Flagship

Debt deal set to pass House vote

The U.S. debt-ceiling deal looks set to be passed in the House of Representatives today. Dozens of Republicans are poised to vote against it, but several conceded they were outnumbered by Democrats who support the agreement, a two-year deal that raises the debt limit in exchange for curbs on government spending and social programs. “The suspense is quickly draining from the debt ceiling standoff,” Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig writes in today’s Principals newsletter. Frustrated conservatives may concentrate on trying to oust Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over the deal, but even that is uncertain: Hardline Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called the debt deal a “shit sandwich,” but said removing McCarthy “would be a horrible decision.”

— To read Joseph’s story, out soon, one-click subscribe to Principals, Semafor’s daily U.S. politics newsletter.

AI experts warn of ‘extinction’ risk

Artificial-intelligence industry leaders and scholars called for politicians to view the threat of AI-driven extinction as an urgent global priority on the level of pandemics and nuclear war. The warning came as G-7 officials held their first meeting on AI regulation. Experts have long warned that unchecked AI advancements could ultimately threaten humanity, but activists worry the warning risks overshadowing present-day concerns tied to the technology. Poorly paid, low-skilled workers “are particularly exposed to the job-killing effects of AI,” the co-founders of a Brazilian think tank wrote in Foreign Policy. Meanwhile the surveillance outlet IPVM reported that a Chinese company is using AI-driven video recognition to detect and report protest signs and demonstrators’ faces to police.

West urges Turkey to let Sweden in NATO

NATO leaders pressed Turkey to lift its veto on Sweden joining the alliance, ahead of a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers. The U.S. secretary of state said “the time is now,” for Stockholm to be included in NATO, while the U.S. president and NATO secretary-general both spoke to Turkey’s recently reelected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the issue. Sweden and Finland jointly applied for NATO membership after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But Ankara held up Stockholm’s membership over its support for Kurdish groups Turkey regards as terrorists, which Sweden has sought to address with new anti-terror legislation. “Only Vladimir Putin has anything to gain from Sweden remaining outside NATO,” Sweden’s prime minister wrote in the Financial Times today.

China’s recovery flounders

New data suggested China’s economic recovery is fast losing steam. Factory activity shrank more than expected, adding to a ream of indicators pointing to trouble in the world’s second-biggest economy. Prior growth appears to have been driven by pent-up demand, released after years of strict pandemic-related restrictions. But high levels of government debt, a struggling property market, and worsening youth unemployment — which rose above 20% last month — are weighing on growth. “The risk of a downward spiral … is becoming more real,” the chief China economist at the Japanese bank Nomura said. The uncertainty adds to global economic concerns, and helped drive European and Asian stocks lower this morning.

More kids flee South America

The number of children migrating through Panama’s Darien Gap surged eightfold in the first four months of the year compared to 2022. Despite the route being one of the world’s most treacherous stretches of land, more than 25,000 children, many traveling unaccompanied, made the crossing. The growth is part of an escalating migration crisis across Central America: Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and a U.S. Homeland Security Department adviser discussed increasing investment in the region as a permanent solution to deter regional migration to the U.S.

The mounting costs of Sudan’s war

Sudan’s army suspended participation in ceasefire talks with a rival paramilitary force, putting a humanitarian truce — breached repeatedly by both sides — in doubt. At least 800 people have been killed, thousands more wounded, and over a million forced to flee as a result of the fighting. The losses extend still further. Dozens of Sudanese artists, central to the country’s 2019 pro-democracy protests, have departed, leaving behind their studios and artwork worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to The New York Times. “A war in Khartoum means not only the displacement of people and the destruction of buildings and infrastructure, but also the loss of a rich heritage,” a Sudanese architectural expert wrote in The Conversation.

Netherlands reforms its pensions system

The Netherlands massively revamped its pension system. The Dutch will pay into a “defined contribution” pension, in which benefits are tied to how much workers contribute and how their investments perform, rather than the current “defined benefit” system that offers predictable payouts. The shift is part of efforts to address the country’s worsening demographics, with an aging population and low birth rate — issues affecting most rich countries. The plan leaves retirees more at the mercy of the markets, but critics of the existing system said it placed a heavy burden on a declining cohort of younger people paying for the retirement of older generations.

How instability drives renewables

Growing demand for renewables in both South Africa and Ukraine illustrates their potential in countries suffering from instability. Demand for residential solar installations hit a record level in Cape Town as South Africa grapples with a power crisis that the state utility warned could be the country’s worst ever. Ukraine’s recently opened Tyligulska wind farm, meanwhile, generates enough electricity for 200,000 homes about 60 miles from the front line of the country’s war with Russia. Though by no means sufficient in either case, green power offers each a measure of energy security and independence — from the corruption and lackluster development that has plagued power infrastructure in South Africa, and from the war battering Ukraine.

Hong Kong’s numerical censorship

Advertisers congratulating the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao on its founding this month in 1959 curiously left out the number of years since its launch: 64. Instead, ads in the Chinese-language daily congratulated the broadsheet on “stepping towards its 65th anniversary.” The number 64 is increasingly verboten in Hong Kong, representing the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen massacre. Whereas mainland China had long been subject to such onerous restrictions — even homonyms of the Chinese words for six and four are censored in the run-up to the Tiananmen anniversary — Hong Kong had until recently been spared. “This Ming Pao taboo points to the degree to which Hong Kong has been forced to adopt [Chinese] orthodoxy,” the China Media Project noted.

Ted Lasso leaves fans hanging

Ted Lasso — a show about the coach of a Kansas American football team taking over a U.K. soccer club — aired possibly its final episode. The show highlighted the U.S. wave of enthusiasm for Europe’s top domestic soccer league: Last year, NBC signed a six year, $2.7 billion contract for the Premier League’s broadcasting rights in the U.S., almost double what it paid in 2016, helping cement the league’s status as the world’s richest. Premier League viewership in the U.S. was up 21% last season compared to year prior, and American investors, wooed by its success, have at least a partial stake in nine of its 20 clubs.

• Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to appear in court for a bail hearing on his graft charges.
• Final day of initial talks aimed at agreeing a new global treaty to tackle plastic pollution.
• Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood turns 93.

Throughout Europe, the prices of food and drinks are rising at the fastest rate in decades. The cost of olive oil, a staple throughout the Mediterranean, has risen by 23.6% in the last year. Cheese and milk have risen even faster, topping 25% each. Even as the prices of fuels and other commodities fall, food inflation is squeezing budgets across the continent, forcing governments to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances: Italy’s government held a meeting this month to discuss the soaring price of pasta.

A new film explores how a pirate mixtape empire that began in an illegal market stall in Naples became Italy’s third-biggest record label. Mixed by Erry, released on Netflix today, is also the name of the real-life label set up by Enrico Frattasio, a DJ credited alongside his two brothers with bringing pop music to young Italians in the 1980s. Their influence traveled: At its peak, the business turned over around $5 million a year in today’s money, with customers from Romania to Hong Kong. “I was the YouTube or Spotify of the 1980s,” Frattasio told The Guardian. The new film depicts the founders “neither as criminals nor heroes,” the paper said, “but [as] kids who loved music and ended up in over their heads.”

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