Flagship

Syria rebels target Assad’s ouster

Syria’s rebel coalition — which has made lightning progress in a surprise offensive — aims to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the group’s leader told CNN. The remarks make clear that fighters’ advances in recent days to take control of the key cities of Aleppo and Hama, and make advances on Homs, are part of a larger effort to unseat the country’s president, who had largely been seen to have won Syria’s long-running civil war. Analysts have questioned whether the rebels’ sudden success may, counterintuitively, leave them vulnerable by forcing them to administer huge tracts of newly acquired territory. Still, “this regime could actually collapse,” one expert told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s a real possibility.”

SKorea’s military resisted martial law

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s attempt at imposing martial law may have been thwarted by his own military. One general told local news that he defied the defense minister’s order to drag lawmakers out of the National Assembly building because although it was “insubordination” to disobey, the instruction was “clearly an illegal act.” A lawmaker meanwhile said forces were “soft-pedaling” their orders, deliberately moving slowly, perhaps in awareness that participants in previous coups faced prosecution. Yoon apparently ordered the arrest of several top politicians, including the leader of his own party, the BBC reported: He faces an impeachment vote on Saturday, with opposition leaders still concerned that there will be another attempt to impose martial law.

Macron strikes defiant tone

French President Emmanuel Macron insisted he would not resign after his prime minister quit following defeat in a parliamentary no-confidence vote. Macron’s government has been roiled by far-right lawmakers’ refusal to back a budget that aims to rein in a yawning deficit, a crisis commentators blamed on his own decision to call snap elections this summer in which his opponents made significant inroads. “Rather than recomposing French political life as he had hoped to, he has accelerated its decomposition,” a Le Monde columnist thundered. The timing of the crisis is inopportune, Handelsblatt noted: Macron this weekend hosts Donald Trump for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral, the US president-elect’s first foreign trip since securing his return to office.

TikTok’s day of judgment

A Washington court may decide today whether TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance must sell its stake in the video-sharing platform to avoid a US ban. President Joe Biden signed legislation in April intended to force the divestiture. If the court rules in favor of ByteDance, it would leave TikTok’s fate in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, who once backed a ban but now describes himself as “a big star on TikTok.” The Chinese-owned company is under scrutiny for its alleged political influence in the US and elsewhere: The European Union ordered it to preserve data related to recent Romanian elections, amid suggestions that TikTok boosted the surprise pro-Russian winner’s videos at Moscow’s bidding.

Trump’s China team at odds

Donald Trump nominated David Perdue, a businessman and former senator, as his ambassador to China, a choice that highlights apparent tensions in the US president-elect’s team over Beijing. Trump has already named China hawks as secretary of state and national security adviser, but his treasury and commerce secretaries “have not expressed strong animus” towards the country, The New York Times wrote. Perdue “was a strong proponent of moving jobs from the US to Asia” during his business career in Hong Kong and Singapore, Politico noted. This approach potentially puts him at odds with Trump, who has threatened to erect tariffs and punish companies that ship work abroad.

Xi’s military priorities

Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week signaled the growing importance of data and coordination in war during a visit to a recently created military force. Xi led an inspection of the PLA’s Information Security Force, a stage-managed tour that nevertheless highlights the priorities of China’s leadership. The ISF was announced in April as part of what analysts say is an effort to better link China’s armed forces: An expert at the US National Defense University wrote in War on the Rocks that Beijing was unnerved by improvements in Washington’s battlefield coordination, as well as by high-profile failures in this regard by its ally Russia in Ukraine.

Questions over EU-Latam trade deal

The European Commission president called for the passage of a long-awaited trade pact with South America during a visit to the region, despite opposition from Europe’s own leaders. “The finish line of the EU-Mercosur agreement is in sight. Let’s work, let’s cross it,” Ursula von der Leyen said in Uruguay. The trading blocs have been in discussions for years, but repeated boycotts by Europe’s influential farming industry — which says South American products would saturate their markets — have sidetracked previous attempts at a deal. Analysts have cast doubt over the prospects for the latest bid, with the leaders of France and Italy, both under pressure from farmers, calling for the agreement to be rejected.

