Flagship

ICC issues arrest warrant for Netanyahu

The International Criminal Court on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and Hamas’ military chief over alleged war crimes. The court said it was “reasonable” to believe Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders committed “inhumane acts,” including using starvation in warfare — accusations that Israel rejected as antisemitic. It’s unclear if European countries will comply with the warrants, even as the EU’s foreign policy chief called the court’s decision “binding.” The warrants mark Israel’s “lowest-ever point in its battle for international legitimacy and support,” a Haaretz columnist wrote, arguing that Netanyahu could overcome the implications by recruiting Donald Trump’s administration to “declare total war” on the ICC. Already, a top Trump adviser suggested the US should impose sanctions on the ICC officials involved.

Bolsonaro indicted over coup attempt

Brazil’s police recommended criminal charges Thursday against former President Jair Bolsonaro and his aides for their alleged role in a suspected coup to overturn the 2022 election results. Despite authorizing a transition of power, Bolsonaro refused to officially concede and had “full knowledge” of a plan to prevent his successor from taking office, police alleged, culminating in pro-Bolsonaro supporters storming the country’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential offices. Brazil’s attorney general will decide whether to try the former leader, who has denied the allegations. The indictment might not dent Bolsonaro’s far-right movement, however: His party is gaining ground in local elections, and Donald Trump’s re-election could “facilitate amnesty” for coup-plotters, according to Brasil de Fato, a left-wing newspaper.

Trump’s DOJ head pick withdraws

Matt Gaetz withdrew as Donald Trump’s nominee for US attorney general Thursday, after facing increasing scrutiny over allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use. The former congressman’s decision came shortly after a police report revealed new details of an alleged sexual assault by Trump’s defense secretary pick, while Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who have been named for important government positions, have denied accusations of impropriety. Trump, who was found liable for sexual abuse last year, is “testing whether his ability to withstand sexual misconduct allegations will transfer to his Cabinet picks,” Politico wrote. “Credible accusations… are a feature of Trump’s own biography,” the author of a #MeToo book told The New York Times.

Adani’s bribery charges fallout

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s conglomerate lost nearly $27 billion in market value Thursday, dragging Indian shares down, a day after US prosecutors indicted him. Allegations that the country’s second-richest man bribed Indian officials for lucrative contracts have thrust his close relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi into the spotlight. Adani’s company is “an extension of India’s government,” The New York Times wrote, overseeing major international infrastructure projects, which are central to Indian diplomacy efforts. The case will likely impact Adani’s global ambitions — Kenya cancelled infrastructure deals worth more than $2.5 billion with his firm — and could complicate US-India relations over his extradition. However, allies of incoming US President Donald Trump see the Adani Group as key to countering Chinese hegemony, Bloomberg reported.

US sanctions Russia’s Gazprombank

The US sanctioned Gazprombank, the last major Russian lender not already blacklisted, as President Joe Biden rushes to ramp up pressure on Moscow before his term ends. Russia is believed to use the bank, which is part-owned by Kremlin-controlled gas giant Gazprom, as a conduit to buy military equipment and pay soldiers fighting its war in Ukraine. The US Treasury had held off sanctioning Gazprombank over fears of disrupting energy supplies to central Europe, but Donald Trump’s expected push for Russia and Ukraine to negotiate a ceasefire led to what some in Washington saw as a last resort. If the weather turns cold, “Europe could exit the winter with alarmingly low gas reserves,” a risk analyst told Bloomberg.

China’s high speed rail debt

China’s nearly 30,000-mile high speed rail network is one of the world’s most envied infrastructure accomplishments — and “a giant money pit,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Beijing has spent more than $500 billion on new tracks, trains, and stations in the last five years, and the national railway operator is nearing $1 trillion in debt — a figure projected to grow as China’s population declines. “Trophy projects,” such as new routes and stations in rural communities, are diverting resources from the social safety net, leaving many Chinese “feeling poorer and their futures less secure,” the Journal wrote. Still, citizens consider rail a public service and are critical of proposals to hike ticket prices despite the mounting debt.

Price of lab diamonds plummets

High-quality lab-grown diamonds are now so cheap to produce that the industry is facing oversupply and fraud concerns. The price of natural diamonds has fallen about 30% in the past decade, the Financial Times reported, while their lab-grown equivalents are down 90%. Some producers have gone bankrupt as the low cost leaves them unprofitable, and the difference in price compared with natural diamonds — which are indistinguishable in quality — means that fraud is rife: One Indian diamond company was accused of replacing $60,000 worth of natural gems in its jewelry with lab-grown stones. Artificial diamonds are also used in money laundering, sold at natural-diamond prices to hide illicit money flows.

Chinese diplomat calls media ‘biased’

A former Chinese ambassador argued that overseas media were consistently biased against China, offering a rare glimpse into how Beijing’s diplomats view the world. In a piece for Leadership Digest, a Communist Party outlet, Fu Ying, ex-envoy to the Philippines and the UK, wrote that one Australian journalist who interviewed her was “hostile towards any country governed by a communist power” — sure enough, the published article criticized China and called her a “stubborn communist,” the South China Morning Post reported. Since then, Fu said, she always researches potential interviewers’ backgrounds and screens their intentions for possible anti-communist bias. Beijing has long complained about what it calls unfair treatment by foreign media organizations, with state outlets frequently accusing them of wielding double standards or being “anti-China.”

