Volodymyr Zelenskyy has learned his lesson from the last time he was in the Oval Office.

When the Ukrainian leader was at the White House in February, he didn’t wear a suit and was berated by Donald Trump and JD Vance over alleged disrespect.

Trump-Zelenskyy latest: NATO-style security guarantees

Zelenskyy’s learned from that moment six months ago and he’s taken on board what other European and world leaders have done with these Oval Office moments – that the best policy is to say as little as possible.

Such was the contrast that the right-wing reporter Brian Glenn, who questioned Zelenskyy over not wearing a suit in February, told the Ukrainian leader: “You look fabulous in that suit.”

The best tactic for dealing with Trump in front of reporters is to not answer the question, don’t rise to the bait.

Get in there and out as soon and as quickly as you can. And this time, that is precisely what Zelenskyy did.

Did Vance learn his lesson too?

The vice president berated Zelenskyy last time but this time, while the US president’s key advisers were there, JD Vance sat quietly to Trump’s side, saying nothing altogether.

It was a marked contrast from six months ago, but some sort of “gulf between the two sides in terms of any peace deal” continues.

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Melania’s influence

The influence of Melania Trump seems apparent again.

The US first lady sent a letter to Vladimir Putin via Trump at the Alaska summit on Friday, calling for the war to end.

And on Monday, Zelenskyy gave Trump a letter from his own wife for Melania.

Veteran stuntman Ronnie Rondell Jr, who was set on fire for the front cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album, has died, his family has said.

Rondell Jr, who performed in a host of Hollywood films, including How the West Was Won, Ice Station Zebra, Twister and The Matrix Reloaded, was 88.

He died at a care home in Osage Beach, Missouri, earlier this week, his family said in a statement posted on the Hedges-Scott-Millard funeral homes website.

Rondell Jr was pictured as a businessman on fire on the cover of the British rock band’s multi-million-selling 1975 album.

His moustache was singed off during the shoot on the Warner Bros studio lot in Burbank, California, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Rondell Jr also racked up numerous TV credits and was known for taking on daring stunts involving diving, gymnastics and hang-gliding skills.

One of his best-known stunts was leaping from a pole that was on fire as it toppled over in the 1963 adventure film Kings of the Sun.

Two years later, he could be seen in midair flying upside down above a cannon in the 1965 western Shenandoah.

Among his other movie credits are the James Bond adventure, Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles (1974), Lethal Weapon (1987), Thelma & Louise (1991), Speed (1994) and Star Trek: First Contact (1996).

He later came out of retirement to take part in a spectacular car chase in The Matrix Reloaded (2003), on which his son R A Rondell was the supervising stunt coordinator.

Rondell came from a family steeped in the movies, with his father, Ronald R Rondell, an extra who graduated to working as an assistant director on films like Around the World in 80 Days and various TV shows.

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One of his sons, R A Rondell, is a stunt performer and coordinator, while another son, Reid Rondell, 22, died in 1985 in a helicopter crash in California while performing a stunt on the TV series Airwolf.

Born in Hollywood in 1937, Rondell excelled in gymnastics and diving at school before entering the US Navy, where he specialised in scuba diving and mine force demolition.

He began as an extra before graduating to TV stunt work, eventually setting up Stunts Unlimited, which represented top motorcycle racers, car drivers, horsemen, pilots, aerial specialists and fight choreographers.

He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Mary Rondell, his son, R A Rondell, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Waymo founder and former CEO John Krafcik is a critic of Tesla’s approach to self-driving, and he has so far accurately predicted the rollout of the “Robotaxi” service.

He is now taking another dig at Tesla.

Krafcik is a highly respected leader in the auto industry. He began his career as a mechanical engineer at the NUMMI plant, which was then a joint GM-Toyota factory, but is now owned by Tesla.

He spent 14 years at Ford, where he was chief engineer of the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator, a very successful vehicle program. He then moved to Hyundai America, where he served as President for five years.

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However, Krafcik is best known for leading Waymo from 2015 to 2021, helping it become the consensus leader in self-driving technology.

Ahead of Tesla’s rollout of its so-called “Robotaxi” service in Austin in June, Krafcik suggested that Tesla could fake the service:

“There are many ways to fake a robotaxi service.”

He wasn’t exactly wrong.

There’s a Tesla employee in the front seat of every “Robotaxi” in the fleet, which is only about a dozen vehicles, based on crowdsource data, which is the only data available, as Tesla doesn’t release any.

Those supervisors in the front seat have their fingers on a kill switch ready to stop the vehicle at all times, and there are many examples of them intervening to prevent accidents or traffic violations.

In new comments (via Business Insider), Krafcik makes it clear that he doesn’t consider this to be a “robotaxi” service:

“Please let me know when Tesla launches a robotaxi — I’m still waiting. It’s (rather obviously) not a robotaxi if there’s an employee inside the car.”

More recently, Tesla expanded its “Robotaxi” service area to the Bay Area in California, but it again has an employee in the car, this time in the driver’s seat.

Krafcik commented:

“If they were striving to re-create today’s Bay Area Uber experience, looks like they’ve absolutely nailed it.”

He continued:

“I think the AV industry would be delighted if Tesla followed Waymo’s approach to launch a robotaxi service, but they are not doing that.”

Furthermore, Tesla has been limiting access to “invite-only” and the invites have been primarily going to Tesla influencers and investors who are rarely critical of the company.

CEO Elon Musk has been discussing “opening up” the service in Austin to the public next month, but it appears that Tesla will need to retain the in-car supervisor for the foreseeable future.

Electrek’s Take

It must be a bit frustrating for Waymo, which has deployed an actual robotaxi service for years, to see Tesla calling this a robotaxi.

When Waymo was using in-car “safety drivers’, it didn’t call its service “robotaxi.” It was obviously in the testing phase.

If Tesla were to remove the safety drivers, which I suggest they don’t, based on the current disengagement rate of FSD and the interventions we have seen from supervisors in the currently minimal “Robotaxi” service in Austin, it would officially be about 5 years behind Waymo.

The argument that Tesla will magically scale faster because they don’t use lidar should be retired, as the goal should be the safest, not the fastest, at scaling.

And when it comes to scaling, Tesla’s current bottleneck is safety. It needs to be safe enough to remove the safety supervisor, and it’s clearly not there yet.

I really don’t like Tesla’s approach. It seems to be more about optics than adopting a safe and transparent approach.