Flagship

IMF downgrades China GDP forecast

The International Monetary Fund lowered its growth forecast for China’s economy from 5% to 4.8%. China’s struggling property market and low consumer confidence eroded growth, contributing to the downgrade, the agency said Tuesday. The projections follow recent reports of major staff reductions in China by several Western firms, including Fidelity International, consulting giant McKinsey, and Finland-based Nokia. But as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures and aims for 5% GDP growth this year, the world’s second-largest economy will argue at the upcoming UN climate summit that it isn’t an economic powerhouse: European leaders have challenged China’s insistence that it is not a “developed” country but a “developing” one, a status exempting Beijing from contributing to a $100 billion climate fund.

Xi-Putin meeting underscores close ties

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping met for the third time this year, underscoring their close ties despite Western pressure on Beijing to scale back its support of the Kremlin. Their meeting came at the start of the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan, a gathering of mostly developing economies that looks to counterbalance Western clout. “The international situation is intertwined with chaos,” Xi told Putin, but “the friendship between China and Russia will continue for generations.” China is reliant on Russian crude oil imports, while Beijing’s exports to Moscow have soared, reaching a record monthly high in September in the absence of Western firms in Russia, the South China Morning Post reported.

How Putin courts the Gulf

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks about the Middle East are resonating with the Arab world by addressing its discontent with the US’ approach to the war in Gaza, the editor-in-chief of Arab News argued. In a column for Semafor Gulf, Faisal J. Abbas wrote that in a two-hour roundtable with journalists from BRICS countries, Putin reiterated his support for a Palestinian state and lamented the disbanding of a diplomatic mediation initiative that included Russia and the US. Washington maintains substantial influence in the Gulf, but “when it comes to winning the hearts and minds of what used to be called the ‘Arab Street’ … Putin seems to be the one speaking their language,” Abbas wrote.

Israel conflict deepens Iran economic woes

Israel’s imminent strike on Iran is exacerbating Tehran’s economic woes. Iranian currency and stocks slid this week, while international airlines canceled flights, the Financial Times reported, as Israel gears up to retaliate against Iran’s missile attack earlier this month. (The US has vowed to lift arms shipment suspensions to Israel as a reward for not striking Iran’s oil facilities, Al-Monitor reported Tuesday.) Tehran is set to increase defense spending, according to its new budget proposal, which ignores sectors “that many argue do not address the pressing needs of the population,” an anti-regime group wrote. Many Iranians, the FT wrote, worry further escalation and Tehran’s increasingly aggressive posture toward Israel will only worsen their economic struggles.

Japan sees largest IPO in years

The stock of the company that runs Tokyo’s subway system begins trading Wednesday in Japan’s biggest IPO in six years. Tokyo Metro Co.’s debut is set to support an optimistic outlook for Japanese stocks, analysts said. Its strong IPO is also a testament to the financial strength of Tokyo’s metro system — Asia’s oldest and one of the world’s largest — compared to its struggling counterparts in New York and London. The listing contributes to what is expected to be Asia’s biggest week for IPOs in more than two years, along with Hyundai Motor India’s trading debut Tuesday. The automaker had India’s largest-ever IPO, but shares fell Tuesday, which “showed the limits of India’s investor frenzy,” Bloomberg wrote.

US election results now harder to block

US lawmakers believe they will be able to certify the results of the presidential election without the chaos that unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021. Even as US officials sound the alarm about violence ahead of the election, a law passed quietly in 2022 limits legislators’ ability to object to the results, Semafor’s politics team reported. The law could take on greater relevance in the coming weeks: Republican-aligned groups have already filed dozens of election-related lawsuits, a move opponents believe lays the groundwork for Donald Trump to once again challenge the results if he loses. His opponent Kamala Harris has assembled a team of hundreds of lawyers that says it is “preparing for every eventuality,” The Washington Post reported this week.

