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Greetings, lovely people,

We hope you all had a restful Easter weekend, celebrating the resurrection of Christ/eating industrial levels of chocolate.

No rest for the wicked, though.

Instead of spending time with our loved ones, we were glued to our screens, and are now ready to regurgitate the week’s news that you need to know, in meme form.

Let’s get stuck in.

⏰ Today's reading time is 6 minutes

Viktor Orbán has spent 16 years turning Hungary into a ‘democracy’ in the same way a zoo is ‘the wild.’

Then Péter Magyar showed up and started rattling the cage.

A former Fidesz (Orbán’s party) insider who quit over a child abuse pardon scandal (always a strong career pivot), Magyar has built a party, Tisza, that is now leading in the polls, all in under three years.

Magyar is running on anti-corruption, democratic restoration, and rule of law reform after defecting from Orbán's inner circle.

A win would reduce Hungary's friction with Brussels, soften its alignment with Moscow, and return a more reliable partner to the EU and NATO table.

Hungarians seem to be slowly realising that “national success” mostly meant Orbán’s mates upgrading from villas to small nations.

The economy has stalled, and EU money, which, despite Orbáns constant whining about the bloc, he has always gladly accepted, has been frozen over corruption concerns.

Sensing the end may be near, Putin’s favourite gimp Orbán has accused Ukraine of election interference, suggested a Serbian pipeline explosion was a false flag, and flown in fellow chubby nationalist JD Vance as a good luck charm.

Not that Magyar is a Boy Scout himself.

Tisza insiders have already flagged concerns that he is building another “one-man show”, not too dissimilar to Orbán.

39 days into Trump’s 3-day special military incursion into Iran, we have a ceasefire.

For two weeks.

Crucially, though, Israel gets to keep bombing Lebanon, given that it’s “a separate skirmish”, in the words of future Nobel Peace Prize winner and wanted war criminal Bibi Netanyahu.

The ceasefire was mediated by Pakistan, given their expertise at launching missiles at neighbouring countries.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said that talks with the US would begin today in Islamabad to discuss the 10-point plan, which includes Tehran maintaining its control over ship traffic in the strait and the lifting of economic sanctions.

In the meantime, America says the Strait is open. Iran says it’s closed. The White House says reports that it’s closed are false, and Iranian state TV says those reports are correct.

This is what experts who have been faithfully monitoring the situation have called “Schrodingers Strait”, i.e. the Strait is both open and closed at the same time.

“We’re thinking of doing a joint-venture,” wrote Trump, only a few days after threatening genocide against Iran on social media.

Wireless Festival has been cancelled following a row over Kanye West’s anti-semitic remarks.

The nutter artist previously known as Kanye, now Ye, was booked to headline all three nights. He applied for his ETA (Electronic Travel Authorisation) on Monday and was rejected.

Festival promoter Melvin Benn told BBC Radio 4 that "multiple stakeholders" were consulted before the booking, and no concerns were raised by sponsors, which included the likes of Pepsi and Diageo.

We compiled some of the zingers that may or may not have had a role in Kanye being banned from the UK:

Of course, there is the fact that Kanye has had very real and troubling mental health issues, which can explain a lot of his behaviour over the years.

Either way, it didn’t matter to Wireless, who ultimately decided to just sack the whole event if Kanye wasn’t going to be there.

There is no draft. There are no plans for a draft.

The government is simply making sure that if there ever were a draft, it would be extremely efficient and require minimal admin.

Previously, you had to register yourself.

Now the government will do it for you, like a personal assistant, but for being sent off to die in another pointless sandbox war.

The White House says a draft is “not part of the current plan right now”, which is the PR-speak equivalent of saying you’ll only have 1 pint in the pub, when in fact you are planning on having 5.

White House press child secretary Karoline Leavitt in March said that while a draft is “not part of the current plan right now,” President Trump “wisely keeps his options on the table.”

For those looking for a way out of the draft, there is a potential solution.

They can always take a leaf out of Trump Daddy’s Draft Dodging playbook and claim to have bone spurs.

The Pentagon tried to label Anthropic a national security risk after it refused to build killer robots with no oversight.

Anthropic said no to autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, which you would assume would be the end of it.

Instead, Trump called the company’s leaders “left-wing nut jobs,” and the Pentagon attempted to kneecap the company.

A judge blocked it, calling it an obvious attempt to cripple a business for not playing along.

The US’s loss might end up being the UK’s gain, as Mayor of London Sadiq “Yes we” Khan has spearheaded a pitch to move Anthropic to the capital.

Ministers are offering a London expansion, a £40 million research lab, and a stock listing, alongside the reassuring promise that Britain will not, at this stage, ask them to build murder machines.

How times change, huh?

About $20 billion was pulled in Q1, as people realised you can’t instantly withdraw money from something designed specifically to stop you doing that.

For years, private credit has been sold as a magical asset: high returns, low volatility, no problems. Turns out the small print was doing some very heavy lifting.

*May cause anal bleeding, the next financial crisis and erectile dysfunction. 

Blackstone got $3.7 billion in redemption requests and paid them out, partly by having executives put in their own money. Yikes.

Bruce Richards, the chairman and CEO of Marathon Asset Management, said he sees major losses for private credit investors in the coming years, as he believes many software loans, a prominent corner of the private debt market, are about to slide into distressed territory as new capital dries up.

Not to fear, though, as the suits have already managed to find a novel way to make a quick buck out of this before the whole thing comes crashing down.

Major banks (Goldman, BofA, Barclays) are teaming up with S&P Global to launch a Credit-Default Swap (CDS) Index for Private Credit.

I’ve seen this one, it’s a classic!

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Five young cows have been enrolled in a French primary school in a bid to boost numbers.

Parents in the Alsatian village of Moosch (yep, that’s really the name) brought them to the school to register them for next year's intake.

The cows apparently amoosed themselves taking huge shits in playground, to the delight of the school's human pupils.

Mayor Jose Schruoffeneger said the school risks losing a class after falling four students short, "so we had the idea to enroll them" to make up the numbers.

“Besides, it saves money on school meals, as we can always turn one of them into some filet mignon if need be”, he may or may not have added.

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Thanks to Max L.S, Dan & Harry