What happened
Donald Trump told European leaders they must halt Russian oil imports if they want to help end the war in Ukraine. Speaking during a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the "Coalition of the Willing", Trump stressed Europe's energy payments were funding Moscow's war effort.

Who said what
According to a White House official, Trump noted that Europe had sent €1.1 billion to Moscow in fuel payments last year alone. 

Almost three weeks after his high-stakes Alaskan summit with Vladimir Putin, Trump is "growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress on peace", said Alayna Treene and Joseph Ataman on CNN. The US president is now considering how involved he should be personally in brokering a meeting between Kremlin and Ukrainian leaders, administration officials told the broadcaster.

What next?
Following the call, Emmanuel Macron revealed that 26 nations had pledged troops for a possible peacekeeping force, while insisting Ukraine required an "American safety net". However, while Trump has vowed "severe consequences" for Russia if talks stall, he remains cautious about committing to direct US involvement. 

What happened
Visionary Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani, the founder of the world's largest private luxury brand, has died aged 91.

Armani had been absent from his last three shows in June and July due to illness, but had been expected "to attend the brand's 50th anniversary celebrations later this month", said The Guardian. He died at home yesterday, surrounded by his family.

Who said what
"Indefatigable to the end, he worked until his final days, dedicating himself to the company, the collections, and the many ongoing and future projects," his fashion house said in a statement.

Perhaps more than any other designer, Armani understood that "fashion was not only about clothes but lifestyle", said the Financial Times, "reshaping the fashion industry in the process".

What next?
A funeral chamber will be set up in Milan tomorrow and Sunday, which will be followed by a private ceremony at a later date.

The process of evolution usually takes thousands, millions or even billions of years. But researchers have found a way to condense it into a matter of minutes using a method called 'directed evolution,' which allows proteins to rapidly advance. It may be used for a variety of treatments and medical advancements in the future.

Directed evolution is the "process of rapidly evolving proteins, introducing beneficial mutations and selecting advantageous variants," said Popular Mechanics. The "hyper-evolved proteins can be used in a wide variety of potential cancer and neurodegenerative therapies." While this process has been explored for years, scientists from Scripps Research Institute recently created a system called T7-ORACLE that can speed up evolution by an unprecedented 100,000 years and introduce mutations in minutes, according to a study published in the journal Science.

Since directed evolution "can force these molecules to evolve in the lab within a much-shortened time scale," there are many promising applications for the technology, said The Scientist. It could be an "important tool for developing new medicines," as well as "give scientists a better understanding of how antibiotic resistance builds up over time," said Popular Mechanics. Protein evolution can also be used to switch diseases off, as well as for diagnostic purposes. 

And the applications are not merely medical; the technology could "lead to enzymes with helpful abilities such as breaking down the plastic in soda bottles that would otherwise persist in the environment," said Caltech Magazine. "What matters is that we can now evolve virtually any protein, like cancer drug targets and therapeutic enzymes, in days instead of months," said Christian Diercks, a co-senior author of the study.