business

European leaders behave like supplicants to an almighty Trump. Putin just sees him as a protege | Rafael Behr

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A hungry pigeon given food at frequent but irregular intervals will develop weird rituals – tics, dances, erratic head jerks – in the hope of summoning another morsel. BF Skinner, the psychologist who first demonstrated this effect in 1947, described the birds adopting “a sort of superstition … as if there were a causal relation … Read more

The curious incident of the dog, the Hanover ballet and the everyday sexism we face as female arts critics | Arifa Akbar

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Remember the international outrage over a lurid incident involving a female dance critic, a male choreographer and a deposit of his pet dachshund’s excrement? In February 2023 the German choreographer Marco Goecke cornered Wiebke Hüster in the foyer of the Hanover State Opera during the interval of a show. Goecke, who was then artistic director … Read more

I used to run the Foreign Office. This is my advice for today’s extraordinary White House meeting | Simon McDonald

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Last week’s extraordinary summit meeting in Alaska is being followed today by an even more extraordinary international conference in Washington. None of the participants knew they were going to take part two days ago. In recent decades, diplomacy has been increasingly conducted in ad hoc contact groups – but the group of seven countries (the … Read more

The Guardian view on the Alaska summit: there must be no more gifts to Vladimir Putin | Editorial

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Hours after Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin departed from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska on Friday, Moscow officials reported that two more villages in Ukraine’s east had been seized by Russian forces. It was a grimly apt postscript to a “peace summit” that allowed a pariah leader to posture on the world stage, but signally failed … Read more

Putin won in Anchorage. Now Zelenskyy and Europe are in an even more perilous position | Rajan Menon

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Donald Trump portrays himself as a hard-nosed dealmaker. Yet in the run-up to Friday’s summit with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, his claim that the Russian leader held him in high regard and was therefore serious about ending the war in Ukraine sounded naive. Putin doesn’t let sentimentality shape his political and military decisions. Nor … Read more

Weather tracker: Typhoon Podul pounds southern Taiwan | Environment

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Typhoon Podul crossed southern Taiwan on Wednesday with wind speeds of up to 110mph (177km/h), equivalent to a category 2 hurricane. Podul had developed a week earlier, near the Northern Mariana Islands, and tracked west across the Philippine Sea, achieving typhoon status on Tuesday before making landfall in south-east Taiwan the following day. Podul whipped … Read more