👋 Aссалом*
Welcome to Thursday, where the U.S. is set to hold talks on Ukraine with European allies in Paris, China says it will pay no attention to Trump’s “tariff numbers game” and our daily quiz question is about a long-awaited discovery in space. Meanwhile, Johannes Schneider in German daily Die Zeit looks at why people are back to consuming like there’s literally no tomorrow.
[*Assalom – Tajik, Tajikistan]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
British daily The Independent lends its frontpage to a unanimous decision by the UK Supreme Court that trans women are not legally women under the Equality Act. Yesterday’s ruling — that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex — means that transgender women with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) can be excluded from single-sex spaces if “proportionate.” While gender critical rights campaigners have hailed the ruling as a victory for biological women that will protect single-sex spaces, trans rights groups warned that it will “exclude trans people wholesale from participating in UK society”. Many practical consequences of this decision have yet to be clarified by public bodies and institutions.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
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U.S. to hold talks on Ukraine with European allies. Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and top diplomat Marco Rubio are meeting today with European counterparts in Paris to discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Ukraine’s foreign minister and defense minister have arrived in the French capital to take part in the discussions. Meanwhile, a large-scale Russian drone attack in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro has killed three people and injured at least 30. Follow Worldcrunch’s international coverage on the war in Ukraine here.
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China says it will pay no attention to Trump’s “tariff numbers game.” This comes after the White House suggested Chinese exports are facing tariffs of up to 245%. Meanwhile, China-founded e-commerce sites Temu and Shein say they plan to raise prices for U.S. customers starting next week. In other news, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni is heading to Washington Thursday as the first EU leader to meet President Trump since his tariff threats, aiming to calm tensions as well as defend Europe’s trade interests. Global markets Thursday continued to drop following pessimist outlook by U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. Read more about Trump and Meloni’s relationship in this article by Italian media La Stampa.
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Iran confirms new round of nuclear talks with the U.S. in Rome. The announcement of negotiations on Saturday came as Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian formally approved the resignation of one of his vice presidents who served as Tehran’s key negotiator in its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Meanwhile, The New York Times is reporting that U.S. President Donald Trump blocked a planned Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites in favor of negotiating a deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program.
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Czech Republic becomes fully independent of Russian oil for the first time. The news follows the completion of capacity upgrades on the TAL pipeline coming from the west. The first increased supplies along the pipeline have reached the central oil depot in the Czech Republic. Since the war in Ukraine started in 2022, many European countries have moved away from supplying themselves with Russian oil.
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White House says man deported to El Salvador will never live in U.S. The White House press secretary doubled down on accusations that Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a notorious El Salvador prison in March, is a gang member and said that he “will never live” in the U.S. again. This comes amid an escalating showdown between the Trump administration and the judiciary on immigration, as a judge in another case said the administration could be held in contempt of court over the deportations. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen travelled to the South American country on Wednesday to meet with García but failed to secure a meeting. For more about the conditions at the CECOT center in El Salvador, read this article from El Espectador, in English by Worldcrunch.
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Myanmar frees around 4,900 prisoners. The release, which included at least 22 political detainees, comes in marking the country’s traditional new year. At least 19 buses with prisoners aboard left Yangon’s Insein prison and were welcomed outside the gate by family members and friends who had been waiting since early morning.
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News Quiz! Scientists from the UK found signs of what long-awaited discovery in a solar system 120 light years away?
A. Alien life
B. A flat, disc-shaped planet
C. A solar system with three stars
D. The Death Star
[Answer below]
💬 LEXICON
自動駕駛
Chinese word 自動駕駛, which means “autonomous driving” as well as 智慧駕駛 which means “smart driving” are now banned from vehicle advertisements in China. This decision by the Chinese government follows a fatal accident involving a Xiaomi best-selling electric vehicle in March that triggered widespread concerns over vehicle safety. At the same time, Beijing announced tighter controls on automakers’ new assisted driving systems and their upgrades.
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🌎 While disinformation and authoritarianism grow stronger in the U.S., countries across the Global South are leading the charge for regulation and resistance. It may be the beginning of a worldwide reckoning with Silicon Valley’s dominance.
— AGÊNCIA PÚBLICA
🛒 Clothing, air travel, food: we are once again consuming as if the climate crisis didn’t exist. But it may provide much needed clarity about how to actually protect the environment.
— DIE ZEIT
✍️ From the Boom generation to the “padritores” of Latin writers, it isn’t that men are incapable of emotional reflection, but that the spaces to do so simply don’t exist.
— RECALCULATING
📸 PHOTO DU JOUR
A Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odessa injured three people, sparked fires and damaged homes, civilian infrastructure and warehouse facilities on Tuesday night. Here, a woman stands among the rubble outside a damaged house on Wednesday. — Photo: Nina Liashonok/Ukrinform via ZUMA
📣 VERBATIM
“You are just like Justin Trudeau. We need change and you, Mr. Carney, are not change.”
— Canadian Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre took aim at Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney in a debate among the leaders of Canada’s four major political parties on Wednesday. The French-language debate was the first of two nationally televised contests ahead of the April 28 snap election, which Carney called last month following former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation. “Mr. Poilievre is not Mr. Trudeau and neither am I,” Carney retorted, adding that the election is about “the question of who will succeed, and who will face up to Trump.” Latest polls show the Liberals, who have been in power for nearly a decade, slightly ahead of the Conservatives.
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright and Cecilia Laurent Monpetit
Quiz Answer: A. Scientists from Cambridge University in the UK say they found new evidence of life on the planet called K2-18b, 120 lightyears away. The researchers say that the atmosphere of the planet shows high quantities of a molecule that, on Earth, is produced by plankton and bacteria. They stressed that the evidence isn’t conclusive, but also said this is the strongest evidence yet of life outside of Earth and her orbit.
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