Flagship

China’s top diplomat to skip UN meeting

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi will skip the U.N. General Assembly next week and instead travel to Moscow, with Beijing sending a largely ceremonial official to New York in his place. The decision points to the widening fracture between the West and China, after Chinese leader Xi Jinping skipped summits in India and Indonesia this month. In the U.S., Wang had been expected to lay the groundwork for an upcoming Xi trip which is now in doubt. Analysts were divided over the strategy behind the moves, with some suggesting domestic worries may be troubling Xi: China’s economy is slowing, and the country’s defense minister has not been seen for weeks, reportedly because he is being investigated for corruption.

US auto workers strike

Workers at the U.S.’s biggest automakers went on strike demanding a 40% pay rise. Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis each face a factory going idle after negotiations with the United Auto Workers union failed. The firms have seen near-record profits in the last year, but face long-term difficulties: The pandemic halted production, leaving stock low, and inflation is hitting consumers’ ability to pay. The auto industry is also changing rapidly. Tesla recently pioneered an innovative new assembly technique, pressing the underbodies of its cars together in one piece rather than building them from 400 parts. If successful the new procedure will slash assembly costs and has left Tesla’s rivals scrambling to catch up, Reuters reported.

Hunter Biden indicted

U.S. federal prosecutors indicted President Joe Biden’s son Hunter on charges of lying when buying a gun and illegally possessing the firearm. The 53-year-old faces up to 25 years in prison, though The New York Times noted that, as a nonviolent first-time offender, he would be unlikely to get a long sentence. The political implications are significant, coming soon after Republicans opened an impeachment inquiry into the president over whether he benefited from Hunter’s business dealings. The latest charges “put the president in a difficult position,” our Principals colleagues note today, adding: “For Democrats, though, the response is a no-brainer: Throw the book at him,” but hold his father blameless.

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Brazil’s first sentence for Jan. 8 riot

Brazil’s Supreme Court sentenced the first person over an alleged coup attempt in January by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro. The 17-year prison sentence for storming government buildings — longer than those meted out in the U.S. to those who invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — suggests the court will show little clemency. Around 1,400 people are expected to face trials in Brazil over the Jan. 8, 2023 violence, while Bolsonaro has been banned from running for office for eight years over the “appalling lies” he spread about the country’s voting system in the run-up to last year’s election.

MDMA may soon be approved for PTSD

A study suggesting MDMA is effective at treating PTSD could lead U.S. regulators to approve the drug’s use as soon as next year. Australia became the first country to allow the use of MDMA, the active ingredient in Ecstasy, in June. The new study found that 71% of patients given MDMA and therapy lost their PTSD diagnosis, compared to 48% on placebo, according to Nature. There’s reason for skepticism: The trials are small, and placebo control in studies of psychedelic drugs is less effective because it’s easy for subjects to tell if they’ve had real Ecstasy or not. Still, countries, including the U.S., seem to be moving ahead with approval.

Rising death toll after Libya flooding

More than 11,000 people have died after flooding in eastern Libya. The natural disaster was made worse, experts told Al Jazeera, by rampant corruption, poor maintenance of public infrastructure, and years of division between Libya’s rival administrations following the 2011 overthrow of dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Still, competently addressing the fallout from the catastrophe, as well as that from a horrific earthquake in Morocco, could help reset tense domestic and regional political situations. “The mismanagement of the disasters is fuelling resentment against local authorities, which may generate instability,” an expert wrote for the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Decisive support today can … be the catalyst to more fruitful relations in the future.”

Demand pushes up uranium prices

Uranium prices hit $60 a pound, the highest level since 2011 and a 20% rise so far this year. The price is driven partly by concerns that a coup in Niger could hit supply: The West African country holds about 5% of the world’s reserves and provides a fifth of nuclear-dependent France’s uranium. But overall demand is also up. The World Nuclear Association predicted that global requirements will reach 140,000 tons by 2040, up from 70,000 this year, as countries increasingly look to nuclear power for energy security, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. China is particularly driving the demand, with another 19 nuclear plants under construction to add to its fleet of 38.

Total power failure in Nigeria

Nigeria’s power grid collapsed almost entirely on Thursday, with generation falling to zero megawatts, leading to widespread blackouts. Despite the country’s huge oil and gas deposits, its energy production is erratic: Fewer than half its residents have regular electricity and many are reliant on generators. Its system collapsed at least four times in 2022, the BBC reported, although this latest breakdown is the worst for a year. Newly elected President Bola Tinubu has promised to allow state governments to build their own power plants to improve reliability. His recent decision to end fuel subsidies and implement a new exchange rate regime have also hit the Nigerian economy, with the naira plunging and inflation at a 20-year high, according to The Africa Report.

Hybrid work boosts UK female workforce

More British women are working full-time after the pandemic led to a boom in hybrid working. Official statistics showed that 58.7% of women work full-time now, compared to 56.5% before the pandemic. The difference is much greater in sectors with strong hybrid-work policies. In finance, the proportion of women working full-time jumped from 75% to 83%. The change was even more notable for mothers, the Financial Times reported: The proportion working full-time in IT and finance jumped more than 10 percentage points. Hybrid workers also reported that their work-life balance improved, and parents said they found it easier to juggle home responsibilities with work.

Most Wordle turn-one winners are cheats

At least 3,000 people, and sometimes as many as 9,000, cheat at Wordle each day. The guess-the-word game, which became a phenomenon in 2021 before being bought by The New York Times, has 2,135 possible answers, which means 0.043% of guesses — roughly 860 out of its 2 million daily players — should be correct on the first try if they guess randomly. Somehow, though, between 4,000 and 10,000 answer correctly on their first attempt, suggesting up to 90% of turn-one victories are fraudulent. The lack of financial or in-game incentives makes the cheating a bit baffling, although researchers cited in New Scientist suggested that posting results on social media was the temptation.

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• El Salvador stages a military parade to mark the country’s Independence Day.
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Revenues from Colombia’s cocaine trade, which is set to overtake oil as the country’s main export. Cocaine exports have grown almost ninefold since 2013, as Colombia has demilitarized its approach against coca growing. This week, President Gustavo Petro called for a new strategy, shifting away from eradicating plantations and into fighting consumption as a public-health problem. The approach has led to record global cocaine production — of which Colombia accounts for 60% — which in turn has fueled violence across the region. A positive sign, however, is that the coca glut has led to a price crash, according to El País, which may pressure growers to voluntarily shift to more profitable, and legal, cultivations.

A 23-year-old student is attracting millions of TikTok viewers with recordings of her reading out articles from The New York Times. Kelsey Russell’s videos work due to “her sincere and enthusiastic demeanor and the natural and entertaining way that she breaks down complicated stories,” Kate Lindsay wrote in the newsletter Embedded. Russell has been invited to tour the Times office and is being wooed by The Washington Post, according to Lindsay, as her audience numbers seem to defy the narrative of Gen Z’s so-called news aversion.

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