Ursula von der Leyen says Europe has entered an “era of rearmament”, after Donald Trump paused all US military aid to Ukraine last night. The European Commission president has outlined plans to mobilise €800bn of new defence spending. More than half the world’s adults and a third of young people will be overweight or obese by 2050, according to a new global study. Experts point out that the research, published in The Lancet, doesn’t consider the potential impact of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. Mice perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on unconscious companions. Researchers in California found that in more than half of cases, rodents rushed to revive drugged friends, pawing at their chests, licking their faces and pulling on their tongues to clear their airways.

How Ukraine can fight on without America

Americans are convinced that without their help, Ukraine is doomed, says Gideon Rachman in the FT. A former top defence official tells me a cessation of military aid could “cripple Ukraine within weeks”, essentially handing the country to Putin. But in Kyiv last week I encountered a far more positive attitude among Ukrainians actually involved in the conflict. This was not mere bravado but a “reasoned assessment of how the war is being fought”. Specifically, Ukraine’s expertise in drone warfare, honed over three years of fighting, has fundamentally “changed the nature of the conflict”. The boss of one major drone firm argues it would now be impossible for Russia to mount a serious assault on Kyiv: “Any large concentration of troops or tanks would be decimated by Ukrainian drone attacks.”

This tech, manufactured in Ukraine, accounts for a major chunk of the “shocking losses” Russia has taken over the past year – some 400,000 troops killed or wounded, for a territorial gain of just 0.5% of the country’s land. Admittedly the Ukrainian military relies, for now, on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network to connect and fly their drones, and US intelligence helps identify profitable targets. But with European assistance, those in the know believe Ukraine could find workarounds to keep fighting. Rather than physically conquering all of Ukraine’s territory, Putin’s preferred outcome is now installing a “pro-Moscow puppet government in Kyiv”. That’s why he, “with Donald Trump’s support”, is suddenly pressing for elections in Ukraine. But even massive Russian interference might not be enough to deprive Volodymyr Zelensky of electoral victory. Ironically, Trump has just given him a “huge boost in the opinion polls”.

💪⛷️ Donald Trump and JD Vance played the tough guys in the Oval Office, but “Zelensky is the real thing”. At the start of the war, he stayed in Kyiv when Russian forces were closing in and the city was under bombardment. “Vance, by contrast, chose to move to a secure location when confronted with a few hecklers on a skiing trip this weekend.”