The US has severed intelligence sharing with Ukraine, dramatically weakening Kyiv’s ability to identify Russian targets and making it harder for Ukrainian cities to receive sufficient warning ahead of air strikes. EU leaders are meeting in Brussels today to discuss what Emmanuel Macron has described as a “turning point in history”. Ministers have criticised plans to make criminals’ ethnicity a greater factor in deciding whether to jail them, saying it amounts to a “two-tier” justice system. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood says the Sentencing Council should reverse its guidance, which advises magistrates and judges to consider an offender’s background, motives and personal life if they belong to certain groups, including ethnic or faith minorities. The 1975, Neil Young and Olivia Rodrigo will headline this summer’s Glastonbury festival, alongside Charli XCX, The Libertines, Scissor Sisters and Nile Rodgers. They join Rod Stewart, who had already been announced for Sunday night’s “legends” slot.

Trump’s “charter for criminals”

Four years ago, says Edward Luce in the FT, Donald Trump said bitcoin was a “scam”. On Sunday, he announced that the cryptocurrency (and four other digital coins) would be held by the US Federal Reserve to help make America the “crypto capital of the world”. To see that as a U-turn is to misunderstand how Trump works: “the second statement follows naturally from the first”. Trump and his wife have both launched “memecoins”; Elon Musk is a major crypto owner, as is Trump’s “crypto and AI czar” David Sacks. The crypto reserve is an “insurance floor” for these billionaires – if the price falls, the Fed can simply “step in and buy more”.

More shockingly, a few hours after Sunday’s announcement, Trump scrapped America’s chief anti-money laundering measure which forces shell companies to declare their “beneficial owner”. Better informed readers may know of a reason why a legitimate business would disguise its ultimate ownership. “I cannot think of one.” Trump made some half-hearted noises about red tape strangling small businesses, but that’s balls: complying with anti-money laundering rules involves filling out a couple of short forms. I’m reminded of the 2017 Reuters investigation which found that a third of the units in Trump’s towers were anonymously owned, and that Russian passport holders had invested at least $98m in Trump-branded Florida condos. A month ago, he shut down the Justice Department’s anti-kleptocracy initiative, which does things like seizing mega-yachts from sanctioned Russian oligarchs. It’s harder and harder to believe Trump is merely “flooding the zone”, when all his actions point in one direction. What’s striking about his “charter for criminals” is how little effort is being made to dress it up. “This pig has no lipstick.”

Five weeks ago, says Anton Troianovski in The New York Times, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was delivering his routine speech blasting the “hegemonic, egoistic” US. But in an interview on Russian state TV on Sunday, the 74-year-old veteran diplomat listed the ills that Europe, not America, had brought upon the world. “Colonisation, wars, crusaders, the Crimean War, Napoleon, World War One, Hitler,” he said. “If we look at history in retrospect, the Americans did not play any instigating, let alone incendiary, role.” Similarly head-spinning changes are afoot across the Russian propaganda machine – almost overnight, the US has gone “from evil mastermind to innocent bystander”. Can’t imagine why.

Tesla owners in the US are coming up with creative ways to distance themselves from Elon Musk, says Fred Lambert in Electrek. Some are covering their car’s Tesla branding with the logos of rival car makers, while others are adding stickers reading things like: “I bought this car before I knew Elon was crazy”.

Ukraine can’t win, but nor can Russia

Donald Trump said during last week’s Oval Office spat that Ukraine is “not winning” the war. That may be so, says Graeme Wood in The Atlantic, but Russia definitely isn’t winning either – and its position is “perhaps more agonising”. Last year, its troops conquered 4,000 sq km of largely unpopulated Ukrainian territory, containing just two operationally significant towns. These measly gains came at enormous cost: tens of thousands killed or wounded; 500 tanks and 1,000 armoured personnel carriers lost. An analyst at the Institute for the Study of War estimates that unless North Korea or China send over more vehicles, Moscow’s stocks will run “critically low” in the next year or so. The Russians have already been spotted transporting kit with mules – typically reserved for rugged landscapes – on Ukrainian flatlands.

Moscow’s ability to bolster its manpower is also “completely busted”. It is mostly relying on mercenaries and convict soldiers, and offering lucrative bonuses for ordinary Russians willing to “try their luck” against Ukraine’s killer drones. Some recruits have been offered as much as $36,000 just to sign up, the equivalent of around three years’ pay. Given inflation is approaching 20% and interest rates are a crippling 21%, this is the “very definition of desperation”. One way or another, this war will end in a deal. If that deal happens now, it could spare the lives of a million Russians and Ukrainians. If it doesn’t, and Russia cannot accelerate its snail-paced advance, then Kyiv only has to hold out and suffer another year or so before Moscow will be forced to concede. This position is unenviable, “but it’s not a losing one”.

We flight attendants get up to all sorts of japes to keep ourselves entertained, says Paula Gahan in The Daily Telegraph. One is the “cheerio” game: as passengers are leaving the plane, you signal to your colleagues which ones you think are attractive by waving them off with a “cheerio” rather than a “goodbye”. Then there’s “crop dusting”. This is when, rather than breaking wind next to your fellow crew members in the cramped confines of the galley, you walk “briskly down the aisle while releasing some pressure”. And if there’s some “Karen” who’s been complaining at you all flight, well, you might just “linger a little longer by her seat”.

Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, shares in the six biggest US defence firms have fallen by an average of 4%, says Foreign Policy, while the shares of Europe’s largest defence groups have surged by almost 40%. One reason is that when foreign governments buy US weapons, Washington has a say in how those weapons are used. European buyers don’t want to risk the Trump administration blocking the use of US-bought kit against the Russians.

It’s a “megalodon” goldfish that was found in Lake Erie, Pennsylvania last week, says People magazine. The rugby-ball-sized creature is more than 10 times the average size for its species. Federal wildlife officials used the discovery to remind owners to “re-home” unwanted goldfish rather than dumping them in waterways, where they can steal food from native fish and create an “invasive problem that can last decades”.