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Defiant Bibi faces growing criticism

In a bellicose speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would no more accept a ceasefire than the U.S. would after 9/11 or Pearl Harbor: “This is a time for war.” Israeli forces continued pounding Gaza in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, with tanks now on the main highway within the territory. Netanyahu faces economic and political difficulties: A video was released of three hostages pleading with him to secure their release and criticizing him for the attacks — polls suggest most Israelis blame him for failing to prevent them — and JPMorgan warned that because of the war, the Israeli economy was likely to shrink 11% in the fourth quarter.

Risks abound for Chinese economy

New data underlined the challenges facing Chinese policymakers looking to bolster economic growth. Manufacturing activity unexpectedly contracted this month, reversing a trend of optimistic indicators. HSBC’s chief executive warned, meanwhile, that China’s moribund property sector could take a long period to recover from what may be its lowest ebb, and that risks remained to any bounceback. China’s economic growth has slowed as officials have grappled with worrying levels of local-government borrowing, as well as huge amounts of debt held by giant property developers. The issue of debt is at the top of the agenda of a major Communist Party conference in Beijing this week, the South China Morning Post reported.

Venezuela suspends opposition primary

Venezuela’s Supreme Court suspended the results of the country’s opposition primary, imperiling a deal with Washington. Under the agreement, the U.S. would ease sanctions on Venezuela’s beleaguered economy in exchange for political liberalization and a commitment to free elections next year. U.S. officials warned that Washington will take action if Caracas failed to honor its commitments. Experts, however, were unsurprised that a government that faces numerous accusations of corruption and human rights violations would close the door to a political movement that might replace it. “They’re not going to serve their head on a platter,” one told The Wall Street Journal.

Union reaches deals with US automakers

General Motors struck a deal with the United Auto Workers union to end a strike, the last of the “Big Three” Detroit carmakers to reach an agreement. The deals were generally seen as a significant victory for the union, and represent a political win for U.S. President Joe Biden, who openly sided with the striking workers. Yet his support for the union sits somewhat in tension with his efforts to cut the country’s carbon emissions: “For autoworkers, the fear is that their skills in milling engine blocks and assembling transmissions might not translate to winding electric motors or wiring high-voltage circuits,” Vox noted.

Gene therapy cures children’s deafness

Several deaf-from-birth children in China can now hear after being treated with a revolutionary new gene therapy. The treatment uses a virus to deliver a working copy of a gene to cells in the ear, making them express a protein vital to hearing. The specific form of deafness treated only applies to about 1-3% of deaf people, but scientists told MIT Technology Review that the breakthrough “could be the gateway drug that drives a lot of funds toward other causes of deafness.” The children, originally entirely deaf, ended up with 60 to 65% of normal hearing, one researcher estimated: The mother of one child said that her daughter was now “complaining it’s too noisy.”

Indian critics targeted in iPhone attacks

Apple warned at least six Indian opposition politicians, as well as journalists and analysts, that their iPhones had been targeted by “state-sponsored attackers.” The U.S. tech giant did not say who was behind the effort, but members of multiple opposition parties suggested the Indian government was to blame. The announcement raised worries of an expanding crackdown on voices critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of a general election next year: This month, officials moved to prosecute a Booker Prize-winning novelist, and a small news outlet was subjected to multiple raids. A senior official in Modi’s party dismissed the latest controversy as a “hullabaloo” which “will end up as damp squib!”

DRC displacement surges

A record 6.9 million people have been displaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the International Organization for Migration warning that the figure may rise as fighting between rebels and government-linked militias escalates. Despite a decades-long effort and a budget of upwards of $1 billion a year, the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in the country remains hugely unpopular, with Kinshasa pushing since last year for it to leave. The IOM, meanwhile, has struggled to raise the $100 million it says it requires for its operations in DRC, forcing almost two-thirds of those displaced to turn to host families for shelter.

Baldur’s Gate rescues Hasbro

Toy manufacturer Hasbro’s disappointing earnings report was bolstered by sales of Magic: The Gathering tie-ins and the Dungeons & Dragons video game Baldur’s Gate 3. Hasbro owns Wizards of the Coast, which makes both Magic and D&D. Sales of BG3 have been stratospheric, while Magic released a successful Lord of the Rings crossover. The success underpins Wizards’ plan to morph into a “digitally driven multimedia franchise” rather than a game designer, Gizmodo reported, which might unnerve fans of its tabletop offerings, with the next D&D edition due out next year. Hasbro isn’t the only toy manufacturer looking to move beyond toys: Mattel wants to build its Barbie success into a cinematic universe, and Lego has an empire of games, films, TV, and crossover content.

Cockney and King’s English disappear

The “King’s English,” aka Received Pronunciation, and Cockney accents may be the stereotype of how Brits speak, but they are all but extinct in England. RP’s clipped vowels, familiar from old World War II films, and the working-class London accent — think Michael Caine — have been replaced by three new accents, a study of speakers in south-east England found. They are Estuary English, descended from Cockney, spoken by people like Adele, often deploying glottal stops like “be’er” for “better”; multicultural London English, influenced by Asian and Black British accents, and standard southern British English, a softened version of RP. The change can be heard by listening to old recordings of the late Queen Elizabeth II, whose cut-glass RP softened in later life.

Japan’s mundane Halloween

Japanese people showed off their increasingly traditional mundane Halloween costumes. Over the last few years, Japan has adopted a comically low-key approach to Halloween, with costumes like “Man who got his coat stuck in a train door” or “Guy who leans in as his Mario Kart character turns a curve.” So-far spotted examples of 2023 costumes include “Person trying to go viral with a video of a cat riding a Roomba,” “Factory worker who wore a helmet all day” — his hair is very flat — and “Person who was about to be late for work, but then their train got delayed and now they are taking their time since they got a proof-of-delay ticket from the station.”

• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visits Serbia as part of her tour of the Western Balkans.
• The sixth annual Vietnam-U.S. business summit opens in Hanoi.
• West Hollywood’s Halloween parade returns for the first time in four years after cancellations sparked by COVID-19.

Of the 10 nations where people feel the least safe globally, seven are in Africa, while almost 30% of the global population doesn’t feel safe walking alone at night, data gathered by Gallup showed. “This statistic represents lost human potential and a major part of the human development challenge in too many countries,” the research firm’s editor-in-chief said. East Asia remained the region where the population felt the safest last year, and the United States and Canada were the only places where perceptions of safety worsened. The countries where people felt the safest walking alone were Kuwait and Singapore.

Khausa, a noodle dish from Pakistan’s coastal city of Karachi, carries within it a history of migration and adaptation. Inspired by the Burmese dish ohn no khao swe — rice or egg noodles in a chicken and coconut milk broth, with similarities to Malaysia’s laksa or Thailand’s khao soi — Pakistan’s version adds a few extra flourishes. “In mine, spaghetti, instead of the original egg noodles, and a broth akin to kadhi (gram flour broth) are often topped with chicken lathered in tikka masala and ‘slimz’, crispy and spicy potato sticks found in bakeries across Karachi,” writes Nida Zehra in the Brown History newsletter. “It gladly receives all the fanfare it deserves.”

• The new House speaker appears to be picking a fight with his own party.
• Small businesses in Kenya are rejecting mobile money payments in favor of cash as they sidestep an aggressive tax.
• Wall Street’s newest CEO is actually a Wall Street guy.
• How a nonprofit is digitizing Nigerian history, one newspaper at a time.