Know someone who would like this newsletter? Forward it to them.
The World
Oil prices rose above $90 a barrel for the first time in 2023 as Saudi Arabia and Russia said they would extend their voluntary production and export cuts until the end of the year. Saudi Arabia, which leads the expanded Opec+ cartel with Russia, has cut an additional 1mn barrels a day from the global market since July, in what had been originally billed a temporary measure. But Saudi Arabia’s state media reported the kingdom would keep its 1mn b/d reduction in place until the end of December, citing the ministry of energy. nRussia has added its own voluntary export cuts in recent months, with deputy prime minister Alexander Novak adding on Tuesday that its 300,000 b/d export reduction would stay in place until the end of the year. The move, which threatens to reignite inflation concerns globally, is the latest effort by two of the world’s largest oil producers to boost prices despite much of the world grappling with higher energy costs. (Financial Times)
US says North Korea will 'pay a price' for any weapons supplies to Russia: Arms negotiations between Russia and North Korea are actively advancing, a U.S. official said on Tuesday and warned leader Kim Jong Un that his country would pay a price for supplying Russia with weapons to use in Ukraine. Providing weapons to Russia "is not going to reflect well on North Korea and they will pay a price for this in the international community," U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House. (Reuters)
The Russian foreign ministry has said Moscow will view any move to return US nuclear weapons to the UK as an escalation and will respond with “countermeasures” for its own security. The foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova was responding to a report last week about an item in the 2024 US air force budget for building a dormitory at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk for personnel on a “potential surety mission” – military jargon for nuclear safety and security. It raised the prospect of the return of US nuclear weapons to British soil for the first time in more than 15 years. (The Guardian)
India has launched its first spacecraft to study the Sun, hot on the heels of landing a spacecraft on the Moon last month. The Aditya-L1 spacecraft will address outstanding problems in solar physics, namely how stars such as the Sun sustain their super-hot outer layer, how variations in the Sun’s magnetic field affect Earth’s atmosphere and how the Sun’s magnetic fields create violent solar storms. The mission “will be an asset to heliophysicists of the country and even the global scientific fraternity”, says Nigar Shaji, Aditya-L1’s project director at the Indian Space Research. (Nature)
Texas ‘Floating Border Wall’ Fails to Deter Migrants: When it installed a chain of giant bright orange buoys on the Rio Grande earlier this summer, Texas hoped that its new “floating border wall” would slow the number of migrants using this shallow point of the river to wade into the U.S. Instead, asylum seekers have simply been skirting the 1,000-foot barrier. This stretch of the river, abutting Eagle Pass, Texas, has for the past few years been one of the most popular crossing spots for migrant families because Piedras Negras, the Mexican city across the border, is relatively safe. The water is also shallow enough to avoid the river’s most deadly currents. Blocking it off hasn’t deterred migrants, but it has redirected them to more dangerous points on the river. (Wall Street Journal)
California kids may get personal finance 101: Next Gen Personal Finance’s advocacy arm is trying to put the proposal to voters in November 2024. The organization already offers a free personal finance curriculum and teacher training to schools, and the nonprofit has deployed both in districts in California, including in San Francisco and Long Beach. The ballot measure is similar to legislation that Assemblymember Kevin McCarty introduced on behalf of the organization, but amendments diluted the bill to require only that personal finance lessons be incorporated into economics classes, rather than mandating stand-alone courses. The California School Boards Association opposed the bill McCarty introduced, arguing it would “ignore the state’s existing curriculum development and update process,” and burden the state’s nearly 1,000 local school agencies by requiring them to decide on lesson plans and otherwise implementing the mandate. (Politico)
2023 State of AI in 14 Charts: A snapshot of what happened this past year in AI R&D, education, policy, hiring, and more. (Stanford University Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence)
Economy
Rate Hikes Curb Output for at Least a Decade, SF Fed Study Finds: Central bank interest-rate increases reduce potential economic output for at least 12 years, in contrast to traditional theories of national economies that assume policy is neutral in the long run, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco research found. “We find that these long-run effects develop primarily through investment decisions that ultimately result in lower productivity and lower capital stock than would be available without policy intervention,” San Francisco Fed researchers Òscar Jordà and Sanjay R. Singh, and University of California Davis professor Alan M. Taylor said in a research note published Tuesday on the bank’s website. (Bloomberg)
