Our daily trip around the world

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia’s Noem, the world’s biggest construction project, is working through some issues. Noem is a planned, built-from-scratch megacity in western Saudi Arabia featuring a number of construction projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The most ambitious of these is “The Line” – a pair of Empire State Building-sized skyscrapers designed to run 105 miles long, aka the length of Delaware, and house 9 million people. Saudi Arabia recently downsized the Line’s first phase – from 10 miles of construction by 2030, to 1.5 miles – amid reports that its projected overall cost has ballooned from $500 billion to $2+ trillion.

💥 Israel-Hamas war: In an interview yesterday, President Biden said the US will stop sending offensive weapons to Israel if the country launches a full-scale invasion of the Gazan city of Rafah, which Israel says is Hamas’ last stronghold in the region. The comments came hours after White House officials confirmed the US has halted a planned shipment of weapons to Israel and is reviewing other proposed arms deals in an effort to prevent a Rafah invasion.

🇫🇮 Finland banned political strikes longer than 24 hours. In addition to placing a time limit on political strikes, the new law also introduces fines for disrupting Finland’s labor market, effective starting in July. The measure came as strikes by Finnish trade unions, who oppose the government’s recent labor market reforms, have disrupted the country’s economy in recent months.