Flagship

Finance leaders jittery ahead of US election

Global finance chiefs are increasingly forecasting Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and are growing more anxious over the implications. Economic uncertainty around the Republican candidate’s proposals — could add trillions to US debt — was a central topic at last week’s IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington. A larger US deficit could cause long-term interest rates to rise and strengthen the US dollar, consequences that “don’t serve emerging markets well,” Turkey’s finance minister fretted. Asia “will be hit the hardest” by a Trump win, a Singapore-based investment banker argued, because his proposed tariff hikes would disproportionately impact the region’s export-oriented economies, like China.

Trump would keep countries guessing

Uncertainty over the impact of Donald Trump’s economic agenda, should he win next week’s election, symbolizes his broader foreign policy posture: unpredictability. America’s allies — and adversaries — believe the Republican candidate “wants to keep them guessing over his plans,” the Financial Times wrote, and his camp is leaning in: “Trump is not predictable and we Americans like it,” said Ric Grenell, a Trump loyalist who could serve in a second administration. In some sectors, the former president’s plans are more predictable: He would likely put pressure on NATO members who spend less than 2% of their GDP on defense, and on partners who have trade surpluses with the US, especially Germany and France. “It’s going to be rocky for them,” a former Trump White House official said.

Volkswagen to close factories in Germany

Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest automaker, is planning to shut down factories in Germany and lay off thousands of employees, workers’ representatives said. Germany’s auto industry is faltering in large part because China’s burgeoning electric vehicle sector has outcompeted German carmakers both in China, and, increasingly, in Europe. China is Volkswagen’s biggest market, but sales have declined as local EV companies developed advanced, affordable alternatives. Chinese carmakers have also started making inroads in Europe’s luxury market, launching SUVs and limousines to compete with BMW, Mercedes, and Rolls Royce, Bloomberg reported. Compounding the industry’s worries, Donald Trump has threatened “substantial tariffs” on vehicles made outside the US: German automakers should be “very worried,” one expert told Deutsche Welle.

Israel bans UN aid agency

Israel’s parliament on Monday voted to ban the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees. The move — which is expected to take effect within two to three months — is expected to severely restrict UNRWA from operating in Palestinian territories, and has drawn criticism from global leaders who say it could stifle much-needed aid distribution. Israel has long alleged that UNRWA has ties to Hamas, and the UN fired nine employees earlier this year who may have been involved in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. UNRWA is also largely considered Gaza’s main lifeline for aid, and hundreds of the organization’s workers have been killed by Israeli strikes in the enclave, making it the deadliest conflict for UN employees.

NATO warns over NK soldiers in Russia

North Korea’s deployment of troops to a combat zone in Russia marks “a dangerous expansion” of Moscow’s war, NATO’s head warned Monday. The US said that many of the 10,000 North Korean soldiers sent to Russia for training are moving to the Kursk region to help retake territory from Ukraine. The move is the latest indication that the West should stop underestimating Pyongyang, analysts said: “The signs of a radicalisation in North Korean policy have proliferated” this year, Gideon Rachman wrote in the Financial Times, noting the country’s success in building an arms arsenal despite its isolation. And the possibility that North Korea deploys nuclear weapons in a future conflict shouldn’t be discounted, a Bloomberg columnist argued, because it knows it would lose a traditional war against the US.

South India facing population challenges

The world’s two most populous countries are now grappling with demographic challenges. India’s population growth rate has slowed, and the heads of two states in the country’s south — where the fertility rate has sharply dropped — recently urged families to have more children. Leaders are concerned that slowing population growth in southern India could lead to less representation in the federal legislature. Meanwhile, China’s well-documented birth rate troubles have seemingly gotten so severe that government workers are now calling up women and asking them to get pregnant, the South China Morning Post reported. The number of kindergartens in the country dropped by 5% in the last year, the second consecutive annual decline.

Ohtani’s World Series debut grips Japan

As Japan plunges into political chaos after its ruling party’s defeat in Sunday’s election, the public seems just as consumed by baseball games more than 6,000 miles away. The ongoing Major League Baseball World Series — featuring Japanese star Shohei Ohtani, who plays for the Los Angeles Dodgers — has packed bars and set viewership records in Japan, despite the time difference. Japan’s most popular anime series delayed its broadcast to avoid conflicting with the series, and travel agencies are swamped with demand from fans hoping to attend the games in the US. The hysteria is driven by Ohtani’s immense celebrity at home: “Think of Princess Di’s coronation — multiplied by a million,” a Japanese baseball expert said.

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Waymo has largest funding round

Waymo raised a further $5.6 billion to move its robotaxis into more US cities. The Alphabet-owned company’s self-driving taxis are currently in operation in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, with plans to open next year in Atlanta and Austin, where its services will be available via the Uber app. Waymo is also testing routes that use freeways, as well as more complex urban environments in major northeastern cities. The company still loses money, but it now makes more than 100,000 customer trips per week and its funding round was oversubscribed, with investors praising its commitment to passenger safety. It’s one bright spot for Alphabet as it prepares to report its third-quarter earnings Tuesday, which will likely reflect the slowdown in its core Google search business.

Ultra-rich rent art for superyachts

Superyacht owners are renting art masterpieces to deck out their boats to avoid damaging their collections at home. While salty air and rough waves can ruin artworks, crews pose “the biggest danger at sea,” one art historian told the Robb Report: One crew member wiped down and damaged a $110 million Jean-Michel Basquiat painting after children threw cornflakes at it, while staff left an Andy Warhol Brillo Box sculpture in a wheelie bin after mistaking it for cleaning supplies. Several museums and galleries now lease originals to yacht owners, but some billionaires still prefer to bring their own treasures on board, said one dealer, “because they like to stand in front of it and tell their guests, ‘This is worth more than the boat.’”

Peculiar cloud returns to New Zealand

New Zealand’s “pet cloud” — a peculiar formation often mistaken for a UFO — has reappeared in the same spot it has favored for decades. NASA satellites recently captured a photograph of what locals call the “Taieri Pet” — the lenticular cloud’s name stems from its periodic formation over one stretch of the South Island. The cloud often appears like a “huge stack of pancakes” or a flying saucer, Space.com wrote, and is reportedly one of the most common explanations for UFO sightings across the world. “The appearance of the Taieri Pet is a great indicator of strong winds high in the atmosphere,” a local meteorologist told NASA, which can in turn pose hazards to aviation, including turbulence.

Oct. 29:

• Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán meets his Georgian counterpart in Tbilisi.
• Chinese EV giant BYD reports third-quarter results.
• The 28th American French Film Festival kicks off in Los Angeles.

NASA’s vast interplanetary spacecraft Europa Clipper set off for Jupiter’s second moon this month carrying a small piece of earthly poetry. Ada Limón, the current US poet laureate, was asked to write a poem to be engraved inside the basketball court-sized craft — preferably with water imagery, a nod to the mission’s purpose of investigating whether the ice-encrusted moon Europa could sustain life. In Praise of Mystery represents a message from humankind to whatever the craft finds on its five-year, 1.8-billion mile journey. It also symbolizes how art can be a medium for discovery, Limón told The New York Times: “Poetry is the language of mystery and the unknown.”

Electricity, minerals, and youth are taking center stage at Saudi Arabia’s Africa summit in Riyadh where leaders are discussing the continent’s development and investment needs, Semafor Gulf’s Sarah Dadouch wrote. Africa has the potential to become a “breadbasket” for surrounding regions, particularly the Gulf, Saudi’s investment minister said, and could provide critical resources, including minerals, for the next phase of economic development.