French authorities are investigating a possible foreign interference campaign targeting a left-wing party ahead of the March municipal elections. This alleged campaign was reportedly linked to an obscure Israeli firm named BlackCore, which is believed to have used deceptive websites, social media accounts, and negative ads to undermine three candidates from the France Unbowed party. […]

The post France Investigates Alleged Election Interference by Israeli Firm BlackCore appeared first on Modern Diplomacy.

Anthropic has just announced Claude Design, a tool that lets teams generate and iterate visual design outputs through natural-language prompts. On the surface, it’s hard not to like the proposition: competent layout and typography on demand, fewer blank-page moments and faster shipping for everything from landing pages to pitch decks.

When it comes to typography, it will make design faster, easier and cheaper. The problem is that it also makes design more likely to converge, because it defaults to what works: what’s legible, familiar and proven. In other words: safe, usable, generic.

That genericness isn’t just an aesthetic issue. It reduces recognition, makes brands easier to imitate, and forces you to shout louder just to be remembered, to rely more heavily on media spend to get noticed. A study by JKR and Ipsos a few years ago showed that only 15% of brand assets tested were truly distinctive. That lack of distinctiveness erodes pricing power, forcing brands to compete on price rather than value. According to Kantar, difference is the most critical factor of what allows brands to charge a premium in their category. In a world where the barriers to brand building are lower than ever, where competition is fierce and consumer attention increasingly fleeting, you can’t afford to look like everyone else; in fact, distinctiveness is crucial in driving growth.

The good news is that this is also a huge opportunity: if AI pushes more brands toward the same “good enough” defaults, the brands that invest in real typographic distinction will stand out faster.

Typography is brand infrastructure. It has to behave consistently across products and platforms, scale globally, support multiple languages and become synonymous with the brand over time. That’s exactly why it’s such a leverage point: sharpen the type system and you sharpen a huge number of touch points at once.

The problem with prompts

This is not an argument against using tools like Claude Design for typography. These tools give brands very usable, free fonts (usually sans-serif) – essentially a useful baseline for type.

But when it comes to creating a distinctive asset that will last over time, using a tool that only draws on a small pool of familiar patterns and widely available fonts won’t cut it. It will lead to a proliferation of brands whose typography is essentially a derivate of the most popular free fonts, that are loaded billions of times and appear on millions of websites.

As I write this, Roboto was served 63.1 billion times over the past week, appearing on more than 410 million websites. Imagine choosing a logo knowing it’s shared by millions of other brands. We’d never accept that level of sameness for a mark, yet typography often gets a pass, even though it does much of the ‘heavy lifting’ on many brand touchpoints.   

Where to start with custom type

Ultimately, Claude Design is a welcome wake-up call – to pay more attention to the power of custom typography. This doesn’t mean that all brands should invest in a 100-style type family. A startup might go for a distinctive headline cut while using a solid retail face for body copy. A scale-up might license a retail font and customise just a few key glyphs, enough to make the system more ownable.

The point is to think about what a custom typeface could be for your brand and explore different routes to type distinctiveness. You can create a ‘logo font’ that becomes recognisable even without the mark (think how some brands can be identified from a headline alone, like Dunkin).

Or take distinctive features from existing assets and bake them into letterforms; small details that quietly connect everything back to the brand. Walmart’s Everyday Sans, for example, is a bespoke type family designed to balance expression with function. Its shapes are sleek and modern while retaining some unique quirks and characteristics of the wordmark – such as distinctive teardrop counter shapes, strong diagonals and elongated circular forms.

You can also be deliberately different: a typographic voice with strategic grounding (warmth, intelligence, rebellion, craft) even if it doesn’t visually echo anything else. Mailchimp’s Means, for instance, is a “friendly” serif that perfectly encapsulates the brand’s quirky personality – in Mailchimp’s words, “Smart but not stuffy. Goofy but definitely aced its SATs”.

Shifting the advantage to originality

So yes, use AI to explore and accelerate. But place human judgment where it counts: building a typographic system with durability and ownership. If everyone has access to the same tools, distinctiveness becomes such a clear advantage.

We’ve already been living through a ‘sans-demic’: a slow convergence over the past 20 years where brand typography has become increasingly interchangeable, simply because it’s deemed effective. Look at the headline type for some of the world’s largest companies (Apple, Uber, Pinterest et al.). Strip away the logo and color and you can’t tell them apart. No distinction, no character.

Ironically, AI design tools might be the thing that finally ends this affliction; by making distinctiveness more impactful than ever.

The #cruise ship Ambition arrived in #Bordeaux… and its passengers were stopped from disembarking, due to suspicions of a stomach flu outbreak aboard. One passenger has died, and about 50 others have shown symptoms. Authorities say it has no connection to the #hantavirus outbreak.

