Flagship

US moves to quell Iran threats

The U.S. military’s top general flew to Israel as fears grew of an Iranian-backed attack. Tehran threatened retaliation after a strike in Syria killed several of its top commanders. U.S. President Joe Biden insisted American support for Israel remains “ironclad,” despite recent tensions, and his secretary of state spoke to counterparts in China, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia to urge Tehran not to escalate. Iranian state media announced the closure of Tehran’s airspace for a military exercise, then retracted it, in what the Institute for the Study of War said was an attempt at “exploiting the uncertainty” to “stoke psychological terror” in Israel. Iranian officials have boasted that the threat itself is damaging to Israel.

US deepens Tokyo, Manila ties

The U.S. said its defense commitments to its Asian allies were “ironclad” in the face of growing pressure from China. U.S. President Joe Biden’s remarks capped visits to Washington from the leaders of Japan and the Philippines, the latest example of what one Southeast Asia expert said was “intensified Indo-Pacific minilateral networking” in which the U.S. sets up flexible groupings to tackle its rivalry with China. Yet in a sign that Washington’s Asia policy is tied to its broader foreign relations and domestic politicking, Japan’s prime minister urged the U.S. to urgently send military support to Ukraine to battle Russia. As the historian Heather Cox Richardson put it, he “gently warned lawmakers that the United States is abdicating its role in world affairs.”

Russia hits Ukraine power plant

Moscow destroyed Kyiv’s largest electricity plant in overnight missile attacks, cementing Ukrainian fears of Russian progress. Ukraine intercepted dozens of missiles and drones but several still managed to strike the facility, the largest power supplier to Kyiv and surrounding regions. The strikes came with U.S. aid for Ukraine bogged down in Congress, despite warnings from the top American general in Europe that Kyiv will be outgunned “10 to one in a matter of weeks.” Ukraine’s president said the West was “turning a blind eye” to his country’s plight, while U.S. and European leaders scrambled for ideas given the delays in Washington: Among them is an American proposal to raise debt against frozen Russian state assets.

US vision of human-free warfare

Northrop Grumman unveiled an unmanned submarine capable of long-range, silent, undersea missions. The Manta Ray, which takes design ideas from its namesake, is designed to be low-energy, able to hibernate anchored to the sea bed for long periods before “delivering payload capability from the sea.” The U.S. is increasingly investing in a human-free vision of warfare: The air force secretary is soon set to fly in a modified F-16 piloted by artificial intelligence, a high-profile test of its capabilities. Washington plans to retrofit older aircraft such as the F-16 as unmanned drones, with several acting as “loyal wingmen” to a single piloted jet, each costing a quarter to a third of a new F-35 and not having a valuable pilot to lose.

Austria’s Russia spy scandal

The arrest of a former Austrian intelligence officer for espionage highlighted concerns over Russian infiltration into the Western establishment. Egisto Ott, formerly of Austria’s domestic intelligence agency, the BVT, allegedly provided high-ranking Austrian government officials’ cellphone data to Russian intelligence, helped arrange the burglary of a journalist’s home, and wrote a debrief after the Russian-orchestrated murder of a Georgian citizen in Berlin, containing “suggestions for improvement.” He was suspended from the BVT in 2017 when suspicions first arose, then arrested in 2021 but released due to a lack of evidence. An espionage expert told the Associated Press that it could be “one of the biggest espionage stories in recent Austrian history.”

Mexico calls for UN to expel Ecuador

Mexico asked the United Nations to expel Ecuador over a police raid on its embassy in Quito. Ecuadorian security forces broke into the compound last week to detain former Vice President Jorge Glas, who was seeking political asylum from Mexico. According to officials in Quito, the asylum was illegal because Glas faces charges over corruption allegations. Latin American leaders uniformly condemned Ecuador’s actions, with some claiming they were the result of President Daniel Noboa’s increasingly punitive crackdown on crime. During the presidential election last year, Noboa vowed to combat years of soaring crime rates in the once-peaceful country.

