Two days of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine failed to yield any major breakthroughs to end the nearly four-year war, despite US President Donald Trump’s rising impatience.

“Surprise, surprise,” Politico wrote: The peace talks have essentially become “political theater,” with both Kyiv and Moscow trying to convince Trump that the other side is to blame for the impasse.

The Kremlin has reportedly offered Trump some $12 trillion in deals as part of a ceasefire agreement.

But that is “plainly hyperbole designed to please” him, The Economist wrote, given that Russia’s available riches “are a small fraction” of what Moscow is touting, The Economist reported.

US President Donald Trump’s new Board of Peace, which convenes for the first time Thursday, reflects the inroads Washington has made in Central Asia and other regions where China has sought to increase its influence.

A bulk of the board’s 27 signatories belong to what one analyst called a “big beautiful belt” stretching from Morocco to Kazakhstan, Nikkei wrote.

The White House’s efforts could counter the growing clout Beijing wields in some of those countries through the infrastructure-focused Belt and Road Initiative.

But the Board of Peace, which Trump has cast as a UN alternative, has a somewhat obscure mandate, and its marquee initiative — rebuilding Gaza — faces myriad hurdles.

The European Central Bank said its chief Christine Lagarde hasn’t made a decision on stepping down before her term ends, but the contest to replace her has already kicked off.

The Financial Times reported Lagarde is expected to quit early so French President Emmanuel Macron would have a say in her successor before France’s elections next year, which could see populist factions surge to power.

While economists downplayed the far right’s potential sway over the appointment, they warned a politically engineered succession could undermine the bank’s reputation.

Spain on Wednesday publicly staked its claim to the powerful post, with its former central bank chief seen as a top contender.

“The race is on,” an EU official said.

Germany’s population is set to shrink 5% by 2050, much faster than previously anticipated, new forecasts suggest.

The shift risks further straining a pension system that already accounts for about a quarter of the country’s budget. Previous predictions had underestimated present population, net migration, and birthrate decline.

Other countries have similar problems — Japan and China both saw plummeting birth rates in 2025.

But “there is no powerful reason to fear declining populations,” the Financial Times’ chief economics commentator argued: While there will be more pensioners dependent on fewer workers, there will also be fewer children dependent on their parents, and rising retirement ages and AI-fueled productivity could stave off economic collapse.

Mark Zuckerberg testified in court Wednesday that increasing engagement time on Instagram wasn’t Meta’s goal, as he defended his company in a landmark trial over social media addiction.

The California case has drawn comparisons to the lawsuits brought against Big Tobacco in the 1990s, which forced a national reckoning over the harms of smoking.

The case also targets Google’s YouTube, and will serve as a test for a bevy of suits against other platforms, including TikTok and Snap.

Governments around the world have lobbed similar accusations against social media sites and are pursuing outright bans for teen users.

Apple is increasingly diverging from its tech giant peers on the stock market as it dodges the AI-fueled anxiety roiling the industry.

The company’s correlation to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index is at its lowest point since 2006. That’s a positive, one strategist said, given that the market is playing “AI whack-a-mole” as investor sentiment swings from fears of dramatic AI investments not paying off to worries that AI is going to kill traditional software businesses.

But Apple “doesn’t fit the bill on either side of that angst,” Bloomberg wrote. While the company has faced challenges integrating AI into its products, it also hasn’t joined the mega-spending spree that has strained its competitors’ finances.

The US and Iran gave conflicting accounts of the results of their ongoing nuclear talks.

Tehran said the latest negotiations were “more constructive,” but US Vice President JD Vance said there had been no breakthrough, and that Tehran had failed to acknowledge core US demands, such as ending its enrichment of uranium. Iran’s stockpile is believed to be nearly pure enough to build a nuclear weapon.

The negotiations are taking place against a tense backdrop: Two US carrier groups are in the Gulf; Iran conducted live-fire military exercises as a show of force and temporarily closed the Strait of Hormuz. Oil prices ticked higher on investor caution over whether a deal could ultimately be reached.

Japan unveiled $36 billion in investments in US fossil fuel and mineral projects, part of a $550 billion trade agreement struck with President Donald Trump.

The first projects include a huge natural-gas power plant in Ohio, “the largest in history” according to Trump, and an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. As part of last year’s deal, Washington agreed to reduce tariffs on Japanese exports, namely cars, although it could reinstate them if Tokyo fails to meet its commitments.

China faces similar risks: Beijing pledged to boost its purchases of agricultural goods from the US, with American soybean farmers particularly struggling as Chinese sales dropped 80% year-on-year in 2025. But port data showed that sales have not picked up.

