Flagship

Americans anxious over ‘Liberation Day’

American consumers and investors appear increasingly uneasy about US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day.” A wave of volatility hit global markets Monday after Trump said the slew of new duties set for April 2 would target “essentially all” US trading partners. While specifics remain unclear, Trump is reportedly pushing for a more aggressive approach, and the duties will likely raise the cost of cars, electronics, and pharmaceuticals. Amid such economic uncertainty, Americans are spending less and boosting savings, new data shows, and “frustration and fatigue” have set in among traders, one told Bloomberg. The global implications of higher tariffs make it “easy to be very, very nervous,” the head of a right-leaning think tank said.

Wisconsin election a test for Trump

A judicial election in the US state of Wisconsin on Tuesday has effectively become a national contest, and an early referendum on President Donald Trump’s second term. The heated state Supreme Court race pits a Trump-backed judge against a liberal one: The outcome will decide the court’s ideological tilt, holding consequences for abortion rights, congressional redistricting, and voting laws — potentially impacting the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election in the battleground state, which Trump won last year. Analysts also view the election as a referendum on billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk, who has poured in millions to support the conservative candidate, making it the most expensive judicial race in US history.

Le Pen verdict could help Europe’s far right

Marine Le Pen’s guilty verdict on embezzlement charges has roiled France, but could further strengthen the global far-right movement, analysts argued. Le Pen, who is set to appeal the ruling that blocks her from running for president in 2027, was instrumental in bringing the European far right into the mainstream, and her allies across the continent, including Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, rallied behind her Monday. The verdict may only reinforce her “victimisation narrative” that the elite are out to get her, The Guardian wrote, similar to how Donald Trump used criminal cases to his political advantage. “The ruling could nourish the feeling that the system is against her party,” The Economist argued, “a powerful force” for the world’s populist politicians.

Panama port deal tests Xi’s business push

China’s clash with a Hong Kong firm over the sale of Panama Canal ports is testing Beijing’s pro-business push aimed at attracting investors amid a global trade war. The country’s regulators opened a review into CK Hutchison’s deal with a US-led consortium just hours after Chinese leader Xi Jinping promised global executives a “predictable” business environment, part of his broader efforts to bolster the country’s private sector. China’s scrutiny of the Washington-backed ports deal “flies in the face of the charm offensive,” one China expert said. Xi only has a “few good options,” Bloomberg wrote: Torpedoing the deal risks US retaliation as China braces for Trump’s retaliatory tariffs, but backing it removes Beijing’s bargaining chip for trade negotiations.

China AI ‘agent’ competition grows

A Chinese startup’s new artificial intelligence “agent” that can perform tasks on a user’s behalf is intensifying the country’s domestic tech race. Zhipu on Monday unveiled a free agent that can conduct research, perform web searches, and do travel planning, challenging rival startups DeepSeek and Manus, which have recently released low-cost AI models. Tech giant Alibaba last week also touted its new AI model as a way to build agents. China has seen a surge in AI product releases since DeepSeek achieved global popularity — the country’s tech stocks have also risen this year — and agents are a popular new area of discovery for the sector: Google said in December that AI was entering its “agentic era.”

AI data center bubble worries

The falling cost of artificial intelligence chatbots may be revealing a data center “bubble.” DeepSeek’s R1 models offered similar outputs to cutting-edge counterparts but 95% cheaper, rapidly shifting the market. Perhaps relatedly, Microsoft is abandoning several major data center projects in the US and Europe, analysts said, while up to 80% of the hundreds of new Chinese centers built to keep pace with the AI boom are standing unused, MIT Technology Review reported. The Information’s Martin Peers suggested that public excitement about AI may have driven data center overdevelopment, with one CEO saying “people are investing ahead of the demand.” But the long-term picture likely remains bullish: In general, a technology’s falling cost drives more demand, not less.

Cricket boosts Indian streaming service

Cricket is helping an Indian streaming service take on Netflix and YouTube in the country. JioHotstar, operated by Disney and Reliance’s entertainment behemoth, recently announced it surpassed 100 million subscribers, the first platform to reach that milestone in India. Its success comes amid signs that more Indians are now willing to pay for streaming content than before, Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw wrote: US media giants like Paramount and Time Warner have struggled in the past to make inroads in the massive and potentially lucrative Indian market. But Netflix’s subscriber numbers have ticked up, while JioHotstar leans into cricket matches, a huge draw. “Executives here still express more optimism than their counterparts in the US,” Shaw wrote.

Bars pose test for Syrian leaders

The regulation of Damascus’ nightlife scene presented a test for Syria’s new leaders. In the last week, the former rebels who toppled Bashar al-Assad ordered more than 60 bars in the city to close for serving alcohol without a license. Most Damascus bars were unlicensed under Assad’s regime and left alone by authorities: Residents partied alongside rebel fighters the night he was overthrown. After the recent crackdown provoked an outcry, all of the closure orders were lifted in less than a day, NPR reported. The episode showed how the new rulers “are still finding their way, wrestling with how to mesh their conservative Islamic values with the secular lifestyle of many of their fellow citizens and urbanites.”

UK’s elite schools go global

The UK’s famous elite schools are setting up overseas offshoots to attract well-heeled parents who don’t want to send their children abroad. Harrow, the great public (in British parlance this means “private”) school that taught Winston Churchill, is opening a New York branch in September, while several others are looking to set up campuses in Nigeria. Africa in particular is a growth area, the BBC reported, given that other regions, such as China, are saturated with international schools. During the colonial era, public schools were a source of British soft power: Princelings from South Asia or the Gulf would come to the UK to learn Latin verbs, cricket, and a BBC accent. Now they can do the same without leaving the country.

New ‘Hunger Games’ book tops charts

The fifth novel in The Hunger Games series sold 1.2 million US copies in its first week, launching it to the top of the bestseller lists. Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping, a prequel to the original trilogy, is already the year’s third biggest seller, and is topping charts in Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the UK. Young-adult fiction makes up a huge chunk of the market — Harry Potter and Twilight have sold 750 million copies between them — and 17 years on from Katniss Everdeen’s debut, it was inevitable that Collins would return to the well. But The New York Times’ review reported that the new book is “a propulsive, heart-wrenching addition,” rather than an example of “profit-driven bloat.”

April 1:

• The US, China, and eurozone countries publish manufacturing PMI data.
• France assumes the presidency of the UN Security Council.
• Pranksters celebrate April Fools’ Day.

After a Hague museum loaned its most famous piece — Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring — to another institution, its open call to fill the space inspired thousands of artists to send in their own interpretations of the Dutch master’s iconic work. The Mauritshuis museum is now exhibiting 60 of those pieces reimagining the young woman in the painting: One artist replaced her face with that of a traditional Indonesian Wayang puppet to evoke the Netherlands’ colonial past, while another subtly (but unmistakably) evokes Vermeer with a sweatshirt draped over an office chair. Submissions continue to roll in, the Mauritshuis’ director told The Associated Press: “It will never end with her.”

As Democrats begin their slow slog back to power, they’re grappling with how the party found itself so hopelessly outmatched online — and what it can do to recover, Semafor’s Max Tani reported.

One possible solution, epitomized by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new podcast, involves tacking to the rhetorical center: “We’ve got to get out of our safe spaces and get into where other people are living,” Newsom told Tani last week. “That’s really what this podcast is about.”