Flagship

Israel-Hamas truce faces delays

Hopes for an Israel-Hamas truce were delayed by disputes over inspections of aid convoys. The talks — which the U.S. called “serious” — came with a U.N. Security Council vote on a temporary ceasefire being repeatedly postponed, and as humanitarian officials warned of worsening conditions in Gaza, where more than 20,000 people have died in Israel’s offensive after 1,140 were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. The Israeli military meanwhile ordered a new evacuation in southern Gaza, suggesting intense fighting will continue right up until any potential pause.

But a more permanent end to the conflict may be in sight. A Hamas official said the group had begun discussions on how to govern Gaza and the West Bank in the longer term, telling The Wall Street Journal, “we want the war to end.” Le Monde also obtained a confidential Saudi think tank document proposing exiling Hamas’ leadership to Algeria, deploying an Arab peacekeeping force to Gaza, and establishing a transitional leadership in the Palestinian territories.

OPEC power wanes

OPEC, the oil-producing cartel, is a waning force, unable to manipulate the world economy as it could just a few years ago. Oil prices remained stable despite a war in the Middle East hitting shipping and OPEC agreeing to cut production. In 2021, when a grounded container ship blocked the Suez Canal and oil producers cut supply, oil prices and inflation surged, the Financial Times’ economics commentator noted. But with improved oil and gas production in non-OPEC countries, notably the U.S., and with increases in renewable energy and electrification hitting demand, OPEC’s power is reduced. “Peak oil is within sight,” — the International Energy Agency thinks it will happen by 2030 — “and there is not much OPEC+ can do about it.”

World’s biggest wind farm OK’d

A Danish energy company will press on with plans to build the world’s largest offshore wind farm. Ørsted’s Hornsea 3 off the British coast will power 3 million U.K. homes when it comes online by the end of 2027. The announcement is a boost for a flagging offshore industry: U.K. and U.S. projects were canceled recently, as rising costs hit profitability. The U.K. and Denmark are increasingly working together across the North Sea: The Viking Link, the world’s largest interconnector cable, carrying electricity from Danish wind farms to Britain, is expected to start operation on Dec. 29. Interconnectors help mitigate renewable energy’s intermittency problem: If the wind isn’t blowing in the U.K., it might be in Denmark.

China weighing nuclear tests: NYT

Satellite data suggests China is weighing whether to test a new generation of nuclear weapons, The New York Times reported. The renewed activity at the site where the country tested its first atomic bomb comes after the Pentagon warned in October that Beijing had significantly expanded its atomic stockpile. China’s growing nuclear prowess, combined with the U.S. and Russia’s own capabilities, portends future instability, a recent piece in the London Review of Books argued: “Think of the three body problem in classical mechanics. The interactions of two masses are relatively easy to calculate, but three are unstable and chaotic: there is no easy equilibrium. Nuclear armed states create a similar dynamic, a three bomb problem.”

Russia’s real nuclear threat

The U.S. is underestimating the risk that Russia will launch a nuclear strike against a NATO ally, a piece by a former senior intelligence official warned. The chances of Moscow using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine itself are low, Peter Schroeder argued in Foreign Affairs, because Russian President Vladimir Putin remains confident he will win using conventional forces, and because doing so would rally Kyiv’s allies. But if battlefield dynamics were to change, he might double down and seek to target Western supply lines to Ukraine. In that scenario, Putin will “want to reach the nuclear level — where Russia is a peer of the United States — as quickly as possible,” Schroeder wrote. “When Putin invokes his arsenal … his rhetoric is designed to threaten NATO itself.”

Venezuela frees US citizens in swap

The U.S. released Alex Saab, a Colombian financier and close ally of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in exchange for 10 American citizens. Maduro also freed a Malaysian fugitive known as “Fat Leonard” who pleaded guilty to being at the center of a sprawling U.S. Navy corruption ring. The release of Saab — who U.S. prosecutors allege siphoned $350 million from Venezuela — is a boon for Maduro and a “gut-punch” for the opposition ahead of next year’s presidential election, experts said. The exchange was criticized in both countries: “I don’t know if Saab’s release brings us closer to freedom,” a Venezuelan congressman said. “But I have no doubt that it sets us further apart from justice.”

