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West’s rift over Ukraine deepens

The third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cemented the widening gulf between Washington and Europe. The US on Monday sided with Russia in opposing a United Nations resolution condemning Moscow for the war, a stunning reversal of yearslong policy. The vote came as Washington skipped a summit in Kyiv to mark the anniversary, a further sign of US President Donald Trump’s anti-Ukraine pivot. Europe is scrambling to heal the tear in Western unity, with the leaders of France and the UK meeting Trump in Washington this week. But their pro-Ukraine message is “a tough sell to a transactional president who doesn’t appreciate alliances as a force multiplier for American power,” CNN wrote.

German centrists face populism challenges

Germany’s election results Sunday encapsulated the challenges facing the country’s political center, analysts said, as right-wing populism surges across Europe. While a center-right conservative party will run the next government, more than a third of voters chose parties on either the far right or far left. The outcome could hold the “last chance” for mainstream politicians to fend off populist parties, The Wall Street Journal wrote. But it also highlights wider problems of governance across Europe, the writer Wolfgang Münchau argued in Unherd: Efforts to achieve a majority to enact substantial change have only produced gridlock in Berlin and Brussels, and it’s unlikely another German coalition of “short-sighted centrists” can “free the nation from its pernicious political trap.”

Denmark bucks populism trend

Denmark has bucked a global trend toward right-wing populism because its center-left government took a restrictive stance on immigration, The New York Times’ David Leonhardt argued. Across the West, far-right parties have grown as working-class voters abandon the left. But Denmark’s pro-abortion, pro-welfare-state Social Democrats, in power since 2019, remain popular. Crucially, the party curtailed immigration, arguing that it disproportionately hurt poorer voters, and made aggressive efforts to integrate the considerable number of migrants it still welcomed. Doing so has marginalized Denmark’s far right, Leonhardt wrote, with an immigration policy “both consistent with progressive values and politically sustainable,” unlike US President Donald Trump’s “cruel approach” and advocates’ position that “more is good, and less is racist.”

Apple hands Trump manufacturing win

Apple on Monday pledged to spend half a trillion dollars in the US and hire 20,000 workers, a move that could help it avoid US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports. The tech giant’s largest-ever commitment hands the president a major manufacturing win, Axios noted: He has pushed companies to build in the US to avoid duties, and Apple’s move lets Trump say to them: “Apple can do it. Why can’t (or won’t) you?” CEO Tim Cook, who met with Trump last week, worked with him during his first term to skirt tariffs on smartphones and the Apple Watch. UBS analysts, though, were skeptical that Apple, with its history of slow investment rollouts, can deploy $500 billion in just four years.

Global investors rediscover China

Global investors are again eyeing China as its tech stocks rally — but they should have never dismissed it as “uninvestable” in the first place, an expert argued. The rise of Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has boosted investor sentiment — with analysts pointing to a rotation away from Indian equities and toward China’s. Foreign financiers are now “rediscovering China for what it has been all along: a difficult market but too vast to be ignored,” Rockefeller International chair Ruchir Sharma wrote in the Financial Times. But even as some geopolitical risks recede, with Donald Trump’s softer-than-expected approach to Beijing, the country’s economic headwinds prompted one expert to caution, “It may be a little too early to say the worst is behind us.”

Microsoft AI pullback, Alibaba AI push

Microsoft canceled some leases for artificial intelligence data center capacity in the US, as investors grow skeptical over the billions Big Tech is pouring into AI infrastructure. A report from brokerage TD Cowen suggests a possible AI computing oversupply at the US tech giant, amid broader concerns about companies overestimating long-term AI demand. Still, US and Chinese firms are going in on major AI investments: Alibaba said Monday it will spend more than $53 billion on projects like data centers over the next three years — the most ever spent by a private Chinese company on AI hardware. The push is a “speculative, risky gamble” in the pursuit of artificial general intelligence, Bloomberg analysts said.

In utero treatment for genetic condition

A two-and-a-half-year-old child who was treated for a rare genetic condition in the womb with a drug given to her mother remains symptom-free. Spinal muscular atrophy involves a mutation to genes involved in the production of a vital protein and causes progressive muscle weakness. Those with severe forms rarely reach their third birthday; the parents had previously lost a child to the condition. The mother started taking the gene-targeting drug during her late pregnancy, and the child will likely continue taking it for the rest of her life. In utero treatment for genetic diseases is increasingly viable, with hopes that conditions like cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell disease could one day be treated in the womb.

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Fears of matcha shortage

A surge in global demand for matcha is forcing shifts within Japan’s tea industry. Consumption of the energy-boosting green drink — popular for antioxidant properties — reached a record high last year, leading some Japanese companies to enact purchase limits on ground matcha powder, and sparking fears of long-term shortages, The Japan Times reported. The country isn’t lacking in farmland, but the shrubs take years to mature, and there aren’t enough tea farmers and stone mills to grind the leaves. Industry groups are hopeful the government will ramp up subsidies for matcha production. “We haven’t hit a point yet where we’re going to run out, but it’s going to be really tight… The demand is off the charts,” a leaf procurer said.

Clue to blue whale calves’ mystery

A longstanding mystery about the apparent scarcity of blue whale calves may be solved. Blue whales are famously quite big — newborns are 20 feet long — so you’d think they’d be easy to spot, but only two births have been observed, and calves are rarely seen. But more than 33% of females sighted are pregnant, raising a question of where the juveniles go. Scientists feared many died early, but the answer appears to be happier: The mothers often give birth in winter, but research is usually done in summer when the whales congregate. It means the population may be healthier than previously thought. Whaling devastated the species’ numbers in the early 20th century, but they have rebounded somewhat in recent years.

Indian court targets long movie trailers

An Indian court penalized a leading movie theater chain after a patron complained about the lengthy trailers he was forced to sit through before a film. PVR Cinemas was ordered to pay the complainant for “the inconvenience and mental agony caused” by 30 minutes of trailers, as well as disclose the actual start time of movies on tickets, The Times of India reported. PVR is expected to challenge the ruling, which reflects global frustrations. An American critic in 2023 called trailer sequences “a commercial bombardment that both exhausts the audience and demeans the experience.” US lawmakers are catching on: A state senator in Connecticut last month proposed a bill requiring theaters to disclose actual start times.

Feb. 25:

• South Korea’s constitutional court holds its final hearing in President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment trial.
• Apple holds its annual shareholders meeting.
• The People Power Revolution, which led to the restoration of democracy, is commemorated in the Philippines.

Soviet-era propaganda paintings are going up for auction in the UK. A life-size portrait of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin, a painting of Soviet troops having “A rest after battle” during World War II, and other paintings dating from the 1920s to the early 1990s were part of a “remarkable” single-owner collection in the Cotswolds, the auction house managing director said. The works, estimated to be auctioned off for thousands of pounds, would have been displayed to the public at the time to communicate “the ideals of the communist message.”

A 25-year-old free-trade deal that offers sub-Saharan African countries duty-free access to the US market is unlikely to survive in its current form, Semafor’s Yinka Adegoke reported.

“The idea of a preferential trade deal is a difficult one in the current environment,” one expert told Semafor regarding the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA). But a bipartisan Senate effort to secure the deal’s future may be waiting in the wings.