Flagship

Huge China port opens in Peru

A massive Chinese-built and -operated port opened in Peru Thursday, reflecting Beijing’s growing influence — and Washington’s waning power — in Latin America. The port has the potential to “transform trade” by turning Peru into a shipping hub thanks to Chinese investment, the Financial Times wrote. China has surpassed the US as a trading partner for much of the region, The Wall Street Journal reported, largely because of Washington’s lack of engagement and perceived disinterest. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has especially made inroads in Brazil, where he will attend next week’s G20 summit and a state dinner. Brasília and Beijing’s deepening ties risk irking the US, and “it’s in Brazil’s economic interest not to choose sides in this feud,” a Bloomberg economist said.

Trump win boosts Ukrainian bonds

The prices of Ukrainian bonds have surged, a sign that investors believe US President-elect Donald Trump could end the war and shepherd Kyiv’s economic recovery. The bonds are “the unlikeliest Trump trade ever,” one local investor told the Financial Times. Trump has pushed an accelerated timeline for peace talks with Russia, and reportedly plans to appoint an envoy focused on the war. Ukraine, meanwhile, is prioritizing getting guarantees against renewed aggression in any ceasefire talks, The New York Times reported. But one investor cautioned that it’s still unclear where a potential settlement would leave Ukraine economically, and how long those negotiations would take.

Trump 2.0 will favor loyalty

US President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for key positions in his second administration prioritize loyalty. Trump’s choices for attorney general, defense secretary, and director of national intelligence have all been his staunch supporters, and their nominations show that “those suspected of disloyalty (or disguised neoconservatism) are not welcome,” The Economist wrote. After clashing with much of his first cabinet, Trump wants to “ensure that he can leave the levers of the federal government to people who ultimately answer to him,” The New York Times wrote. Democrats’ outrage in response to his choices is “proof of a president-elect who is increasingly powerful” and cares little about criticism, a CNN analyst argued.

More countries snub climate summit

More countries pulled out of the COP29 climate conference, joining several world leaders who have already skipped the summit. France pulled its top negotiator after host country Azerbaijan’s president criticized Paris’ actions in its Pacific island territories, and Argentina’s team abruptly left, fueling anxiety that has loomed over the summit following the election of Donald Trump in the US. Trump’s win casts doubt about global commitments to climate financing, and Wall Street is unlikely to embrace environmental, social, and governance investing as much as it did under Trump’s first term, which was a “golden age” for ESG, Bloomberg wrote. The concerns come as climate researchers warned in a report Thursday that countries are further away from achieving global warming targets outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Smog worsens in India’s capital

India shut down primary schools in its capital Thursday as smog worsened over New Delhi. The air pollution was so bad that flights were diverted and views of the Taj Mahal obstructed. New Delhi officially passed Pakistan’s Lahore this week to become the world’s most polluted city, due to emissions mixed with smog from nearby farms, where rice straw is burned to clear land and prepare it for the next season, The Times of India reported. Hazy skies and unhealthy air quality levels were also reported across other Southeast Asian cities, including Hanoi and Bangkok.

COP29 to discuss limiting contrails

Global flight paths may be rerouted to minimize contrails and reduce air travel’s climate footprint. Contrails are caused by the condensation of water vapor left in planes’ wakes, and tend to occur in cold, humid air. Like natural clouds, they trap heat radiating from Earth, stopping it from escaping to space: Contrails roughly double the warming impact of aviation, while also spawning wild conspiracy theories about mind control. Representatives at this year’s COP29 will discuss possible changes to flight paths. Research suggested that rerouting 3% of flights could reduce contrails by 80%.

China’s ‘iPhone city’ becomes EV hub

China’s so-called “iPhone city” is pivoting to electric vehicles. The shifts happening in Zhengzhou are emblematic of broader industrial, geopolitical, and tech trends: Foxconn’s factory there is now making fewer iPhones — last year it produced half its 2017 peak — as Apple shifts more production to India to reduce its reliance on China, a trend that could accelerate if US President-elect Donald Trump hikes tariffs on Chinese imports. Stepping in in Zhengzhou is the EV industry: Chinese giant BYD plans to double its production there this year compared to 2023, Nikkei Asia reported, while other firms are also investing in the city. It demonstrates China’s ongoing push to dominate the EV industry, even as the sector comes under scrutiny from Washington and Brussels.

Sergio Gor, the president and co-founder of Donald Trump Jr.’s publishing company, has been offered the low-profile but influential job of leading the Presidential Personnel Office in the incoming Trump administration, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott scooped. While there is intense focus on Trump’s splashiest job offers, this is an often overlooked, but hugely important pick that brings “both close access to the president and the ability to influence decision-making across the government,” Talcott wrote.

