The Economist - 25 ноября 2023

Год выпуска: ноябрь 2023

Автор: The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group

Жанр: Экономика/Политика

Издательство: «The Economist Newspaper Ltd»

Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)

Качество: OCR

Количество страниц: 92

Some progress, must try harder

• Progress on climate change has not been deep or fast enough, but it has been real: leader, page 11.
• A special report on carbon-dioxide removal, after page 40.
• The rich world's overdue climate pledge, page 64.
• Solar geoengineering is becoming a more respectable idea, page 67.

Open AI: lessons from a revolution

• The fallout from the fiasco: leader, page 14, and analysis, page 53.
• Sam Altman, the visionary at the centre of the Open AI imbroglio, is a man of contradictions: Schumpeter, page 59.

The uae's ambitious ascent

• The United Arab Emirates is seizing opportunity in a time of disorder: leader, page 72, and: briefing, page 19.

Inside Hamas's finances

• Israel is powerless to dismantle the organisation's sources of funds, page 60.

Why isolationists should aid Ukraine

• What some Republicans can learn from Sparta: Lexington, page 27.

The world this week Politics

• Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary truce in order to facilitate the freeing of some hostages who were captured by Hamas during its terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th and taken to Gaza. The deal, brokered by Qatar, will also release 150 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, all of them either women or teenagers. Negotiations over the details delayed the release of the hostages until at least November 24th. The deal will also allow more aid into Gaza.
• Israel carried out further strikes on southern Lebanon, killing four members of Hamas and five Hizbullah militants. A Lebanese broadcaster said two of its journalists were also killed. Israel has intensified its attacks on Hizbullah targets in response to the Iranian-supported militia stepping up its rocket attacks.
• Yemen’s Houthi rebels boarded and seized a British-owned and Japanese-operated cargo ship in the Red Sea, claiming it was linked to Israel. The attack by the Iranian-backed group has raised concerns over the security of a vital sea route that carries 40% of Europe’s trade with Asia.
• Israel recalled its ambassador from South Africa, following an escalation in tensions between the two countries over the war in Gaza. South Africa, along with four other countries, has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate what they allege are Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
• The effort by Zambia to restructure its debt hit a bump when a deal it had struck with bondholders was rejected by China and France, highlighting the difficulty in getting private and official creditors to agree on debt relief. The setback raises doubts about whether other African countries such as Ghana will be able to resolve their own debt troubles.
• Liberia’s president, George Weah, conceded defeat to Joseph Boakai, his rival in a recent presidential run-off election. Mr Weah’s concession ends worries about postelectoral violence in Liberia’s second democratic transfer of power since 1944, and calls full time on the political career of a man who won fame playing top-flight football in Europe.

Ayes to the right

• The Dutch election produced a shock result, as the Party for Freedom (pvv) led by Geert Wilders, a veteran far-right politician, won the most seats in parliament. Mr Wilders has pledged to halt a "tsunami of asylum and immigration” to the Netherlands but may find it difficult to form a coalition with the mainstream parties. The conservative party of the outgoing prime minister, Mark Rutte, came third; he is leaving office after 13 years in power.
• Britain’s official figure for net migration in 2022 was revised sharply upwards, from 606,000 to 745,000. For the 12 months ending June 2023 the figure was given as 672,000. The statisticians think the "more recent estimates indicate a slowing of immigration coupled with increasing emigration.”
• In Spain Pedro Sanchez named his coalition cabinet after parliament approved his bid for a new term. The prime minister’s Socialist party came second in an election in July. He has formed a minority government, but only by gaining the backing of Catalan separatists after granting a controversial amnesty to their leaders for holding an illegal referendum. Two days after Mr Sanchez was confirmed as prime minister 170,000 people marched in Madrid against the amnesty, the biggest such protest so far.
• Volodymyr Zelensky sacked the head of medical operations for Ukraine’s armed forces. The president said "a fundamentally new level of medical support for our soldiers” was needed. Reports suggest that some equipment is lacking in the field. The government is also looking at ways to improve troop rotation. Meanwhile, Lloyd Austin, America’s defence secretary, visited Kyiv, where he announced a new $ioom package of military aid, the smallest from America so far for Ukraine’s war effort.
• The German government suspended a vote on the budget amid a crisis resulting from a recent ruling by Germany’s top court, which found that a plan to divert €6obn ($6sbn) in unused covid funds to climatechange programmes was unconstitutional. That legal decision has complicated the government’s spending plans by creating a knock-on effect on its ability to tap money in other special funds.
• Lai Ching-te, the presidential candidate of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, chose Hsiao Bi-khim as his running-mate. Ms Hsiao was Taiwan’s representative in America. Like Mr Lai she favours looser ties with China. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s two main opposition parties, the Nationalist Party (kmt) and Taiwan People’s Party, which both favour closer relations with China, were locked in acrimonious talks over which of their respective candidates should head a joint ticket for January’s election.
• North Korea claimed it had sent a spy satellite into orbit for the first time, following two failed attempts. South Korea responded by resuming reconnaissance and surveillance operations along the two countries’ frontier, in effect suspending part of an agreement struck with the North in 2018 to reduce tensions.
• The UN refugee agency called on Pakistan to stop the expulsion of illegal Afghan migrants from the country over the "harsh season of winter”. The Pakistani government has ordered illegal Afghan migrants who are not refugees to leave. More than 370,000 have done so, but an unknown number are thought to have gone into hiding.
• Thailand’s new government approved an initiative to legalise same-sex marriage. If parliament approves the bill, Thailand will become the third Asian country, following Nepal and Taiwan, to recognise gay marriage.

