment of crisis has arrived.

The river is “on the brink of disaster,” said The Wall Street Journal. An “unusually warm winter” deprived Colorado and Utah of the snowpack that feeds the river in the spring. That will have literal downstream effects: Lake Powell reservoir in Utah and Arizona “will receive the least amount of water this year” since its creation in 1963.

Western states have struggled for years to divvy up the dwindling supply, and old agreements are expiring. Now the Trump administration is preparing a “drastic” plan to “cut water deliveries to farms, cities and tribes” by a third, said E&E News. “There wasn’t enough water to start with, and there’s still less water,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last month, per The Arizona Daily Star.

Solutions ‘will not be popular’

“The clock is running out on a deal” between Western states to “keep the Colorado River alive,” Mike Gardner said at The Raincross Gazette in Riverside, California. The Interior Department’s proposal would likely face years of legal challenges, but the system of dams and reservoirs along the river “could cease to function due to lack of water” before the lawsuits play out. So the states must find agreement before the federal government imposes one. The “political reality,” though, is that elected officials who agree to water cuts “will not be popular” with their constituents.

States along the river have seen “enormous increases” in water consumption over the last half-century “with no thought for tomorrow,” Steve Hanley said at CleanTechnica. They have been “kicking this can down the road this entire century.” We are getting a “preview of the kind of wrangling” that will become common as “Earth becomes too hot in some places to sustain human life.”

Downsizing agriculture?

It is time to build more water desalination plants on the Pacific Ocean, Greg Walcher said at The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colorado. If the Colorado River “cannot continue to supply all the people who once relied on it” then desalination plants seem a logical solution to the West’s “seemingly unsolvable water dilemma.” Indeed, Arizona, Nevada and Utah are trying to “buy excess water” from San Diego, said The New York Times. The city built a desalination plant to process Pacific Ocean water in the 1990s and is now poised to sell its “surplus water” across the West.

Such solutions will take time and cutbacks loom in the short term. Farms use about three-fourths of Colorado River water to “grow alfalfa and other kinds of hay to feed cattle,” said the Los Angeles Times. It will be “critical” to “downsize” the sector’s water usage. Some agricultural lands “are going to go out of production,” The University of Colorado Law School’s Anne Castle said to the outlet.

This week’s question: Residents of an Atlanta neighborhood have been besieged by dozens of empty, self-driving Waymo cars that drive aimlessly around cul-de-sacs on dead-end streets, especially early in the morning. In seven or fewer words, come up with a subject line for an email from an irate resident to the company complaining about this robotic traffic.

How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest@theweek.com. Please include your name, address, and daytime telephone number for verification; this week, please type “Waymo woes” in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, May 26. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page of the June 5 issue and at theweek.com/contest on May 29. In the case of identical or similar entries, the first one received gets credit. All entries become property of The Week.

The winner gets a one-year subscription to The Week.

Click or tap here to see the winner of last week's contest: MMA makeover

What happened

The Senate on Tuesday voted 50-47 to advance legislation that would halt the Iran war unless President Donald Trump obtained authorization from Congress. A trickle of Republicans began supporting the war powers resolutions over seven previous votes, and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) joined them Tuesday, providing the crucial 50th vote.

Who said what

The vote “showed how Republicans are increasingly uneasy with a conflict” that’s “stuck in a fragile ceasefire” while “causing rising gas prices in the U.S.,” The Associated Press said. The “sliver of GOP skepticism” about Trump’s handling of the war “widened last week,” The New York Times said, a shift “fueled in part” by his “ignoring” of a 60-day legal deadline to seek congressional authorization.

Even Trump supporters are “concerned about this war,” and Congress is “in the dark,” Cassidy, who lost his primary campaign after Trump endorsed his opponent, said on social media. “Until the administration provides clarity, no congressional authorization or extension can be justified.”

What next?

This was “only the first step” toward passing the bill, and GOP leaders believe it would have failed if three Republican Senators hadn’t been absent, Politico said. The House is “expected to vote on a similar war powers resolution” Wednesday, the AP said, and “Democrats are bullish” on passing it.

What happened

President Donald Trump’s controversial agreement with the Justice Department to set up a $1.8 billion fund for alleged “weaponization” victims was quietly expanded Tuesday to permanently bar the IRS from auditing Trump or his businesses. The one-page addendum, signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, says the federal government is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” claims against Trump or “related or affiliated individuals.”

Who said what

Trump “received no direct financial payout” from the new fund, The Wall Street Journal said, but Tuesday’s “unprecedented blending of personal and governmental interests” between “Trump as a taxpayer and the Trump administration” could “bring a significant financial benefit to the billionaire president and his family.” The agreement “most likely wiped away” a long-running audit that could have cost Trump “more than $100 million,” The New York Times said, and “also puts an end to any other audit” pertaining to tax returns already filed. Trump set up a “slush fund to enrich his own friends,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said during a hearing with Blanche, and now he’s also “looting from the Treasury for his own gain.”

What next?

It’s uncertain “whether anyone would have standing to challenge the agreement in court,” the Journal said. “Congress could step in, but such a move likely would require Republican votes over Trump’s objections.”