Two big industry moves showcased European ambitions to make ground in the AI race.

French startup Mistral AI made its first acquisition, buying a Parisian AI infrastructure company, as it tries to move from simply developing models to becoming a one-stop shop. And a top British AI researcher is looking to raise $1 billion for a new company building “superhuman intelligence,” in what would be the largest-ever European seed round.

David Silver, formerly of Google DeepMind, sparked a flurry of excitement as investors raced to find competitors to US and Chinese AI giants. Europe remains way behind Silicon Valley, though: Mistral’s $14 billion valuation, which makes it Europe’s largest AI firm, is barely 2% of the estimated worth of OpenAI.

The EU’s finance chiefs want the euro to take on a larger global role. The European Central Bank is offering liquidity to other central banks, reinforcing euro diplomacy as trust in the US financial system wavers.

It’s one of several proposals to boost the euro’s use as an international reserve currency, despite fears of a strengthening euro hurting the bloc’s exports.

Growing European unity in the face of US isolationism is also driving interest in joining the eurozone: Sweden, one of six EU members yet to adopt the single currency, has seen public support for accession grow. Such a move would boost the euro’s credibility, although is unlikely at least in the next couple of years, the country’s finance minister said.

Peruvian lawmakers removed the country’s interim president from office over a scandal involving undeclared meetings with Chinese businesspeople.

The ouster cemented Peru’s status as among the least stable countries in Latin America — José Jerí was the country’s eighth president in less than a decade — and comes just two months ahead of scheduled general elections.

It also points to the country’s emergence as a battleground for influence between the US and China. Washington warned last week that Lima was surrendering its sovereignty by giving Beijing too much control over a Pacific deep-water port built by a Chinese company in Peru, a mammoth infrastructure project that has sparked concern that China is wielding power in the US’ backyard.

The European Central Bank’s chief will reportedly leave her role early, part of what analysts characterized as efforts to “future-proof” against the anticipated rise of the far right in upcoming French elections.

The ECB did not confirm a Financial Times report that Christine Lagarde would depart ahead of French presidential elections in April 2027. Her leaving, combined with the surprise early exit of the head of the Bank of France, offers European leaders a chance to select a replacement ahead of the French vote.

The anti-immigration National Rally — which has previously called for an exit from the euro, a position it has since reversed — is expected to perform well in those polls.

US President Donald Trump suggested Monday he was discussing future Taiwan weapons sales with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which would signal a stunning reversal of decadeslong US policy.

Previous administrations, including Trump’s, have refused to consult with Beijing ahead of arms sales to Taiwan, leading analysts to seek clarity on Trump’s ambiguous statement.

From Beijing’s perspective, trends in Taiwan are moving in a positive direction, and while US lawmakers warned Taipei that the threat from China “has never been greater,” some experts think Xi is satisfied with mere momentum toward his goal of Taiwan “reunification.”

Meanwhile, the US is beefing up its regional military presence, deploying more advanced missile systems in the Philippines to deter Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.

Iran on Tuesday partially closed the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial chokepoint in global oil flows, as Tehran held another round of nuclear talks with the US in Geneva.

The closure, the result of military drills Tehran conducted in the waterway, marked the first shutdown since US President Donald Trump threatened to strike Iran in January.

The countries made progress in Tuesday’s negotiations — pushing oil prices down — though they resulted in no breakthroughs.

Brent crude, which fell substantially in 2025, is up nearly 13% this year because of the tensions and the prospect of war.

Still, a complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the “mother of all disruptions,” remains a low-probability scenario, OilPrice.com wrote.

India and France vowed to deepen economic, defense, and tech ties as their leaders sought to project stability and cooperation in a time of global uncertainty.

French President Emmanuel Macron is hoping to convince New Delhi to finalize its purchase of 114 French fighter jets during his trip to India. The visit comes as Europe looks to bolster its defense industry and reduce US reliance, while New Delhi seeks to diversify away from Russia.

Macron will also attend India’s AI summit Wednesday, as he and India’s leader promote shared regulatory frameworks as an alternative to the US- and China-led paradigm. Washington and Beijing “appear increasingly detached” from discussions around AI guardrails, and middle powers should be on notice, a tech expert argued.

The EU on Tuesday launched an investigation into Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein, alleging its site has an “addictive design” and markets sexually inappropriate content.

Shein, along with other Chinese e-commerce companies, has made inroads in Europe in recent years, drawing scrutiny. French authorities sought to suspend Shein in November hours after it opened its first physical store in Paris; the site was accused of selling “childlike” sex dolls.