Victory for a state slasher

• Javier Milei won Argentina’s presidential election run-off, taking 56% of the vote. The self-styled "anarcho-capital-ist” trounced the Peronist candidate in 20 of the country’s 23 provinces. Mr Milei promises to cut red tape and slash public spending. With 40% of Argentines living in poverty, annual inflation expected to be 150% when he takes office next month and interest rates at 133%, Mr Milei says the central bank has enabled only "crooked” politicians to thrive.
• The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, endorsed Donald Trump for president, citing Mr Trump’s pledge to crack down on illegal migration. Mr Trump’s speech at the event was mercifully short, just ten minutes. At other recent campaign stops he has spoken for 75 minutes (Iowa) and two hours (New Hampshire—they don’t call it the Granite State for nothing).

The world this week Business

• OpenAi reinstated Sam Altman as chief executive, just days after he was ousted, and created a new board of directors. The turmoil at the startup that developed the ChatGPT chatbot shook the artificialintelligence industry. The reasons behind the sacking are still unclear, but are thought to have reflected a disagreement over the speed of the ai revolution. Almost all of OpenAi’s staff threatened to quit if Mr Altman was not brought back. Microsoft, which owns a 49% stake in the firm, had offered to employ him. Larry Summers, an eminence grise and former American treasury secretary, will sit on the new board.
• America’s Department of Justice announced that Binance had pleaded guilty to money-laundering and failing to comply with international sanctions, and would pay penalties amounting to $43bn. ChangpengZhao, who founded the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, resigned as chief executive and pleaded guilty to related charges. The department said that over five years Binance had enabled nearly $ibn in illegal payments involving countries and individuals under sanctions, and simply ignored American law and safeguards.
• Elon Musk tried to navigate a storm of criticism following his approval of an antisemitic trope posted on X. After the White House lashed out at his apparent endorsement of a "hideous” conspiracy theory, Mr Musk insisted he was not antisemitic. He also announced that users on X who apply the term "decolonisation” to Israel and other terms that imply the genocide of Jewish people would be suspended from the platform.
• Meanwhile X sued Media Matters for America, a pressure group, after it published data purporting to show that X had allowed ads to run next to Nazi and Holocaust-denying posts. Some big companies, including Apple, Disney and IBM, pulled their advertising from the site following the report. X claims Media Matters "manipulated” data in order to destroy its business.

Beyond satire

• X was not the only socialmedia company to find itself in hot water over antisemitic-related content. A number of Jewish celebrities urged TikTok to tackle a rise in anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli posts on its platform, which includes the re-emergence of Osama bin Laden's bilious rant against Jews and the West, which first surfaced in 2002. Bin Laden’s self-styled "Letter to America” recently went viral on TikTok, which eventually removed hashtags linked to it. Sacha Baron Cohen, a comedic actor, said TikTok was "creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis”.
• In a tough week, Mr Musk was at least able to celebrate a further advance in testing SpaceX’s Starship rocket, the biggest ever built. After leaving its launch pad in Texas, Starship’s two stages separated successfully and one reached space for the first time, but the "super heavy booster” part of the rocket then exploded. SpaceX said this second test had provided it with invaluable data in planning for the next flight.
• Broadcom at last completed its $6gbn takeover of VMware after Chinese regulators approved the deal. The combination of the chipmaker with the cloud-computing and software company was first proposed 18 months ago.
• Boosted by a surge in demand for its ai chips from the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, Nvidia’s revenues more than tripled in its latest quarter, year on year. Net profit rose to $9.2bn compared with $68om in the same period last year. The company expects sales to China will drop "significantly” because of tighter restrictions on exporting ai chips to the country, but thinks revenues will climb again this quarter as demand from elsewhere makes up the shortfall.
• Alibaba’s share price recovered some of the ground it lost when it said it would now not spin off its cloud unit. The Chinese internet giant cited America’s latest restrictions on exports of advanced chips to China as a reason for reversing course, as it believes the curbs will “materially and adversely affect” the business.
• The British government unveiled its “autumn statement”, a kind of mini-budget. The rate of national insurance, a payroll tax that employees pay, will be cut from 12% to 10%. In another giveaway, a tax break that enables businesses to deduct investment from their taxable profits will be made permanent. The government’s ebullient presentation of its plans was at odds with the downgrading of official GDP forecasts.

Bargaining power

• A new contract between the United Auto Workers and Ford, General Motors and Stellantis was ratified by the union’s members, bringing an official end to its strike. As well as improved pay and conditions, the agreement brings thousands of jobs in electric vehicles and batteries under the uaw’s protection.

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