Japan government tackles overwork

Japan’s longstanding culture of overwork is running up against its shrinking workforce. Japanese workplaces have historically thrived “on unpaid overtime, presenteeism, and coercion,” the Financial Times reported — so much so that a law was passed a decade ago to prevent karoshi, or death by overwork. But working hours appear to be coming down, as staffing shortages brought on by Japan’s aging population and low labor market liquidity have strengthened employees’ hands. Men’s average work hours per week have fallen from 50 in 1973 to below 45, and women’s from 45 to below 35, close to the US average.

London nurseries shutter

Maternity wards, nurseries, and schools in London are closing as birth rates in the city fall. Some boroughs will see a fifth of nurseries and neonatal units shuttered. The British capital’s population has steadied after losing about 75,000 people during COVID, but government statistics this year showed that birth rates are still dropping, down 20% on 10 years ago to just 1.39 children per woman. It is the lowest of any English region, apparently driven by decisions to delay parenthood or put it off altogether. London’s skyrocketing house prices and childcare costs are likely a factor — many people leave the capital to raise a family.

French dictionary took decades

Sages in France have produced a new, definitive dictionary for the French language — 40 years after they began the task. The ninth edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française was presented on Thursday, replacing the eighth module that was completed in 1935. The relevance of the task is “increasingly in question” given the protracted timeline, the BBC wrote. “The effort is praiseworthy, but so excessively tardy that it is perfectly useless,” a group that calls itself “the Collective of Dismayed Linguists” argued in a French newspaper. Because of painstaking debates over definitions, it takes more than a year to finish a single letter in the dictionary. As a result, the words are out of date. “New” additions to the dictionary include soda, sauna, and yuppie.

Nov. 15:

• Indonesian and Australian troops conduct a joint live-fire exercise.
• Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba releases third-quarter earnings.
• Dolly Parton releases a new album, Dolly Parton & Family: Smoky Mountain DNA – Family Faith & Fables.

WeChat is the center of the Chinese internet — powering everything from messaging to payments — and the main portal where China’s news outlets and bloggers publish their work.

Walk of glory

One of China’s most prolific content creators, Li Ziqi, returned to social media this week after a three-year hiatus amid a legal dispute with her talent management company. Known for her cinematic-like videos documenting her life in rural China — cooking, making crafts, and farming — Li’s latest three videos got more than 500 million views and added 3.5 million new followers on Douyin in the last 48 hours, according to retail blog Linkshop, and she remains the most followed Chinese-language YouTube channel.

Li’s return is her “walk of glory,” Linkshop wrote, because she now has complete control over her content after severing ties with her management team, which was hoping to focus her channel on e-commerce promotions, similar to other Chinese influencers. But Li is a “pure content queen,” Linkshop wrote, with fans craving her therapeutic videos.

Cycle of life

Thousands of Chinese students in Henan province this week participated in an hourslong bike ride to the ancient city of Kaifeng in search of specialty soup dumplings that were hyped on social media. Authorities initially embraced the viral phenomenon, but quickly introduced new restrictions — such as limiting bike rentals — when it became apparent that the city did not have the adequate infrastructure and resources to accommodate the influx of visitors.

The students shared their experiences on social media with the caption “youth has no price,” but the reality is that the so-called “youth market” — what young Chinese people spend money on — is drying up, according to the Travel Zone blog. Before the pandemic, students could easily afford weekend trips across China on planes or trains, and this kind of cycling trend, using mostly public share bikes, wouldn’t have taken off.

Signing off

A niche internet community has become a hub for families to seek closure after their loved ones’ deaths. The “Bad Handwriting Group” on Douban, a website similar to Reddit, began as a meme page where users uploaded photos of illegible homework assignments and doctors’ prescriptions. But in 2023, the story of how the online community helped one man decipher his dying grandfather’s last letter went viral, and dozens of other users have since sought out the group hoping for help decoding messages written by weak and sick family members, according to the Oh! Youth internet culture blog.

While some users have complained about the group’s pivot, the administrators now see their page as a “glimmer of hope” for many families, and several professional calligraphers have also joined the community. For those letters that are still too ineligible to decipher, “maybe one day someone will recognize it, and then you will know what they wanted to say to you at that time,” one of the page moderators told the blog.

Michelangelo may have covertly painted a woman with breast cancer among the figures on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. The frescoes, commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508, tell the story of Genesis from the Old Testament, including “The Flood,” which depicts people trying to escape the water. European researchers who analyzed one of the female figures situated in the painting proposed that she showed signs of cancer on her right breast. Because Michelangelo did not use models for his Sistine Chapel paintings, the depiction may instead be an attempt at allegory, they wrote, and perhaps even a commentary on the sin of lust, where physical illness becomes an “expression of spiritual abyss.”