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Год выпуска: January 2025
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: 84
China’s lean, mean Al machine
- The success of cheap Chinese models threatens America’s lead and poses a dilemma: leader, page 9, and briefing, page 17.
- OpenAl’s latest model will change the economics of software, page 59.
- Donald Trump’s priorities for Al, page 60.
Trump’s imperial presidency
- For the first time in over a century America has an imperial president: leader, page 10.
- Donald Trump pardons with cynical glee, page 31.
- He has a chance to build on America’s strengths. Can he subdue his own weaknesses? Lexington, page 36.
The West Bank and the ceasefire
- Quiet in Gaza could make violence in the West Bank more likely, page 41.
- America should try to end the Middle East’s oldest conflicts, not manage them, page 42.
Amping up electricity trading
- To make power cheaper and greener, connect the world’s grids: leader, page 11.
- Why don’t more countries import their juice? Page 55.
Pontification: the pope’s memoir
- Autobiographies can be a blissful art, or a dismal one, page 76.
- The pope and Italy’s prime minister tussle over Donald Trump, page 49.
The world this week Politics
- Donald Trump was inaugurated as America’s 47th president in a ceremony that was held inside the Capitol Rotunda because of freezing conditions outside. On his first day Mr Trump signed orders withdrawing America from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organisation, and revived sanctions on the International Criminal Court. He also declared an emergency at the border with Mexico, tasking the Department of Defence to come up with a plan to seal it and repel “invasion” from mass migration and trafficking. Refugee admissions were suspended and a scheme that allowed people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to move temporarily to America was ended.
The Trump revolution
- Other edicts prohibited federal employees from interfering with free speech. An order “restoring biological truth” officially defined sex as male or female. All diversity, equity and inclusion programmes in government were terminated along with their mandates, policies and activities. There was even a presidential memorandum on “putting people over fish” in California. Most of Mr Trump’s decrees will be challenged in the courts.
- Mr Trump also issued a flurry of presidential pardons, mostly for almost 1,600 people convicted for their part in the attack on Congress on January 6th 2021. Shortly before leaving-office Joe Biden issued pardons of his own, many of them preemptive to counter possible legal action by the new administration. Mr Biden’s list in cluded members of his own family as well as Anthony Fauci, the chief covid adviser, and Liz Cheney, an implacable Republican critic of Mr Trump.
- Volodymyr Zelensky used his speech at Davos to take Europe to task for not doing enough to protect its security, saying its leaders needed to do more than just post agreements on social media. “Will Trump even notice Europe?” the Ukrainian president asked, as he confirmed that he wants to meet his American counterpart soon. Separately, Mr Trump said Vladimir Putin should make a deal on Ukraine, and that he was “destroying Russia” by not doing so. He suggested he would impose crippling-sanctions on Russia if Mr Putin refuses to negotiate.
- In Russia a closed-door court sentenced three lawyers who represented Alexei Navalny to prison. Mr Navalny was the leading figure opposing the Putin regime until his death in an Arctic penal colony a year ago. His lawyers were convicted of supporting “extremism”.
- At least 79 people died when fire engulfed a hotel at a ski resort in Turkey’s Bolu mountains, which lie halfway between Istanbul and Ankara.
- Axel Rudakubana pleaded guilty to murdering three young girls in Southport, a town in England, last July. The killings had triggered riots that were blamed on the far right; Mr Rudakubana is the son of Rwandan immigrants. The prime minister, Sir Keir Statuier, admitted that the authorities had failed to stop the killer; he had been referred to a terrorism-prevention scheme three times but never put under enhanced monitoring. Sir Keir stopped short of calling the murders a terrorist attack.
- Aspate of violence between rebel groups in Colombia killed scores of people and displaced 32,000. The death toll in the Catatumbo region rose to 80 after the oldest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), targeted dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which disbanded under a peace deal in 2016. President Gustavo Petro suspended talks with the ELN and announced a state of internal unrest. Clashes in the Guaviare jungle killed another 20 people. The armed groups have long-fought for control of Colombia’s drug-producing regions.
Safe at last
- The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect, allowing aid to flow into the Gaza Strip. After a small delay caused by bickering over the details, Hamas released the first three hostages it has held captive for 15 months in exchange for 90 Palestinian prisoners. Thirty-three hostages will be released over the six-week period of the truce. Meanwhile, Israeli forces launched a major operation in Jenin, in the West Bank, target-ingHamas and other militants.
- Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi decided to resign as chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces, saying he had failed to protect the country from the Hamas attack in October 2023. In his resignation letter, General Halevi also said that “The war’s objectives have yet to be fully achieved.”
- Nine people were shot dead by soldiers at a gold mine in Ghana, according to a local miners’ group. The army said that scores of illegal miners were carrying rifles and had fired on security personnel. The incident comes soon after the deaths of 78 illegal miners in South Africa, where the authorities had cut water and food supplies to the mine.
- The Taliban in Afghanistan freed two American captives in exchange for the release from an American prison of one of their number, who was found guilty of running a drug ring to buy rockets to attack American troops. The prisoner exchange was announced on the final day of the Biden administration. Two Americans are still held by the Taliban.
