The Beijing summit ends in choreography without substance, Trump tells Taiwan to stand down, and Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign reaches new geography as Russia doubles its nightly drone barrages.

Trump Warns Taiwan Against Independence, Signals Retreat on Arms Sales

Hours after his summit with Xi Jinping, Trump warned Taiwan not to declare independence and said both sides should “cool it,” while remaining noncommittal on continued arms sales to Taipei. He explicitly said he was not “asking for any favors” from China regarding Taiwan — suggesting the island’s security is now in play as a bargaining chip. The statements mark a significant departure from longstanding bipartisan US support for Taiwan’s military deterrence and risk emboldening Beijing at a moment when the broader summit produced warm words but no concrete trade, Iran, or human rights outcomes.

BBC World · Politico · Al Jazeera · CNBC

Ukraine’s Deep Strikes Reach Stavropol; Russia Launches 294-Drone Wave

Chemical plant burns in Nevinnomyssk, Stavropol Krai, after Ukrainian drone strike. Photo: Ukrainska Pravda

A Ukrainian drone struck a chemical plant in Nevinnomyssk, Stavropol Krai — a new geographic reach for the deep-strike campaign. Overnight, Ukraine also hit a missile boat and minesweeper at the Kaspiysk Naval Base (Caspian Flotilla, Dagestan) and destroyed a Be-200 amphibious aircraft at Yeysk Airbase, confirmed by satellite imagery. In the opposite direction, Russia launched 294 drones — nearly double the previous night’s 141 — striking 24 locations; Ukraine downed 269. Separately, Zelensky published Russian reconnaissance documents showing Moscow has prepared strike plans against roughly 20 facilities frequented by senior Ukrainian officials, including the presidential administration. The pattern: probe defenses, deplete interceptors, then hit leadership targets.

Ukrainska Pravda · United24 · Ukrainska Pravda — drones · Kyiv Independent

IS ‘Second-in-Command’ Killed in Joint US-Nigeria Operation

Trump speaks to reporters on Air Force One after announcing the operation. Photo: Reuters

US and Nigerian forces killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, described as Islamic State’s global second-in-command and “the most active terrorist in the world,” in what Trump called a “very complex mission.” Al-Minuki had been designated a global terrorist by the US in 2023. The operation highlights the continued importance of US counter-terrorism partnerships in West Africa as IS has significantly expanded its Sahel presence.

BBC World · The Guardian · Al Jazeera

Indicator	Value	Change
S&P 500	7,408.5	−1.24%
Nasdaq	26,225	−1.54%
VIX	18.43	+6.78%
Gold	4,562	−2.63%
BTC	$78,331	−3.08%
EUR/USD	1.1627	+0.04%
USD/NOK	9.3046	0.00%

Broad selloff, VIX +6.8% — Trump-Xi summit closed with warm words but no trade framework; markets priced in disappointment.
Gold −2.6% despite risk-off tone — unusual divergence, possibly position unwinding after recent run to record highs.

World

Beijing Summit Ends With Warm Words but Few Concrete Deals

Trump’s two-day visit — the first US presidential trip to Beijing in nearly a decade — concluded with both leaders calling talks “very successful” but yielded little clarity on trade, Taiwan, or Iran. Trump announced China agreed to purchase 200 Boeing planes, though neither Boeing nor Beijing confirmed. The choreography outpaced the substance: no trade breakthroughs, no specifics on disputed issues, and Trump was told the case of jailed Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai was “a tough one.” On Iran, Trump and Xi reached verbal alignment that Tehran cannot acquire nuclear weapons, with Trump saying he would accept a 20-year suspension of Iran’s nuclear program if it shows “real” commitment. China publicly called the Iran war pointless.

BBC World · The Guardian · Al Jazeera · Reuters

German Chancellor Merz: I Would Not Advise My Children to Study or Work in the US

Friedrich Merz publicly stated he would no longer advise his children to pursue opportunities in the United States, citing the “deeply polarising” social and political climate under Trump. Already embroiled in a row with Trump over the Iran war, Merz’s comments reflect a sharp deterioration in European elite opinion of the US — a significant signal given Germany’s historically close postwar relationship with America.