Sudan’s second city falls to RSF

The Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seized Sudan’s second-largest city, a potential turning point in the country’s eight-month civil war. Wad Madani was held by the army, and is host to hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians from the capital Khartoum and elsewhere. Aid agencies were reportedly forced to suspend their work with refugees after the RSF attack: Wad Madani was a “gateway” to other cities, one aid director told Al Jazeera. With it falling to the RSF, “It really sweeps Sudan’s heartland. Logistically it will make things difficult [for aid agencies].” The United Nations said about half of Sudan’s population face hunger.

Toyota subsidiary in safety scandal

Toyota’s subsidiary Daihatsu halted shipments after an investigation found it had rigged safety-test data. The small-car maker falsified reports on headrest impacts and test speeds, and used different airbags in tests to those in cars sold to the public. The findings affect 64 models. The controversy comes during a trying time for Toyota: Last month it recalled 1.8 million of its RAV 4 SUVs over potential fire risks, and it has fallen behind rivals, notably Tesla, in the race to dominate the electric-car market, having bet early on hybrids rather than full-battery vehicles. Daihatsu vehicles account for 7% of Toyota’s global sales. A similar scandal hit another Toyota subsidiary, its truck-maker Hino, in 2022.

Blue Origin resumes rocket launches

Blue Origin launched its first rocket in more than a year, following a crash in 2022. The New Shepard rocket blasted off from Texas and reached space before returning to the launchpad. The explosion last year led to a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration probe which ordered the Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin to redesign its engines to improve safety. As Blue Origin and other companies look to challenge SpaceX’s dominance of commercial space travel, countries are hoping to take advantage of the burgeoning industry: The U.K. recently approved its first spaceport, on an island off northeast Scotland. Its first suborbital launches are expected this year, and satellite launches from 2025.

Eight-year-old takes Euro chess win

An eight-year-old defeated an international chess master — the level below grandmaster — and drew with a grandmaster at a European tournament. Bodhana Sivanandan, from London, won 8.5 out of 13 games at the European Blitz Chess Championship, in which players only have three to five minutes to make all their moves, on her way to winning the women’s title. The president of the English Chess Federation praised her “remarkably mature playing style … strategic and patient,” while a chess commentator noted “the maturity of her play, her sublime touch.” Chess is a young person’s game — the top players tend to peak around 30 — but usually not quite this young. Sivanandan said she didn’t get nervous: “I just play the board.”

Semafor’s 2024 World Economy Summit, on April 17-18, will feature conversations with global policymakers and power brokers in Washington, against the backdrop of the IMF and World Bank meetings.

Chaired by former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, and in partnership with BCG, the summit will feature 150 speakers across two days and three different stages. Join Semafor for conversations with the people shaping the global economy.

• Thailand’s draft same-sex marriage law is scheduled for its first reading in Parliament.
• South Korea and Japan hold economic talks in Seoul for the first time since 2016.
• On this day 125 years ago, future Nobel-winners Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the element radium, which would later be used to treat cancer.

The time Glynn Simmons spent in prison for a crime he did not commit, the longest known wrongful sentence in U.S. history. Simmons was arrested in 1975 shortly after a murder at a liquor store in Edmond, Oklahoma. He and an acquaintance were selected from a police lineup by a woman who had been at the store at the time of the killing. Although the witness later contradicted her testimony, the two men were sentenced to death, a ruling eventually commuted to life in prison. “It’s a lesson in resilience and tenacity,” Simmons said after being exonerated. “Don’t let nobody tell you that it can’t happen, because it really can.”

A musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple will be released in U.S. cinemas on Christmas Day. The Pulitzer Prize-winning book, which spotlights racism and misogyny in the American south in the early 1900s, was previously brought to the big screen by Steven Spielberg. The latest film also draws on the successful 2005 Broadway play based on the novel, and is one of a number of movie-musicals released by Hollywood this year. “It is a poignant and important story, personal to many,” Sharina Black wrote in Collider. “It’s time for [protagonist] Celie Harris to triumph again.”

• Despite starting his career in artificial intelligence and staying on top of the latest developments, Meta’s CTO says the latest generative AI craze still caught the company by surprise.
• The COP28 agreement says annual global greenhouse emissions need to peak by 2025 to stay within the global warming limit of 1.5 C. That means for the biggest emitters, 2024 will be a critical turning point for the energy transition.
• There’s no shortage of examples of how combining generative AI and journalism can go wrong — but how can it go right? The trick may be to make AI know less.