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US rebukes Israel for West Bank operations

The US Secretary of State called on Israel to make “fundamental changes” to its West Bank operations after Israeli forces said they “unintentionally” killed a Turkish-American activist protesting Jewish settlements there. Antony Blinken’s rebuke was one of the Biden administration’s strongest condemnations of Israel’s conduct since the war in Gaza began, The Washington Post wrote, and comes as the White House’s top foreign policy goal of securing a ceasefire to end the war looks more remote than ever. In insisting an agreement is imminent, the US president appears to be “operating in a different reality” from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has doubled down on demands that would likely thwart a deal, CNN wrote.

Stocks shaky before debate

US stocks fell Tuesday ahead of the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. The face off “could prove market-moving,” The Wall Street Journal wrote, if the candidates expand on their economic policy. Wall Street will be listening for more specifics on their plans for taxes, tariffs, and regulation, Semafor’s Liz Hoffman noted. “The market seems to still favor a Trump victory,” one financial analyst said, so any debate wins for the Republican candidate would likely push stocks higher. In at least one metric that signaled confidence in Trump, the stock price of Trump Media surged by double digits Tuesday afternoon, CNBC reported.

Nippon Steel makes final plea

A Nippon Steel executive will head to Washington Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to salvage its blocked $15 billion acquisition of US Steel, the Financial Times reported. Observers will closely watch whether the deal will come up during the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, who have both opposed it. It’s not the only mega-deal to fall apart recently, The Economist argued, despite seemingly ripe market conditions. One theory is that “sprawling global conglomerates are thoroughly unfashionable,” with more investor skepticism around empire builders: Big tech, especially, is averse to risky tie-ups. But politics are the potent killer of such deals, The Economist wrote, as companies want to avoid heightened antitrust scrutiny.

New Hindi LLM to be launched

A UAE-based artificial intelligence company is set to launch a Hindi large language model as global tech firms race to adapt AI platforms for India. G24’s platform will be trained on around 2.13 trillion “tokens” of language datasets including Hindi, which is spoken by more than 50% of Indians. It joins giants like Microsoft and Google who are “particularly interested in navigating India’s linguistic challenges,” Fortune Magazine wrote, and are customizing AI chatbots to operate in less-popular Indian languages. But some AI researchers have warned of “cutesy technology solutions” that don’t address realistic problems faced by rural Indians.

Kenya blocks Adani airport deal

A Kenyan court on Tuesday blocked India’s Adani Group from managing Nairobi’s main airport after protests that the deal would result in job losses. It’s the latest blow for Gautam Adani — Asia’s second-richest man — and his efforts to expand the conglomerate’s overseas presence, the Financial Times reported. India views the Adani Group’s infrastructure projects as an opportunity for Delhi to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, but its projects in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have also faced fierce local opposition. The Adani Group’s own investments in China have also come under scrutiny in India, with critics citing national security concerns.

Maduro blows through dollar stockpile

Venezuela faces financial turmoil as the country’s dollar reserves dry up. President Nicolás Maduro spent a huge chunk of the stockpiled money on campaign rallies and ads ahead of July’s widely disputed presidential election, Bloomberg reported. It has caused a parallel, unofficial US dollar exchange rate of the Venezuelan bolivar to trade at 20% below the official rate. The crisis “threatens to revive a cycle of rapid inflation and currency debasement,” Bloomberg wrote, undoing Maduro’s efforts over the past two years to stabilize the bolivar and slow price increases for poverty-stricken Venezuelans.

Chinese students shun finance majors

A banking career is now less appealing to China’s brightest students as Beijing continues its crackdown on the sector. Minimum entrance exam scores for universities’ finance programs are falling, reflecting lower demand, the Financial Times reported. Given Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s ideological campaign against inequality and financial elitism, students are recognizing Beijing’s shifting policy direction and are turning to disciplines that give them “better economic prospects,” said one economist. Still, one top Shanghai academic recently urged bankers not to feel ashamed about their profession.

Mark Ein, Venture Capitalist and Entrepreneur; Limited Partner, Washington Commanders and Lori Kalani, Chief Responsible Gaming Officer, DraftKings will join Semafor’s editors in Washington, D.C. on September 19 for a discussion on the growth and trajectory of the U.S. gaming industry.

RSVP for in-person or livestream.

A case against the penny

There are at least 240 billion pennies lying around in the US, making it the most produced coin in the history of civilization. That’s a fraction of the total minted since 1793, New York Times Magazine writer Caity Weaver reported, most of which are missing. Pennies are rarely used and no one seems to think they should exist: A report in 1976 said the penny should be eradicated by 1980, and a former Mint director said, “I think everybody agrees this is ridiculous.” In 2013, then-President Barack Obama called the coin “a good metaphor for [government’s] problems… It’s very hard to get rid of things that don’t work.”

Physics and math ‘become one’ again

Math has long driven discoveries in physics, but in recent years advances in physics are leading to new insights in math. That used to be the case — Newton and Leibniz independently developed calculus while trying to understand gravity — but had largely stopped happening by the last century. In the 1970s, however, physics was once again a “promising source of new ideas,” one mathematician told science writer Ananyo Bhattacharya in Nautilus. String theory, once hailed as the theory that would unite physics, has “arguably had a bigger impact” on mathematics, creating new tools that researchers used to solve decades-old puzzles. “Physics and math are starting to become one again,” one professor said, “like they were in Newton and Gauss’ day.”

How animals understand death

A feature in The Atlantic asks whether animals understand their own mortality. “Comparative thanatology,” the study of how animals experience death, is a small field that dates back to Aristotle, who wrote about dolphins supporting a dead calf. More systematic research is difficult: The animals that “react most interestingly to death,” such as elephants and primates, are long-lived, so data on their deaths is harder to come by. One philosopher argues that some animals achieve a child’s understanding that death involves a permanent loss. Chimps and other smarter creatures seem to “feel something like grief,” gathering around a dead community member, with those closest to it lingering longest. Still, animals’ conception of death “is mysterious and maybe always will be,” The Atlantic wrote.

September 11:

• Global chip industry group SEMI holds the Semicon exhibition in India.
• The US releases CPI data for August.
• Pope Francis delivers a state address in Singapore.

A rediscovered Baroque masterpiece by Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi has gone on display after centuries of being hidden from view. Painted around 1625, Penitent Mary Magdalene was considered lost until 2001, when it surfaced at a Paris auction before disappearing into a private collection. Gentileschi, a protégé of Caravaggio, achieved rare fame for a woman painter of her time, defying conventions to take biblical heroines, saints, and female figures from mythology as her subjects. Unseen by the public since the 17th century, the painting is now on show at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. “Nothing compares with seeing the newly rediscovered, emotive original in person,” museum director Eric Lee said.

• What we can learn from Trump’s and Harris’ old debates.
• Can the US win over Google in court?
• Chinese roots deepen in Africa’s last Taiwan holdout.