The Guardian

Israel Kills Hamas Military Wing Commander on Nakba Day

Israel killed Izz ad-Din al-Haddad, described as the leader of Hamas’ military wing and “one of the architects of the October 7 massacre,” in an airstrike on Gaza City. Separate strikes the same day killed at least seven Palestinians including three women and a child. The strikes coincided with Nakba Day, as Palestinian flag protests were held across Europe including on the Eiffel Tower.

BBC World · Al Jazeera · NPR

Lebanon-Israel Ceasefire Extended 45 Days as Israeli Strikes Continue

The US State Department announced a 45-day extension of the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire following “productive” talks in Washington. However, Israel struck the southern Lebanese city of Tyre during the extension talks, killing six people. Lebanon’s health ministry says Israeli attacks have killed 2,951 people since March 2. The ceasefire has been repeatedly violated by both sides.

BBC World · The Guardian · Al Jazeera

Iran Claims Strait of Hormuz Authority; UAE Fast-Tracks Bypass Pipeline

Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz is open only to ships cooperating with its navy, and said it is coordinating with Oman on tolls and vessel tracking for all transiting ships. Oman has not confirmed the arrangement. In direct response, the UAE announced it will complete a second oil pipeline bypassing the strait by 2027, doubling its crude export capacity. Separately, hackers believed to be operating on behalf of Iran breached automated tank gauge readers at gas stations across the United States — systems monitoring fuel levels at critical storage infrastructure.

The Guardian — Hormuz · The Guardian — pipeline · CNN — hackers

Rare Bundibugyo Ebola Strain Kills 80 in DRC, Spreads to Uganda

The MV Hondius arrives at Granadilla de Abona — the vessel at the centre of the hantavirus outbreak. Photo: AFP

An outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola — rarer and genetically distinct from the more common Zaire strain — has killed at least 80 in DR Congo’s conflict-ridden Ituri province, with 246 suspected cases. A case has been confirmed in Uganda’s capital Kampala. Containment is severely hampered by active armed conflict. Meanwhile, the WHO confirmed 10 hantavirus cases globally following the MV Hondius cruise ship outbreak that killed three; returning US passengers are housed in Nebraska for 42-day monitoring.

BBC World · The Guardian · Al Jazeera — hantavirus · NPR

Supreme Court Deals Major Blow to Voting Rights Act

The Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that states cannot consider race in redistricting, effectively striking a core protection of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Southern states from Tennessee to Alabama have moved swiftly to erase majority-Black congressional districts ahead of midterms. Separately, the Court rejected Virginia Democrats’ congressional maps without noted dissent, costing the party a potential four-seat gain in the closely divided House.

The Guardian · NPR

UK and 45 European Nations Endorse Asylum Seeker Deportation to Third-Country Hubs

All 46 members of the Council of Europe — including the UK — signed a political declaration endorsing plans to send rejected asylum seekers to third-country processing hubs. Human rights organizations immediately condemned the agreement. The deal legitimizes at the multilateral level what had been controversial bilateral schemes and signals a continent-wide shift toward externalized migration enforcement.

The Guardian

Keir Starmer’s Labour Leadership in Crisis

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces intensifying leadership pressure, with Labour figures openly discussing successors including Andy Burnham, Wes Streeting, and Angela Rayner. A disastrous week has left Starmer looking like an “interim leader” — with the Westminster question shifting from whether to when. Former leader Jeremy Corbyn said he felt personal sympathy while noting the structural dynamics pushing Starmer toward the exit.

The Guardian · The Guardian

Also today

World

Mali junta launches airstrikes against rebel alliance with Russian mercenary support — The Guardian
Cuba faces acute crisis: nationwide blackouts spark protests, CIA director reportedly visits Havana, Trump administration preparing to indict 94-year-old Raúl Castro — BBC · The Guardian
Switzerland to declassify secret files on Nazi “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele — BBC
Harvey Weinstein’s third New York rape trial ends in mistrial — second hung jury in a year — BBC · NPR
FDA’s top drug regulator fired after declining to resign — deepens oversight concerns — The Guardian
Pentagon secretly dismantled legally required program to track and prevent civilian deaths — The Guardian

Climate

Climate change systematically depleting dissolved oxygen in rivers worldwide; super El Niño risk grows — AP News · BBC Weather

Ukraine

Russian Strike on Kyiv Kills 24 — Zelensky Vows Response

Emergency services search the Darnytskyi district after the May 14 strike on a residential building. Photo: Getty

Russia launched what Ukraine’s air force described as the largest aerial assault of the war, hitting a residential building in Kyiv and killing 24 civilians including three children. Among the victims was 12-year-old Lyubava Yakovleva, whose father had also been killed earlier in the war. Zelensky called Ukraine “entirely justified” in striking Russian energy and military targets in response. A 250-for-250 prisoner swap proceeded the same day despite the attack.

