The Man who Made a World Power: Your Headlines for Monday

Singapore will mourn its founding father all week. Lee Kuan Yew, the city-state’s prime minister from 1959 to 1990, died at 91. He led Singapore's growth, often with an iron fist, from Third-World island nation to First-World financial center, making it into one of Asia's richest, least corrupt and “most quirkily repressive" countries. Here’s what his rule looked like in some (impressive) numbers.

Germany’s Chancellor Merkel and Greece’s Prime Minister Tsipras are meeting tonight in Berlin. According to The Financial Times, Tsipras warned Merkel in a five-page letter that making debt payments due in coming weeks would be “impossible” if the European Central Bank persists in being so strict. The country could run out of cash by end of April, but its neighbors are stalling a bailout until Athens makes serious reforms.

Starbucks is closing the door on its controversial #RaceTogether campaign. Baristas will no longer "start conversations on race relations" with customers. Ending it now was the plan all along, wrote CEO Howard Schultz, and not a result of social media backlash. (If it was indeed the plan, no one had been told.) “Let me assure you that we didn’t expect universal praise,” Schulz wrote, promising the company’s efforts in this space would continue.

Monsanto’s Roundup is “probably carcinogenic to humans,” says the World Health Organization. The WHO found “limited evidence” that glyphosate, commercially known as Roundup, causes cancers in workers handling it and “convincing evidence” it does so in lab animals. Monsanto is fighting the conclusion, saying the WHO is not looking at new data and going against other regulatory agencies. Roundup is the cornerstone of Monsanto’s business model, worth $15.9 billion annually: the company sells the weedkiller, and sells crops genetically engineered to resist it.

Y Combinator president Sam Altman thinks so too: startup valuations are insane. But don’t blame entrepreneurs, he said in a Twitter rant: it’s investors who have lost touch. “I think seed prices are often disconnected from reality. I just don’t think it’s the fault of founders,” he wrote. “And it will be better for good companies when seed funding heat cools off.”

Uber is getting some help in India: Times Internet is investing $25 million. "A partnership with India's most influential media company can only ease matters for Uber,” writes my colleague Ramya Venugopal. “The Times' own news report says that Uber will be able to leverage the reach of assets owned by the Times Group, across print, television as well as 150 million monthly active users on digital, a clear indication of what's in it for Uber.” Tit for tat.

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