Know someone who would like this newsletter? Forward it to them.
The World
Joe Biden on Monday pressed Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to “tactical pauses” in Israel’s war with Hamas as Israeli forces encircled Gaza’s main city and carried out an intense bombardment of the besieged strip. The US president told Israel’s prime minister in a phone call that Washington was going to “continue to advocate for temporary localized pauses in the fighting”, said John Kirby, US National Security Council spokesperson. (Financial Times)
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng will meet in San Francisco this week “to try to deepen a fledgling economic dialogue between the world’s two largest economies.” The meeting will come just before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit at which President Biden hopes to meet with Xi Jinping. (South China Morning Post)
“U.S.-China relations remain in their worst state since the countries established diplomatic ties in 1979.” (Financial Times)
Vladimir Putin will seek re-election in Russia’s March presidential election, which will keep him in power until least the end of the decade. Putin, “who was handed the presidency by Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has already served as president for longer than any other Russian ruler since Josef Stalin, beating even Leonid Brezhnev's 18-year tenure.” (Reuters)
Sweden is facing the most serious challenges to its security since World War II, according to its National Security Adviser Henrik Landerholm. Sweden, “once a symbol of peace, neutrality and social cohesion, is now threatened on three fronts by Russia, Islamist terrorism and a wave of shootings and bombings as armed cartels battle for supremacy over drugs.” (Times of London)
Delhi will restrict the use of cars and other vehicles in an effort to reduce air pollution. The city’s current air pollution levels “are between seven to eight times the safe limit set by the government, with the region enveloped in a hazardous toxic haze.” (DW)
Democrats see a chance at winning the governorship of deep-red Mississippi today. Nominee Brandon Presley—a distant cousin of Elvis — is making a surprisingly strong run at incumbent GOP Gov. Tate Reeves” by focusing on economic issues, playing down social issues, and distancing himself from the national party. (USA Today)
“The average American commute is about 27 minutes,” and the duration of an average commute has declined over the past few years. But “while people in many industries were able to start working from home during the pandemic, recouping their travel time, nearly half of U.S. workers kept devoting a good chunk of their day — sometimes an hour or more — to being in transit.” (New York Times)
Economy
The U.S. has approximately two million more retirees than predicted, “in one of the most striking and enduring changes to the nation’s labor force.” (Bloomberg)
The New Headache for Bosses: Employees Aren’t Quitting. Just last year, companies were struggling to keep staff. Now, they say not enough people are leaving their jobs. (Wall Street Journal)
WeWork Files for Bankruptcy Amid Glut of Empty Offices: The move is a blow for landlords who have rented space to the co-working group, which is planning a reorganization that includes cutting leases. (New York Times)
Citigroup could eliminate 10% or more of jobs in several major businesses, according to executives and consultants working with CEO Jane Fraser on the cuts. In September, Fraser warned in a memo, “We’ll be saying goodbye to some very talented and hard-working colleagues.” (CNBC)
Foreign firms pulled more than $160 billion in total earnings out of China during six successive quarters ending in September. (Wall Street Journal)
The French economy was stagnant over the summer, growing just 0.1% between July and September compared with the previous quarter. The sluggishness follows “a more dynamic 0.6% increase booked in the prior three-month period.” (Wall Street Journal)
Dish Network “suffered its worst stock decline in 23 years after reporting disappointing third-quarter revenue and a drop in wireless customers” that was nearly five times what analysts had expected. Revenue for the quarter was $3.7 billion, below analyst estimates of $3.8 billion. (Bloomberg)
Technology
OpenAI announced GPT-4 Turbo “during its first in-person event, and revealed a new option that will let users create custom versions of its viral ChatGPT chatbot. It’s also cutting prices on the fees that companies and developers pay to run its software.” (CNBC)
CEO Sam Altman said the company’s platform “is now used by 92% of Fortune 500 firms and that ChatGPT has 100 million weekly users. More than 2 million developers use the platform, he said.” (Semafor)
‘ChatGPT detector’ catches AI-generated papers with unprecedented accuracy. (Nature)
Meta bars political advertisers from using generative AI ads tools. (Reuters)
Intel is the leading candidate to potentially receive billions of dollars in government funding for secure facilities producing microchips for U.S. military and intelligence applications. The facilities—which have yet to be disclosed publicly—would be explicitly designated as a “secure enclave,” according to people familiar with the development. The goal is to reduce the U.S. military’s dependence on chips imported from East Asia, particularly Taiwan, which some say is vulnerable to Chinese invasion. (Wall Street Journal)
The Pentagon “is moving slowly and cautiously — too cautiously, critics say — away from its focus on big weapons platforms like planes and ships to embrace smarter systems and the potential of artificial intelligence.” Obama Administration Defense Department official Michèle Flournoy recently wrote, “The Pentagon needs to accelerate — not slow — its adoption of responsible A.I.” (New York Times)
“Toyota’s battle to catch up with Tesla in a new era of electric vehicles is playing out in one of the oldest parts of the carmaking business: the assembly line.” Elon Musk wants to simplify and accelerate assembly processes in a way that could supplant the industry standard set by Toyota. (Financial Times)
Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is stepping down as CEO “of the company known for the female-focused dating app she founded nearly a decade ago.” She will be succeeded by Slack Technologies CEO Lidiane Jones on January 2. (Wall Street Journal)
“Slack is losing its second leader in less than a year” with Jones’s exit. (Bloomberg)
Smart Links
Google ends deal to build 15,000 Bay Area homes due to “market conditions”. (Ars Technica)
Turning Empty Offices Into Apartments Is Getting Even Harder: Only 3,575 apartment units were converted from office space last year. (Wall Street Journal)
Taiwan's MediaTek bets on generative AI devices with latest mobile chip. (Nikkei Asia)
Xbox partners with Inworld AI to build AI tools for game development. (VentureBeat)
Electric Planes, Once a Fantasy, Start to Take to the Skies. (New York Times)
Droves of Californians are moving to Texas. Here’s the life they are finding. (Los Angeles Times)