Flagship

Kim to meet Putin in Russia

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is expected to travel to Russia to meet Vladimir Putin and discuss selling weapons to the Kremlin. A U.S. official said that after Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Pyongyang recently, Kim “expects these discussions to continue, to include leader-level diplomatic engagement in Russia.” The deal could involve “significant quantities and multiple types” of weapons, notably rockets and artillery shells, another official said, adding that any such deal would violate several United Nations resolutions. That official warned that the U.S. would impose sanctions on any individuals or entities that facilitated the deal.

China map dominates Asia summit

The ASEAN bloc of Southeast Asian nations opened its annual summit with a new map issued by Beijing dominating the agenda. The latest document, which Beijing called its “standard map” of China, lays claims to vast areas of the South China Sea claimed by its neighbors as well as disputed territory with India. “In a fit of imperial pique, China’s Xi Jinping has slammed the door” on the region, The Sydney Morning Herald’s international editor wrote. Yet even as ASEAN frets over Beijing’s apparent revanchism, the grouping is also not altogether happy with the U.S.: President Joe Biden’s absence — Vice President Kamala Harris is attending in his place — calls “into question Washington’s engagement in the region,” Nikkei reported.

UK economy revised upward

Britain’s national statistics body revised its estimate for the size of the U.K. economy up significantly. Earlier data had suggested that the economy was still 1.2% below its pre-pandemic size: The new figures say it is 0.6% larger. “In effect, they found almost two percentage points’ worth of GDP hidden behind a sofa,” The Economist reported. Under the old estimates, Britain was a global laggard, with the weakest growth of any G-7 country. Now, “if hardly stellar,” it is faster than Germany and on par with France. Exactly why Britain was underperforming was a topic of much discussion: Was it Brexit, the pandemic response, austerity? The government — with an election on the horizon — can now say the answer is partly, “it wasn’t.”

AI boosts pharma work

Artificial intelligence techniques sped up discovery of a vital reaction in the pharmaceutical industry. The Buchwald-Hartwig reaction forms bonds between carbon and nitrogen, but requires lengthy trial-and-error to establish optimal conditions depending on the particular molecules involved. Researchers created a machine-learning tool that can effectively predict those conditions, speeding up the process significantly. Language AIs like ChatGPT are getting much of the attention, but AI models in science are rapidly changing how scientists work, from protein discovery to nuclear fusion.

Naloxone now available

Naloxone, which reverses opioid overdose, is now available over-the-counter in the United States. With the country facing record high overdose deaths, the Food and Drug Administration in March approved non-prescription use of Narcan, the brand name for the nasal-spray version of naloxone. But it has only reached shelves now. The drug can revive an overdose victim in minutes. Opioid overdose can slow or even stop patients’ breathing. More than 80,000 people died from opioid overdoses in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control: Up from 68,000 the year before and 21,000 in 2010. The rise of synthetic opioids, notably fentanyl, has driven the increase.

Ecuador cartels infiltrate bananas

Drug cartels operating in Ecuador are increasingly infiltrating the country’s main export industry, bananas, to traffic drugs. Ecuador is nestled between Peru and Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine producers, making it a key hub of the world’s drug trade. The once peaceful nation is also responsible for 30% of the world’s banana production, meaning its produce travels to most regions of the world. Cartels fighting over control of the country’s ports and shipping lanes have sent murder rates soaring, doubling from 2021 to 2022 alone. “This is everyone’s responsibility: The person who transports it, the person who buys it, the person who consumes it,” a vendor in Guayaquil told the Associated Press. “They all share responsibility. They have ruined our country.”

Gabon swears in coup leader

Gen. Brice Nguema, the leader of last week’s coup in Gabon, was sworn in as the country’s leader. Although celebrated by many eager for change, some fear that Nguema represents a continuation of the Bongo dynasty which ruled the country for decades. Ali Bongo — whom Nguema deposed and is related to — was widely condemned for embezzling the country’s abundant natural resources, using them to bankroll a lavish lifestyle, and to fund a foray into music. Over almost six decades, Semafor’s Yinka Adegoke wrote, the Bongo family splurged on hosting stars including James Brown and Bob Marley at the expense of the Gabonese taxpayers. “Gabon was a neocolonial country ruled by a Black man,” one of Marley’s band members said.

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Contrail trial reduces airline climate impact

American Airlines is trialing a system that reduces its planes’ contrails, which contribute significantly to global warming. Contrails, the white clouds left behind by high-flying planes, trap heat in the atmosphere, and cause about a third of air travel’s climate impact. A Bill Gates-backed organization and Google led efforts to predict where contrails would form, using satellite images and machine learning, and to modify airlines’ routes to avoid those areas. American Airlines used the system and found its planes made 54% fewer contrails, Quartz reported. Air travel is responsible for about 3.5% of warming: If all planes used the system, it would have a non-trivial impact on the climate.

Galaxy discovery confuses physicists

The James Webb Telescope’s early results may force a rethink of some key tenets of physics. Starlight takes time to reach us, so staring into deep space is also looking back in time. After the big bang, stars and galaxies coalesced under gravity. But Webb is seeing galaxies far earlier than previously thought possible: Like “parents and their children appearing in a story when the grandparents are still children themselves,” two physicists wrote in The New York Times. Cosmology already requires several ugly patches for it to make sense: “Dark matter” and “dark energy” are just labels saying “Something unexplained here.” The physicists argued that perhaps the time has come to stop patching cosmological theory and come up with a new one.

Apple pivots to USB-C standard

The new iPhone due to be announced next week will have a USB-C socket, as Apple bends to the European Union’s insistence on a common standard. Existing iPhones use Apple’s proprietary Lightning charger, but the EU requires that to change by December. Although Apple resisted the change for a long time, it is now selling it as a win for consumers: A single charging cable for many Apple devices, increased data transfer and charging speed, compatibility with non-Apple devices. “The company has an iron-clad rule,” reported Bloomberg: When dealing with the media, “it always wants to operate from a position of strength.” That means no mentioning its years of opposition to the move it is now enthusiastically backing.

• Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen visits Eswatini — the last country in Africa that still recognizes the self-ruling island — for its national day celebrations.
• Typhoon Haikui is expected to make landfall in China.
• Birth/Rebirth, a dark reimagining of the Frankenstein story, becomes available on digital and video-on-demand today.

Young Indians are increasingly upbeat about their prospects — more so than their older compatriots and their peers abroad, according to Gallup polling. Indians overall are more hopeful than almost any year since 2009, and those in the 15-24 age cohort most of all, while Indians of all ages overwhelmingly believe their country offers good opportunities for children to learn and grow. In every age grouping, women are more positive than men about their job prospects, and Indians across the board are more optimistic about their country’s economy than people in richer countries.

A debut novel out tomorrow about the kidnapping of a U.S. tech executive was hailed as a “thrill-a-minute adventure.” The Unexpected Hostage by Allison McKenzie follows an encryption company boss as she is taken hostage by international terrorists trying to steal code developed by her company, eventually untangling an unsolved murder via the dark web. “The plot is intricate without being convoluted, and the characters … are layered and memorable,” a star review in Kirkus gushed.

• The gerontocratic nature of U.S. government is back in the spotlight. But in many other parts of the world, politicians are actually getting younger.
• Why the Gabon coup is different from other military African takeovers.
• African governments are clamping down on TikTok over “inappropriate content.”