Exactly two years after Brussels’ landmark regulation for online services went into effect, Europe is ramping up pressure on large platforms. Spain on Tuesday ordered an investigation into Meta, X, and TikTok over allegations that AI-generated sexual images are proliferating, and Ireland opened a probe into X’s chatbot.

Shares in a British PC maker soared Tuesday after a social media post suggested that AI agents could drive demand for the simplest commercially available computer.

A Raspberry Pi is like a normal PC, except packed onto a single, credit card-sized circuit board. Popular with educators and computer hobbyists, the low-cost machines are now being sought for running AI agents like OpenClaw, as a safer alternative to a user’s main device, or the cloud, where agents could wreak havoc by, say, mistakenly wiping your entire drive.

Raspberry Pi has raised prices as the cost of memory increases globally, Bloomberg noted, but the 1GB model still costs as much as a cheap bottle of wine.

Russia is facing growing pressure on and off the battlefield.

Ukraine has in the past five days made its fastest territorial gains since 2023, according to AFP; analysts said disruption to Starlink access was causing command-and-control problems for Russian forces, while Moscow has seen casualties surge in recent weeks.

Tougher sanctions appear also to be hitting Russian oil exports: Moscow had redirected sales to India, among others, but Washington threatened New Delhi with secondary tariffs over the purchases, and Indian purchases have fallen since. The war enters its fifth year this month, and Kyiv is in a stronger position than at the start of 2025, a Carnegie Endowment expert argued in Foreign Affairs.

The UN said it was “extremely worried” about a worsening humanitarian situation in Cuba as a tightened US embargo brings the island’s economy to a grinding halt.

Washington has upped pressure in a bid to replace Havana’s communist regime, cutting off oil shipments and, by extension, the economy. Ensuing blackouts have hit essential sectors, namely health care, while a lack of fuel has stunted the island’s vital tourism industry.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Havana will have to give its people freedoms before Washington lets up, though all signs point to a prolonged impasse, despite the toll on Cubans: Havana has said it is open to talks, though not to regime change.

Global efforts to bar children from social media gathered momentum.

Germany’s governing coalition looks set to back a proposal to limit access for under-16s, a move likely to cause friction with Big Tech firms in the US, Bloomberg reported. India is discussing similar curbs. Australia imposed the first such ban late last year; France and Britain voted for restrictions last month; and a dozen or more other countries and US states are considering moves.

The scientific backing for curbs is ambiguous, The Economist reported: Research finds only weak evidence that “social media are harmful for the average child,” or that bans improve mental health. But regardless, voters are convinced, with a majority in 30 countries polled backing restrictions, and support across the political spectrum.

India faces a particular AI challenge because of the country’s young population and their demand for jobs, the government’s chief economic advisor said.

He told an AI summit in New Delhi that India must create 8 million jobs a year to ensure its economic expansion; while AI will help rich countries facing demographic decline by boosting workers’ productivity, it will present difficulties for those, like India, that are still growing, he warned.

India’s economy is reliant on coding and call-center jobs, both particularly vulnerable to AI. Its problem may soon be the world’s: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that while AI and humans are more productive working together than either alone for now, that sweet-spot period will likely be brief.

Two European powers pushed for an acceleration in military spending, as US isolationism and Russian aggression piled pressure on the continent.

NATO members pledged last June to dedicate 5% of GDP to defense-related spending but Germany, which greenlit a huge debt-fuelled expansion of its military outlay, said France was lagging behind on its commitments.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, meanwhile, said the UK also had to “go faster” to meet its own, separate, target of 3% of GDP on defense. Both Britain and France are hampered by their economic woes: France, already heavily indebted, is in the midst of bitter rows over public spending, and the UK’s GDP has been stagnant for years.

Parallel talks resumed in Geneva aimed at curtailing Iran’s nuclear program and finalizing a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, but analysts held out little hope of lasting progress in either.

In both negotiations, opposing sides appear to have irreconcilable demands. Washington wants Tehran to curb its atomic ambitions and has sought to expand the talks to include Iran’s support for regional proxies and its missile program, efforts that the Islamic Republic has so far resisted.

And Moscow has shown little sign of budging from maximalist territorial demands and even carried out renewed strikes on Ukraine overnight. In a sign of Russia’s position, its negotiating team in today’s talks is helmed by a Kremlin aide who has previously questioned Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Iran’s foreign minister met with the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog Monday as Tehran signaled openness to a US deal in exchange for sanctions relief.

The countries are set for another round of nuclear talks on Tuesday aimed at reaching an agreement and averting a war.