Mixed Signals is back for Season 2, and this time we’re following the money in the ever-changing media business. With podcasters and YouTubers dominating the election, is this the end of legacy media? And, can advertisers keep up with audiences’ evolving media habits?

Ben and Nayeema bring on author, New Yorker writer, and media savant Ken Auletta, who has been examining the industry since the ’90s. They discuss whether this moment feels different from past disruptions, how Elon Musk is reshaping media, and Ken’s, uh, colorful recollections of flying with Ted Turner, his girlfriend, and their bed.

Rwanda bets on F1

Rwanda is in talks with Formula 1 to host the first Grand Prix in Africa in more than three decades. The move is part of a wider drive by Kigali to boost economic growth through tourism, Semafor Africa’s managing editor wrote: Rwanda will also host the road cycling world championships next year. However critics say the country is vying for sporting events in a bid to divert attention from its poor human rights record and a crackdown on dissent by President Paul Kagame, who has dominated Rwandan politics since the 1994 genocide. F1 should “avoid contributing to laundering the Rwandan government’s human rights record,” a Human Rights Watch researcher told The Associated Press.

Self-driving cars progress

Waymo plans to expand its US robotaxi operation into Miami. The Alphabet-owned self-driving car firm already operates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Phoenix: It said it provides 150,000 paid trips a week. Driverless cars are making rapid progress into the mainstream, both in the US and China. The tech giant Baidu operates 500 in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Shares of the ride-hailing firms Uber and Lyft dropped 10% on the Miami news, but The Information said this was “silly.” Waymo plans a partnership with Uber in Atlanta, and the two companies work with each other elsewhere: “What’s good for Waymo can be good for Uber.”

NASA’s Moon mission delayed

NASA’s Moon return has been delayed, again. The Artemis mission planned to send astronauts to orbit the Moon next year, but that has been pushed to 2026, putting landing on the surface back to at least 2027. The dates had already slipped: The orbit flight was supposed to happen last month. NASA blamed issues with the heat shield and said the astronauts’ safety was paramount. The European Space Agency, meanwhile, finally launched its much-delayed Vega-C rocket, two years after a failed first attempt. The government-backed space agencies, with their traditional single-use rockets, are under pressure: SpaceX is racing ahead with its larger, more capable Starship, which is also reusable and will be much cheaper per flight.

• US First Lady Jill Biden visits Doha ahead of Qatar’s Doha Forum conference.
• South Korean author Han Kang, winner of the 2024 Nobel Literature Prize, gives the award body’s annual literature lecture on Saturday.
• Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour comes to an end in Vancouver on Sunday.

The percentage of drugs in preclinical testing that end up reaching the market. Even of those, only about a fifth to a third end up recouping the cost of development: The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board warned that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the incoming US health secretary, could make those numbers even worse by discouraging pharmaceutical investment and innovation. Pharma’s business model has always been to back thousands of possible drug candidates in the hope that one goes on to become Ozempic or Viagra and returns its investment many times over, part of the reason why the pills are often sold at high prices despite being individually cheap to make.

Taka Fogo em Kiksilver by d.silvestre. Pitchfork named this Brazilian artist’s new release one of its electronic albums of the year: Douglas Silvestre began making music as a teenager and has developed “a distinctly noisy, brutalist production style,” full of energy, “conjuring images of psychosexual anxiety and Quiksilver jackets set ablaze.” Listen to Taka Fogo em Kiksilver on Spotify.

BlackRock’s $12 billion acquisition of HPS Investment Partners shows that what was once set up as an existential war between public and private lending is anything but, Semafor’s Liz Hoffman wrote.

For most of its decade-long rise, private credit has been cast in opposition, and competition, to loans and bonds underwritten by banks. That’s a satisfying but outdated lens, and as more money flows into private credit, the lines will start to blur.