Flagship

Ukraine under pressure

Ukraine declared a nationwide alert as Russia hammered the country’s energy infrastructure, the latest escalation in the war. Analysts have attributed the intensifying conflict — with Moscow’s forces making rapid advances and increasing bombardments of Ukrainian territory — to both sides’ attempting to secure victories ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House: Trump favors a rapid peace deal, which could freeze any territorial gains by either party. Ukraine, meanwhile, is trying to boost its domestic weapons industry. European nations are increasingly financing contracts for Kyiv’s arms manufacturers, and Ukraine is reducing its reliance on China-made drones, fearing Beijing’s ties to Moscow, according to the Counteroffensive, a Ukraine-focused outlet.

Lebanese return home after truce

Thousands of Lebanese returned to their homes shortly after Israel and Hezbollah implemented a truce. Two months of all-out war, following nearly a year of cross-border fighting, devastated Lebanon, displacing more than a million people and leaving more than 3,000 dead. The longer-term fallout of the war is murkier: Hezbollah claimed victory, but it is largely “battered and diminished,” The New York Times noted, while the Financial Times said rival factions may seek to exploit the Lebanese group’s apparent weakness. The 60-day ceasefire also does not necessarily mean peace is on the horizon in Israel’s other battlefield: The truce in Lebanon isn’t contingent on calm in Gaza, so “the Palestinians are on their own again,” Haaretz noted.

World scrambles over Trump tariffs

US President-elect Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum differed over their accounts of a telephone call following Trump’s pledge to ramp up tariffs on imports from Mexico. Although the sanctions would significantly diminish Mexico’s growth prospects, they would also destroy 400,000 US jobs, Sheinbaum warned. Trump, meanwhile, said the Mexican leader agreed to stop migration, a claim she denied. Across the globe, leaders are scrambling to shield their economies from the fallout of potential US tariffs, with Canada’s prime minister calling an emergency domestic meeting to respond to the threats, and the European Central Bank’s chief urging the continent’s leaders to buy more US products in a bid to placate Trump.

Trump’s lockdown-skeptic NIH pick

US President-elect Donald Trump nominated health economist Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya came to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as a lockdown skeptic: Alongside the selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, the choice of Bhattacharya suggests an unorthodox bent to the Trump-era health establishment. Bhattacharya got some things right, the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote in The New York Times: Notably, he highlighted lockdowns’ social cost, and correctly said the lab-leak hypothesis was plausible, even if it now looks unlikely. But he also made “catastrophically wrong predictions,” such as that COVID-19 would kill perhaps 40,000 Americans, rather than the eventual 1.2 million.

US, China swap prisoners

Beijing and Washington traded three prisoners apiece while the US lowered its travel advisory for China, rare positive news involving the superpower rivals. The trio of Americans held by Beijing were detained on drug and espionage charges, but Washington argued they were wrongfully imprisoned. No details were released on the Chinese nationals freed. The US State Department, meanwhile, removed a “D” notice — used to indicate the risk of wrongful detention — from its travel advisory on China, and a spokesperson told The Hill that no Americans fit that designation in China any longer. The deal came ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump taking office, with analysts warning that his hawkish foreign-policy team could result in heightened tensions with Beijing.

‘Decisive battle’ looms for China EVs

China’s EV market, the world’s biggest, will likely see a renewed price war next year, a leaked document indicated. The automotive behemoth BYD asked a supplier to cut its prices by 10% in 2025, with a senior executive forecasting a “decisive battle,” a memo circulated on the internet in China showed. Years of slashing prices have accelerated the adoption of EVs and hybrids in China, but also narrowed carmakers’ margins, driving a broader industry consolidation. The impact of China’s rapid EV growth has been deep and global: One brokerage projects gasoline consumption falling in the country by up to 5% annually for the next several years, while historically dominant carmakers in Japan and Europe are fast losing market share.

