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Israel-Hamas talks progress

Ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas appeared to grow in seriousness, but negotiators were still deadlocked over key details and hampered by Israel’s domestic political divisions. Israel, Semafor’s Jay Solomon reported, is discussing a longshot plan to allow some Hamas leaders to take refuge in another Middle East country. The ceasefire talks were hamstrung by disagreements between extremist cabinet members who opposed any negotiations and others who described the agreement as necessary, if a “hard deal to swallow,” The Times of Israel reported. Underlying the dispute is the likelihood that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government “won’t survive a hostage deal with Hamas,” Haaretz’s longtime defense analyst wrote.

On the ground, Israel confirmed it was flooding Hamas tunnels in Gaza, and its soldiers disguised as medical staff and civilians shot dead three purported Hamas members inside a hospital in the West Bank. The moves came amid persistent warnings of humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with the World Health Organization saying one hospital was only “minimally functioning.” A pediatrician in the territory, who also worked in earlier disasters and conflicts around the world, told The New Yorker that Gaza was “a sea of human tragedy.”

US probed AMLO’s drug ties

U.S. officials uncovered evidence that drug traffickers funneled millions of dollars to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s first, unsuccessful, presidential campaign, a ProPublica investigation found. According to the report, in exchange for campaign donations, aides promised to select law-enforcement officials helpful to the traffickers if AMLO won the presidency in 2006. The Mexican leader has denied the accusations. Since gaining power in 2018, AMLO’s strategy — called “hugs, not bullets” for its less confrontational approach — has been criticized at home and abroad: Last year, a U.S. senator said Mexico was fighting an “imaginary war” against drug gangs, who control as much as 20% of Mexico’s territory and have made it one of the world’s most dangerous countries.

US immigration battle heats up

Republicans pressed forward with efforts to impeach the U.S. homeland security secretary, escalating a political battle over immigration that is key to both the coming presidential election and Ukraine’s prospects in repelling Russian invaders. Were the impeachment to be successful, it would mark just the second such decision in U.S. history, with the prior case occurring in 1876. It comes with senior lawmakers appearing to abandon a bipartisan deal — House Speaker Mike Johnson called it a “nonstarter” — which at Republicans’ behest combined increased border-security measures with funding for Kyiv. “The cost of [Republican] obstruction has been clear in domestic politics over government funding,” the U.S. historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote, “but it has now become a global issue.”

Top Western leaders push Ukraine support

The director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency said that not funding Ukraine’s defense against Russia would be “an own goal of historic proportions.” Writing in Foreign Affairs, William Burns said that the “relatively modest” investment had “significant geopolitical returns,” also helping warn China that Washington does not lack the resolve to defend allies, such as Taiwan. Five European leaders, including Germany’s Olaf Scholz, also wrote a letter published in the Financial Times calling for increased arms shipments. The push by top leaders for upping support to Ukraine came amid growing signs that the country’s president was close to dismissing his top military commander following a much-touted but ultimately disappointing counteroffensive.

Oligarch loses art fraud case

A Russian oligarch lost a U.S. court case accusing Sotheby’s of defrauding him of tens of millions of dollars in art sales. Dmitry Rybolovlev, who made his $6.4 billion fortune in fertilizer, said the auction house conspired with art dealer Yves Bouvier to convince him to buy several works for far above their value: Bouvier bought Salvator Mundi, a Renaissance-era painting credited to Leonardo da Vinci, for $83 million and sold it to Rybolovlev a day later for $127.5 million. Bouvier also sold Rybolovlev works by Klimt, Picasso, Magritte, and others. The court agreed that Sotheby’s was not liable for Bouvier’s dealings. It may be hard to feel much sympathy for Rybolovlev, given that he sold Salvator Mundi in 2017 for $450.3 million.

China targets economy worries

Chinese policymakers sought to address worries over the financial and housing sectors, merging hundreds of small, rural banks and lifting restrictions on homebuying in major cities. Yet the moves — which come amid slowing economic growth and broader concerns over massive piles of real-estate debt and local-government loans — are not inherently steps forward: The mergers are creating banks that are bigger but, as Bloomberg noted, not “necessarily stronger,” because they retain large quantities of bad loans, while the new property-buying rules in major cities do little to address the sector’s high level of leverage. Concurrently, The New York Times reported, Beijing is intensifying a crackdown on economists, analysts, and influencers who criticize China’s economy.