According to Chinese intelligence reports and military analyses in May 2026, the Chinese side (both military and academic) views Saudi Arabia’s refusal to allow the use of its bases and airspace in the US operation known as Project Freedom to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as a significant strategic shift in the Middle East. Riyadh […]

The post Chinese Analysis of Saudi Arabia’s Strategic Hedging in the Hormuz Crisis appeared first on Modern Diplomacy.

Disney+ has finally set the VisionQuest premiere date, with Paul Bettany, Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Hiddleston unveiling the first teaser at Disney’s Upfront presentation.

Ranked: How Economic Power Shifted in the Last 10 Years

See visuals like this from many other data creators on our Voronoi app. Download it for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

The global economic order has shifted dramatically over the last decade, with countries reshuffling positions amid inflation shocks, geopolitical tensions, pandemic disruptions, and the rapid rise of AI-driven industries.

This graphic compares the world’s 15 largest economies in 2016 and 2026 using IMF World Economic Outlook data, revealing which countries gained ground, which fell behind, and which surprised the most.

The U.S. remains the world’s largest economy at $32.4 trillion in 2026 forecasts, while China crossed the $20 trillion mark. India posted one of the fastest growth rates among major economies, while Japan became the only G20 economy to shrink over the decade.

The World’s Reordering of Major Economies

The period from 2016 to 2026 saw major reordering among the world’s top economies, with Mexico overtaking Spain, India overtaking France, and Russia leapfrogging both Brazil and Canada.

The table below lists the world’s 15 largest economies in both 2016 and 2026 based on their nominal GDP in billions of U.S. dollars.

Rank	Country	2016 GDP (billions, USD)	2026 GDP (billions, USD)	% Change
1	USA	18,805	32,384	72
2	China	11,452	20,852	82
3	Germany	3,536	5,453	54
4	Japan	5,110	4,379	-14
5	UK	2,717	4,265	57
6	India	2,265	4,153	83
7	France	2,470	3,596	46
8	Italy	1,887	2,738	45
9	Russia	1,281	2,656	107
10	Brazil	1,797	2,636	47
11	Canada	1,528	2,507	64
12	Australia	1,268	2,124	68
13	Mexico	1,112	2,121	91
14	Spain	1,243	2,091	68
15	South Korea	1,579	1,931	22

One of the biggest shifts in the rankings came from India, whose economy expanded by 83% between 2016 and 2026. By the end of the period, India’s GDP had nearly caught up with both Japan and Germany.

Meanwhile, Germany overtook Japan to become the world’s third-largest economy, despite relatively modest growth compared to emerging markets.

Germany’s growth was modest compared to emerging markets like China, India, and Mexico, and was tempered in part by the economic slowdown it faced throughout the post-COVID era. However, Germany still grew faster than other major European Union economies like France (46%) and Italy (45%), though not Spain (68%).

The decade between 2016 and 2026 also saw the European Union lose its second-largest member economy, the United Kingdom, in 2020. The UK grew its GDP by 57% to reach $4.3 trillion by 2026.

Another Lost Decade for Japan

Every major world economy expanded over the last decade, with one notable exception. Japan’s GDP shrank from $5.1 trillion in 2016 to $4.4 trillion in 2026, reflecting a 14% contraction.

Following decades of rapid economic expansion in the late 20th century, Japan’s economy has struggled since the 1990s. The government has accumulated a debt-to-GDP ratio of over 200%, while major exporters in the auto and tech sectors have faced rising competition and trade tensions involving both the U.S. and China.

Perhaps Japan’s most pressing challenge is its demographic crisis. The country’s population was roughly 5 million larger in 2016 than in 2026, reflecting a decades-long fertility decline that threatens future growth prospects.

Russia’s Economic Expansion

Russia’s economy more than doubled in size between 2016 and 2026, growing by 107% to reach $2.7 trillion based on IMF forecasts. This expansion came after the Russian financial crisis of 2014–2016, which was driven largely by falling oil prices.

Russia’s growth, fueled heavily by oil and gas exports, came despite sanctions imposed after the country’s occupation of Crimea in 2014 and full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Even as the U.S. and European Union imposed sanctions, Russian energy exports were rerouted toward buyers in China and India, albeit at discounted prices.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

How do these countries and economic powers compare with individual U.S. states? Find out with The 50 Largest Economies, Including U.S. States on Voronoi.Use This Visualization

Americans paid more for their groceries last month, but high gasoline prices resulting from the Iran war were only one of the reasons why.

Prices for food eaten at home rose 2.9% in April compared to the same month a year earlier, according to government figures released Tuesday. That was the highest year-over-year inflation rate for the category since August 2023.

