June 21 update

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, claimed his forces were “destroying” Russian troops in the east and south of the country. He also said that Russia had launched an aerial assault on Ukraine on Tuesday, but almost all of its drones were shot down. The Kremlin accused Ukraine of planning an attack on Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister, warned that any strike on Crimea using Western weapons would drag America and Britain into the conflict.

President Joe Biden referred to Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart, as a “dictator”. During a fundraiser in California, Mr Biden remarked that Mr Xi did not know that the Chinese balloon shot down earlier this year was carrying “spy equipment”, and that such unawareness is a “great embarrassment for dictators”. China is yet to respond to the comments.

Son Masayoshi, SoftBank’s boss, said the investment group will shift to “offence mode” after spending nearly three years selling assets and scaling back investments to shore up its finances. Speaking at SoftBank’s annual general meeting, Mr Son said that investments would focus on AI startups. The group reported an annual loss of $6.9bn in the financial year ending in March.

A Canadian aircraft reportedly detected “banging sounds” in the search zone for the Titan submersible that went missing on Sunday. According to American media outlets, search crews heard the sounds at 30-minute intervals. America’s coast guard is leading the rescue effort across an area of 20,000 sq km (7,700 sq miles). It estimates that the submersible has 30 hours of oxygen left.

Hunter Biden, the son of America’s president, will plead guilty to two counts of wilful failure to pay federal income tax. Mr Biden has agreed to probation. He will also be charged, but not prosecuted, for having lied about his use of illegal drugs on a background-check form to buy a gun in 2018. The saga will now hang over the re-election campaign of President Joe Biden, who has backed his son.

The European Commission proposed adding €66bn ($72bn) to its seven-year budget, with €50bn earmarked to support Ukraine until 2027. Around €15bn will be used to tackle rising migration. The EU’s executive arm wants to reduce its economic exposure to rivals. A related plan, unveiled on Tuesday, would increase funding for emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and renewable energy.

At least 41 women were killed—many of them burnt to death—after violent clashes between rival gangs at a women’s prison in Tamara, Honduras. The head of the country’s prison system blamed the violence on attempts to crack down on “organised crime” inside jails. Xiomara Castro, Honduras’s president, promised to respond with “drastic measures”.

Figure of the day: 8%, the proportion by which bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa fell in real terms in 2022. Read the full story.

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PHOTO: AP

Hunter Biden gets a deal

This week Hunter Biden, the American president’s famously troubled son, will appear in federal court in Delaware. On Tuesday Mr Biden reached a deal with prosecutors: he will plead guilty to two misdemeanours over his failure to pay more than $200,000 in taxes between 2017 and 2018, and serve a two-year probation for allegedly lying about his drug use on a background-check form when purchasing a gun. He will probably not serve prison time.

Donald Trump, who faces his own federal indictment, likened Mr Biden’s punishment to a “traffic ticket”. Prosecutors, he complained, had underhandedly “cleared everything up”. Indeed many Republicans have accused Hunter and Joe Biden of evading charges for corruption, alleging that they took bribes from foreigners in exchange for policy concessions.

Republicans have failed to substantiate those claims, though they are still trying. Instead their probe has revealed how Hunter Biden capitalised on his father’s name. That may be unseemly, but it is not illegal.

PHOTO: AP

The cost of rebuilding Ukraine

Russia’s war against Ukraine has devastated infrastructure, industry and housing. The World Bank estimates the cost of repairing the damage to be at least $411bn. On Wednesday a two-day conference in London will begin to discuss how to raise that money and how to spend it.

Delegates include diplomats from Ukraine and its allies, as well as big donors, multilateral financial institutions, businesses and civil-society groups. Ukraine wants the West to use frozen Russian funds to pay for reconstruction. Some in the room will be worried about corruption when massive donations are made.

One question is how much more detail Ukraine’s government can add to its previous plan, presented last July. Ukraine wants to “build back better”, raising infrastructure standards in line with the EU. But exactly where it rebuilds depends on how much territory it can reclaim from Russia. Meanwhile war damage, including the ecologically disastrous destruction of the Kakhovka dam, continues to mount.

PHOTO: AP

Modi’s International Yoga Day

Narendra Modi will mark International Yoga Day on Wednesday by leading a mass session at the UN headquarters in New York. The annual celebration is a UN initiative that was launched, at the Indian prime minister’s urging, in 2015, the year after he came to power.

Critics of Mr Modi’s Hindu-nationalist agenda have treated his yoga evangelism with suspicion, given the practice’s Hindu origins. “Om”—a yoga chant—is considered a sacred sound in Hindu scripture. The Sun Salutation, a common set of yoga poses, is associated with Hindu prayer. Others note that yoga’s popularity in the West, which Yoga Day is intended to reinforce, is positive and culturally inclusive.

Mr Modi, who urges practising yoga daily, appears to have been mainly motivated to underline the activity’s association with India. It is one of the many examples of the prime minister’s flair for branding and marketing—of his country and himself.

PHOTO: AFP

Britain’s stubborn inflation troubles

Figures due on Wednesday will probably show that Britain’s annual rate of consumer-price inflation fell again in May, from April’s 8.7%. But on Thursday the Bank of England will all but certainly raise its benchmark interest rate, currently 4.5%, for the 13th consecutive meeting. Inflation in Britain is not only the highest in the G7 but looking worryingly persistent. The “core” measure (excluding food, energy, alcohol and tobacco) rose unexpectedly in April. In a still-tight labour market, wage growth has picked up.

Fretful markets have priced in higher rates. Two-year gilt yields are above the peak that followed last autumn’s catastrophic mini-budget, and this week briefly topped 5%. Mortgage-holders whose fixed-rate deals are ending face eye-watering increases: the average two-year rate now exceeds 6%, reports Moneyfacts, a data provider, against 2.59% in June 2021. The central bank seems baffled. Having been too optimistic about inflation, it is commissioning an external review of its forecasting. Its 2% target seems far off.

PHOTO: ALAMY

Where are Glastonbury’s female headliners?

Too few showers mean many revellers at the Glastonbury Festival, which is Britain's largest and begins on Wednesday, will be stale, pale and male. But they do not expect the same of the acts. Emily Eavis, the organiser, aspires to fill half of the lineup with female artists. She also consciously books acts from a range of genres and ethnic backgrounds. But when it comes to picking headliners, she says that is difficult.

The star acts this year—Arctic Monkeys, Elton John and Guns n’ Roses—are all white men who are veterans of the music business. The industry has a “pipeline” problem, Ms Eavis argues, with too few female-fronted acts getting the investment or radio airplay needed to become headliners. Others argue that Lizzo, a black female pop star who will perform before Guns n’ Roses, could have had their slot. But the problem goes beyond Glastonbury. According to Sky News across 104 British festivals this summer, only a fifth of headline acts are fronted by women.