Hard Numbers: South Korean tragedy, US political violence, deadly Somali blast, German frugality

The United States announced on Tuesday that Russia and Ukraine have verbally agreed to a Black Sea ceasefire and a moratorium on energy infrastructure strikes. In a pair of statements, the White House said it will help Russia regain access to agriculture and fertilizer markets and that it remains committed to returning forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.

On Tuesday, a Tokyo court revoked the legal status of the Unification Church in Japan, ordering the sect known as the Moonies to disband following a government problem spurred by the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022.

Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, in collaboration with Nobel Prize winner David Baker, Seoul National University Professor Minkyung Baek, MIT Professor Bonnie Berger, and University of Pennsylvania Professor Gregory Bowman, have developed Seq2Symm, an AI model that can predict protein structures 80,000 times faster than previous methods. Understanding these structures is key to breakthroughs in medicine, disease research, and synthetic biology. Seq2Symm’s open-source technology will help scientists accelerate drug discovery, better understand diseases like Alzheimer’s, and develop new bioengineered materials. By making protein research faster and more accessible, Microsoft is helping unlock life’s biggest mysteries. Learn more here.