Greetings! Happy National Cappucino Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

🇷🇸 Serbia greenlights Kushner’s riverfront compound. Lawmakers in Belgrade passed a bespoke bill to enable a luxury mixed-use development led by Jared Kushner’s firm, overriding opposition parties who called it crony urbanism. The project would redevelop prime riverfront land that critics say should have gone through open tender and fuller public review. Supporters argue the build will catalyze jobs, tourism, and tax receipts in a slow-growing corridor. Transparency groups warn that customized statutes for single projects raise governance and corruption risks. Foreign-policy analysts note the symbolism of a former White House adviser gaining a flagship in the Balkans. Real estate is never just square footage; it is also signal and soft power. Contracts will outlast slogans, and the financing will tell you who really won.

🌏 Southeast Asia’s scam factories multiply despite raids. Regional police tout hundreds of arrests and camp closures, yet trafficking victims continue to surface from compounds where “customer service” means extortion at scale. The criminal business model blends cross-border luring, debt bondage, and scripts that separate retirees from savings and traders from crypto. Governments face an enforcement catch-22 when victims are both illegal workers and coerced perpetrators. Telecom regulators are racing to flag spoofed numbers while banks refine fraud heuristics that often arrive a transaction too late. Diplomatic friction grows when compounds sit near borders and in special economic zones with murky oversight. The humanitarian math is brutal: rescue is expensive and relapse is common when recruiters return with fresh promises. Cybercrime is globalization’s dark franchise, and it scales with terrifying elegance.

📦 After deadly crash, cargo giants ground MD-11 fleets. United Parcel Service ($UPS) and FedEx ($FDX) said they will temporarily sideline McDonnell Douglas MD-11 freighters following the Kentucky disaster while investigators secure the site and data. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will reconstruct the final minutes from cockpit voice and flight data recorders and cross-check maintenance logs. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will evaluate any fleet-wide advisories once facts are clearer. Air-cargo networks are already rerouting volume to 767s, 777s, and charters, with knock-on effects for overnight delivery guarantees. Louisville’s hub faces the sharpest near-term strain, and shippers should expect tighter cut-off times. Insurance markets will watch for hull-loss implications and potential rate adjustments. In aviation, confidence is cumulative and rebuilt one safe turn at a time.

🎵 Kendrick Lamar tops 2026 Grammy field. The Recording Academy unveiled nominations led by Kendrick Lamar, with Lady Gaga, Jack Antonoff, and producer Cirkut close behind in a slate heavy on blockbuster pop and meticulous craft. Category congestion will force strategic submissions from labels angling for major-category shine. Touring data and streams often correlate with wins, but surprise sweeps usually ride critic consensus and voting-bloc turnout. Legacy acts sprinkled across genre fields keep the telecast broad even as TikTok darlings fight for oxygen. Television partners want ratings; artists want canonization; fans want receipts, not think-pieces. Watch engineering and producer credits for the industry’s real power map. Awards are currency that never devalues in a press release.

🏛️ Shutdown drags Washington’s economy downhill. The nation’s capital is absorbing layoffs, quieter lunch rushes, and swelling food-bank lines as the impasse stretches from theater to balance sheet. Hospitality bookings and per-diem spend fall first, then the hurt spreads to contractors and cultural venues. Nonprofits report client surges just as donations wobble with market jitters. Small businesses that survived the pandemic on thin margins are back to triaging payroll and rent. Municipal budgets feel it in transit fares and sales-tax receipts that miss projection. The longer it lasts, the less a clean restart can fix because confidence erodes faster than it returns. The shutdown is not symbolism; it is subtraction.

⛏️ Coal country’s black-lung fight breaks the partisan script. In towns that vote deep red, miners with progressive massive fibrosis say benefit hurdles and delayed rulemaking are strangling families, not saving budgets. Clinics document rising severity in younger workers as dust controls lag behind modern mining intensity. Advocates want automatic eligibility triggers and faster presumptions that shorten the wait between diagnosis and check. Employers counter that premiums and productivity are already under pressure as energy markets shift. Public-health economists argue that earlier intervention costs less than late-stage disability and funerals. The moral arithmetic is simple even when the policy calculus is not. If a nation worships work, it should not abandon workers when lungs turn to lace.

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That’s all for today!

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See you tomorrow!