Flagship

Syrian rebels advance in Aleppo

Rebel forces in Syria have taken control of much of Aleppo, including the city’s airport, following a surprise offensive that reawakened the country’s stalled civil war. The fighting poses the most serious challenge in years to President Bashar al-Assad, and Syrian and Russian jets stepped up retaliatory strikes Sunday. The rebels’ success so far is a “direct consequence” of wars elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal wrote: al-Assad’s allies — Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah — are all embroiled in their own conflicts, and Turkey, which backs the rebels, took advantage. “It’s a tectonic shift,” a Syria analyst said. “The conflicts of Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon all come together and overlap in Aleppo.”

Pro-EU protests escalate in Georgia

Massive protests erupted in Georgia over the government’s decision to suspend its bid to join the European Union. Authorities clamped down hard on the demonstrations, prompting condemnation from the US: Police fired tear gas and used water cannons, and more than 40 people were injured on Saturday, officials said. The unrest has created a crisis for Georgia’s ruling party, which has been criticized for seemingly steering the country away from Brussels and into Moscow’s orbit. Georgia’s prime minister accused the opposition of plotting to overthrow the government, while the country’s pro-EU president called for fresh elections: “This resistance has really gone beyond previous public demonstrations,” one expert told Politico.

Trump threatens BRICS over dollar

US President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on BRICS countries that move away from the dollar, further raising fears of a multi-front trade war. Some nations in the bloc — which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and others — have called for challenging the dollar’s dominance as the world’s reserve currency. But competing interests among the BRICS countries, as well as the bloc’s diminished role in international banking and debt markets, mean the dollar is not in “immediate danger,” ING analysts said. China’s yuan is making some inroads abroad, but largely at the expense of other alternate currencies. Experts also warned that moves to solidify the dollar’s dominance run counter to Trump’s other goal of reducing the US trade deficit.

Trump picks loyalist to lead FBI

US President-elect Donald Trump tapped ex-aide Kash Patel as FBI director. Patel, a former public defender and prosecutor who ascended in Republican circles as a staunch Trump advocate, has previously called for the FBI headquarters to be converted into a “museum of the deep state.” For the president-elect, “Patel is the perfect nominee to prove that he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks,” The Atlantic’s Scott Nichols wrote, although his appointment still requires Senate approval. Indian media largely heralded the choice of Patel, who is Indian American and accompanied Trump on his 2020 trip to India. Patel has also defended Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s controversial inauguration of a Hindu temple complex on the site of a destroyed mosque.

Taiwanese president visits Hawaii

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te arrived in Hawaii for a two-day stay Saturday, hours after the US announced a $385 million arms sale to Taipei. The deal and visit drew strong condemnation from Beijing, which described the former as a “provocative act” and vowed a “resolute” response. Lai was welcomed in Honolulu by the state’s governor, although the US State Department stressed the stopover was “private and unofficial.” The Taiwanese leader’s Pacific tour is widely seen as an effort to bolster regional ties amid concerns that incoming President Donald Trump could take a more transactional approach to the relationship, even as China’s “oppression of Taiwan has intensified,” Lai’s former spokesperson told CNN.

China space industry gets a boost

China launched its newest space rocket, the Long March 12, on Saturday from the country’s first dedicated commercial spaceport. The maiden mission for both the rocket and the Hainan International Aerospace Launch Center marks a significant step toward fostering a Chinese rival to SpaceX’s Starlink: A 14,000-strong constellation from Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology. To achieve its goal of being completed by 2030, it would need to launch more than seven satellites every day, IEEE Spectrum noted. SpaceX makes its rockets and its satellites, but SSST does not, and the Chinese satellites are largely untested, posing potential hindrances to progress, an industry expert told the outlet: “Ultimately this is about resilience and quality in the supply chain: launch, satellite manufacturing, and terminal equipment.”

‘Clean’ air travel will make costs soar

Passengers will bear much of the cost of efforts to make air travel carbon-neutral by 2050, experts said. Flying is emission-intensive: Every single passenger on a flight from London to New York generates as much carbon dioxide as 10 mature trees can absorb in a year. Improvements to aircraft design or using more direct routes are incremental. “Sustainable airline fuel,” meanwhile, is hard to make at scale, and electric aircraft can’t go long distances. “Offsetting” is ineffective. Significant change will be expensive, one expert told the BBC, even as some governments like the UK have made it a policy priority: “Governments desperately don’t want to tell people they’re going to have to pay.”

Conservative funds are capitalizing on President-elect Donald Trump’s win to push back against companies that use diversity quotas in hiring or promotion, Semafor’s Liz Hoffman scooped. While activists were perhaps able to pressure some companies to drop DEI policies, “the ideological economy that conservatives had been calling for hadn’t materialized” before his election, Hoffman wrote.

Pickleball rises in Asia

Pickleball is ascendant in Asia. The paddle sport, once considered only a hobby for retirees, has taken off across age groups in the US — much to the frustration of many tennis players — and is rapidly expanding internationally. Money is pouring into the sport: A global league is set to host a high-profile pro tournament in India in January, where Bollywood stars have become unofficial ambassadors for the vastly popular sport. China has lagged somewhat, but the sport is expanding there, too. “There’s no doubt that China will, all things being equal, eventually emerge as a leader in the global pickleball community,” a Chinese pickleball executive told Bloomberg. “It’s just a matter of time.”

Swift is latest celeb to self-publish

Taylor Swift’s new commemorative book represents the changing relationship between big publishers and celebrity authors. The 256-page release features 500 images from Swift’s Eras Tour along with “personal reflections,” and is being published by the singer herself, rather than a traditional publisher. Swift’s not the first prominent self-published author: Colleen Hoover, Brandon Sanderson, Donald Trump, and Colin Kaepernick have also done it. Meanwhile, publishing houses have seen some of their recent celebrity releases flop, a sign that “simply slapping a famous name on a book doesn’t always move product,” The Atlantic’s Lora Kelley wrote. But don’t expect every A-lister to start self-publishing: “Publishing a book is hard and expensive,” Kelley noted — especially if you’re not Taylor Swift.

De Gama galleon believed found

A shipwreck off Kenya may be from the great Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s final voyage. Da Gama was the first European to reach India by sea, traveling around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1497 and establishing Portugal as a maritime power. He made two more voyages, but his third, in 1524, ended in disaster: Several ships were lost en route, while Da Gama himself perished, likely of malaria, while in India. The wreck was first discovered in 2013 just 20 feet underwater, less than half a mile from the Kenyan coast. Archeologists have since removed artifacts that suggest it is the remains of the galleon São Jorge, which carried ivory and copper on that final third voyage before sinking.

Dec. 2:

• The United Nations’ top court holds public hearings to discuss countries’ legal obligations to fight climate change.
• Romania’s Supreme Court decides whether to validate the first-round results of the country’s presidential election.
• E-commerce platforms celebrate shopping holiday Cyber Monday.

A new exhibition in Qatar recontextualizes the work of Jean-Léon Gérôme. The famous 19th century painter is most associated with Orientalism — a term and concept that has been the subject of much debate. Through Orientalism, Western artists depicted aspects of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian culture, and the movement has been criticized for exoticizing and patronizing these regions. The Doha showcase is notable, Art News wrote, because it is staged for a non-Western audience, and “fittingly leaves room for the lived experience and histories” of its visitors. The shifting boundary between reality and fantasy in Gérôme’s pieces is especially notable, and his work is important to study, the curator said, because “his visions, his creations shaped a worldview.”