• Trump delays Mexico tariffs: President Donald Trump postponed the 25% tariffs on most goods from Mexico for a month after a conversation with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. – The Associated Press
  • Related Monitor story: Trump’s tariffs and job cuts fuel Main Street uncertainty.
• Columbia University investigation: A new Columbia University disciplinary committee, known as the Office of Institutional Equity, is investigating students who have criticized Israel. – AP
• Britain drops Syrian sanctions. Britain unfroze the assets of Syria’s central bank and 23 other entities, including banks and oil companies, on Thursday, reversing sanctions imposed during Bashar al-Assad’s presidency. – Reuters
  • Related Monitor story: As Syrians struggle to rebuild, old U.S. sanctions are a daunting hurdle.
• Surprise Hong Kong ruling: Hong Kong’s top court overturned the convictions of three former organizers of an annual vigil in remembrance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown over their refusal to provide information to police. The Thursday decision marked a rare victory for the city’s pro-democracy activists. – AP

The Trump administration has made ridding U.S. college campuses of diversity, equity, and inclusion a top priority. Several states, including Texas, had already begun doing so even before President Donald Trump took office. Among the changes: shuttering DEI offices and firing staff, defunding programs and student clubs, and getting rid of diversity training. The moves have support, but they have also made many students feel unwelcome and have raised questions about censorship.

There is a growing sense in Europe that Ukraine is its unique and sole responsibility, and that the future of the continent depends on it. The result is a fundamental rethink about defense spending, recognizing that Europe can no longer rely on the United States. “Europe has had to grow up very quickly,” says one expert. But not every country is in lockstep. It presents a daunting challenge. The continent not only needs to rearm itself, but also figure out on the fly in Ukraine how and when it will use force.

President Donald Trump appears to be fundamentally changing the core expectations that guided America’s eight-decade transatlantic alliance. His approach to Russia and Ukraine has European leaders questioning whether Europe and the United States still share key values. The importance of the partnership means trying to find ways to mend the relationship. But for now, European nations are scrambling to face Russia on their own, a challenge they had never imagined.

Clocks move forward an hour Sunday for daylight saving time in most of the United States. But must it be so? There’s a long-running back-and-forth about the value of tinkering with the clocks, with Congress weighing in recently. So what’s the history of daylight saving time, what are some of the arguments for and against time changes, and what’s the likelihood of “locking the clock”? Our Explainer dives into each of these questions.

As Indonesia becomes more prone to wildfires, the threat to its natural abundance – from orangutans to hornbills – has grown. Enter the Power of Mama. The group is comprised of women who patrol for fire risks and urge farmers to follow rules about slash-and-burn clearing. Along the way, they’re challenging stereotypes about women’s roles in rural Indonesian life. Female forest rangers in Indonesia are rare, says an environmental activist in Indonesia. But when women are given training and information, she says, “They protect the forest with their whole hearts.”

Florida resident Nicole Killian had always thought about hurricane recovery in a certain way – through a human lens. Then Hurricane Milton taught her to look through a dolphin’s-eye view. After she found the animal caught in debris from the storm, she realized there was more to do in helping local ecosystems recover. Who is going to remove the refrigerator washed into a tree in an already stressed habitat? Her answer: Waterway Warriors.

In Florida and Arizona, where ballplayers have emerged from their winter slumber into the citrus- and saguaro-scented breezes of spring training, pro ball is now arguing about umpires.

The sport has long done this, but there’s a new twist. For the first time, the major leagues are testing robots behind the plate. Human umpires still bark balls and strikes. If a pitcher, batter, or catcher doesn’t like a call, they can now object. An automated system then settles the matter.

That sounds simple enough. Baseball already has instant replay, introduced in 2008 to review whether runners are safe or out on the base path. And, for now, the new system is just a preseason experiment.

Yet for some, this feels different. “We’re humans. Can we just be judged by humans?” asked Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer. “What problem are we really solving?” he posed to The New York Times. 

Artificial intelligence is already changing baseball. Teams are using ever more sophisticated algorithms to analyze players and determine game strategy. Computerized umpiring, formally called Automated Ball-Strike System, however, hits at the game’s central contest – a battle between one person with a rock and another with a stick, each testing the other at the extremes of human endeavor.

Baseball is a game of fractions of time and space that puts into play a restless pursuit of dominion over fallibility. When pitchers throw great games, they evoke – to borrow the language of British art curator Catherine Milner – masterpieces “like the Sistine Chapel or Venus de Milo [that] embody a devotion to excellence in their precision and gracefully balanced composition.”

Yet, as in fine art, baseball’s beauty flowers in the imperfections and subtle deceptions that reveal human striving. With human umpires, good catchers “frame” pitches and good pitchers make microadjustments to paint the edges of subjective strike zones. If they miss the mark, good hitters make them pay for it.

That interplay of human judgment is baseball’s rebuttal to a world of constant digital advancement. “Soul is kinda important in this increasingly techno world, and if we have to lose a little accuracy [on the ball field] to acquire that soul, well, that’s a currency worth expending,” wrote Steven Zeitchik, a longtime tech and sports journalist, on the online platform Substack.

Mr. Zeitchik isn’t completely sold on his own argument. Human umpires make bad calls on less than 4% of pitches, according to Statcast. But society is already concerned about human displacement by AI. “If we start saying that an AI shouldn’t replace a [home] plate-measurer, ... it’ll make people inured to listening when the humans really do add something valuable,” he wrote. The beautiful art of arguing about umpires goes on.