This week

• “They say criminals always return to the scene of the crime.” Why has the governing body of international football given the president of the United States a peace prize?
• Why is Washington claiming a new legal authority to strike Venezuela—and sanctioning the International Criminal Court for issuing arrest warrants over Gaza? Yuan Yi Zhu on how democratic countries are responding to expansive rulings by international courts.
• Does Putin’s vision of Russia as a great power make a peace deal with Ukraine impossible? Anatol Lieven on nationalist ambitions, historical narratives, and Moscow’s fraught relationship with the West.
• Why is it so tough to define what Israel will accept in phase two of the Gaza ceasefire? Natan Sachs on resilience, doubt, and the challenge of preventing the next October 7.
• How is an isolated North Korea suddenly producing advanced military tech? Rachel Minyoung Lee on an emboldened Kim Jong Un.
• How does joining a petition become a crime? Glacier Kwong on civic life in Hong Kong today.
• Why are Colombian armed gangs and militias launching so many drone attacks? Robert Hamilton on the new art of war.
• & How has Europe become the destination for so much dirty money—and what are European states doing about it? Tena Prelec on why it is so hard to root out grand corruption.

Weather report

• The atmosphere seeks balance over Australia.

+ Cultural intelligence

• Why is European innovation-led growth so low? Andrea Lorenzo Capussela’s new book, The Republic of Innovation: A New Political Economy of Freedom.
• What’s Wisdom Teeth Records?
• & The week in new music

The consolation prize

On Friday, Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA—the International Federation of Association Football—awarded U.S. President Donald Trump a new honor at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. It’s a gold trophy representing hands holding up the world, engraved with the president’s name, accompanied by a medal and certificate—the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, recognizing the recipient for having “taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace.”

The ceremony had the textures of a state-managed spectacle. The Village People performed “YMCA”—a Trump rally staple. The venue was the Kennedy Center, once a bipartisan cultural institution, now chaired by Trump himself after he purged its board in February. According to The New York Times, Infantino created the prize weeks after Trump lost the Nobel in October, moving so fast he blindsided his own FIFA Council. Some vice presidents learned of it from a press release.

The FIFA president has spent more face-to-face time with Trump this year than any world leader. He attended Trump’s inauguration in January. He joined Trump on state visits to Saudi Arabia and Qatar in May, arriving three hours late to FIFA’s own annual meeting—prompting UEFA officials to walk out in protest. In July, FIFA opened an office in Trump Tower, making the president its landlord. Now Trump chairs a White House task force overseeing World Cup preparations, run by Andrew Giuliani, the son of his former lawyer.

What is Infantino doing?

New music

‘Slide by Side’

K-LONE makes texturally plush, rhythmically swung U.K. bass music that slips easily into deep house and U.K. garage—club music with a Balearic glow. This track is a playful, bright take on deep house. It’s hard to pin down all the styles he uses, but there’s a tenderness to it—warmth, where other U.K. electronic producers tend to go cold or abrasive. It helps that K-LONE, working in the gaps between genres, is close friends with Facta—the two being co-heads of an important record label in bass music, Wisdom Teeth Records.

Moises Gonzalez

What’s Wisdom Teeth Records?