China’s Xinjiang push

China carried out a diplomatic push to coincide with the Muslim holiday of Eid over criticism of its treatment of minorities in its western Xinjiang region. Diplomats from nearly 50 countries — democracies and autocracies, with many Muslim-majority states included — attended a reception in Beijing this week in which they said their countries hoped to deepen economic ties to Xinjiang, where China is accused by Western governments and rights groups of forced labor and other human rights violations against the mainly Muslim population. Western companies are reducing their involvement in Xinjiang, emboldened by what the Financial Times’ international business editor said was “a rare window of opportunity” to exit controversial investments in China, thanks to the country’s slowing growth.

We’ve got some exciting additions to the list of speakers at the World Economy Summit, including Jeremy Hunt, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer; Gina Raimondo, U.S. Secretary of Commerce and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Join us in Washington, D.C. next week, on April 17-18, to hear from some of the world’s most influential economic and business decision-makers on the future of global economic growth, the rising middle class, digital infrastructure, AI, and much more.

Ghana VP opposes LGBTQ+ rights

Ghana’s Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, who’s running as his party’s candidate in presidential elections later this year, said he opposes “the practice of homosexuality.” Bawumia has promised to maintain his stance if elected, raising the likelihood of a draconian anti-LGBTQ+ law, currently stalled in the Ghanian Parliament, passing. Gay rights have come under threat across Africa after years of progress. According to Amnesty International, 31 countries in the continent still criminalize same-sex relations, including ones where the death penalty “looms as a terrifying spectre.”

Hawaiian sumo champ dies

Taro Akebono, a Hawaiian-born sumo wrestler who drove a resurgence in the sport’s popularity, died aged 54. He was born Chad Rowan in Honolulu in 1969, but moved to Japan in 1988, where in 1993 he became the first non-Japanese yokozuna to win the ancient sport’s grand championship, blazing a path for other foreign-born wrestlers to follow. A towering 6’ 8” and 514 lb at his peak, he became a naturalized Japanese citizen in 1996 and overcame persistent knee problems to win 11 major sumo tournaments before his retirement in 2001. Rahm Emmanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, hailed him as “a giant in the world of sumo, a proud Hawaiian and a bridge between the United States and Japan.”

Too many books, says literary critic

The publishing industry releases too many books, a literary critic argued. Writing in LitHub, Maris Kreizman said she was “constantly overwhelmed with new material,” with publishers ascribing to “the very American and capitalist idea that more is always better,” churning out quantity over quality to keep year-on-year growth going. Publishing house editors and publicists are “inundated” and unable to give new titles adequate attention, and the industry would be better served if it focused on doing a smaller number of books well. Flagship’s not-very-American but thoroughly capitalist Tom regrets that he is only adding to the problem: His new book, about Bayes’ theorem, is out in the U.K. and U.S. in the next few weeks.

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• Germany’s chancellor sets off for an official visit to China.
• U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris heads to Arizona in the wake of that state’s Supreme Court reviving an 1864 ban on nearly all abortions.
• Thailand’s Songkran water festival opens, mark the beginning of the Thai new year

Each weekend, we’ll tell you what a great independent bookstore suggests you read.

London’s Backstory recommends Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan. Backstory calls it a “thrilling state-of-the-nation novel [that] paints a compelling (and blistering) portrait of modern Britain.” Buy it from Backstory or your local bookstore.

A new Amy Winehouse biopic, released in the U.K. today, drew mixed reviews with critics praising its stars’ performance but lamenting Back to Black’s refusal to grapple with the artist’s demons. The Guardian complimented Marisa Abela’s “thoroughly engaging and sweet-natured performance” as Winehouse, but the Financial Times and IndieWire said the film ultimately did not fully depict the nature of addiction or the costs of Winehouse’s celebrity. “The palpable sincerity behind Back to Black almost makes its myriad weaknesses more glaring,” a reviewer for IndieWire wrote.

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