Flagship

US steps up Kyiv backing

The US will step up air defense deliveries to Ukraine to help it fend off intensifying Russian attacks by diverting weapons intended for other allies. Hundreds of exports, mostly anti-missile missiles, will be redirected to Kyiv in what the White House called a “difficult but necessary” decision. South Korea may be among those countries that sees its shipments delayed, despite Russia and North Korea signing a mutual defense pact earlier this week and Russian President Vladimir Putin making apparent threats against Seoul should it decide to supply arms to Kyiv. Separately, Washington said that US-supplied weapons could now be used to strike more widely inside Russian-held territory: National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said it was “common sense” to allow Kyiv to attack Russian forces that are firing from behind their lines.

Tokyo sanctions Chinese firms

Japan imposed trade sanctions on a number of Chinese companies that Tokyo says have provided support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. The move comes soon after G7 leaders warned Beijing over its ongoing support for Moscow, which they said includes transferring weapons components and equipment used by Russia’s defense sector. While the US has already rolled out sanctions on Chinese firms — which it broadened last week to target companies selling semiconductors — officials in Washington say its European allies should do more. Beijing is “trying to get it both ways,” NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg told the BBC. “This cannot work in the long run.”

Russian antivirus software’s US ban

US President Joe Biden will ban the sale of antivirus software made by the Russian firm Kaspersky Lab. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Moscow’s influence over the company made it a significant security risk — antivirus software has privileged access to a computer’s system that could allow it to steal information or install malware. Kaspersky’s customers include state and local governments and providers of key infrastructure. The move applies new US restrictions on tech companies from “foreign adversary” nations, rules that may also be used to potentially ban TikTok. Kaspersky has been under scrutiny since 2017, when its products were banned from federal networks because of alleged ties to Russian intelligence.

Trump’s finances outpace Biden’s

Donald Trump has nearly as much cash to fight the election as US President Joe Biden. Biden’s war chest was significantly larger than Trump’s, but for the last two months the Republican candidate has outpaced his rival in donations. Both men have seen major contributions from billionaires, The Wall Street Journal reported, with $50 million for Trump and $20 million for Biden coming from just one donor each. Some businesses are drawn to Trump for his promises of lower taxes and deregulation. Smaller donors also flocked to support him after his conviction for falsifying business records last month — which is important, The New Yorker reported, because the Trump campaign is burning through millions in legal fees.

US to send Haiti millions in aid

The US will send almost $110 million in security and police assistance to Haiti, bypassing a months-long hold on the funds by Republican lawmakers. The vast majority of the funding will go to support a security mission led by the Kenyan police that has yet to be deployed despite repeated promises. Haiti has spiraled into chaos as powerful drugs gangs have gained control over swaths of the territory, in turn devastating the country’s economy. Now almost one in five families in the capital Port-au-Prince face famine, according to Save the Children. “If gang violence deteriorates further in Haiti, the threat of famine will only loom larger and take lives,” the NGO’s country director said.

Philippines reinforces reef wreck

The Philippines has secretly reinforced a warship marooned on a reef in the South China Sea that has been central to its territorial disputes with China. The Philippines sunk the dilapidated World War II warship on the reef in 1999 to reinforce its claim to the region, and has attempted to shore it up since. While most neighboring countries avoid confronting Beijing, Manila has taken a stand in a simmering conflict that reached a high point this week when military personnel from both countries faced off in a “bare hands” fight. “The potential for an armed conflict over this tiny, submerged feature is increasing,” a China expert at the German Marshall Fund told the Financial Times.

High hopes for panda census

China will conduct its first panda census in a decade amid hopes of finding the wild population has increased again. The last full count in 2011-2014 found 1,864 wild pandas, up from 1,100 in the 1980s. The latest census was delayed by the pandemic, but an academic from the Sichuan Academy of the Giant Panda told the Financial Times that preliminary investigations suggested numbers were up again. The animals are symbols of China and useful diplomatic tools, but populations crashed in the 20th century, largely due to habitat loss. A careful conservation program, including the release of captive pandas into the wild and the creation of a vast Giant Panda National Park, has taken the once-threatened species off the endangered list.

Anti-tax protests grow in Kenya

One person was killed and more than 200 were injured after anti-tax protesters clashed with riot police in the Kenyan capital. Although the government backed down from a tax on bread earlier this week to quell the demonstrations, protesters say the move wasn’t enough. Since becoming president in 2022, William Ruto has rolled out a series of tax hikes in a bid to reduce the country’s debt burden, one of the highest in Africa. However, many are already struggling to make ends meet: “I’m hustling… and now you want to take the little I make and make me not even buy sanitary pads?,” a protester holding a pad, one of the items affected by the proposed rises, told the BBC.

In US, Brits Distress Serious Journalists

An influx of British bosses is disconcerting US newsrooms. The Washington Post ran an exposé on its own incoming editor, a British journalist appointed by the British publisher, Will Lewis. The Wall Street Journal and CNN are also run by Brits. The British journalist Tom McTague, writing in The Atlantic, noted that American reporters consider their British counterparts “fundamentally corrupt and tawdry.” But the real difference, McTague argues, is Fleet Street’s “unseriousness” and profound allergy to “earnestness.” “As a trainee … I dressed up in a giant yellow chicken outfit to chase Conservative politicians around London,” he reminisces, a very different experience to US fact-checkers asking whether a painting in Downing Street “was hanging over the fireplace rather than above [the] desk.”

Read a One Good Text between Semafor’s Mizy Clifton, another former Mirror Chicken, and Tom McTague, below.

Bronze Age deep-sea shipwreck discovered

The world’s oldest deepwater shipwreck was discovered off the coast of Israel. The Bronze Age wreck, more than a mile down and 60 miles from land, last saw daylight at least 3,200 years ago — it could be quite precisely aged by the design of storage jars it was carrying. The period was dominated by Egyptian and Hittite empires, and the eastern Mediterranean was the scene of prolific trade. An underwater drone found the amphorae on the sediment, and retrieved them: The researchers hope that below the mud some of the wooden hull is preserved. All other Bronze Age ships have been found in shallow coastal waters. One academic called it an “incredible find” and “basically a time capsule.”

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The Semafor fellow Mizy Clifton also cut his journalistic teeth dressed up as a chicken for the British tabloid The Mirror. He texted UnHerd’s Political Editor Tom McTague to reminisce:

Family Lexicon, by Natalia Ginzburg. This autobiographical novel, first published in Italy in 1963, is a story of family and language, and about “storytelling not only as a form of survival but also as an instrument of deception and domination,” as The New York Review of Books put it. It follows the Levi family, at the center of which is the father Giuseppe, chronicling the story of an Italian family between the 1920s and the 1950s — the rise of fascism, World War II, and its aftermath — focusing on their habits, their behavior, and the way they communicate.

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