Chocolate makers look to India

Chocolate makers are turning to India as crop failures in West Africa push up cocoa prices worldwide. Volatile weather in the key cocoa-producing regions of the Ivory Coast and Ghana has led prices of cocoa beans to skyrocket over the past year. While India currently produces just 1% of the world’s cocoa, demand for the beans from Indian chocolate and confectionary makers is rising 15% a year, the BBC reported. Farmers in the country are also investing in cross-bred hybrid varieties: The new strains are disease-resistant and drought-tolerant, and offer a much higher yield. “The global average production is 0.25 kilogram per year per tree,” one researcher said. “In Kerala, we get 2.5 kilograms per year per tree.”

Milan has priciest shopping street

Milan’s Via Monte Napoleone has surpassed New York’s Fifth Avenue as the world’s most expensive shopping street, the first time a European city has topped the list in more than 30 years. Rents on Monte Napoleone surged 11% in the last year, CNN reported, now averaging $2,047 per square foot, while those on Fifth Avenue remained flat for the second straight year at $2,000. Milan’s generous tax breaks have lured luxury shoppers from outside the EU, pushing up real estate and hotel prices — and raising rents in the city’s small historic center, the Financial Times wrote. Europe’s commercial rent market has boomed, Fashion Network wrote, thanks to the post-pandemic influx of tourists and the Paris Olympics.

Nov. 22:

• Hungary, Austria, Romania, and Bulgaria discuss Romania’s accession bid to the Schengen zone.
• Germany releases third quarter GDP data.
• The National Gallery of Ancient Art unveils Caravaggio’s Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini publicly for the first time.

Rojak is a colloquial Malay word for “eclectic mix,” and is the name for a Javanese dish that typically combines sliced fruit and vegetables with a spicy dressing.

Growing pains

Genetically modified crops are at the center of a heated debate in Kenya. Some small-scale farmers vowed to continue their fight to reimpose a ban on GMOs after the country’s top court last week dismissed a petition to do so, according to The Continent, an Africa news Substack, but even experts can’t seem to agree on whether the crops would help or hurt the Kenyan economy.

Nairobi lifted the ban on GMOs in 2022 amid the country’s worst drought in 40 years. One academic called the decision a “big win,” arguing that it would give farmers resilient and higher yielding crops, helping address food insecurity. But some agroecologists believe lifting the ban has exposed small-scale farmers to “exorbitant seed prices [that] tie them down in the cycle of debt” and intellectual property disputes with multinational firms. Farming GMOs also impact trade with other east African countries like Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which have all banned GMO imports.

Muted bark

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s constant world travels and presence at major international summits garner a lot of local media attention — especially his vocal support for Palestine. But “no major Arab or Muslim country seems to care much about his stance,” the leader of a Malaysian business group argued in a scathing critique of the prime minister published in Murray Hunter’s Substack on Southeast Asia.

Anwar’s attendance at the G20 in Brazil and the Arab Muslim Summit in Riyadh has “largely been ignored,” Ghafar Mohamad wrote, and these diplomatic visits are more about boosting his image abroad than benefiting Malaysia, which has been struggling with corruption, rising costs, and stagnant wages. “The gap between the Prime Minister’s self-image as a global leader and the harsh reality of Malaysia’s economic and political troubles is glaring,” Mohamad argued, and until he prioritizes addressing domestic challenges, his overseas trips will “remain little more than empty gestures.”

Pearl mania

The market for Japanese cultured pearls is booming, driven by supply constraints and strong overseas demand — including from a growing number of male customers amid a trend of fashion influencers sporting unisex pearl jewelry. The Real Gaijin culture newsletter compared the pearls’ surging popularity to the 17th century frenzy over tulips in Holland that made the flower a Dutch cultural symbol.

Japanese people struggling with high inflation and a depreciated yen are taking note: They are “digging out pearls that they normally only wear at weddings and funerals and exchanging them for cash at a local pawn shop,” Gaijin wrote. But like the Netherland’s tulip bubble that eventually popped due to “rampant speculation,” it’s likely that Japan’s cultured pearl prices “will ultimately be driven higher than their intrinsic value.”

A duct-taped banana sold for $6.2 million at Sotheby’s. Titled Comedian, the 2019 work — which has been eaten twice before, once by a performance artist and later at a gallery in Seoul — is intended as a “sincere commentary on what we value,” its creator has said. Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun beat out six other bidders for the banana, which had been bought earlier that day for 35 cents from a fruit stand in New York. Sun, who also receives a roll of duct tape and instructions on how to install and replace the fruit, said he would “personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture.”

The list of potential candidates to lead financial regulatory agencies under Donald Trump is growing, and they include a law professor at George Mason University and a partner at law firm Jones Day, Semafor’s Rachel Witkowski scooped. Current Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman, who is being floated for the central bank’s vice chair of supervision role, notably turned heads for criticizing the board’s latest rate decisions, Witkowski wrote.