Swimming Lake Geneva, and a recommendation of the music of a 1960s French prog pioneer.
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Xi meets African leaders
Somalia's President arrives in Beijing. Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters
Chinese leader Xi Jinping began a series of talks with his African counterparts ahead of a summit in which Beijing will demonstrate its geopolitical ambitions in the continent. Leaders of South Africa, the DRC, Djibouti, and Mali are among those who met Xi ahead of the ninth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation starting tomorrow. China’s lending to Africa rose in 2023 to $4.6 billion after several years of decline. Both sides of the negotiating table will be wary, Semafor’s Alexander Onukwue reported: Many African countries have unsustainable debt, and China lost out in the past when Zambia defaulted on its $6 billion loans. Green energy and security cooperation will also be discussed at the summit.
African countries are losing up to 5% of their yearly GDP to climate change, a new report found. According to the World Meteorological Organization, they are spending as much as 9% of their budgets for climate adaptation policies: The continent “bears an exceptionally heavy burden from climate change” given that it has the smallest carbon footprint on a per capita basis, the WMO said. Meanwhile millions of Africans — living in some of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of a warming planet and the consequent extreme weather — have been displaced this year as rains and floods devastated homes and crops.
France’s latest nuclear power plant will start producing energy, and could be attached to the grid by the end of the year. Flamanville, the 57th French reactor, is 12 years behind schedule and 300% over budget after regulators demanded redesigns. But despite the project’s struggles, nuclear power is seeing a resurgence: The French state power company EDF hopes to use the model to export overseas, and about 60 reactors are under construction worldwide, according to the World Nuclear Association, with many more planned and proposed. Finland unveiled the world’s first deep-earth repository for nuclear waste, capable of storing used fuel for 100,000 years: It will open in 2026.
Venezuela opposition candidate Edmundo González. Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/File Photo/Reuters
Venezuelan authorities issued an arrest warrant for opposition leader Edmundo González after a disputed July election. While most independent exit polls showed González leading Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by more than two to one, officials claimed Maduro won despite failing to provide evidence. The government has since ramped up its crackdown on dissent, arresting hundreds and forcing opposition leaders, including González, to go into hiding. The political repression — which has led to the death of at least 25 people, according to rights groups — could lead to the reimposition of international sanctions on Venezuela’s beleaguered economy.
US citizens are losing faith in college. As a new academic year begins, universities face declining enrollment: “Public confidence in four-year colleges is at a record low,” one analyst told the Financial Times. The percentage of US high-school graduates going on to do a four-year college degree dropped from 70% in 2016 to 62% in 2022. The student debt crisis and falling birth rates are contributing to colleges’ problems, and elite support is declining: Even former US President Barack Obama recently said “college shouldn’t be the only ticket to the middle class,” while an ex-college governor said young people increasingly make the “rational economic decision to make $120,000 a year as a plumber.”
US voters’ outlook on the economy improved in August, although a majority still remain worried by the country’s economic prospects, new data from Gallup showed. Despite unemployment rates recently reaching a record low and inflation cooling from a two-decade high — as well as a months-long rally in equity markets — a historically low share of US voters approve of President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy. Meanwhile a third of voters say economic issues are still the biggest problem facing the country. Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’ ability to distance herself from Bidenomics may well define the election, Janan Ganesh argued in the Financial Times.
China’s economic slowdown has sparked fears of a rise in obesity rates as consumers turn to cheaper, less healthy meals. The slump is expected to fuel China’s burgeoning fast-food market, which is forecast to reach more than $250 billion by next year, up more than twofold from 2017’s figures. Although China still has relatively low obesity rates, they have risen sharply over the past three decades. Even a moderate further rise in rates could lead to “a major public health issue,” a senior Chinese health official told Reuters. A recent estimate showed that the cost of weight-related treatments is expected to rise to 22% of the health budget by 2030, from just 8% in 2022.
Mark Ein, Venture Capitalist, Entrepreneur, and Limited Partner, Washington Commanders; and Lori Kalani, Chief Responsible Gaming Officer, DraftKings,will join Semafor’s editors in Washington, DC, on September 19 for a discussion on the growth and trajectory of the US gaming industry.
Protests against Israeli settlements in Bethlehem. Yosri Aljamal/Reuters
Illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank are being funded by organizations closely linked to the country’s government, a BBC investigation showed. Settlements have expanded rapidly in recent years: There are 196 in the occupied territory, with 29 set up in 2023, more than any previous year. The BBC followed one settler, Moshe Sharvit, who apparently evicted several Palestinian families at gunpoint. Sharvit and other settlers signed contracts with two groups backed by the Israeli government, providing them with tens of thousands of dollars. The contracts prohibited them from building on the land, but several outposts have been constructed.
A Texas resident who attached an AirTag to her plastic recycling found that, rather than being recycled, it ended up sitting in an open-air trash pile. The Houston waste-management facility claims it will recycle any form of plastic. But the recycling is yet to begin, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of plastic waste have piled up inside: The facility has now failed three fire-safety inspections. Just 6% of US plastic waste is recycled. “People… see the recyclable label, and they put it in the recycle bin,” one chemical engineer told CBS in June. “You’re being lied to.” AirTags are used to track stolen luggage, or even family members with dementia, but Apple likely didn’t think it “would be used to track trash,” Tom’s Hardware noted.
Caenorhabditis elegans. Zeynep F. Altun/Creative Commons
Scientists used artificial intelligence to control the brain of a primitive worm.C. elegans worms have just 302 neurons in their brain, making them useful subjects for neuroscience. Worms were gene-edited so some neurons would fire in the presence of light, sometimes prompting movement, and then the AI was given the task of guiding the worm towards some food by flashing the light. Using reinforcement learning, watching how the cyborg worm behaved, the AI learned how to direct the worms to the food faster than the worms on their own. Researchers told Scientific American that the method could be used to improve deep-brain stimulation for Parkinson’s patients.
The amount of time it took British endurance swimmer Sam Farrow to swim the length of Lake Geneva, likely a women’s record. The 72.8-kilometer (45-mile) swim — which will be ratified by record-keeping agencies at the end of the month — was almost twice as long as any Farrow had ever achieved, leading to fatigue and cramping as far out as 20km from the finish line. “I’ve not done as much training as most of us would do,” Farrow told The Guardian. “I have two jobs and two children, so it’s definitely a juggling act.”
Pitchfork recommends Paix by Catherine Ribeiro, who died last month aged 82. Ribeiro began as a French yé-yé star in the 1960s, but moved to psychedelic rock and “experimental, uncompromisingly political songs on issues including the Vietnam War and Palestine,” inspiring figures such as Kim Gordon and Jim O’Rourke. Listen to Paix on Spotify.