BBC World · Al Jazeera · The Guardian

36 Nations Formally Join Aggression Tribunal

Thirty-six countries have formally joined the special tribunal to prosecute Russia for the crime of aggression, to be based in The Hague. Organizers called it a “point of no return” — though Russia’s refusal to extradite its leaders means prosecutions depend on political circumstance. Trump responded to the May 14 Kyiv strike by saying it “could hinder the peace process” — a notably restrained framing compared to European allies simultaneously building the tribunal and surging air defense. Germany quietly allocated €300M for artillery shells.

Euronews · Ukrainska Pravda · Militarnyi

Ukraine Liberates Odradne; Russia Exploited Ceasefire to Mass Forces

Ukrainian forces recaptured Odradne in Kharkiv Oblast, confirmed by geolocated footage of troops raising a flag in the village center. More concerning: Ukrainian commanders report that Russian forces used the May 9–11 Victory Day ceasefire to quietly accumulate equipment near Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad — including artillery camouflaged under garbage containers and vehicles moved under spring foliage cover. The ceasefire, framed diplomatically as goodwill, functioned operationally as a resupply window.

Ukrinform · ISW Assessment May 15

Russia’s Eastern Advance Stalls; Belarus Offensive Warned

Russia’s territorial advance in eastern Ukraine has slowed to near standstill, with Ukraine successfully cutting supply lines to the front. Ukraine has deployed unmanned ground vehicles to sustain logistics to besieged positions like Kostiantynivka. Simultaneously, Zelensky warned that Russia is actively pressuring Lukashenko to commit Belarusian forces — potentially aimed at Ukraine or a NATO state — as Moscow seeks to open a new front to relieve eastern pressure. He ordered reinforcement of the northern border.

Al Jazeera · United24 Media · Euromaidan Press

Russia’s Budget Deficit Hits 150% of Annual Plan

Russia’s budget deficit reached $78.4B in the first four months of 2026 — 150% of the entire planned full-year deficit. Military and social spending is up 15.7% year-on-year, 209,000 small businesses closed in Q1 partly due to a VAT hike, and regional governments have doubled recruitment bonus spending. Putin publicly claimed “restrained, but positive results,” omitting that GDP contracted in January and February.

Ukraine SZRU

Also today

Russian drones strike UN humanitarian convoy in Kherson — immediate international condemnation — Kyiv Post
ISW notes Russia is launching Kh-101 cruise missiles almost immediately after production — no stockpiling buffer — and missiles still carry Western components from late 2025 and early 2026

Tech

Project Zero: 0-Click Root Exploit Chain for Google Pixel 10

Google Project Zero achieved full kernel code execution on Pixel 10 via a two-stage 0-click chain. Stage one adapts a prior Dolby audio library exploit (CVE-2025-54957) with updated memory offsets and a PAC workaround; stage two exploits a VPU (WAVE677DV) driver mmap handler that remaps physical kernel memory to userspace with no bounds checking. The full chain was developed in under a day. Android patched the VPU flaw within 71 days, but the research flags persistent driver code quality problems in the Android ecosystem.

Project Zero · Hacker News

Orthrus: Dual AR+Diffusion Architecture Achieves 7.8× LLM Inference Speedup

Orthrus combines autoregressive LLMs with diffusion models, sharing the same KV cache natively (O(1) memory overhead), enabling parallel token generation per forward pass. Unlike speculative decoding (e.g. EAGLE-3), no separate draft model is needed — only 16% of parameters are fine-tuned while the base LLM stays frozen. An exact intra-model consensus mechanism guarantees lossless output (identical distribution to the base model). Benchmarks show it outperforms EAGLE-3 with higher token acceptance rates across context lengths.

