President Donald Trump agreed to delay tariffs of 25% on imports from Canada and Mexico, due to take effect on Tuesday, by a month. The countries pledged to step up efforts to stop the smuggling of fentanyl into America. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose by nearly 4% after Mr Trump said he would hold talks with China, raising hopes that the world’s second-largest economy could also secure a tariff delay.
Marco Rubio, America’s secretary of state, announced that he had become acting director of USAID and that the development agency would in effect be absorbed by the State Department. He said “a lot of functions” would continue as long as they aligned with America’s foreign policy. Earlier, USAID employees were told not to report to work and hundreds lost access to their email accounts.
In his first interview since becoming Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa told The Economist he would take the country in “the direction of” democracy and promised to hold presidential elections. He called America’s military presence in Syria “illegal”, welcomed negotiations with Russia about its military bases and warned Israel that its recent advance into Syria “will cause a lot of trouble in the future”.
Anthropic, an artificial-intelligence startup, unveiled a new safeguarding technique to stop users generating illegal or harmful content from its large-language models. It says its “constitutional classifiers” filtered 95% of “jailbreaking” attempts during a trial. Other tech giants, such as Microsoft and Meta, are also racing to develop methods to stop users accessing such information.
Shares in Palantir closed at a record high on Monday and rose another 23% in after-hours trading after the American data firm forecast revenue of around $3.75bn this year. The average analyst estimate was $3.5bn. The company, which supplies software that can analyse sensitive data, looks set to benefit from Mr Trump’s focus on national security.
Addressing European Union leaders in Brussels, Sir Keir Starmer said that Britain need not “choose” between closer trade ties with America or the EU. The prime minister called for a “reset” in relations with the bloc after Brexit, including greater military co-operation. Mr Trump seems eager to impose tariffs on the EU, but has been unclear about whether he will do so to Britain.
Jenni Hermoso, who led the Spanish women’s football team to a World Cup victory in 2023, gave evidence at the trial of Luis Rubiales, the former head of Spanish football. Mr Rubiales, who kissed Ms Hermoso when giving medals to her team, is accused of sexual assault and of later trying to coerce Ms Hermoso into saying that the kiss was consensual. (He has apologised and denies all charges.)
Figure of the day: 13, the number of people employed by America’s State Department in its “office of diversity and inclusion” last year. Read the full story.
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