Wegovy boosts Novo Nordisk

Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk reported better-than-expected profits, driven by sales of its weight-loss drug. Wegovy, also sold as a diabetes treatment under the name Ozempic, reduces hunger: The average obese patient loses 15% of their body weight using the drug. It has become wildly popular, making Novo Nordisk Europe’s biggest drug company with a $500 billion market capitalization. Other drug companies are entering the market: Eli Lilly’s Zepbound is already available, a new drug by Danish biotech firm Zealand is in late trials, and pharma giants Roche and AstraZeneca both reached agreements with companies developing new treatments. Pfizer, meanwhile, abandoned its own efforts to produce a weight-loss pill after trials showed significant side effects.

Court blocks Musk pay package

A U.S. court blocked a $55 billion pay package for Elon Musk, saying he had misled shareholders when he presented a growth plan laden with personal financial incentives. The goals were achieved, but an investor sued, saying that shareholders were not told that the plan was Musk’s or that key board members were beholden to him. The loss of the shares will mean that Musk’s net worth will drop to $154 billion and he would become merely the third-richest person in the world after two years mostly at number one — though as our friends at Project Brazen have noted, such lists are “comprised only of people with publicly known wealth,” largely ignoring “hidden billions” held by oligarchs, autocrats, and monarchs.

Mandela auction suspended

An auction of dozens of artifacts belonging to Nelson Mandela was suspended after it received widespread criticism in South Africa, including from the country’s heritage agency. Despite the campaign to keep his belongings at home, South Africa’s first democratically elected president has become less popular with younger generations as the party he led — the African National Congress — has mismanaged the economy to historic lows. Last year unemployment rose above 30% while a widely used inequality index jumped to the world’s highest level, pushing support for the ANC below 50% for the first time since Mandela won the presidency after leading the effort to end apartheid three decades ago.

Insect light-seeking behavior explained

Insects such as moths who fly into or orbit light bulbs and candles are not mistaking them for the moon, as widely believed. The popular theory is that moths keep stars and the moon steady in their visual field to maintain straight-line travel, a heuristic that fails when lights are nearby, leading to the insects spiraling into the source. But researchers examined insect flight patterns using high-speed cameras and found the evidence didn’t match the theory. Instead, insects use light to orient themselves vertically — light usually comes from above, so they try to keep their backs facing towards it. Nearby light then causes them to orbit the light with their backs to it. The findings “reiterate the fact that artificial light is bad news” for insects, Scientific American said.

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• Myanmar’s military junta extends the state of emergency it has imposed on the country since its February 2021 coup.
• Argentina’s Senate is set to debate President Javier Milei’s controversial economy reform bill.
• Alexander: The Making of a God, a new docudrama, drops on Netflix.

The growth of artificial intelligence was the biggest tech story of 2023, and how governments respond to its threat and promise could be the biggest of 2024. Flagship Lead Writer Tom Chivers texted Google DeepMind’s head of governance to ask him what to look out for in the coming year.

Nearly three years since Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup, its exiled diaspora finds comfort in the country’s food. Journalist Thin Lei Win wrote in Nikkei about bonding over meals with friends in neighboring Thailand, none of them knowing when they could safely set foot in their homeland again. They shared bowls of mogok myeeshay (rice noodles in a tangy meat sauce), delicacies like kin baung kyaw (spring onion fritters), and pickled tea-leaf salad. Across Thailand, where many junta opponents from Myanmar have sought refuge, are Burmese eateries where “we could pretend we were back home,” she said. “We cook, we eat and we share, so that we will live to fight another day.”

• South Africa’s ANC suspends former President Jacob Zuma.
• The new U.S. border deal gives the president big new powers. Conservatives say it doesn’t go far enough.
• Ukraine’s war prospects questioned as anniversary approaches.

Semafor’s 2024 World Economy Summit, on April 17-18, will feature conversations with global policymakers and power brokers in Washington, against the backdrop of the IMF and World Bank meetings.

Chaired by former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, and in partnership with BCG, the summit will feature 150 speakers across two days and three different stages, including the Gallup Great Hall. Join Semafor for conversations with the people shaping the global economy.