GitHub · Hacker News

A History of IDEs at Google: From Editor Anarchy to Cider V

Google’s internal Cider IDE. Photo: laurent.le-brun.eu

Google’s IDE evolution: from complete editor freedom (causing fragmentation) to Cider (a cloud IDE built ~2013 around Google’s infrastructure) to Cider V (VSCode frontend + Google backend, launched 2020). By 2023, roughly 80% of development happens in Cider V — enabling concentrated investment, 100+ internal extensions, and AI features like intelligent code completion and automated review comment resolution.

laurent.le-brun.eu · Lobsters

5× Faster Blur in Rust’s image-rs via Integer Arithmetic and Reciprocal Multiplication

Two targeted optimizations brought a 5.9× speedup to image-rs’s fast_blur: replacing float accumulators with u32 integer types eliminated expensive roundf calls (~1.83×), and replacing the div instruction with precomputed reciprocal multiplication plus bit-shifting added ~3× more. A clean example of micro-optimization reasoning on CPU instruction costs, applicable well beyond blur filters.

apas.tel · Lobsters

Git Is Not Fine

A critical look at Git’s design choices and the friction, confusion, and correctness hazards they create for everyday developers. The critique targets fundamental model decisions rather than UX surface issues.

billjings.com · Lobsters

The Emacsification of Software

An analysis of a broader trend toward software designed for user extension in the Emacs tradition — editors, shells, and developer tools increasingly built to be modified rather than consumed as fixed products. Examines what this pattern means for tool design and longevity.

sockpuppet.org · Lobsters

LLM-Assisted Bug Archaeology: Solving a Decade-Old Swift/C++ Crash

A practical account of using LLMs to trace a decade-old crash in Swift/C++ interop. The author uses the model to reconstruct context, trace call chains, and narrow hypotheses — a novel workflow for investigating bugs where original authors and documentation are long gone. A concrete example of LLMs adding genuine value in debugging rather than code generation.

samkhawase.com · Lobsters

SQL: Two Deep Dives

Incorrect by Construction explores using type-level constraints to make invalid SQL queries unrepresentable at compile time — applying the “make illegal states unrepresentable” principle to database access layers. ORDER BY in SQL examines surprising edge cases: NULL ordering, collation behavior, stability guarantees, and database-specific behaviors that silently produce different results across systems.

chreke.com · boringsql.com · Lobsters · Lobsters

Gwern on Media Manipulation: How the NYT Lied About Vaping Using Only True Facts

A detailed essay dissecting how the New York Times systematically misrepresented vaping’s harm profile using exclusively true statements — through selective emphasis, omission of context, and framing choices that collectively produce a false picture. A sharp case study in how “factual” reporting can be structurally dishonest. Relevant beyond vaping as methodology for spotting epistemically manipulative journalism.

gwern.net · Hacker News

Tech’s Control-Based Business Model Depends on US Hegemony — Which Is Eroding

Baldur Bjarnason argues that tech’s strategy of regulatory capture and data monopoly is structurally dependent on US geopolitical enforcement capacity — illustrated by the DMCA’s extraterritorial reach. As US dominance deteriorates (Hormuz closure, tariff conflicts, declining enforcement credibility), the conditions enabling this model collapse. A Gramscian framing: the old is dying and the new cannot be born.

Baldur Bjarnason · Lobsters

Also today

Dev tools & languages

Epiq: distributed git-based issue tracker for the terminal — multi-user collaboration via immutable event logs, no server required — epiq · HN
Why use F# for scripting and automation — type inference, .NET ecosystem, dotnet-script ergonomics — iev.ee · Lobsters
Erlang/OTP 29.0 released — erlang.org
VLDB 2026: How to write to SSDs efficiently — write amplification, block/page granularity, I/O patterns — VLDB

Security

CVE-2026-40369: arbitrary kernel address increment via Windows NtQuerySystemInformation — full exploit published — GitHub
DOJ demands Apple and Google unmask 100,000+ users of car ECU tuning app in emissions crackdown — MacDailyNews · HN

Culture & open source

Julia Evans: moving away from Tailwind toward structured vanilla CSS — 2.8MB minified bundle bloat drove the switch — jvns.ca
Open Source Resistance: take company time for OSS maintenance without asking — ossresistance.com
npm’s structural supply chain problem — satire that points at real design gaps — kevinpatel.xyz
ABC News deletes entire FiveThirtyEight archive — HN
Project Gutenberg continues expanding its digital library — gutenberg.org

cd ~/repos/ratatosk && claude --resume 6aadaddb-7698-4e88-bd34-5641c3dda4d5