Flagship

Biden OKs long-range weapons for Kyiv

In a major US foreign policy shift, President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to use US-made long-range missiles to strike Russia. Officials said the decision was made to discourage North Korea from sending its soldiers to fight for Russia in the war. Both the White House and Kyiv’s other Western allies have for months debated whether to allow the use of their long-range weapons in Russia after Moscow warned that would draw the US and NATO into war with Russia. The developments could complicate President-elect Donald Trump’s promise of quickly ending the war, the continuation of which Kyiv and its allies increasingly seem to acknowledge amounts to “Ukraine’s slow death,” one US foreign policy expert told Politico.

Biden, Xi meet for last time

At likely their last face-to-face meeting, US President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping sounded caution over deteriorating relations as Washington transitions to a new administration. On the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru, Biden stressed the need for open communication with Beijing, while Xi warned Washington to “make the right choice” on China policy — remarks “as clear a sign as any that China is now looking past Biden toward his successor,” CNN wrote, yet President-elect Donald Trump’s name apparently wasn’t mentioned. While largely symbolic, the meeting secured an unexpected agreement between the two leaders not to give artificial intelligence control over nuclear weapons.

China limits critical mineral exports

Beijing will expand export controls on critical minerals used in electronics, a move analysts suggested anticipated future US trade curbs. Following US President Donald Trump’s reelection, there is widespread expectation that his administration will raise tariffs on Chinese goods and perhaps tighten existing restrictions on sales of advanced chips and AI technology to China. Minerals like tungsten and magnesium are indispensable in chip manufacturing, and China controls almost all of their global production. The curbs are the latest in a series of measures by China to limit the sale of such minerals to foreign companies. Some analysts worry the tit-for-tat measures could disrupt semiconductor supply chains, a threat one likened to “the sword of Damocles, hanging over the market, ready to strike at anytime.”

Tata expands iPhone footprint in India

Indian conglomerate Tata is set to take a majority stake in an Apple iPhone manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu, Reuters reported. The move underscores India’s ambition to become Apple’s dominant hardware supplier instead of China. The purchase means Tata will be in competition with Taiwan’s Foxconn as one of Apple’s largest contract suppliers, The Times of India wrote, with Indian facilities on track to make up nearly 24% of global iPhone production in 2024. Apple’s shift to India may prove strategic, some analysts noted, in anticipation of President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on Chinese imports as the bulk of Apple’s production is still based in China. Ultimately, India could prove the “big beneficiary” in a heightened US-China trade war, an Indian official told The Economic Times.

Fracking exec. tapped as energy secretary

Fossil fuel executive Chris Wright has been tapped as President-elect Donald Trump’s Secretary of Energy. Described by Axios as an “evangelist for the oil and gas industry,” Wright has previously denied the climate crisis exists, and once drank fracking fluid to indicate its safety. If confirmed, he is expected to support Trump’s plans to maximize US fossil fuel production amid a surge in demand for electricity. While environmental activists decried his nomination, the reaction has been more mixed abroad, particularly in the oil-rich Gulf: One Saudi official told S&P Global that Wright would be “fantastic” for the region’s economy, although some analysts have warned that increased US oil production could cause Gulf oil prices to fall.

UN urges G20 to do what COP29 may not

The United Nations urged the G20 to agree to a climate finance deal at their Brazil meeting this week as negotiations at COP29 stall. Ahead of the meeting, the UN’s climate chief warned that “no G20 economy will be spared from climate-driven economic carnage.” The G20 accounts for 85% of the global economy and 75% of emissions, and thus is perceived as “holding the purse strings” on climate financing, the South China Morning Post wrote. But reaching a deal in Brazil may also prove difficult: Officials are worried that Donald Trump’s election victory could embolden other countries to shirk their climate obligations, the Financial Times reported. “It’s hard to see how anything decided [here] has much of a future,” one European official said.

ByteDance value jumps to $300 billion

TikTok owner ByteDance now values itself at around $300 billion, among the highest valuations for a Chinese tech company. The company’s valuation came in a recent share buyback at about $180 a share, The Wall Street Journal reported, and indicates that it expects its business to grow even as its app TikTok faces a potential ban in the US. Both TikTok executives and experts in Washington believe President-elect Donald Trump could reverse the law — which goes into effect the day before he is inaugurated — and his election “significantly improves the picture for TikTok,” the National Security Agency’s general counsel told Bloomberg. ByteDance also owns various other businesses, including a Chinese version of TikTok called Douyin.

A tech industry lobbying group is urging the incoming Trump administration to review federal AI regulations to ensure they are not “unnecessarily impeding AI adoption,” Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant reported. The group also wants a review of US trade and investment restrictions, expressing “opposition to efforts by the US government to restrict investments in cutting-edge Chinese technologies on the basis of national security,” Chalfant wrote.

New AI decodes, designs DNA

Scientists have created a new artificial intelligence model that can decode and design entire genomic sequences. Trained on a dataset of 2.7 million microbial genomes, “Evo” can predict, generate, and engineer the blueprints for biology at a scale and accuracy older models were incapable of, the researchers said. Having learned the “grammar of DNA,” Evo can create synthetic DNA, RNA, and protein sequences, and can predict how mutations will affect their function across the many different layers of a sequence, a geneticist who wasn’t involved in crafting the model wrote in Science. Future models like it could learn from human genomes, and being able to predict and design DNA could have “tremendous diagnostic and therapeutic implications for disease,” she added.

India Inc. diversity efforts avoid caste

Corporate India’s efforts to boost diversity within its ranks largely ignores caste. Public-facing inclusion statements often mention gender, sexuality, disability, and race, the Financial Times reported, but rarely caste. The ancient system of social hierarchy is a sensitive topic: Caste-based discrimination has been banned since 1947 and 50% of government jobs and university places are reserved for marginalized groups. But those measures have failed to end the system and inequality is still viewed through a lens of caste. One diversity consultant told the FT that corporations’ priorities are led by the West, focused on race and gender, and largely skip over caste. “It’s not a topic most Indian companies want to talk about,” another consultant said.

Saber-tooth cub mummy unearthed

The mummified remains of a saber-tooth cat cub that lived 31,000 years ago have revealed what the extinct predator looked like for the first time. The cub’s body was trapped in the Siberian permafrost, but because of climate change, its head, fore limbs, and most of its torso emerged from the ice near-perfectly intact, complete with bronze fur. It was so well preserved that scientists managed to extract its DNA, enabling the reconstruction of its entire genome. Until now, the fur color, muzzle size, and other features of Homotherium latidens, a more slender species of saber-tooth than the bulkier, toothier, and more famous Smilodon, were only guessed at from skeletal remains.

Nov. 18:

• Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te attends the annual Taiwan-EU investment forum.
• Former US President-elect Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon is due to appear in court for a hearing over fraud charges.
• Canadian author Margaret Atwood celebrates her 85th birthday.

An ongoing Guggenheim Museum exhibition provides a retrospective of one of the least well-recognized movements in early 20th-century European modernism. Invented by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, Orphism offered a “more poetic vision of the universe and of life,” he wrote, encompassing works that embodied the spirit of Orpheus, whose musical abilities were supernatural in their effect. The Guggenheim’s sprawling collection, which includes artwork made between 1910 and World War II, suggests Orphism was “less a movement than a pivotal transitional moment in Western art history,” ArtNews wrote. While some artists embraced being labeled Orphist, like Francis Picabia, others defied the movement even existed.