Russia’s Demands, Renaming Another Gulf, Rate Policies, & Robots With Feelings

May 8, 2025

Hello, readers – happy Thursday! Today, we’ll be talking about deportations, Vance’s opinion on Russia, China’s visit to Moscow, tension with Denmark, interest rates, the Persian Gulf, and Amazon’s sensitive robots.

Here’s some good news: Salt Lake City adopted three new city flags in hopes of getting around a new Utah law that effectively banned flying LGBTQ+ Pride and other flags at public buildings in the state. The new flags incorporate the city’s flag into designs celebrating Juneteenth, LGBTQ rights, and trans rights. Also, the CDC released new figures that found that diabetes deaths in the U.S. have fallen to some of the lowest rates in years.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Vermont Is The Venue

(Free Rümeysa Öztürk protest sign by Erin Clark via Getty Images)

Yesterday, a New York federal appeals court ruled that Rümeysa Öztürk must be moved from a detention center (read: prison) in Louisiana to another in Vermont. Öztürk is the Tufts University doctoral student who was stopped in the street by ICE agents, who eventually dragged her into their unmarked black van. According to the Trump administration, her crime was writing an essay in a Tufts university paper criticizing the school’s refusal to condemn “the Ongoing Genocide in Gaza” – the White House said that her writing amounted to engaging “in activities in support of Hamas.”

After being shuffled around ICE prisons, Öztürk eventually landed at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center. The facility, a privately-owned prison, has been repeatedly dinged for abusing prisoners. “The District of Vermont is likely the proper venue to adjudicate Öztürk’s habeas petition because, at the time she filed, she was physically in Vermont,” the New York court wrote in its ruling.

While it took a setback in its case against Öztürk, the Trump administration is continuing on its warpath against immigrants. Yesterday, a U.S. official told NPR that Washington is planning to deport migrants to Libya, though the Trump White House hasn’t yet confirmed that plan. Given the country’s record of mistreating immigrants, though, our bet is on the news being real.

Crashing Out On The Kremlin

Vice President JD Vance highlighted a rare Trump White House disagreement with Moscow yesterday, saying that Russia is “asking for too much” in negotiations to end its war with Ukraine during a gathering of international diplomats during the Munich Leaders Meeting in Washington.

Apparently, Russia has declined a 30-day ceasefire agreement, and U.S. diplomats are now looking to iron out a longer-term peace deal. “We would like both the Russians and the Ukrainians to actually agree on some basic guidelines for sitting down and talking to one another,” Vance added. “That is the next big step we’d like to take.”

But things weren’t so great for Russia yesterday either. As world leaders flew into Moscow to participate in celebrations for the 80th anniversary of Victory Day (more on that later), the country was struck by a massive wave of Ukrainian drone attacks. Over 60,000 people had their flights delayed across the nation, and some leaders were forced to divert their travel plans to play it safe.

More Ammo For The Trade War

(Xi Jinping in Moscow by Grigory Sysoev/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Chinese President Xi Jinping began a four-day visit to Russia yesterday. The visit coincides with a massive Victory Day parade thrown by the Kremlin in celebration of the end of World War II in Europe – Russia celebrates Victory Day more than other countries due to the fact that more than 26 million USSR citizens (including over 8 million Soviet soldiers) died during the conflict. To put those staggering losses into context, Germany experienced a maximum of 7.4 million total deaths during the war, including both civilians and soldiers.
As Xi touched down in Moscow, the People’s Bank of China announced that it would be cutting interest rates, allowing money to flow through the country as its trade war with the U.S. continues. The rate cuts include a half-percent cut to the bank’s reserve requirement ratio, letting it disburse 1 trillion yuan ($138.4 billion) into China’s economy, as well as another 0.1 percent tweak to another key interest rate, which will let even more money flow. Pan Gongsheng, the bank’s governor, said the rate cuts are a response to a global economy “full of uncertainties, with intensified economic fragmentation and trade tensions.”

Greenland Gives A Red Card

Denmark? More like Discipline-mark! Yesterday, Denmark announced that it plans to summon the U.S. ambassador to Copenhagen for a dressing-down. The planned chastising session comes in response to reports that the White House has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to expand their spying operations in Greenland, the Danish territory that Trump has repeatedly talked about annexing.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that, according to multiple anonymous U.S. intelligence sources, top U.S. intelligence community officials had passed down a directive to the CIA, NSA, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, ordering them to learn more about the Greenland independence movement and locals’ responses to U.S. claims on the island. “It worries me a lot, because we don’t spy between friends,” said Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen.

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Powell Plays It Cool

The Federal Reserve kept interest rates steady for the third consecutive meeting yesterday, voting unanimously to keep the federal funds rate at a range of 4.25% to 4.5%. However, new language in the Fed’s closely watched policy statement said the committee “judges that the risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation have risen.”
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said, “The administration is entering into negotiations with many countries over tariffs. We’ll know more with each week and month it goes by where about where tariffs are going to land.” The main concern is deciding which way to go – with tariff-driven inflation, higher rates would be necessary, but a tariff-fueled slowdown in hiring and economic growth would warrant lowering rates.

The President Presses The Persians

President Trump is a big fan of renaming things – for example, the Gulf of Mexico is the Gulf of America, Mt. Denali is Mt. McKinley, and President Trump was the winner of the 2020 election. He’s got something else in his sights now – during his trip to Saudi Arabia next week, the president is expected to announce that the U.S. will now call the Persian Gulf the Arabian Gulf or the Gulf of Arabia.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said he hoped the rumor was disinformation. “If Trump went ahead with the proposal he would manage to unite every Iranian, pro- or anti-regime, against him, and that is a near impossible achievement,” one diplomat said. The news comes as the U.S. tries to negotiate the future of Iran’s nuclear program, so, not exactly ideal timing.

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A Touching Piece Of Tech

Amazon has developed a robot that’s capable of feeling. Not feeling emotion (is Jeff Bezos even capable of that?), we’re talking about feeling in the sense of touch. Yesterday, the e-commerce giant announced the launch of its Vulcan robot, a machine that consists of an arm that can feel out the contours of items on shelves via a variety of sensors, and will be used to assist warehouse workers in moving boxes from hard-to-reach shelves. In a few years, it’ll probably just replace those workers entirely, but that’s going to take quite a bit of development.
“The human sense of touch is extremely sensitive and complex, with a huge dynamic range,” said one robotics expert. “Robots are progressing rapidly but I’d be surprised to see human-equivalent [skin] sensors in the next five-to-10 years.” According to Amazon, the tech giant is looking to leverage its machine learning capabilities to help Vulcan adapt quicker.
“The special sauce we have is the software interpretation of the force torque and how we wrap those into our control loop and into our motion plans,” said Amazon’s director of robotics AI. “We don’t really believe in 100 percent automation, or lights out fulfillment,” he added, promising that the robot won’t replace all human jobs. “We can get to 75 percent and have robots working alongside our employees, and the sum would be greater” than just humans or robots working alone. How human!

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