Flagship

HK makes arrests under new law

Hong Kong made its first arrests under a new Beijing-inspired national security law to curb dissent. The six suspects — including a prominent democracy activist who is already in a maximum security prison — are accused of advocating “hatred” against Hong Kong and China. The city’s reputation as a global business hub has taken a hit over the political crackdown and closer ties to the mainland: International companies are grappling with the transition, The New York Times wrote Tuesday, with lawyers and bankers fearing scrutiny for “external interference.” Some firms are leaving Hong Kong altogether; office vacancies hit a record high in March.

China modifies last Arabic-style mosque

China removed the dome on the country’s last major Arabic-style mosque and converted its minarets into pagoda towers, completing its campaign to replace features in Muslim places of worship with Chinese attributes. It’s part of the government-led push toward the “sinification of Islam,” Beijing’s effort to model religion, especially Islam, in the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology, analysts say. The government is also seeking to rebrand food made by the Uyghur Muslim population as generically “Xinjiang” food — the region where it’s from — while training Uyghur chefs in Han Chinese cooking styles, Foreign Policy and ChinaFile wrote.

Japan bets on hybrid, not electric

Japanese automakers are increasingly resistant to the electric vehicle transition, instead embracing hybrid cars. In a rare joint appearance Tuesday, the heads of Toyota, Mazda, and Subaru pledged to invest in fuel-based technology and unveiled new hybrid engine prototypes. Toyota’s CEO said the hybrids are for customers who are fed up with high EV prices and the lack of charging infrastructure. The stance marks a contrast to China and the US, which are both betting big on EVs. In a clear sign of Japan’s EV hesitation, only Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW are forecast to produce enough EVs by 2030 to make a difference in global decarbonization efforts, while “Japanese automakers are the least prepared,” according to Influence Map, a climate and business think tank.

US suspends ill-fated Gaza pier shipments

The US suspended deliveries of desperately needed aid to Gaza through its floating pier after several mishaps and damage to the structure. In the two weeks since the pier went into operation, four US military vessels broke from their moorings and beached; bad weather ripped apart portions of the structure; and a service member was critically injured. The $320 million pier has been beset by delays, delivering only a fraction of the aid that entered Gaza through land routes. Repairs will take at least a week, further impacting the distribution of food and supplies to Palestinians as Israel intensifies its assault on Rafah: Israeli tanks moved into the center of the city for the first time Tuesday after bombarding it overnight.

Is the West taking it easy on Modi?

The West is “mostly allergic” to calling out Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite agreeing that he has overseen the country’s democratic backsliding, The Economist argued. Western officials’ approach to Modi — who is widely expected to win a third term next week — highlights their struggle to balance business and security interests with democratic values. Only the US and Germany released statements following the jailing of a prominent Indian opposition politician in March. China is a large piece of the puzzle: The US and Europe need India as a counterbalance to Beijing, and don’t want to lose access to the world’s fastest-growing major economy by upsetting Modi, whose government “routinely denounces any Western criticism as imperialist hypocrisy,” the magazine wrote.

Trump jury deliberations imminent

A New York jury could begin deliberations in former US President Donald Trump’s hush-money case Wednesday, as his first criminal trial enters its final phase. During closing arguments, Trump’s lawyers sought to sow doubt in the jury’s minds over his intent behind the hush-money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s campaign, which has stayed largely silent on his 2024 rival’s legal woes, changed tact, deploying actor Robert De Niro for an anti-Trump press conference outside the courtroom Tuesday. Biden intends to directly address the trial’s verdict from the White House, Politico reported, and whatever the outcome, make the point that “America’s legal system worked and that the process should be respected.”

OpenAI starts training new model

ChatGPT creator OpenAI is training a powerful new AI model that will fuel its chatbot and image generation tools. It is also launching a new safety-focused committee following a rash of controversies: Several high-profile executives focused on safety resigned earlier this month, and a new voice chatbot was suspended after actress Scarlett Johansson accused the company of copying her AI voice character from the movie Her. The committee will be partly led by CEO Sam Altman, who was accused by two former OpenAI board members of undermining “internal safety protocols.” Companies’ self-governance of their AI products, the members argued in The Economist, “cannot reliably withstand the pressure of profit incentives.”

Peanut butter could prevent allergies

Feeding babies and young children smooth peanut butter could provide lifelong protection against peanut allergies, a long-term UK study found. Previously, researchers found that children who ate peanut butter before age 5 were far less likely to develop a peanut allergy than those who avoided it. Now, those same kids are teens, and they’re 71% less likely to have an allergy than their peanut butter-avoiding peers, regardless of whether they kept eating it or not. It’s vindication for the study’s lead scientist, Gideon Lack — he conceived the once-controversial theory after noting that Israeli children eat a lot of peanut snacks and have far lower rates of peanut allergies than children elsewhere.

News Corp Australia set for shakeup

Australian media is bracing for a major shakeup of the Murdoch empire’s News Corp portfolio, including significant job cuts, reflecting the legacy outlets’ diminishing money-making abilities. The company, which owns national broadsheet The Australian and the site News.com.au, along with several local newspapers, has cut around 1,000 people each year over the last decade, while effectively consolidating and nationalizing its local outlets, offering them through a single subscription. It has resulted in “near identical, all-caps headlines shrieking the same message around the coast from Adelaide to Cairns,” Crikey’s media columnist wrote. The Murdochs’ once-powerful and profitable mish-mash of legacy properties is now “just hard work,” begging the question, “For how long will the largely disengaged … family continue to care?”

Clarity on human-Neanderthal relations

The period of interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals was both briefer and more recent than previously thought. Almost all modern humans not of solely African ancestry have genes that can be traced back to pairings between the two species, Nature reported. The encounters between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals were estimated to have occurred between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. But new genetic analysis suggests that these relations began 47,000 years ago and lasted for just 6,800 years: A short period in evolutionary time. Many Neanderthal genes have subsequently been removed from our genomes, suggesting that they were evolutionarily unhelpful to humans and therefore selected against.

May 29:

• South Africans vote in national elections in which the ruling African National Congress could lose its majority.
• Exxon Mobil hosts its annual shareholder meeting, months after the oil giant sued climate activists.
• Documentary The Commandant’s Shadow, following the son of a Nazi commandant, is released in US theaters.

The world’s “rarest album,” heard only by a handful of people, will now be accessible to the public at a gallery in Australia. The sole CD copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s secretly recorded Once Upon a Time in Shaolin will be displayed in a hand-carved nickel box at a museum in Tasmania that will hold listening parties for 10 days in June where visitors can hear a 30-minute sample. Since the American hip-hop group finished recording it in 2013, the album has been likened to an exclusive piece of fine art. Disgraced “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli was forced to hand it over to US prosecutors in 2018 after buying it for $2 million in 2015.

• How Nigeria’s economy cratered in President Tinubu’s first year.
• Global pressure against Israel mounts as it persists in bombarding Rafah.
• In a pre-Dobbs world, The Washington Post deferred to a Supreme Court justice.