Flagship

Limited progress at Xi-Biden talks

A much-anticipated meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping yielded few major concrete agreements beyond a pledge to keep talking. The two sides made little to no progress over U.S. worries of Chinese aggression against Taiwan and in the South China Sea, or Beijing’s complaint that Washington’s semiconductor sanctions are designed to hamper China’s economy. And whereas in years prior, the two countries coordinated limited joint action against Iran, or North Korea, or on climate change, this meeting lacked any such efforts. After the talks, Biden once again called Xi a “dictator,” which China’s foreign ministry labeled “extremely wrong” and “irresponsible political manipulation.”

Still, that the pair spoke at all was viewed as progress. Biden described their meeting as “constructive and productive” and the two countries agreed to reestablish military-to-military and climate communications. Business leaders including Apple’s Tim Cook, Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio, and BlackRock’s Larry Fink ate alongside Xi at an exclusive dinner. And the Chinese leader said the “Earth is big enough” for both countries to succeed — though one veteran China watcher described the easing tensions with a colorful Chinese idiom: “Both sides admitted that they may not pee in the same pot, but vowed to ensure they will not pee on each other.”

Israel: Weapons in Gaza hospital

Israel said it had uncovered weapons and other evidence of military use inside the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. It released a video showing apparent piles of Hamas ordnance behind MRI machines. The enclave’s Hamas-run health ministry denied the claims. As Israeli forces take greater control of Gaza, foreign capitals are considering what happens after the war. The European Commission president and EU foreign minister are in the Middle East, pushing diplomatic solutions: One plan involves bringing Gaza under United Nations control, Politico reported, although Israeli, Palestinian, and EU voices all expressed skepticism. The King of Jordan, in a Washington Post op-ed, said a two-state solution remains the only realistic path to peace.

UK approves CRISPR medicine

The U.K. became the first country to approve a medicine based on CRISPR gene editing. Casgevy repairs a gene that causes sickle-cell disease and beta thalassemia. Both cause severe health problems and require lifelong treatment. The British medicines regulator said that Casgevy restored healthy blood-cell production in most people, reducing or eliminating the need for blood transfusions for beta thalassemia patients and ending the severe pain of most sickle-cell patients. Britain has long had a forward-looking approach to gene-editing technology: It was the first country to allow the use of mitochondrial donation, so-called “three-parent babies,” to prevent mitochondrial disease. The first baby created with the technique was born this year.

Germany considers Ozempic export ban

Germany is considering an export ban on Ozempic. The drug, which contains the same active ingredient as the weight-loss drug Wegovy, is intended to treat diabetes. But Wegovy is in short supply across Europe and the U.S. due to production bottlenecks and sudden, huge demand, and Ozempic is often prescribed off-label in its place. Austria, France, Greece, and the Czech Republic have already imposed export controls and others are considering it. If “the public messages don’t show an effect,” a spokesperson for the German drugs regulator said, “we would then think about imposing an export ban so that enough remains in the country for the patients that need it.”

Musk endorses antisemitic claim

Elon Musk was criticized for endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory. The chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX agreed with a post on his social media network X which claimed that Jewish communities promoted “hatred against whites,” with Musk writing: “You have said the actual truth.” The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg described the message as the “inevitable destination” of an “online radicalization spiral” while the Financial Times’ Edward Luce wrote that “a rubicon has been crossed by the world’s richest man.” The controversy came as The New York Times reported that antisemitic and Islamophobic hate speech had “surged across the internet” since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, with huge numbers of violent and aggressive posts across X, as well as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Bin Laden letter goes viral on TikTok

The Guardian deleted Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “letter to the American people” from its website after it went viral on TikTok. Bin Laden’s letter attempted to justify the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., by attacking Israel and “Jewish control of capital.” The British newspaper published it in print and online 21 years ago, alongside a news article calling it “chilling.” But TikTok users began sharing it widely this week, some apparently partly in agreement with its sentiments. The Guardian then took it down, with a spokesperson saying it was being shared “without its original context.” A growing share of U.S. citizens get their news from TikTok, Pew research recently noted.

