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Take a peek behind the scenes of our news quiz, Pointed, in the Bonus Points newsletter. 📥 Last week's hardest question made people think Squid Game was CoComelon. Read more from Quizmaster Aimee Lucido ⤵️

Pakistan’s climate minister accused India of using dams to disrupt the flow of the Indus River system, as both countries seek international support amid a fragile ceasefire agreement.

The Trump administration’s attack on the NIH is strangling the biotech industry’s innovation engine — and it could get much worse given the proposed 40% cut to the agency's budget. The brutal cuts to academic grants are an existential problem in the long-term, as fewer dollars mean fewer discoveries to be pulled from academia and into biotech and pharmaceutical companies. But industry could face a more immediate problem: a huge cut to the an NIH program that currently provides ~$1.3 billion in seed funding to biotech startups. SBIR/STTR grants are vital support for early-stage technology development and clinical trials--particularly for companies bubbling up outside of the typical biotech hubs or working in therapeutic areas outside the VC fads. Read more in my latest for Bloomberg Opinion (gift link): https://lnkd.in/dKHXYUMj

There's a really good chance that Trump's tariffs will outlast his time in office, and that bodes ill for a bunch of reasons, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Clive Crook can explain: Perhaps the most important force cementing tariffs in place will be their fiscal consequences. This came into sharper focus last week when the Congressional Budget Office did an official score of the revenues the new taxes will raise. According to the CBO’s numbers, if the new tariffs imposed between Jan. 6 and May 13 stick (30% on imports from China and Hong Kong, 25% on cars and auto parts, the 10% baseline tariff, the 25% tariff on steel and aluminum, and partial 25% tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico), they would reduce budget deficits by $2.8 trillion over the next 10 years. This takes account of lower debt-interest payments, slightly slower economic growth, and inflation 0.4 percentage points higher this year and next. Nearly $3 trillion is an enormous sum, even by US budget standards — and as public debt continues to grow, the government will need that money. In discussions over the budget bill before Congress, projected tariff revenues aren’t directly involved. Official and unofficial scorers focus on the effects of the bill on projected deficits and debt while leaving tariffs to one side — they aren’t in the measure, they’re the result of executive action not legislation, and in the past the revenues have been both modest and stable, hence barely worth discussing. #tariffs #trade #deficit

"They are starting to change their approach here, which we think will result in higher growth rates." Steve Schwarzman tells Francine Lacqua that Blackstone is planning to invest as much as $500 billion in Europe over the next 10 years. bloom.bg/4l2cl3O

“Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, tells Bloomberg's Ethan Bronner that if one day there is a Palestinian state, it need not necessarily be based in the West Bank, as has long been assumed. bloom.bg/3SGAHE5

On secondary activity within the private market sphere in Asia, "Secondary now is getting more and more popular and well known." Ardian's Jason Yao #BloombergInvest Sonali Basak ⏯️ bloom.bg/45io0H8

It was, by any stretch of the imagination, an ugly Sunday of violence and vandalism in downtown Los Angeles. Thousands of people angrily took to the streets after President Trump took the extraordinary step of summoning the National Guard, ostensibly to quell protests over ICE raids. It didn’t take long for these images to start ricocheting around the internet, with the sense of being on the brink amplified by the Trump administration and buttressed by an assessment from LA’s own police chief that “this thing has gotten out of control.” But California Democrats have a story about what happened and they are sticking to it. Too bad it’s a story that’s going up in flames, writes Erika D. Smith. Read why LA is losing the war for public opinion: https://lnkd.in/eMYMaqqv

The University of Texas System grew its endowment over the last century from oil and gas underneath 2 million acres in the Permian Basin. University Lands, which manages the massive swath for the UT and A&M systems, is looking for more revenue for the next century on the surface: data centers for crypto and AI, wind and solar, battery storage and even water. I traveled to Midland, Texas, for this story. Read with this gift link: - UT reached a preliminary agreement to lease 200,000 acres, or 10% of its land holdings, to Apex Clean Energy Inc. for generating electricity from wind and solar. Customers of Apex include Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. and the US Army. -The difference between the UT system's endowment and Harvard's fund is shrinking, around $5 billion to $6 billion. Thanks to John Hechinger, Pat Regnier and Donna Cohen from Markets magazine, and energy colleagues Kevin Crowley, Will Wade, Naureen S. Malik and Simon Casey.

"When you look at Europe, interestingly, real estate is getting very attractive." Pictet Group's Hui Yang Goh tells Sonali Basak at #BloombergInvest Hong Kong. ⏯️ bloom.bg/45io0H8