business 
My condolences to everyone who spent days trying to play 5D chess with Donald Trump’s market-exploding tariff mess. Where Trump is involved, there is a cloud of malevolent chaos, and there is grift amid the chaos. What grandmasters there are to be found are almost certainly grandmasters of grift. When markets dump $10tn in three … Read more
No more than a narrow window of opportunity remains if we are to prevent an unnecessary global recession. As China and the US decouple, disruptive trade wars are intensifying and threaten to descend into currency wars; import, export, investment and technology bans; and financial fire sales that will destroy millions of jobs worldwide. It seems … Read more
Germany is about to get a new fitness trainer. So declared Markus Söder, one of the political leaders who have just announced a coalition agreement. In one of the quirks of the country’s constitution, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) will play a significant role in the new administration, and Söder used his moment in … Read more
In the first week of January, I received a letter from the Berlin Immigration Office, informing me that I had lost my right of freedom of movement in Germany, due to allegations around my involvement in the pro-Palestine movement. Since I’m a Polish citizen living in Berlin, I knew that deporting an EU national from … Read more
NASA will prioritize sending American astronauts to Mars, President Trump’s nominee to lead the space agency will tell a Senate committee on Wednesday. The nominee is Jared Isaacman, the chief executive of the payment processing company Shift4 Payments, who is a close associate of Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX. As someone who has led … Read more
Jeremiah Ostriker, an astrophysicist who helped set off a revolution in humankind’s view of the universe, revealing it to be a vaster, darker realm than the one we can see, ruled by invisible forms of matter and energy we still don’t understand, died on Sunday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. … Read more
After a cold weekend in north-eastern Europe, chilly conditions are expected to spread southwards this week. This cold spell is due to a large area of high pressure over the North Sea, which allowed very cold Arctic air to sink southwards over the weekend and will continue to do so this week. The chill began … Read more
Universities in the US are under attack. While the Trump administration pretends to punish them for their alleged compliance with or support for “antisemitism” (ie pro-Gaza demonstrations) and “anti-white racism” (ie diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives), the real targets are academic freedom and freedom of speech. Going after the most prominent and privileged universities, such … Read more
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/06/the-guardian-view-on-the-return-of-landmines-a-deadly-peril-resurges
Kirill Dmitriev’s meetings with US officials in the White House last week went largely below the radar. And deliberately so. The dapper investment envoy to Russian president Vladimir Putin, who also serves as a key negotiator for Moscow on Ukraine, posted an image of his flight plan on social media to make the point that … Read more