Argentina’s AI election

Argentina’s presidential candidates are relying on artificial intelligence-generated content for their campaigns to an extent not yet seen worldwide. Both Sergio Massa, the incumbent party’s candidate, and radical libertarian Javier Milei have relied on such material to bolster their image and tarnish the opposition’s, largely doing away with graphic designers and photographers. The proliferation of such content, and the speed at which it can be generated, has worried experts and made voters in the country question what is real. “We’re on a horse that we have to ride,” Massa told The New York Times, “but we still don’t know its tricks.”

French court pursues Syria’s Assad

A French court issued an international arrest warrant against Syrian President Bashar Assad for crimes against humanity over chemical-weapons attacks on civilians. The move — reportedly the first time a country has issued such a warrant against another nation’s sitting head of state — underlines ongoing efforts to punish Assad and his regime for the use of chemical weapons in 2013, during the early years of Syria’s civil war. It relies on the principle of universal jurisdiction, under which any country’s courts can prosecute anyone suspected of certain grave crimes, regardless of the suspect’s nationality and where the crimes occurred. Germany has previously used the notion to jail Syrian military officers, while Sweden has charged a former Iranian official.

Nigerian rapper dies

Oladips, a popular Nigerian rapper, died at the age of 28. No cause of death was given. The international outpouring of grief and praise for the artist highlighted the soaring popularity of Africa’s music scene: Streaming of African mixes on Apple Music, for example, increased 500% last year, while Nigeria’s Boomplay Music streaming service has 75 million monthly active users. Artists such as Burna Boy and Tems now regularly top international charts and play at some of the world’s biggest venues, while at next year’s Grammys a prize for best African music performance will be awarded for the first time. “I don’t think currently there’s better or more advanced music being made anywhere outside the continent,” a Nigeria-based media executive said.

SKorea’s national exam shutdown

Much of South Korea came to a standstill as students took their university entrance exams. The country takes academic success extremely seriously, and between 8:40 a.m. and 5:45 p.m. local time today, services nationwide were disrupted to avoid distracting the students. Many businesses and the stock exchange opened late, vehicles were required to drive slowly and not use horns near test sites, and all flights were halted for 35 minutes during the English-language listening test. Students’ performance in the exams determines their university options, and families spend hugely on extra tuition — a record $19.6 billion in 2022, up 11% from 2021 and representing a fifth of household expenditure, according to Bloomberg.

Dozens of cities around the world lie in “water stressed” regions, where growing populations and declining rainfall put aging water systems under ever more stress. There’s no shortage of ways these places can adapt, through tried-and-true methods. Watch Semafor’s video on how South Africa shows the myriad ways things seem to keep going wrong — while offering a glimmer of hope for how the world can come together to pull itself out of this mess.

• Madagascar holds presidential elections despite an opposition boycott and weeks of protests.
• Cambodia’s prime minister inaugurated the new $1.1 billion Siem Reap International Airport, designed to act as a gateway to the Angkor Wat temple complex.
• Would-be record breakers celebrate the annual Guinness World Records Day, first held in 2004 to mark the GWR book becoming the best-selling copyright book of all time.

The estimated fall in sperm concentration across the world over the last 50 years. Research out this week linked the apparent decline partly to the use of certain common pesticides — organophosphates and N-methyl carbamates. The paper examined the results of 25 papers from around the world and found men most exposed to the pesticides, such as agricultural workers, were more likely to have low sperm counts. Other scientists, though, are skeptical of the basic idea: Last year, The New York Times reported that claims that sperm counts are falling are based on sparse data, and that sperm count alone is not very predictive of fertility.

Justin Torres’ second novel, Blackouts, won the fiction category of the U.S. National Book Awards, where politics took centerstage. The Los Angeles Times described the book as “an experimental journey” into queer history, while The Guardian called it a “queer‑gothic version of the Hotel California.” The 43-year-old author, a professor of English at UCLA, only made a brief acceptance speech to allow his fellow finalists to issue a collective statement opposing Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and calling for a humanitarian ceasefire.

• New details show that the obscure firm snapping up global sports teams used a $1.5 billion pot of customers’ cash at an insurance company it controls to do so.
• Why AI-assisted bioterrorism became a top concern for OpenAI and Anthropic.
• What happened to ‘woke’? How the right’s rallying cry faded away.