The World · 2026-07-16

world

China overtakes the United States in global favorability for the first time¹

For the first time in the two decades Pew Research Center has surveyed the question, more people abroad hold a favorable view of China than of the United States. China leads in 25 of the 36 countries polled and the United States in six, among them Israel, Japan, India, South Korea, the Philippines and Poland.²³ The reversal tracks disaffection with Washington more than warmth toward Beijing. Confidence in Xi Jinping now runs ahead of confidence in Donald Trump in 22 of 36 countries, and the drop is steepest among US treaty allies: Canada's favorable view of the United States fell from 57% in 2023 to 33%, while its view of China climbed from 14% to 44%.² Washington keeps a clear edge on just one of Pew's measures, whether a country respects personal freedoms, and even that has narrowed.¹ Pew put the survey at 42,151 adults across 36 countries, fielded between February 8 and May 13.¹

health & science

Wildfire smoke pushes Midwest and Northeast air into the "very unhealthy" range⁴

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency placed its northeast counties in the purple, "very unhealthy" category through Thursday, citing fine-particle pollution from heavy smoke off large wildfires in northeast Minnesota and Canada.⁴ The Minnesota fires that triggered the alert burned about 33,000 acres in a single day near the Boundary Waters, but forecasters attribute most of the smoke now shrouding the Great Lakes and Northeast to the far larger Canadian fires, which briefly gave Toronto the worst air of any major city.⁵ More than 800 fires are burning across Canada, dozens out of control in western Ontario, with Toronto's air quality index near 220 against Boston's 147 and unhealthy air expected to reach on the order of 100 million people into Friday.⁶ How far the smoke spreads next depends on winds the forecast models still disagree on.⁵

health & science

FDA approves gedatolisib, the first inhibitor of all class I PI3K isoforms and both mTOR complexes⁷

Celcuity's gedatolisib, branded Revtorpyk, became the first drug to inhibit all class I PI3K isoforms and both mTOR complexes to win FDA approval, cleared July 14 for HR-positive, HER2-negative, PIK3CA wild-type advanced breast cancer that has progressed on endocrine therapy. In the VIKTORIA-1 Phase 3 trial the triplet that adds gedatolisib to fulvestrant and palbociclib lifted median progression-free survival to 9.3 months from 2.0 on fulvestrant alone, a 76% reduction in the risk of progression, while the two-drug combination reached 7.4 months.⁷ Independent oncology coverage set the safety trade in sharper relief than the sponsor did, with hyperglycemia in 15% of triplet patients against 58% for the older PI3K inhibitor alpelisib.⁸ The milestone still read as a setback to investors: Celcuity shares fell because the commercial launch slips to late in the third quarter, so a first-in-class drug cleared the agency without yet reaching a pharmacy shelf.⁹

policy & law

The New York Times moves to quash Justice Department subpoenas of its reporters¹⁰

Calling the demands a bad-faith attempt to punish the paper and violate its journalists' constitutional rights, The New York Times asked a federal court on July 15 to quash Justice Department subpoenas served on its reporters.¹⁰ The subpoenas, aimed at the reporting behind the paper's coverage of security gaps in the Qatari-gifted Air Force One, would compel testimony before a grand jury in the Southern District of New York; the paper expected five reporters to be served and says three were.¹¹ The government spent about $400 million retrofitting the donated jet, which the Times reported lacked some of the older aircraft's antimissile features, a switch the Secret Service urged ahead of a NATO summit.¹² The motion was filed under seal, and the security reporting behind the subpoenas rests on anonymous sources the paper has not named; the court has yet to rule.¹⁰

wildcard

FAA clears Starship to fly again, setting Flight 13 for tonight¹³

SpaceX is set to launch Starship Flight 13 as soon as the evening of July 16, carrying 20 functional Starlink V3 satellites rather than mass simulators and attempting the first in-space relight of a Raptor engine since Flight 12 failed.¹³ The flight follows the Federal Aviation Administration's July 13 closure of its Flight 12 mishap investigation, which accepted four corrective actions and ended a 52-day grounding.¹⁴ SpaceX traces the earlier loss to a hot-staging engine-timing difference that swung the booster about 90 degrees off axis, after which five of its 33 engines failed to relight for the boostback burn.¹⁴ The 90-minute window opens at 6:45 p.m. Eastern from Starbase, Texas, with the booster and ship targeting splashdowns in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean.¹⁵ Whether the relight succeeds will not be known until the flight itself, the decisive test of the mission by SpaceX's own account.¹³

China overtakes the United States in global favorability for the first time1

Wildfire smoke pushes Midwest and Northeast air into the "very unhealthy" range4

FDA approves gedatolisib, the first inhibitor of all class I PI3K isoforms and both mTOR complexes7

The New York Times moves to quash Justice Department subpoenas of its reporters10

FAA clears Starship to fly again, setting Flight 13 for tonight13

Sources

China overtakes the United States in global favorability for the first time¹

Wildfire smoke pushes Midwest and Northeast air into the "very unhealthy" range⁴

FDA approves gedatolisib, the first inhibitor of all class I PI3K isoforms and both mTOR complexes⁷

The New York Times moves to quash Justice Department subpoenas of its reporters¹⁰

FAA clears Starship to fly again, setting Flight 13 for tonight¹³