Last weekend, I was in Oxford to meet my friend’s one-month old daughter. Resting in her German mother’s arms, the newborn had spent the past weeks hearing her father and grandmother cooing over her in Persian, while her other grandmother, over from Germany, sung her berceuses in French. 

How very different her first impressions of life would have been had she been born three years earlier, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her international family would have struggled to visit. Masks would have concealed moving lips, and touch and embraces would have been cautiously distributed.

Her language development could have even taken a hit, according to new research. Interviewing 153 children between 18 and 31 months born between October 2019 and December 2020, Spanish linguists and psychologists have found that children born during the pandemic use fewer words and simpler sentences. While my friend’s baby may have escaped this fate, the study shows children from poorer backgrounds are most exposed.

Whether the Hungarian president, Viktor Orbán, can ever find a common language with his European counterparts and above all, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, remains to be seen. The meeting of the European Council, which takes place today and tomorrow, will see him and other European heads of states discuss continued European funding of Ukrainian war efforts against Russia as well as Kyiv’s EU candidature. Political scientists Stefan Woff and Tetyana Malyarenko fill you in on the summit’s far-reaching implications.

As for the outcome of another critical summit, COP28, climate scientists deliver their first stinging verdict on the agreement reached on fossil fuels. While a definite step back, read until the very end for hope.