After President Trump's summit with President Vladimir Putin last week, and his meeting on Monday with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and several E.U. leaders, the most likely next step is more meetings. Here's what you need to know.
Monday's talks at the White House produced few public signs of progress toward peace in Ukraine. Trump said he intended to focus on setting up a meeting between Putin and Zelensky. Putin has said he's willing to talk with Ukraine's leader, though the Kremlin has issued no formal confirmation, and Russia's foreign minister yesterday threw cold water on the potential for any talks, according to state media.
After leaving the Oval Office, Zelensky said, "There is still a lot of work to be done."
Military aid:
Zelensky said Ukraine would receive $90 billion in American weaponry, including sorely needed air defense systems and war planes. How Ukraine would pay for them remained unclear. It is likely that European countries and allies of NATO will foot much of the bill.
Security guarantees:
The White House meetings ended without a formal agreement on Ukrainian security, and European leaders yesterday scrambled to figure out exactly what it would look like. Trump said that no American ground troops would be sent to Ukraine, but that the U.S. could help in other ways, such as providing air support. But without U.S. troops on the ground, it's not clear just how much America could deter Russia.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain called for an international force stationed in Ukraine, which could range from hundreds to tens of thousands of troops. Trump has suggested that Russia would accept European troop deployments, even though Russia has frequently rejected the idea.
Successes:
Zelensky and other European leaders have learned how to work with Trump. Instead of being reprimanded and asked to leave, as Zelensky was during a White House visit earlier this year, he received a warm welcome, promises of U.S. weapons sales and more efforts to broker a face-to-face meeting with Putin.
Overnight, Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and missiles.
Netanyahu under pressure over a proposed Gaza cease-fire
Some far-right members of Israel's governing coalition ruled out a proposed hostage deal with Hamas, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had yet to state his position.
The deal would see the release of some of the remaining hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. A cease-fire would effectively halt Netanyahu's plan to invade Gaza City.
Indonesian rainforests are being cleared to build U.S. motor homes
American motor home manufacturers have relied for decades on a crucial import: an Indonesian wood called lauan. The timber is processed into plywood that is lightweight, moisture-resistant and flexible.
Motor home manufacturers consider lauan irreplaceable for features like cabinets and interior walls. But conservation groups said that the industry's demand has accelerated deforestation in Borneo, where rainforests have been razed in the past five years.
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- Vietnam: A new crowdfunding campaign for Cuba, which sent doctors and food during the war, has raised more than $13 million.
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MORNING READ
Paris is particularly ill-adapted to heat waves. In 2023, the medical journal The Lancet deemed it the European capital whose residents were most exposed to heat-related deaths.
But city planners say they are taking steps to prepare for temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius that could force cellphone services to cut out, hospitals to shut down and asphalt streets to melt. They're planting trees, insulating apartments and converting schools to cooling centers. "It's a race against time," a city councilor and environmental engineer said.
Lives lived: Joe Caroff, a quiet giant in graphic design who created the 007 James Bond logo, died at 103.
CONVERSATION STARTERS
- Moving day: A beloved church in Sweden is being slowly wheeled to a new site over two days to save it from unstable ground.
- City lovers: Two coyotes, named Romeo and Juliet, have quietly made New York's Central Park their home.
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ARTS AND IDEAS
A classical musical score seems straightforward: Play the notes as the composer intended, following tempo indications like "allegro" or "andante." But musicians struggle to interpret oblique, ambiguous or outright surreal paratext, the words and images sometimes jotted alongside the score by the composer.
The most famous example is Erik Satie, who once asked musicians to play "like a nightingale with a toothache." George Crumb went beyond written suggestions, producing otherworldly scores in spirals, mandalas or cruciform shapes to coax performers into approaching his music as ritual.
"The words don't tell you what to do," a violist said. "They tell you how to be."