The Russian government, in an updated forecast for 2026 published today, assessed the depth of the slowdown in the Russian economy - it should stop one step away from recession and grow by 0.4% instead of the previously assumed 1.3%. The oil price forecast, despite the crisis over the Strait of Hormuz, has been left unchanged, and the exchange rate forecast suggests a much stronger ruble than before - and this is bad news for the budget.

SpaceX and Google are discussing a deal to launch orbital data centers, WSJ reports , citing sources. Google, according to the newspaper, is also in talks with other companies providing launch services. Orbital data centers are still an unrealized technology. The idea is to bring computing power to solar-powered satellites, solving the main problems of terrestrial AI infrastructure: energy and land shortages.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is experiencing the most acute political crisis since Labor came to power in 2024, writes FT. The reason was the results of last week's local elections: Labor lost about 1,400 seats in local councils and lost control of the Welsh Parliament, where it had been the largest party for several decades. The main beneficiary was Nigel Farage's right-wing populist Reform party, which won 1,454 seats nationwide.

THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) IS PRODUCED AND DISTRIBUTED BY THE BELL'S FOREIGN AGENT OR CONCERNES THE ACTIVITIES OF THE BELL'S FOREIGN AGENT. 18+ Bigtech spending on infrastructure is already comparable to the GDP of individual states. But the companies themselves don't seem to be stopping.

The introduction of AI tools into work processes at Amazon has not avoided the classic imitation of hectic activity, expressed in KPI spamming and resource overruns, writes the Financial Times. Only a few weeks have passed since the launch of the internal AI agent MeshClaw, but some employees have already learned to assign unnecessary, redundant and obviously unproductive tasks to it (tokenmaxxing). The goal is to increase the consumption of AI tokens in order to meet KPIs.

Unsatisfied demand for AI-95 gasoline is growing in Russia, Kommersant reported , citing an analysis of exchange trading by the National Exchange Pricing Agency and industry sources. At the auction on May 8, less gasoline (AI-92 and AI-95) was sold than applications were submitted, by 50 thousand tons, and only 32.6 thousand tons were sold. The upcoming increase in demand specifically for AI-95 is associated with the onset of the travel and vacation season.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, in an interview with Vedomosti, named the parameters of a new scenario for socio-economic development until 2029, which has long been expected and which the Ministry of Economic Development will publish today. What's happened? The new forecast is significantly worse than last year’s scenario for 2026–2028, which envisaged GDP growth in 2026 of 2.4%, and worse than the ministry’s current estimates of growth of 1.3% in 2026, 2.8% in 2027 and 2.5% in 2028.

The United States and Iran are at a diplomatic impasse, reports The Wall Street Journal. And, although both sides are far from a deal, they are not interested in resuming the war.

There is a double political crisis in Ukraine. The former head of Vladimir Zelensky's office, Andrei Yermak, was charged with money laundering, and the former press secretary of the President of Ukraine, Yulia Mendel, gave an interview to Tucker Carlson about the “favorite dictator of the West” EastNews