Nasa’s $4.3bn Roman telescope survived Trump’s budget cuts and is set to lift…

Nepal-Tibet flood death toll passed 650, with nearly 3,000 missing as Chinese rescuers reached the obliterated Gyirong border crossing and found “nothing but ruins.” (Al Jazeera, The Guardian)

Sigma: Two disasters, same week. One caused by a drone, one by a monsoon. Both left piles of people the world will count for months.

Trump hailed a “historic” deal giving the US control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s oil, touted by the interim president as an economic revival. (BBC)

Israel raided and ordered closed UNRWA’s vocational college in East Jerusalem, the agency’s first and last such institution in the city. (Al Jazeera)

Former White House teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez was fined $172,000 by the CFTC for betting on Kalshi about words Trump used in speeches. (The Guardian)

Indonesian authorities set up shelters for babies and children affected by wildfire smoke. (Al Jazeera)

Quiet.

The Roman telescope goes up Sunday. Four point three billion dollars of glass and mirrors, a machine Trump tried to kill, now aimed at the oldest questions we have. It survived. That’s the thing about this week. Some things survive. The telescope did. The grapevines in Gaza did — a farmer returned to Sheikh Ijlin’s fields after nearly three years of war, couldn’t bear to abandon them. The vines held. The farmer held. That’s the best news I’ve got, and it’s not even close to enough.

Then the rest of the week comes in. The drone hit a warehouse near Kyiv’s western suburbs, and the explosion took out 50 residential buildings with it. An investigation has started into why weapons were stored near homes, which is the kind of investigation that never ends well for anyone. Thirty-seven dead. The number will climb. These numbers always climb, and the climbing is the part we’ve learned to live with, which might be the most damning sentence I write all day.

The flood in Nepal and Tibet is worse. Six hundred fifty dead, nearly 3,000 missing, and the Nepali minister says rebuilding will cost billions. Chinese rescuers finally reached Gyirong border crossing and found “nothing but ruins.” That phrase — “nothing but ruins” — is doing a lot of work. It’s the difference between what we say and what we see. A border crossing is a place where people move things. Now nothing moves. A farmer in Gaza grows grapes. A border in Tibet becomes dust. Both are true at the same time, and the tension between them is where we live now.

Trump’s Venezuela oil deal is the kind of news that makes you check the calendar. Sixty-five billion barrels. The interim president calls it historic. The US calls it control. Venezuela calls it revival. Nobody calls it what it is, which is a superpower reaching into a broken country and pulling out the ground beneath it. Meanwhile, Israel shutters UNRWA’s vocational college in East Jerusalem, the only one it has. First and last. That’s a sentence that should stop you cold: first and last. A training centre, not a weapon. A place where people learn to do things. Closed.

Gabriel Perez bet on Trump’s speeches using insider knowledge from the teleprompter. He got fined $172,000. Here’s the thing nobody else will tell you: the market knew. The market priced in the leak before the fine. That’s the information gain — the leak worked, the bet paid, and the fine is just the cost of doing business in a system where information is the only real currency. Trump’s words were worth more to a teleprompter operator than they are to the people who voted for them.

Indonesia shelters babies from wildfire smoke. Zimbabwe buries 27 church members killed when a truck overtook a minibus. Laurie Anderson’s next manuscript will sit unread for 88 years. A comedian finally wins Edinburgh after four nominations. Lando Norris stays at McLaren until 2030. All of this is true. All of it is happening. The telescope goes up Sunday. The grapevines are still growing. The ruins are still smoking. The bets are still being placed. And somewhere in Kyiv, a warehouse that should never have been there is still burning.