Saturday 12th April 2025

Boxing clever across the Pacific, adventure tourism in Ukraine, and rooting for Syria

Apr 12, 2025

*One direction: are shipping routes about to change course?*

10 CHINA & US / Punching up 🥊

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! In the red corner, the plucky young contender on the make refusing to be cowed. And in the tanned corner, the defending champion with an unpredictable swing. Now the diplomatic chess game of yore has been replaced by the winner-takes-all bar brawl, it looks like it’ll all come down to who can hold out the longest as tariffs ratchet up on both sides. Given that America imports vast quantities of Chinese consumer products its citizens rely on, whereas China imports intermediate goods for manufacturing its citizens are largely unaware of – and that can easily be sourced elsewhere – some are betting on the latter. Imposing another import duty hike, Prez Trump said he believed in “fair deals for everyone”. But Beijing was unconvinced: “The US side’s threat to escalate tariffs is a mistake on top of a mistake, once again exposing the American side’s blackmailing nature,” a Chinese spokesman said. “If the US insists on going its own way, China will fight to the end.”

09 UKRAINE / Cracked commandos 🤯

While Russia massed 67,000 troops on the northern border in what Prezelensky said was preparation for a spring offensive, he also revealed his forces had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with the Russian army – and that there were at least 150 more. Recruiting foreign mercenaries is straight out of a Kremlin playbook designed to draw others into their mess; that said, there’s no hard evidence the trigger-happy trogs are sponsored by their own state, and Chinese men have been found fighting on both sides. Many go for the cash, the chaos and a misplaced sense of nationalism stoked by social media (Russian visas are easier to come by than Ukrainian ones) before realising their deadly mistake.

08 SYRIA / Cross roads 😡

Where one proxy war ends, another fills the void: now a weakened Iran has largely retreated from Syria, Israel and Turkey are moving in to play their own deadly game. Whereas Ankara worries that Jerusalem wants to split the country into sectarian fiefdoms to include the Kurds, Jerusalem isn’t keen on Ankara’s plans to set up military bases and invite neighbourhood nasties Hamas in. “Turkey thinks Israel wants to create a [Kurdish group] PKK statelet on its border,” the International Crisis Group’s Dareen Khalifa said. “The Israelis think Turkey could use Syria against them the same way.” One thing they can agree on: no more Tehran.

07 IRAN & IRAQ / Fighting talk 🪖

Initial intel suggested the Baghdad-based militias behind Tehran’s Axis of Resistance were discussing laying down their weapons to avert more strife with Washington – until it was found Iran had just sent long-range surface-to-surface missiles into Iraq for the first time. As the Islamic Republic prepares to start talks with the US over its nuclear ambitions – Prez Trump warned it would be “a very bad day for Iran” should they deteriorate – regional stability looks under greater threat than ever. “It’s a desperate move by the Iranians, risking the stability of Iraq,” a spook said.

06 US / Squeaky glean 🐁

A team of over 100 researchers tracked the activity and mapped the structure of a cubic millimetre of a mouse’s brain – a feat Nobel Prize-winner Francis Crick said would never be possible. Even though human brains are similar (some more than others), applying the technique to a person or even a mouse’s full, 500mm³ brain is far off. “The human brain right now feels like outside the range of what is possible,” the Allen Institute’s Forrest Collman said. “We are not going there anytime soon.”

*Rough trade: the new face of construction*

05 ASIA / Burning ambition 🔥

Some commentators warned that Trump’s tariffs might not in fact reignite America’s smoky construction heartlands but lead other countries to forge new trade routes avoiding the US instead. Ministers from China, Japan and South Korea met for the first time since 2019 to figure out a new deal that could well see Beijing transform into a “guardian of free trade” while Washington burns.

04 RUSSIA / Wave goodbye 📡

After the US cut the cashflow despite a court-ordered reprieve, Radio Free Europe (set up in the Cold War to combat Soviet propaganda) was taken off air. “We came into work today and saw that satellite services that reach into Russia had been turned off by USAGM [Agency for Global Media],” station boss Stephen Capus said.

03 UK / Never mind 🧠

Black Mirror fans at the Ministry of Justice are developing a “homicide prediction project” – aka “sharing data to improve risk assessment” – designed to forecast murderers. “Like other systems… it will code in bias,” Statewatch’s Sofia Lyall said.

02 BULGARIA / Laugh time ⚽

Arda Kardzhali FC, a top-division team in the south, apologised after holding a minute’s silence in honour of ex-player Petko Ganchev, who is still alive.

01 US / Baby steps 🐢

A Galápagos tortoise from Philadelphia Zoo became a first-time mother aged 100.

Make-it-into-a-tea-towel of the week: sorry situation 🙇

Who apologises more?