Putin appeared open to a cease-fire with Ukraine
President Vladimir Putin of Russia yesterday seemed to voice preliminary support for a cease-fire, but made it clear he was in no hurry. He said he wanted to continue negotiating with President Trump, but told reporters in Moscow that Russia was in favor of a 30-day truce — with numerous conditions.
Among the questions he hopes to address, Putin said, is whether Kyiv would continue getting arms shipments during the truce, and how the cease-fire would be monitored and enforced. He said that Ukrainian forces occupying land in the Kursk region wouldn’t be allowed to peacefully withdraw. Kyiv could instead order them “to simply surrender.” He did not repeat his demand that Kyiv cede land from four regions in exchange for a cease-fire.
Trump said yesterday that the U.S. and Ukraine had been discussing land that Kyiv would have to give up as part of an agreement to end the war, and told reporters that “a lot of the details of a final agreement have actually been discussed.”
Quote: President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Putin only wanted to continue the war and had set so many preconditions “that nothing will work out at all or that it will not work out for as long as possible.”
Trump threatened Europe with a 200% alcohol tariff
President Trump escalated his trade war with the E.U. yesterday, announcing he would “shortly place” 200 percent tariffs on European wine and champagne if the bloc did not reverse its own U.S. tariffs planned for April 1.
The S&P 500 fell 1.4 percent, slipping into correction territory and underscoring investors’ souring mood over Trump’s policies.
European leaders have made it clear that they would rather make a deal with Trump than enact tariffs. In an interview yesterday, Howard Lutnick, the U.S. commerce secretary, warned other countries against retaliating. “If you make him unhappy, he responds unhappy,” Lutnick said of Trump.
What’s next: The E.U. trade commissioner will have calls with his U.S. counterparts in Washington today, a spokesman said.
Vineyards: A 200 percent tariff “would kill the business totally,” said an owner of a small Champagne house that exports 10 to 12 percent of its annual production to the U.S.
For many Syrians, a return home is a return to nothing
During 13 years of civil war, more than six million Syrians left the country and some seven million have been displaced within its borders. After President Bashar al-Assad was ousted last year, the interim leader has said millions can return. But after more than a decade of fighting, rubble is all that’s left of thousands of homes.
Some people have chosen to live in their homes, no matter how damaged. Many others have decided to remain outside Syria for the time being, including in camps in Turkey and Jordan. They watch as recent sectarian violence plays out on the country’s coast.
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Japan held a rare auction this week, but not for art or antique cars. On the table were nearly 150,000 metric tonnes of rice from the government’s emergency stockpile, sold off to drive down prices during a national shortage. Nobody is quite sure what caused the problem, but experts think that speculators may be hoarding the grain in anticipation of rising prices.
An official called the crisis “truly unthinkable.”
Lives lived: James Reason, a British professor who became an authority on the psychology of human error through his Swiss cheese model for failure, died at 86.
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The bone hunters of Siberia
Mammoths and other ice age creatures once roamed the Yakutia region of Russia, and the freezing climate has kept their fossils hidden under permafrost for centuries. Now, explorers are diving in the ice-covered Adycha River for skulls and tusks that are thousands of years old.
Temperatures can reach brutal lows, and success is unpredictable. Sometimes the river gives a lot, and sometimes nothing.
“The world under the water is so strange and mysterious,” one diver said. “It looks like this ancient cemetery.”