Flagship

Israel-Hamas truce extended

Israel and Hamas extended their truce by a further two days. The pause in the conflict allowed Gazans to assess the scale of damage from the war: More than 15,000 people have been killed, and one resident said that the destruction — which has left the enclave’s main public library, among other key buildings, destroyed — was “incomprehensible.” Analysts, writing in The Washington Post and Foreign Affairs, urged Washington to use the ceasefire to build momentum for a two-state solution. But Israel’s prime minister reportedly described himself as “the only one who will prevent a Palestinian state” in a recent effort to bolster support within his party.

Musk in Israel after antisemitism storm

Elon Musk met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, toured a site attacked by Hamas, and was shown a video documenting some of the atrocities. Musk faces criticism for apparently supporting an antisemitic conspiracy theory and for failing to control extremist material on X: The platform is believed to have lost $75 million in advertising, and several brands, including Disney and Warner Bros., have not posted on it in days. In Israel, while negotiating a deal for the use of Starlink satellite internet by Gaza aid agencies — albeit only with Israeli approval — Musk acknowledged a need to stop “propaganda … convincing people to engage in murder.” Not everyone was reassured: Ben Samuels in Haaretz said his visit was “a cynical betrayal of Jews, dead and alive.”

Record fossil-fuel extraction in US

U.S. oil and gas production is expected to hit record levels in 2023 and continue at high levels for decades, despite President Joe Biden making tackling climate change a key part of his agenda. Biden will not be attending the COP28 climate summit in Dubai this year, but the U.S. delegation will call for a “phase-out” of fossil fuels, and Biden himself said this month that denying climate change’s impact is “condemning the American people to a very dangerous future.” His landmark Inflation Reduction Act boosted investment in green tech and renewables, and overall emissions are declining, but growing energy demand — in the U.S. and worldwide — means that fossil fuels still have a big market.

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EVs and hybrids hit new sales record

Electric and hybrid vehicles hit a record 18% of total U.S. sales in the third quarter of 2023. In the year to date, 15.8% of cars sold have been electric or hybrid, compared to 12.3% in 2022 and 8.5% in 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The split is pretty even between the two categories: Tesla has backed EVs entirely, while its chief rival Toyota went all-in on hybrids since launching the Prius 20 years ago. The clash between the two auto giants is the “new hot battle in cars,” The Wall Street Journal reported. It had seemed as though Tesla had won, but a recent slowdown in EV growth and a surge in hybrid sales has revived Toyota’s fortunes.

Chinese confidence in economy dips

Indicators pointed to dwindling confidence among Chinese people in their country’s economy. More than three million people sat China’s civil service entrance exam over the weekend, resulting in about 77 candidates for each vacancy — a ratio which one China watcher noted was about in line with examinations during the Qing dynasty. The record number of applicants suggested limited confidence in the private sector: “At least I won’t be unemployed and starve to death,” one social-media user said. Wealthy Chinese, meanwhile, have moved hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country this year alone, buying apartments, stocks, and insurance policies overseas, The New York Times reported.

Milei’s surprising DC schedule

Argentina’s radical libertarian president-elect held a surprising set of meetings in Washington. Javier Milei, who has expressed admiration for Donald Trump, had lunch with former U.S. President Bill Clinton, a man “largely on the opposite side of the ideological fence” from the Argentine, Reuters reported. Today, Milei is expected to meet with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and the head of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, who described her initial call with Milei as a “very constructive engagement.” Georgieva said the IMF, of which Argentina is the biggest debtor, is “very keen” to support the country’s economy, which is forecast to contract by 1.6% this year. Meanwhile, a planned visit by Trump to Buenos Aires is now unlikely to happen.

Niger overturns migrant law

Niger’s coup leaders overturned a law that criminalized migrant smuggling, a move seen by some as part of efforts by the junta controlling the country to defy international pressure for its removal. The law, approved in 2015 after more than a million asylum-seekers and migrants attempted to reach Europe, had reduced human smuggling significantly. Its overturn “is a huge blow” to the European Union’s strategy for managing flows from Africa, the BBC reported. More than 90,000 migrants from Africa arrived in Europe in the first six months of the year, on track for the highest annual total since 2017, according to U.N. figures.