Coffee at highest price since 1977

Coffee beans hit their highest price in 47 years, driven by bad weather in Vietnam and Brazil, the biggest producers of robusta and arabica beans respectively. Brazil saw its worst drought in 70 years this year followed by heavy rains, raising fears that next season’s output will drop, further pinching already tight global supplies. Vietnam has itself had three years of low output. Arabica beans hit $3.18 a pound on Wednesday, leading Nestlé, the world’s biggest coffee company, to increase prices. As well as climate concerns, future prices are being raised by worries about tariffs: Roasters “will try to import now, because otherwise you will be paying tariffs later,” one trade analyst told the Financial Times.

Semafor will be on the ground in Davos for the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering where the world’s most powerful come together to strike deals, tout their good deeds, and navigate the snow — sometimes getting stuck long enough to share a scoop or two with us.

We’ll deliver exclusives on the high-stakes conversations shaping the world. Expect original reporting, scoops, and insights on all the deal-making, gossip, and lofty ambitions — with a touch of the pretentious grandeur Davos is famous for.

Namibia votes

Namibians cast their ballots for a new president and Parliament in what experts said would be a tough election for SWAPO, the party that has governed the country since its independence from South Africa in 1990. SWAPO’s vote share has plummeted in recent elections over the country’s diminishing economic prospects and failure to crack down on graft. Across Africa, similar frustrations have driven voters away from the parties that have ruled their countries since independence, with incumbents in Botswana, Mozambique, and South Africa losing support in recent elections. Desperate to retain power, liberation parties are resorting to “intimidating the public and the opposition and rigging electoral results,” an expert wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dinosaur dung reveals path to dominance

A study of fossilized dung revealed how dinosaurs rose to global dominance. Researchers looked at fossils called bromalites, which include coprolites — fossilized feces — and vomit, to understand how dinosaur diets changed over millions of years. They showed that dinosaurs’ small, omnivorous ancestors rapidly spread during periods of climate change in the Late Triassic, before evolving into the specialist herbivores and carnivores we think of as dinosaurs. The finding suggests that they took serendipitous advantage of a fast-changing environment, rather than outcompeting rival species through superior adaptations, to become the most successful group of animals on Earth for 180 million years.

Avoiding holiday awkwardness

Today is US Thanksgiving, the start of a holiday period leading into Christmas in which millions of people will spend time with their families. Faced with such a daunting prospect, The New York Times suggested brainstorming non-awkward conversational topics for 30 seconds before meeting up, and to be prepared to change topics if a conversation is growing stale. Another piece suggested being careful about discussing politics, or if that is unavoidable, to “distinguish between policies and people” and to assume goodness in others rather than paint political opponents as evil. On the plus side, US gasoline prices are at their lowest level since 2020, so the usually safe “how was your drive here?” conversation can start on a positive note.

• Hong Kong International Airport opens its third runway.
• The biggest French farmers’ union, FNSEA, protests against EU regulations.
• The Australian Open golf tournament begins in Melbourne.

The global value of music copyrights in 2023. The figure was up 11% on the year before, driven by growth in streaming and — perhaps more surprisingly — by the continuing revival of physical sales, particularly vinyl. The music industry is now bigger than the cinema industry, a drastic turnaround from before the pandemic. Billboard noted that below the headline figure, the numbers revealed changes in the industry, in particular a move away from agencies that collect revenues on behalf of many artists, towards direct ownership on the part of the composer or performer.

The Trans Dinarica bike route. The 3,400-mile (5,500-kilometer) trail — officially launched in July — twists through eight Balkan nations and is the latest in efforts to connect people across those countries’ borders: The Via Dinarica, a 1,200-mile hiking trail, opened in 2010. The cycling route “climbs, twists, and slaloms through national parks, UNESCO sites, and remote villages as it crosses the Dinaric Alps, one of Europe’s most pristine and least-visited landscapes,” the BBC wrote.

Sanctions on Iran have kept smugglers busy, operating small boats in broad daylight in one of the world’s busiest waterways, Camilla Wright reports from Oman. Back and forth across the Strait of Hormuz, loading and unloading — “If you’ve ever wondered how ordinary Iranians get around US primary sanctions, this is it. This is smuggling, 2024 style.”