US President Donald Trump prefers a diplomatic solution, and an Iranian minister told BBC that Tehran was willing to consider compromises, but military tensions are simmering.

Washington ordered a second group of aircraft carriers to the Middle East, while Iran on Monday began a new military drill in the Strait of Hormuz.

Tehran wants to “warn Washington that a war with Iran would have serious consequences for global energy markets,” one expert said.

Beijing argued at the Munich Security Conference that it is a reliable global partner, reiterating a well-worn narrative aimed at garnering influence amid US chaos.

Much of the defense summit was focused on the breakdown of the transatlantic alliance: The US secretary of state did not mention China in his speech, and remarks by Beijing’s foreign minister garnered fewer headlines than previously.

Beijing is enjoying that silence, the South China Morning Post wrote, and is hoping to seize on US-Europe tensions to make inroads with Washington’s allies.

Yet even as China presents itself as a stable alternative, the country is expanding its nuclear arsenal, The New York Times reported, readying for “a new age of superpower rivalry.”

Alibaba unveiled its latest AI model Tuesday during a big week for China’s tech firms that Beijing is betting will turbocharge the country’s lagging economy.

Giants like ByteDance and startups such as Zhipu also released upgraded models around Lunar New Year, while AI-powered humanoid robots stole the show at Monday’s annual new year gala, a variety show watched by millions.

That the Chinese tech companies released the new tools around the consumption-heavy holiday — along with aggressive promotions and giveaways — shows how much they’re pushing AI as a consumer product.

Beijing sees the tech as a much-needed tonic to counteract sluggish spending and a still-troubled property sector: Xi Jinping said building an “AI-plus strategy” is a top economic priority for 2026.

The world’s top tech executives are descending on New Delhi this week for an AI summit, part of India’s efforts to position itself as a global leader in next-generation technologies.

Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are investing billions in the country; startups like Anthropic and OpenAI also have offices there.

India has yet to produce an AI model that rivals its US or Chinese counterparts, but it is betting its competitive edge lies in the ability to deploy the tech at scale.

AI adoption in India “is even more extreme compared with the rest of the world,” Anthropic’s CEO said at the summit. “We can do experiments with hundreds of millions of people.”

AI will send most software companies the way of print media in the 2000s, a top fund manager said.

Software stocks have plunged in recent weeks following the release of AI tools that promise to automate tasks like writing documents and managing payrolls.

Nick Evans, a Polar Capital fund manager, whose global tech fund beat 99% of peers in the last year, told Bloomberg that apart from infrastructure and cybersecurity, few software sectors will survive AI’s existential threat.

The software selloff is among several event-driven swings traders have contended with recently, thanks to AI, tariffs, and geopolitical turmoil, prompting investors to increase exposure in Europe and emerging markets.

“You almost get desensitized to it,” one Wall Street investment chief said.

Hungary’s relations with the US and EU will play a central role in the country’s elections this spring.

The US secretary of state on Monday emphatically endorsed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in his bid to serve a fifth term, stressing the close relationship between the nationalist premier and US President Donald Trump.

Hungary opposition leader Péter Magyar launched his campaign Sunday ahead of the April contest, vowing to return Budapest to its Western orientation. He wants to mend relations with the EU, which has withheld funds from Hungary over concerns of corruption and democratic backsliding.

But Brussels is reportedly scaling back its criticism of Orbán to avoid perceptions of election interference.

European leaders voiced relief over a reassuring speech by the US secretary of state, but nevertheless warned that the transatlantic relationship had irreparably fractured.

Marco Rubio’s address to an annual gathering of security officials in Munich was part of efforts to reset rocky ties between once-close allies, and he repeatedly insisted the US had an “unbreakable link” with Europe.

While his remarks were broadly welcomed, European leaders pointed to American actions over the past year — trade pressure, demands to annex European lands, curbing support to Ukraine, to name a few — as having created a permanent rift. “I don’t think we will be doing business as usual,” Latvia’s prime minister told Politico.

Evidence mounted that long-running global efforts to block nuclear proliferation were faltering.

France has suggested it could anchor a Europe-wide nuclear deterrent, proposals to which Estonia and Latvia have voiced openness, while Poland’s president has called for Warsaw to pursue its own independent capabilities to face down an “aggressive, imperial Russia.” The shift is not just evident in Europe: Satellite imagery analyzed by The New York Times showed that China was rapidly expanding its own nuclear arsenal, readying for “a new age of superpower rivalry.”

The momentum coincides with the expiry of a US-Russia nonproliferation treaty this month, and as diplomatic efforts to curtail other nuclear weapons buildouts — by Iran and North Korea — appear to stall or reverse.