India nears construction rescue

Indian authorities appeared on the verge of completing the long-awaited rescue of 41 men stuck in a tunnel. The group — low-wage workers from the country’s poorest states — were trapped when the tunnel collapsed on Nov. 12. Though they have been receiving limited supplies of food, water, oxygen, and medicine, efforts to dig them out have been beset by challenges. The tunnel in the Indian Himalayas is part of an ambitious project to link Hindu pilgrimage sites, and the government has faced criticism over its response to the collapse: “They take workers from poor and backward states for such risky projects and if something happens to them there, who cares?” a senior politician, and rival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s, said.

The end of Popular Science magazine

After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer exist as a magazine. The outlet went online-only two years ago, but published quarterly online “issues”: Now it is reduced to occasional news items and video. This month all but five editorial staff were laid off. A spokesperson for its owner said “PopSci is a phenomenal brand” but the “content strategy has to evolve,” while its editor said she was “frustrated, incensed, and appalled.” Popular Science’s decline comes during a tough time for science journalism more widely, The Verge noted. National Geographic cut the last of its staff writers this year, while CNN, CNBC, and Gizmodo have all lost or cut their climate teams.

Google Maps leaves travelers stranded

A Google Maps navigation error left several vehicles, driving home from the Las Vegas Grand Prix last weekend, stranded in the Mojave Desert. To avoid delays caused by a dust storm, the app suggested a detour down a road that did not, in fact, exist. No one was injured, but cars were damaged and travelers stranded for hours. Map services previously left one woman marooned for five days in the Arizona desert and left several requiring rescue from the Australian bush. Outsourcing decision-making to algorithms means on-average better decisions, at the expense of the occasional really weird — though also at times tragic — error that humans would never make, such as Tesla’s autopilot feature fatally mistaking a lorry for the sky.

Dec 5 | Principals Live with Mathias Döpfner | Virtual
Join Semafor’s Founding Editor-at-Large Steve Clemons and Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner for a virtual conversation about the role of trade in autocracies. Döpfner’s latest book, The Trade Trap, argues that free trade has strengthened dictators while undermining a rules-based world order.
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Dec 7 | Finding Common Ground on AI: A Bicoastal Exchange | Washington, D.C.
The East and West Coasts are talking about the future differently: On one coast, there is a mix of optimism and fear that AI will become too powerful and one day threaten humanity. On the other, AI is viewed as the latest tech invention that threatens to upend society. While Silicon Valley is reimagining a world with generative AI at the center, Washington is looking to rein it in.
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Dec 13 | The State of Made in America | Washington, D.C.
On Dec. 13, Join Semafor’s editors for a convening of the top voices and policy practitioners across government, labor, business, and beyond to explore critical and timely debates around how manufacturing capacity, supply chain production, and trade policies are changing the American and global economy.
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• The Philippine government and the country’s communist rebels agree to resume peace talks after a six-year hiatus.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to address the World Russian People’s Council.
• The Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA), an annual K-pop ceremony, is held in Tokyo.

The amount spent online by U.S. shoppers on Black Friday, a record. Spending on “Cyber Monday,” usually the biggest U.S. online shopping day of the year, is also expected to have broken records, with an estimated $12 billion spent. Heavily discounted cosmetics, electronics, toys, and clothing drove the sales, according to Adobe Analytics, bucking high inflation, and analysts said the holiday season should continue to see significant spending: “Consumers are quite resilient and have found ways to buy presents and experiences for their kids and their pets,” one told Reuters.

A Bangladeshi film won a top prize at the Busan film festival. The Wrestler, set in a coastal village along the Bay of Bengal, tells the story of an aging fisherman who challenges a local wrestling champion to a match. The debut feature by the Toronto-based director Iqbal H. Chowdhury, who grew up in the area, won the New Currents Award last month. It marked the first major win for a Bangladeshi movie at Asia’s biggest film festival, Nikkei reported, noting that the industry was moving out of neighboring Bollywood’s shadow.

• Influential members of the U.S.‘s largest journalist union are resisting calls to release a statement supporting a ceasefire in Gaza.
• Trump says he still wants to repeal Obamacare. Republican senators say not so fast.
• Nigeria’s top tech reviewer sketches a path to global attention.