Flagship

Syria rebels vow to pursue torturers

The rebels who toppled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad vowed to pursue officials involved in torture and war crimes, as the US and Israel carried out air strikes on the country. The call for ex-regime officials to be held to account came as the rebels’ leader met with the outgoing prime minister to ensure government services remained operational, the latest step in a euphoric few days since Assad’s overthrow. Yet in a sign of the security challenges Syria faces, the US carried out air strikes against Islamic State camps to dissuade the group from taking advantage of a power vacuum, while Israel’s warplanes bombarded chemical-weapons sites and its soldiers reportedly came within 15 miles of Damascus.

How Syria is affecting global migration

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow had near-immediate global reverberations on migration and drug trafficking. At least eight European nations — including Germany, France, and the UK — suspended processing of asylum applications for Syrian nationals after his fall, while officials told The National that manufacturing of Captagon, an amphetamine-like narcotic whose production was concentrated in Syria, had all but halted. The rapid fallout from Assad’s ouster points to how “Syria broke the world,” the journalist and historian Kim Ghattas wrote in the Financial Times: The country’s civil war contributed to the growth of the Islamic State terror group, a migration crisis in Europe, and even Russia’s global revanchism, she argued.

Ukraine’s bleak present and future

Ukraine faces its most difficult winter of the war so far, experts warned. Russia is increasing the pace of its offensive, pushing back Kyiv’s forces on several fronts and advancing up to six miles a day, Radio Free Europe reported, while Ukraine lacks the troops and air defenses to stabilize the front lines. The longer-term future is also worrying, as Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency is raising fears that Washington will scale back support. A Polish defense minister told Bloomberg that Europe “is in a leadership crisis” and needs to step up on Ukraine’s defense, calling particularly on Germany to boost military spending, and said the European Union should work together to finance arms purchases.

Trade war warnings

The US’ three biggest trading partners warned that President-elect Donald Trump’s promised trade war would be costly for Americans. China cautioned that “no winners” would emerge from rising protectionism, while Canada said tariffs would “make life a lot more expensive” in the US, remarks that echoed Mexico’s. Trump’s threats — and the legacy of his first term — have already had an impact: Chinese firms have seen their US market share plummet, and while some third countries have benefitted, ING economists warned they may “get caught in the crossfire” of Trump’s trade push. Trade policy uncertainty is also a “meaningful headwind” for European economic growth, Goldman Sachs analysts said.

Milei’s upbeat anniversary

A year into his presidency, Javier Milei has reined in Argentina’s soaring inflation rates and cut a yawning budget deficit, but huge challenges remain. The self-described “anarcho-capitalist” has helped slow monthly inflation to less than 3%, down from 25% before his term, and despite his “painful” austerity measures — which have led to poverty rates passing 50% — Milei remains popular. He has also softened his rhetoric with Argentina’s main trading partners, helping drive investor confidence. But Milei faces a projected economic recession and the June expiry of a law that gives him sweeping executive powers. “Things could still go off the rails, as they so often do in Argentina,” an expert wrote in Americas Quarterly.

Wind power struggling to keep up

BP retreated further from its wind-power ambitions, placing its offshore turbine assets into a jointly owned business with a Japanese company. The fossil fuel giant made a big play for wind power four years ago, but is now “eat[ing] its words,” the Financial Times said. Its rival Shell is similarly backing away from wind power, while a major auction for offshore wind generation licenses in Denmark failed to attract any bidders. Ørsted, the world’s biggest offshore wind company, is struggling too, with share prices down 70% since 2021. While solar power is taking off exponentially, wind is falling behind its target of tripling generation by 2030.

Europe’s battery plans stumble

The Chinese battery giant CATL announced plans with carmaker Stellantis to build a major battery plant in Spain, a sign of how Europe’s ambitions to challenge China’s electric vehicle prowess are faltering. Northvolt, the much-heralded Swedish startup, declared bankruptcy last month, and 12 out of 16 planned European-backed battery factories are either under review, delayed, or canceled. That contrasts with the burgeoning growth of Asian manufacturers: 10 out of 13 projects in Europe by companies such as CATL or South Korea’s Samsung are on schedule. “Building a European industry was always going to be a long shot,” Bloomberg reported, because China has the raw materials, the expertise, and the infrastructure.

Morocco sees tourism surge

Morocco reported a record number of tourists so far this year, a 20% increase year-on-year, helping boost the country’s economic growth. The North African nation has turned into a tourism powerhouse, with the number of visitors expected to almost double by 2030, when it is due to co-host the FIFA Men’s World Cup. Government officials have set their sights on the country becoming one of the 15 most visited in the world. Tourism has boosted economic growth across Africa, with one estimate showing it generates more than 7% of the continent’s GDP. However barriers — including intra-continental visa restrictions — still hold back Africa’s potential.

Space anomaly hints at new physics

The universe appears to be expanding faster than expected, and scientists hope the discovery could lead to new physics. The finding that distant galaxies tend to be moving away was a key piece of evidence for the Big Bang theory. Data from the 2011 Hubble Space Telescope suggested that distant galaxies were receding faster than predicted. New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have confirmed those findings, suggesting that our model of the universe might be wrong. Physicists, unusually, are desperate to find errors in their hypotheses: Relativity and quantum mechanics, the subject’s main frameworks, are incredibly useful for predicting the world but are mutually incompatible, so finding an error in one or both could help unite the fields.

‘Remarkable’ quantum breakthrough

A quantum computer solved in minutes an equation that would have taken a classical computer septillions of years. Google’s Willow contains twice as many “qubits,” quantum equivalents to computing bits, as its predecessor. But the real advance is its error resistance: In order to be useful, quantum computers must have incredibly low error rates, because in larger models errors in single qubits will propagate, and render calculations false. Willow is a “truly remarkable breakthrough,” one scientist told Nature, although Semafor’s Reed Albergotti noted that there is still a long way to go before the machines are commercially practical. Still, it is chilling news for science journalists, who soon will have to try to understand quantum computing again.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu testifies in court for the first time in his corruption trial.
• The two-day Abu Dhabi Space Debate kicks off.
• Polo, a new sports docuseries, is released on Netflix.

The number of countries that have “graduated” from being international aid recipients to aid donors. The group, which includes Chile, China, and South Korea, is a reflection of developing nations’ high rates of economic growth in the last two decades, during which they greatly outpaced the G7 club of richer countries. Now international finance institutions are focusing their resources on boosting growth in Africa — home to nine of the 10 poorest nations in the world — in the hope that a country there may graduate in the future.

How the World Ran Out of Everything by Peter S. Goodman. The book was named one of the best of 2024 by Foreign Affairs. It uses a series of vignettes to chart how a worship of efficiency, trumpeted by “self-interested business leaders and consultants… resulted in fragile supply chains, soaring profits for corporations, and high prices for consumers.” Buy How the World Ran Out of Everything from your local bookstore.

A bill put forward to the US Senate seeks to defund the country’s public media companies, many of which are already struggling with dwindling engagement and budget constraints, Semafor’s Max Tani reported. Congressman Scott Perry told Tani that federally funded media like NPR has shown “itself to be an unnecessary” and “very inflammatory expenditure.”