US celeb vids used to influence Moldova

An app that allows fans to buy personalized greetings from celebrities was used in a pro-Kremlin campaign to influence Moldova’s recent referendum on whether to join the European Union. US actor Brian Baumgartner, who played Kevin in the US remake of The Office, recorded a message in broken Russian on Cameo earlier this year calling for the removal of pro-Western Moldovan President Maia Sandu: “We, Hollywood stars, support the people of Moldova in their desire to overthrow you, Sandu.” The Russian-backed operation, which included similar messages from Lindsay Lohan and other celebrities, was unsuccessful: Moldovans narrowly voted to join the EU, but the small country has become “a cautionary tale” about the exploitation of social media to “fund complex disinformation operations,” Wired reported.

Ana Maria Prieto, Head of Payment Systems at the Colombian Central Bank, will speak at the Digital Payments Infrastructure session at the Fall Edition of Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Oct. 25. The session will explore how robust payments infrastructure and expanded access to financial services drive business growth and empower consumers, while also examining how policymakers, companies, and individuals can harness this potential.

RSVP to this session and the World Economy Summit here.

Scientists try to make heat-resistant rice

Scientists are racing to genetically modify Japan’s most popular rice so it can withstand the ravages of climate change. Known as the “king” of Japanese rice, Koshihikari is particularly vulnerable to heat, and a record-breaking drought last year devastated crops in the country’s rice-growing heartland. To enable farmers to keep growing the grain, scientists are seeking to crossbreed into Koshihikari a DNA sequence from other rice varieties that makes those plants more resistant to extreme temperatures, The New York Times reported — but the entire process will take 10 to 15 years. One agricultural researcher said his institute had been developing rice based on heat projections for the end of the 21st century, but by last summer, “those temperatures had already arrived.”

River restoration creates wetland

The restoration of an English river has created a new wetland ecosystem. Rivers in flood plains naturally split and rejoin, but human land use often forces them to follow a single course. The River Aller in Somerset was engineered back to something like its pre-human state, with many smaller channels and pools. This “Stage 0” restoration technique, pioneered in Oregon in the US, creates new habitats, improves water quality, and reduces fire risk: “The site has gone bananas” in terms of wildlife and vegetation, one conservationist said. Conservation efforts have improved other rivers, notably the Thames in London and the Seine in Paris, both of which were all but dead a few decades ago but are now home to thriving populations of wildlife.

Hate for Comic Sans subsides

Comic Sans may no longer be the world’s most reviled typeface. The font, released by Microsoft in 1994, was designed to be friendly and comic book-like, and quickly became popular. But as Simon Garfield, the author of a new book on Comic Sans, noted in The Atlantic, it also became seen as déclassé: “Type aficionados don’t like it, the way coffee connoisseurs don’t like Starbucks.” As a result, it gets people bizarrely angry: “No other font gets people so worked up,” he wrote. (“Nothing can undo what you’ve done,” characters in a 2007 cartoon yelled at the font’s inventor.) But the hate appears to have subsided. A 2023 magazine issue published entirely in Comic Sans didn’t cause the uproar it expected to.

Oct. 23:

• NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 astronauts are expected to return to Earth, off the Florida coast.
• Tesla reports third-quarter earnings.
• Comedian and actor Ken Jeong​ unveils his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Artist Edmund de Waal is both creator and curator for an exhibition at a new museum in Norway. Playing with Fire, showing at the recently opened Kunstsilo in Kristiansand, displays works by the British ceramicist alongside pieces by Axel Salto, the late Danish twentieth-century master of ceramic arts. De Waal, who became a literary star with his 2010 family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes, set out to build the exhibition around the two artists’ “shared concern with metamorphosis,” he told Artnet. The show features an installation made by de Waal that was inspired by the work of Salto, whose pots “examine the moment when one thing becomes another.”

The owner of the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, has blocked the paper from endorsing a presidential candidate this year, Semafor’s Maxi Tani scooped. This wouldn’t be the first time Soon-Shiong overruled editorial board decisions, and recent local endorsements of candidates supported by his progressive daughter have “raised eyebrows,” Tani wrote.