Prices at restaurants, fast-food chains and other places to get prepared meals also increased, putting overall food prices up 3.2% in the last year, the Labor Department’s consumer price index showed.

Fuel prices have soared while the Iran war prevents cargo ships from passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital corridor for global oil supplies. Diesel fuel powers fishing boats, tractors and the trucks that ship 83% of U.S. agricultural products. As of Tuesday, the average price per gallon was up 61% from a year ago, according to AAA.

The meat, produce and dry goods vendors that supply Sparrow Market, a small independent grocer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, all added fuel surcharges to their deliveries in recent weeks, owner Raymond Campise said. Wholesale prices for meat, produce and some other products also have gone up, he said.

“For independent markets operating on narrow margins, even small increases can have a major impact,” Campise said.

The full impact of rising energy costs on food likely has not hit retail grocery prices yet in the U.S., according to Purdue University economists Ken Foster and Bernhard Dalheimer. Higher costs to produce, process, store and transport food can take three to six months to show up on supermarket shelves, where prices typically fall slowly once increased, they said.

“Most of what we’re seeing now in the food price chain probably predates the conflict,” Foster, a professor of agricultural economics, said. “We’re cautiously waiting to see what the June numbers and the May numbers might show as they come out in terms of … the extent to which energy shocks in the Strait of Hormuz and shipping blockades and so forth are going to impact food prices.”

The consumer price index measures changes in what people in U.S. cities paid at retail stores for meat, bread, milk, produce and other grocery staples. Over the last 20 years, grocery prices increased an average of 2.6%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Prices for perishable and refrigerated products tend to increase faster than prices for packaged goods when energy is an issue. Consumers paid 6.5% more for fresh fruit and vegetables in U.S. cities last month than they did in April 2025, and 8.8% more for meat, the Labor Department reported.

But U.S. trade policies and extreme weather also have weighed on U.S. food prices in the last year. In July 2025, the Trump administration imposed a 17% duty on fresh tomatoes imported from Mexico; consumer prices rose 40% in the 12 months before April.

Dry weather in the Western U.S. has been one of many factors pushing up beef prices, which in April were 15% higher year-over-year. Coffee prices were up 18.5%, partly due to drought and other weather conditions that have hurt global coffee production in recent years.

“Today’s CPI showed that food prices have been rising 3.2 percent in the past year, but the story behind that number is more complicated than just an energy shock,” said Dalheimer, an assistant professor of macroeconomics and trade in Purdue’s Department of Agricultural Economics.

Prices for some foods remained more or less flat or declined over 12 months. Milk and chicken dipped slightly. Butter cost 5.8% less in April than it did a year earlier. Egg prices fell 39% as farmers rebuilt flocks that were decimated by an ongoing bird flu outbreak.

Food prices and broader inflation are likely to feature prominently in November’s midterm elections. During his 2024 campaign, President Donald Trump often cited the prices of bacon, cereal, crackers and other groceries as reasons why voters should return him to the White House.

Some food producers say they’re struggling now because of higher fuel costs. The Southern Shrimp Alliance, which represents shrimpers in eight states, said some boats haven’t left the dock this spring because they can’t catch enough shrimp to compensate for the cost of diesel.

Fuel typically makes up 30% to 50% of the costs for U.S. shrimpers, but because they supply only 6% of the shrimp that Americans consume, they have limited ability to raise prices or add surcharges for fuel, the organization said.

Higher fuel prices may also be impacting food costs in other ways. Part of April’s 5% annual increase in prices for nonalcoholic beverages may be due to the petroleum derivative that goes into making plastic bottles, Foster said.

“It’s possible some of that’s starting to seep down the supply chain and get into those prices,” he said.

Over the next year or more, Americans could also see higher food prices due to spiking fertilizer costs, since around 30% of the world’s fertilizer travels through the Strait of Hormuz.

Fertilizer costs are less of an issue for U.S. farmers this year, since many already had fertilizer supplies in place before the war began, according to Foster. But the effects could become more noticeable next year if the war drags on, he said.

“I expect the Iran conflict to impact the coming years’ food prices through a couple of channels. One, the energy costs and transportation handling. The other would be through packaging costs,” Foster said. “If the conflict were to last longer, then we might see more coming online as fertilizer prices start to impact longer-term planting decisions and cropping decisions.”

—Dee-Ann Durbin, AP Business Writer

As the Africa Forward summit concluded in Nairobi, FRANCE 24 sat down with Kenya’s President William Ruto. For him, the summit was “significant” after French President Emmanuel Macron announced investments in Africa in areas such as the energy transition, digital and AI. Ruto also discussed the war in Sudan, refuting claims that he is siding with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). “Both SAF (the Sudanese Armed Forces) and RSF are cut from the same cloth,” he said. “And they have taken the country to the dogs, so to speak”.