Flagship

Nations jockey for position in Syria

Foreign powers are jockeying to shape post-war Syria as various factions seek to fill the power vacuum left by Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Jordan and Turkey this week to push Washington’s vision for “an inclusive, Syrian-led transition.” Meanwhile, Ankara moved to weaken Kurdish forces and expand Turkey’s own influence in the country. Israel carried out nearly 500 air strikes on Syria in two days and made ground incursions, prompting criticism from France, and Germany said it would provide millions in humanitarian aid. “Each actor in Syria is scrambling to redraw the map,” an expert told The Wall Street Journal, raising fears that the fall of the Assad regime will merely shepherd in another period of conflict.

US prices rise as Fed eyes rate cut

New US economic data is unlikely to change the Federal Reserve’s expected decision to cut interest rates next week, but it muddies the waters ahead. The consumer price index, which tracks the cost of most goods and services, notched its highest monthly increase since April. Analysts predict the central bank will lower borrowing costs at its next meeting, followed by a pause in January 2025. “Price pressures are hardly settling at a level that the Fed can be completely at ease with,” one analyst said. Indeed, high prices almost certainly “will extend through the next administration,” The Washington Post noted. That could complicate Republicans’ tax and tariff plans, which many economists warn would raise inflation.

China mulling letting yuan weaken

China is considering letting its currency weaken in response to US President-elect Donald Trump’s threatened tariff hikes, Reuters reported. Such a move could lessen the impact of higher duties by making exports cheaper, and represent “a signal by China to the rest of the world that there are exchange rate implications of imposing tariffs,” HSBC’s chief Asia economist said. However, that might risk sparking a cascade of tariffs from other trading partners looking to protect domestic businesses from cheaper Chinese competition. It may also lead foreign investors to take money out of China, hurting the country’s already stagnant economy.

SKorea martial law crisis deepens

Fallout from South Korea’s brief stint under martial law is mounting. Authorities tried to raid the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol and vowed to detain him, while the already imprisoned former defense minister attempted suicide, officials said. The turmoil has spooked investors and amplified calls for Seoul to overhaul its corporate governance system, which gives a handful of family-run conglomerates an “unfettered ability to buy, sell, split, and merge subsidiaries,” Bloomberg reported. Changing those rules, analysts say, would reduce volatility and boost foreign investment. North Korea, meanwhile, broke its silence on the situation in the South, with state media accusing Yoon of running a “fascist dictatorship.”

Lula’s health spotlights aging leaders

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s emergency brain surgery raised concerns over his age and fitness — with some drawing parallels to 82-year-old US President Joe Biden. At 79, Lula will become the oldest G20 leader after Biden leaves office in January, but his septuagenarian status is hardly unusual. Every main member of the BRICS bloc — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — is led by a man in his 70s. Autocracies are driving the trend of aging leaders, The Economist noted: The average dictator is 64, 12 years older than in 1975. The US is somewhat of a global outlier: The world’s second-largest democracy has increasingly elected older leaders, and has the oldest lawmakers of any country.

Google unveils upgraded AI model

Google announced a new version of its flagship artificial intelligence, Gemini 2.0. The US tech giant positioned the model not only as a chatbot but as an “agent” that can “think multiple steps ahead, and take action on your behalf,” like assisting with booking flights or shopping. The shift reflects a race across Big Tech firms like Amazon and Microsoft to inject AI “into practically every product” in the companies’ ecosystems. But even as the technology evolves, getting AI to reliably follow instructions has proven difficult, and “errors could translate into costly and hard-to-undo mistakes,” Wired wrote. That problem may be getting harder to solve: Researchers worry AI models are running out of training data to level up.

CEO shooting puts focus on ‘ghost guns’

A 3D-printed gun police believe was used to murder UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson is spotlighting how “practical and lethal” the weapons have become, Wired argued. At-home 3D printers are on the rise, and law enforcement experts have grown increasingly concerned they could lead to the proliferation of untraceable firearms known as “ghost guns.” The suspected weapon is apparently a tweaked version of a common design, while other groups have been found with 3D-printed semi-automatic guns. If parts can’t be printed, they can be easily bought: As one academic told The Guardian, “you can’t regulate a steel tube or a spring.”

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Saudi’s cultural reach expands

Saudi Arabia will host the 2034 men’s soccer World Cup, FIFA confirmed, after being the sole bidder for the tournament. The 2030 competition, meanwhile, will be played across six countries: Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina. Despite some criticism from human rights groups, Saudi’s winning bid is a boon to Riyadh’s ambition to become a global sports and entertainment hub. The Gulf nation struck several other soft power deals this week: Riyadh will help fund the renovation of the Centre Pompidou in Paris in exchange for France’s support for museum and heritage projects in Saudi Arabia, while the UK agreed to help conserve cultural landmarks in the oil-rich nation.

Air travel to soar in 2025

Passenger air travel is in for a bumper 2025. The number of travelers is expected to top 5 billion for the first time, and the sector’s global revenues will reach the trillion-dollar mark, according to aviation industry estimates. Deutsche Bank, meanwhile, forecast that airlines’ shares and profits should go up in 2025. Airlines were badly hit by the pandemic, but demand has sprung back to the point that the industry is struggling with a plane shortage, thanks in part to delays at major manufacturers like embattled aerospace giant Boeing. High demand and limited supply are hiking up fares, especially on transatlantic US-UK flights, a key route for several airlines.

US moves to protect monarch butterfly

The monarch butterfly could soon be added to the US endangered species list. The iconic orange-and-black insect migrates every year from Mexico to Canada and back, but logging, grassland loss, and pesticides have gravely reduced its population, by some estimates as much as 95%. Measuring insect populations is notoriously difficult, however, and not all scientists agree that the monarch is under threat: “They haven’t really shown any decline in the summertime,” one scientist told The Washington Post, and it’s unclear that the creature is “endangered or even threatened.” Government scientists are less optimistic: They think monarchs have a 99% chance of going extinct by the end of the century if nothing changes.

Dec. 12:

• South African President Cyril Ramaphosa meets his Angolan counterpart Joao Lourenco to discuss trade and investments.
• Costco posts first-quarter earnings for the financial year 2025.
• Actor Jude Law unveils his star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles.

Tetris released a new edition that combines the classic block-moving game with a host of interactive features to document and celebrate its 40-year history. “Tetris Forever” allows users to navigate a timeline of the history of Tetris and play different versions of the game interspersed with documentary-style interviews with Tetris’ founder and notable collaborators. Tetris has had hundreds of iterations, including “Bombliss,” in which blocks blow up parts of the screen, and Hatris: which is like Tetris, but with hats that are stacked on characters’ heads. The latest version demonstrates that Tetris “is endlessly malleable and yet always recognizably itself, the gravitational center of interactive art,” Hyperallergic wrote.

The latest auction for leases to drill geothermal energy wells on federal land in the US was a bust, highlighting challenges the emerging clean energy tech still faces, Semafor’s climate editor Tim McDonnell reports.That said, industry efforts and some lawmakers could make geothermal a priority for the incoming Trump Administration.