The Daily

Aatish Taseer opens a three-part journey through Buddhism in Nepal at Lumbini, then moves through the Ashokan pillar, Kathmandu Valley practice and Newar Hindu-Buddhist hybridity. The piece works because religious history stays grounded in places, politics and pilgrimage rather than becoming a museum caption. Its sharp thread is adaptability: Buddhism spreads by absorbing local worlds while its anti-caste core still unsettles ritual systems around it.

Friday brings a clean two-game Conference Semifinals night: Detroit at Cleveland first, then San Antonio at Minnesota late. The useful watch plan is simple: avoid score pages, keep the setup to matchups, venues and time windows, and treat both games as elimination-pressure viewing without importing box-score detail. Wikihoops lists both games but had no usable community rating yet this early in the day.

Der FALTER setzt die Wiener Festwochen 2026 als 75-Jahr-Jubiläum mit dem Motto "Republic of Gods". Erste Produktionen beginnen am 15. Mai, die große Gratis-Eröffnung folgt am 22. Mai um 21:20 Uhr am Heldenplatz. Für Robert ist der Nutzwert klar: FALTERs zehn Tipps liefern den kuratierten Einstieg, ohne das ganze Festwochen-Programm zu lesen.

Anthropic has agreed terms for a $30bn fundraise at a $900bn valuation, with Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia and Altimeter lined up as co-leads. The useful angle is revenue speed, not valuation theatre: annualised revenue is nearing $45bn after sitting around $9bn at the end of last year. That reframes the AI-lab race as a capital and commercialisation contest at once.

FDA granted accelerated approval to sonrotoclax for adults with relapsed or refractory mantle-cell lymphoma after at least two prior lines including a BTK inhibitor. The clinical hook is clean: another BCL-2 inhibitor moves into a post-BTK MCL setting. Continued approval depends on confirmatory evidence, with the label anchored by a 52 percent ORR and 1.9-month median time to response.