👋 ꦲꦭꦺꦴ*
Welcome to Monday, where Pope Francis died less than a day after a courageous final Easter Mass, China issues a warning to countries about striking deals with Trump and Russia resumes Ukraine war. We also have French daily Le Figaro checking in to what the law (and heart) say about the tricky question of whether to give back your engagement ring after a divorce.
[*Halo – Javanese, Indonesia]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
Brazilian daily Folha de São Paulo lends its frontpage to Pope Francis’ Easter appearance on Sunday in Vatican, a day before he died. Francis even went to St Peter Square in his open-air popemobile for the first time since surviving double pneumonia, stopping occasionally to bless babies brought up to him and greeting tens of thousands of Catholics attendees after the celebration of Easter Mass. Earlier in the day, the pontiff had reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza in a message read aloud by an aide as the pope looked on from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
- Pope Francis dies aged 88. The Argentine-born Pope, who was the first Latin American leader of the Roman Catholic Church, died at 07:35 local time on Easter Monday in his residence in the Vatican. His death comes after a series of health issues, and less than a day after he appeared in St Peter’s Square to wish “Happy Easter” to thousands of worshippers.
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China warns countries against striking trade deals with U.S. at its expense. Beijing’s warning comes as dozens of U.S. trade partners are scrambling to negotiate relief from Donald Trump’s trade war, including steep “reciprocal” tariffs that have been paused until July. “Appeasement cannot bring peace, and compromise will not earn respect,” a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce said on Monday. Meanwhile, U.S. Vice-President JD Vance has arrived in the Indian capital, New Delhi, where he is due to hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi amid tariff tensions.
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Russia resumes strikes on Ukraine as would-be Easter ceasefire ends. Ukraine issued air raid alerts for Kyiv and the country’s eastern half as blasts shook the city of Mykolaiv early on Monday, hours after the one-day Easter “ceasefire” declared by Vladimir Putin came to an end. Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the Russian president’s unilateral Easter ceasefire declaration as a fake “PR” exercise and said Russian troops had continued their drone and artillery attacks across many parts of the frontline on Sunday.
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Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli report into Gaza medics’ killings “full of lies”. The Israeli military has released details of an investigation into its own killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics and aid workers in Gaza last month, saying its code of ethics was not violated and only one soldier was dismissed. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and the Israeli rights organization Breaking the Silence rejected the findings of the Israeli probe on Sunday.
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Hegseth shared Yemen attack details in second Signal chat. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared information about U.S. air strikes on Yemen in a second private group on the Signal app. The developments come a month after the existence of a separate Signal group discussing sensitive information about U.S. military operations was revealed.
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El Salvador offers Venezuela prisoner swap involving U.S. deportees. El Salvador’s president has offered to repatriate 252 Venezuelans deported by the U.S. and imprisoned in his country if Venezuela releases the same number of political prisoners. Nayib Bukele appealed directly to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a post on social media.
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News Quiz! Conservationists are using new AI tools to protect endangered snow leopards in Pakistan. What kind of tool are they using?
A. Digital tripwires to track the cats’ movements
B. Cameras to detect the cats and notify nearby farmers
C. Laser pointers to make the cats dizzy
D. Timed feeder boxes to keep the cats in certain areas
[Answer below]
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
21
Twenty-one humanoid robots participated in the Yizhuang half-marathon in Beijing on Saturday, the first time these machines have raced alongside humans over a 13-mile course. The robots came in all shapes and sizes, some shorter than 120 cm (3.9 ft), others as tall as 1.8 m (5.9 ft).They were accompanied by human trainers, some of whom had to physically support the machines during the race. The winning robot was Tiangong Ultra, from the Beijing Innovation Center of Human Robotics, with a time of 2 hours and 40 minutes. The men’s winner of the race had a time of 1 hour and 2 minutes.
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🇨🇳Xi Jinping and the rest of the Chinese leadership is defying Donald Trump in the tariff duel – and positioning itself as a more reliable superpower. The nation has been expecting this moment.
— DIE ZEIT
🇹🇳In the Sfax region, migrants are mostly using artisanal metal boats to cross the Mediterranean. Leaked European Union documents reveal the role these vessels play in the increase in migration flows from Tunisia and the dangers they pose for migrants.
— INKYFADA
💍To keep or not to keep? What does the law say about giving back your engagement ring after a divorce? For some, it’s an emotional issue; for others, it’s a legal case, one taught as early as the first year of law school.
— LE FIGARO
📸 PHOTO DU JOUR
A Priest leads the Catholic Easter service at the destroyed St. George Melkite Catholic Church in the southern Lebanese village of Derdghaya on Sunday. The church was hit by an Israeli air raid on October 9, 2024 killing eight people. — Photo: Marwan Naamani/ZUMA
📣 VERBATIM
“In this time of war and brutality, he had a sense for the other, for the most fragile.”
— French president Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Pope Francis who died Monday, declaring that the pontiff had stood for “brotherly humankind” as the bells at Paris’s Notre-Dame Cathedral rang out 88 times for Francis this morning. Other world leaders also paid tribute, including India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who said in a statement: “Pope Francis will always be remembered as a beacon of compassion, humility and spiritual courage by millions across the world.”
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright and Cecilia Laurent Monpetit
Quiz Answer: B. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) developed cameras that use AI to detect snow leopards and warn village farmers in Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan via text to move their livestock to safety. The idea aims to reduce the deaths of snow leopards in the region, with more than half of their deaths being caused by retaliation from farmers after attacks on their animals.
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