Good morning. It has been a heavy week of news, the kind where the ground shifts in more than one place at once. If you only have a few minutes this Sunday, here is what actually matters and why.
In today's newsletter: Assam's flood toll surges past 60.
What's worth your time off
New on OTT. Kay Kay Menon leads Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya, a seven-episode dramedy about a government-school headmaster trying to fix a broken system after a Cambridge trip is dangled in front of his teachers. |
Assam's flood toll climbs past 60 as 7 lakh people are hit
The death toll in Assam's floods has climbed to 61, with 14 people killed in a single 24-hour stretch as the Brahmaputra and its tributaries stayed above the danger mark across a dozen districts.
Over 7 lakh people are now affected, with Sivasagar the worst hit at nearly 3.5 lakh residents. Close to 900 villages have gone under, tens of thousands of hectares of standing crop are submerged, and lakhs of people are riding out the flood in relief camps rather than at home.
This is not a one-off bad monsoon. Scientists point to a warming climate as the reason South Asia's rains are arriving in shorter, far more intense bursts than the steady seasonal pattern of even a decade ago, which is exactly what has overwhelmed the Brahmaputra this year.
The death toll is the headline, but the quieter failure is logistics: relief material has not yet reached an estimated 80,000 affected people, many in pockets cut off by silt and mud that road crews have not been able to clear.
Breaking.exe
Open-weight united front. Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta and roughly two dozen other companies, joined late by OpenAI, published a joint letter urging Washington not to impose premature restrictions on open-weight AI models, warning that curbs would only hand China's AI industry an opening. |
Altman's side bet. World, the biometric identity startup Sam Altman co-founded, raised $52.5 million through a crypto token sale led by Pantera Capital, separate from his day job running OpenAI. |
Midjourney's odd pivot. Image-generation lab Midjourney acquired Co-Star, the social astrology app with 4.3 million monthly users, a sign AI labs are hunting for consumer reach well outside their core products. |
Pangaea Revisited
Iran war, night 13. The US bombed Iran for a 13th consecutive night after their ceasefire collapsed, with Tehran rejecting a fresh truce proposal even as Trump claimed Iran was growing "more serious" about talks. |
Kyiv hit again. A Russian ballistic missile struck an arms exhibition in Kyiv, killing at least 10 people and injuring around 100, prompting Ukraine's prosecutor general to open an inquiry into whether the event's risks were properly assessed. |
Gaza police chief killed. An Israeli strike killed the head of the Hamas-led police force in northern Gaza, part of a campaign that has killed dozens of police officers since last October's ceasefire took effect. |
Also, Also, Also
India's first CWG medal. Weightlifter Jhandu Kumar won India's opening medal of the Commonwealth Games 2026, a bronze in the men's heavyweight category in Glasgow. |
Series sealed in Harare. India beat Zimbabwe by 90 runs in the second T20I, with half-centuries from Tilak Varma and Ishan Kishan wrapping up the series with a match still to spare. |
A quiet earnings beat. Among 23 companies reporting first-quarter results on Saturday was IDFC First Bank, whose profit climbed sharply from a year earlier. |