More than four in five US homebuyers are factoring in climate risks when they shop for a new house, according to a new survey by real estate firm Zillow. Some 83% of respondents said they weighed at least one climate risk such as floods, extreme temperatures, wildfires, hurricanes or droughts in their purchase plans, according to Zillow’s poll of almost 12,000 prospective buyers conducted between April and July 2023. (Bloomberg)
Meta employees are back in the office three days a week as part of new mandate: The company began notifying employees in June of the coming change, which will not affect Meta’s current roster of remote workers. “We believe that distributed work will continue to be important in the future, particularly as our technology improves,” a Meta spokesperson told CNBC. (CNBC)
Return-to-Office Is a $1.3 Trillion Problem Few Have Figured Out: Asian workers are coming back, European nations are adopting new policies and US employers are fending for themselves. (Bloomberg)
The cost to rent a home or apartment has soared, and it isn’t just because of super high rents. Landlords are hitting tenants with an abundance of fees every month. Many are no more than five or 10 dollars each, but when stacked up they can amount to hundreds of dollars more each year. Some fees, such as those for parking and pets, have been around for years, but many renters now pay up for things they were rarely charged for in the past. That includes fees for trash pickup, pest control, the use of a mailbox, and for making routine maintenance requests. Then there are fees for move-ins and move-outs and for “lease administration.” One Minnesota landlord collected a $100 so-called January fee the first month of each year, though it isn’t clear what tenants got in return for that charge. (Wall Street Journal)
Technology
Huawei Technologies' breakthrough in making an advanced chip underscores China's determination and capacity for fighting back against U.S. sanctions, but the efforts are likely very costly and could prompt Washington to tighten curbs, analysts said. Huawei unexpectedly unveiled the latest Mate 60 Pro smartphone last week during U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo's visit in China, as the government readies a new $40-billion investment fund to bolster its developing chip sector. The Mate 60 Pro is powered by its proprietary chip Kirin 9000s and manufactured by the country's top contract chipmaker SMIC (0981.HK) using an advanced 7 nanometre (nm) technology, according to a teardown by Ottawa-headquartered TechInsights. Its findings and claims by early users about the phone's powerful performance indicate China is making some headway into developing high-end chips. (Reuters)
Apple, Google, Nvidia and other tech giants are considering buying Arm shares: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had positive things to say about Arm in the chip-design company’s digital roadshow. The comments come after Nvidia dropped a plan to buy Arm as regulators said the deal could hurt competition. (CNBC)
Some of the world’s biggest tech companies and more than 20 of their services will have to meet obligations under new EU laws that will force the likes of Apple and Google to overhaul how they do business and generate billions of euros in revenues. Amazon’s marketplace, Apple’s AppStore, Meta’s WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram and Google’s Search and YouTube are among the extensive list of services that will have to comply with obligations aimed at enabling greater competition for the sector in Europe. A total of six companies, including Microsoft and TikTok, will have to comply with stipulations imposed by the new Digital Markets Act, which include sharing data with rivals, making their services interoperable with rival apps and linking to competitors. (Financial Times)
FTC Antitrust Suit Against Amazon Set for Later This Month After Meeting Fails to Resolve Impasse: E-commerce giant’s lawyers offered no concessions in talks with agency officials last month. (Wall Street Journal)
Disney Lures Sports Fans to Hulu+ With ESPN Pulled From Charter: Walt Disney Co. and Charter Communications Inc., locked in a fee standoff that’s cut off 14.7 million cable TV viewers from ESPN, are steering consumers to online services where they can replace the lost channels. Disney has been running ads on social media, its website and its TV channels telling people to subscribe to Hulu+ Live TV, its own $70-a-month, cable-TV alternative offering ABC, ESPN and other channels pulled from Charter. (Bloomberg)
Messi Drives Jump in Apple TV+, MLS Subscriptions: The Argentine soccer superstar’s arrival brings more than 110,000 sign-ups to MLS Season Pass on the day of his first match with Inter Miami. (Wall Street Journal)
Smart Links
Cheap Flights of Fall Are Back: Airlines are tempting fliers with the kind of deep autumn discounts that disappeared during the past few years. (Wall Street Journal)
Europe’s tourist surge defies cost of living crisis. (Financial Times)
Why Renting an Airbnb in NYC Just Got a Lot Harder. (Bloomberg)
Ramaswamy's Anti-ESG Fund Hits $1 Billion in Assets. (Bloomberg)
Elon Musk Borrowed $1 Billion From SpaceX in Same Month of Twitter Acquisition. (Wall Street Journal)