Flagship

Trump doubles down on Gaza proposal

Israel ordered its military to prepare for “voluntary” departures of Palestinians from Gaza, as US President Donald Trump doubled down on his widely-condemned proposal to take over the enclave. “The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel,” Trump said Thursday. The vague plan has sparked unease in Gaza — although some Palestinians told The Washington Post they would prefer to leave the war-torn territory — while neighboring Egypt and Jordan have strongly objected to Trump’s idea. A former European ambassador told The New York Times that “in his brutal and clumsy way, [Trump] raises a real question: What to do when two million civilians find themselves in a field of ruins, full of explosives and corpses?”

Trump takes cues from China playbook

US President Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland, Canada, and now Gaza have imperialist echoes and reflect China’s “wolf warrior” style of diplomacy, two experts argued this week. Trump has long said he opposes US interventionism, but his second term has seen him “talk the language of imperialism,” a Guardian columnist argued. And Trump’s threats of annexation mirror China’s old playbook of being “willing to lay waste to the existing world order,” Howard French wrote in Foreign Policy. But Beijing’s strategy failed, as could Trump’s “unilateralist folly,” French argued: “Just as Asian countries reconfigured their diplomacy in response to an imposing China, states will figure out a way to do so in relation to a United States under Trump.”

Japan’s Ishiba aims to forge ties with Trump

Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is set to meet Donald Trump in Washington Friday, with hopes of forging close ties to the US president. Trump has so far been silent on Japan, and officials in Tokyo have scrambled to prepare Ishiba in a series of “Trump countermeasures meetings,” The Japan Times reported. The leaders’ talks are expected to focus on economic issues, Trump’s concerns about Japan’s defense spending, and curbing China’s threat to regional security. Whether Ishiba can make a personal connection with Trump could determine US-Japan relations, although The Economist noted that Ishiba lacks the charm and golf skills of his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, whose 2016 gift of a gold-plated golf club to Trump sparked a warm relationship.

Uproar in India over deported migrants

India said it was working with the US to ensure Indian citizens weren’t mistreated during deportations, after protests Thursday over reports that migrants on a US military plane were shackled for the 40-hour flight. One Indian opposition lawmaker said the migrants were “chained like terrorists,” while another said the US had insulted India. The uproar has created a “political headache” for Prime Minister Narendra Modi days before his meeting with President Donald Trump in Washington, The New York Times wrote: Modi considers Trump a “dear friend,” but the Indian leader has to walk a fine line between containing domestic outrage and displaying willingness to work with Trump.

Bangladesh’s new leadership tested

Bangladesh’s new leaders are struggling to appease an increasingly impatient public six months after a student-led uprising ended Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year reign. The interim government, led by a Nobel Peace laureate, vowed to restore democracy and overhaul institutions, but is underperforming so far, Foreign Policy’s South Asia expert argued. The country is plagued by a still-floundering economy and accusations of human rights violations. The government has promised to hold elections this year without offering a timeframe. “By no means are people growing nostalgic for Hasina,” the FP wrote, but the uncertainty, coupled with external worries — including building ties with the Trump administration and tensions with neighboring India — means “things won’t get any easier for Dhaka.”

Germans sour on Tesla

Tesla sales dropped 59% in Germany last month, despite soaring demand for electric vehicles, suggesting consumers may have soured after CEO Elon Musk endorsed the country’s far right in upcoming elections. German EV buyers “may well be reacting to Musk’s comments,” industry analysts said: He has repeatedly cheered on the nationalist Alternative for Germany party, including in an op-ed, infuriating mainstream politicians who denounced the tech billionaire for election interference. Some observers have also attributed Tesla’s declining sales in the UK, US, Norway, France, and Sweden to Musk’s forays into right-wing politics. Still, Tesla’s shares have rocketed as investors bet that Musk’s ties to US President Donald Trump will ultimately help the company, not hurt it.

Whale song follows human language laws

Humpback whale songs, among the most complex examples of animal communication, share hallmarks of language once thought unique to humans. In two new studies, scientists analyzed hours of humpback whale song recordings and found that the songs can be broken up into repeatable units that string together to make phrases; this kind of sequential structure likely evolved to make whale songs easier to learn and pass down. Both whale song and human languages also follow a pattern where the most common word in a language is used twice as often as the second most used one, and so on. The results suggest that “we should perhaps be comparing whale songs to human music,” two evolutionary biologists wrote in Science.

AI are not all ‘stochastic parrots’

Large language models may pick up abstract grammar rules during training, allowing chatbots like ChatGPT to perform well in other languages despite learning mainly in English. LLMs’ neural networks show similar activity patterns for plural nouns, past-tense verbs, or similar concepts across languages, researchers found. Artificial intelligence skeptics have suggested chatbots are merely “stochastic parrots,” incapable of reasoning, but mounting evidence suggests otherwise: One 2023 study found that an AI taught to play the game Othello made novel moves outside the training set, and appeared to have a kind of internal representation of the board. The researchers argued the AI had formed a “model of the game,” suggesting some understanding rather than simple repetition.

Climate change means more wine, less beer

Global warming is changing what we drink. Northern European countries are increasingly becoming wine producers: “Not just England, Belgium and the Netherlands, but Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia” all have built thriving industries as their temperatures have risen, the Financial Times’ wine correspondent wrote. Beer, by contrast, might struggle in the face of changing climates — hops and barley, two of beer’s four ingredients, are becoming difficult to grow in their traditional heartlands, the BBC reported. Hops provide beer’s distinctive bitter notes, and unless farmers relocate or cultivate more climate-resistant varieties, the drink’s flavor could change as the world warms.

Rocks carved giant Moon canyons

Two gorges on the Moon’s surface, both deeper than the Grand Canyon, were carved in less than 10 minutes by rocky debris from an asteroid impact, a new study suggested. Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck emerge from a huge 3.8-billion-year-old crater near the Moon’s south pole. NASA scientists calculated that the arrow-straight, two-mile-deep ravines were likely carved by rocks hurled with 130 times more energy than all the world’s nuclear weapons combined: Where water took millions of years to create the Grand Canyon, these valleys took minutes. “The lunar landscape is dramatic,” one planetologist told Space.com. As well as the plunging canyons, “there are mountains that exceed Mt. Everest in height… Future lunar surface explorers will be awed.”

Feb. 7:

• India’s central bank is expected to cut interest rates for the first time in nearly five years.
• The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva holds an emergency session to discuss fighting in eastern Congo.
• Parthenope, a movie directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, releases in theaters.

Balled up cellos, flattened trumpets, and slumped pianos are among the sculptures on display at Crescendo!, a new exhibition by Dutch designer Maarten Baas. Suspended from hooks, three pianos hang “almost like a piece of meat from a butcher,” Baas told Dezeen. “Just like how an animal used to live and used to have a soul, it is now a few kilos of meat.” The instruments’ transformation shows how any object can be stripped of meaning and turned into a commodity, the outlet wrote. Yet Baas said the objects are also imbued with a deeper meaning: “The whole orchestra is compressed to a ball, but it looks like they want to come out again as a full orchestra… it’s the end and the beginning.”

President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is having an identity crisis: Does “America First” mean avoiding overseas engagements — or pursuing them when they further US interests?

Semafor’s Kadia Goba spoke to Republican lawmakers about Trump’s expansive foreign policy as he floats US control of Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada, and Gaza, though only a few in the GOP publicly acknowledged the tension. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., posted on X after Trump’s proposal to take over Gaza that “I thought we voted for America First.”