- A judge in Kolkata handed a life sentence to a man convicted of raping and murdering a junior doctor. The murder last August prompted protests across India against the lack of protections for female workers and the general disregard for women’s safety. The killer was a police volunteer.
- At his impeachment trial being-heard by the Constitutional Court, Yoon Suk Yeol, the president of South Korea, defended his decision to impose martial law briefly in December and denied that troops had been ordered to remove opposition MPs from parliament. Meanwhile, the anti-corruption agency investigating Mr Yoon passed its findings on to prosecutors, recommending that he be charged with insurrection.
- Taiwan’s opposition-controlled parliament voted to freeze substantial parts of the country’s defence budget. A defence minister said the decision would affect Taiwan’s ability to counter almost daily provocations from China. It could also incur the wrath of Donald Trump, who has said Taiwan needs to spend more on its defence.
- The first same-sex weddings were held in Thailand, which has become the only country in South-East Asia to legalise gay marriage. More than 1,000 couples took their vows on the first day.
The world this week Business
- Donald Tramp took no time to issue a gale of executive orders relating to business on his first day as president. He declared an ‘‘energy emergency” and terminated funding for renewables infrastructure under Joe Biden’s Green New Deal, ditched a goal that 50% of new cars in America should be electric, and resumed export applications for new liquefied natural-gas projects. Another order aims to expand the development of resources in Alaska.
- Mr Trump also ordered a review of existing trade deals and said he would create an External Revenue Service to collect tariffs. He warned that he would levy tariffs of 10% on Chinese goods by February ist (which is a lot lower than the 60% he had aired on the campaign trail) and reiterated his intention to impose import duties of up to 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico. “The European Union is very, very bad to us,” Mr Tramp said, “so they’re going to be in for tariffs”, too. He also ripped up a global deal on corporate taxes.
- Tariffs were also dangled as a further punishment to China if a deal cannot be reached on divesting TikTok. Mr Trump signed an order giving the video platform a 75-day reprieve in America. It had temporarily become inaccessible to its 170m American users on the last day of the Biden administration, after the Supreme Court decided that shutting TikTok down on national-security grounds was constitutional. Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, attended Mr Tramp’s inauguration.
- Sam Altman, Larry Ellison and Son Masayoshi, the bosses of OpenAl, Oracle and SoftBank respectively, joined Mr Tramp at the White House to announce a new project to build infrastructure in artificial intelligence. Named Stargate, the project aims to spend $ioobn on such schemes, rising to fcoobn over the coming-years. Elon Musk, who has been in a long-standingfeud with OpenAl, claimed the companies didn’t have the money. That prompted a clash with Mr Altman, who said Mr Musk was “wrong”.
- Google was reported to be investing another $1bn in Anthropic, a startup that has developed the Claude generative-AI models. Amazon is also collaborating with Anthropic to build Claude into its Alexa voice-command service.
How green is your AI?
- Microsoft reportedly secured carbon credits by paying to restore parts of Brazil’s forests, the latest attempt by a big tech company to offset the increasing amount of energy it is burning through because of the expansion of artificial-intelligence services. Microsoft’s carbon emissions in 2023 were 29% higher than in 2020.
- In Britain the government forced Marcus Bokkerink out as chairman of the country’s Competition and Markets Authority, reportedly because the regulator is not considering economic growth in its deliberations. The CMA’s new interim head is Doug Gurr, who used to run Amazon’s British business.
- Pod Point, a provider of charging points for electric vehicles in Britain, warned that weak demand for EVs would cause its annual revenues to be less than expected. The company’s share price plunged by 40%. It said the market for non-company-car EVs was “challenging” and that the government’s consultation on its planned zeroemission mandate for cars “could further increase near-term uncertainty”.
- Another 19m subscribers joined Netflix in the final three months of 2024, the most ever for a quarter, taking its total membership base to 301m. The company stepped up its push into live-streaming in the period, broadcasting a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, and two National Football League games. It also launched new episodes of “Squid Game”, a wildly popular South Korean series, and “Carry-On”, a film thriller. Confident of its success, Netflix is increasing its subscription fees in America, raising the price of a standard ad-free plan from $15.49 to $17.99 a month.
- America’s Federal Aviation Administration ordered SpaceX to suspend further launches of its Starship project after a rocket exploded minutes after taking off from its base in Texas. The accident caused dozens of airline flights to be delayed or diverted in order to avoid the rocket’s falling debris over the Caribbean and Atlantic. SpaceX is hoping to conduct at least 12 Starship tests this year, but that goal may now be in jeopardy.
Shedding a few pounds
- LVMH overtook Novo Nordisk to become Europe’s most valuable company on the stock-market, a crown the luxurygoods company last claimed in 2023. Novo Nordisk’s stock dropped after the body that oversees America’s Medicare programme added its Ozempic and Wegovy diabetes and weight-loss treatments to a list of drugs that will be subject to price negotiations.
скачать журнал: The Economist USA + Asia - 25 January 2025
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