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The World
Biden admin nudge led Ukraine to drop Putin condition for peace talks. Zelenskyy changed course on Monday, ditching the demand for Putin’s ouster before peace talks. The change came after days of talks between Kyiv and Washington — including an in-person visit with Zelenskyy by national security adviser Jake Sullivan. U.S. officials didn’t directly tell Zelenskyy and his aides in Ukraine to alter their position, a senior administration official said, but did relay that Kyiv must show its willingness to end the war reasonably and peacefully. (Politico)
Putin's Elite Tremble as Hardliners Call for ‘Stalinist’ Steps: The rise of outspoken hardliners in the Kremlin is alarming insiders fearful the Russian president will heed their calls for even more confrontation abroad and sweeping repression at home. Senior business executives and government officials have watched with growing worry as players they once considered marginal like Yevgeny Prigozhin, known for his Wagner mercenary company and recruiting of prison inmates to fight in Ukraine, have become the public forces behind Vladimir Putin’s push to step up his increasingly all-encompassing war effort. (Bloomberg)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he discussed the joint production of modern weapons with his Indian counterpart during talks in Moscow. It was Lavrov's fifth meeting with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar this year. "We discussed in detail the state and prospects of military-technical cooperation, including joint production of modern arms," Lavrov said, in comments carried by the TASS news agency, without providing more information. (Deutsche Welle)
G20 summit in Bali an opportunity for Xi and Biden to meet but China and US stay silent on possible talks. All eyes are on a possible summit between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies at next week’s G20 gathering, but neither Washington nor Beijing has confirmed that a meeting will take place. The two-day Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia starts on November 15 and will offer a rare chance for Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden to meet in person. The South China Morning Post has learned that the two sides are working to arrange talks between the two leaders, though neither side is willing to announce it publicly at this stage. (South China Morning Post)
Switzerland is paying poorer nations to cut emissions on its behalf. The country, one of the world’s richest nations, has an ambitious climate goal: It promises to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. But the Swiss don’t intend to reduce emissions by that much within their own borders. Instead, the European country is dipping into its sizable coffers to pay poorer nations, like Ghana or Dominica, to reduce emissions there — and give Switzerland credit for it.The agreements raise concerns that other countries will follow suit, delaying more difficult cuts of greenhouse gas emissions in wealthier nations. (New York Times)
A group of UK researchers recently injected their first two human volunteers with 5-10 milliliters of blood grown entirely within a laboratory setting—a world’s first. About four months later, the test subjects will also receive a similar injection of donated, naturally-developed blood to compare. If the patients’ bodies don’t reject the “artificial” donation, it could be an absolute game changer for increasing supplies of previously ultra-rare blood types, and may even one day enable smaller and less frequent transfusions. (Popular Science)
Brain implants that translate paralyzed patients’ thoughts into speech creep closer to reality. As part of an audacious clinical trial, surgeons at the University of California, San Francisco, opened the skull of a paralyzed man and slipped a thin sheet packed with 128 microelectrodes onto the surface of his brain. The system, developed in the lab of UCSF neurosurgeon Edward Chang, would listen in to the electrical impulses firing across the patient’s motor cortex as he tried to speak, then transmit those signals to a computer, whose language-prediction algorithms would decode them into words and sentences. If it worked, after more than 15 years with only grunts and moans, this patient would have a voice again. And it did. (STAT News)
Economy
The share of new homes on the market surged to record levels last quarter as mortgage rates jumped to a 22-year high, forcing builders to offload homes with steep incentives and at lower prices in a bid to attract prospective buyers. A record 29% of single-family homes for sale in the third quarter were newly constructed, climbing from 25% in the same period last year and 18% in 2020, thanks in part to the highest number of new homes finishing construction and entering the market since 2007.For buyers, that has meant offering a slew of incentives to attract bidders, with many builders buying down a buyer's mortgage rate by 1.5 percentage points in addition to paying down closing costs and offering free appliances, says Floyd. (Forbes)
Top Office Developers Hit the Pause Button on New Projects: Anemic return-to-office rates cause real estate giants such as Vornado and Kilroy to throttle back on developments. (Wall Street Journal)
Don’t expect cheap airfares to come back soon, airline executives say. Travel demand has surged, but supply of flights hasn’t kept up, leading to higher airfares and revenues for airlines. (Wall Street Journal)
Millennials are changing what it takes to succeed in sales. The biggest generation in the workforce is taking over purchasing for much of the corporate world—and transforming the sales profession in the process. Those tactics involve fewer trips to the golf course and more time corralling large buying teams that include senior managers, finance officials and end users at target companies. Cold calls are ceding ground to millennials’ preference to communicate via text or direct message. And just as they do as consumers, many millennial corporate buyers like to research business products online and on their own before ever talking to a salesperson. (WSJ)
Disney's stock was down more than 6% in after-hours trading after the entertainment giant said it missed Wall Street expectations on revenue and earnings for its fourth fiscal quarter, but surpassed expectations on streaming subscriber additions. On Tuesday, Disney CEO Bob Chapek said in a letter to investors that the company expects its streaming unit's operating losses "to narrow going forward and that Disney+ will still achieve profitability in fiscal 2024," assuming the economy doesn't shift meaningfully. (Axios)
FTX Exchange is set to be acquired by Binance, pending due diligence, following a liquidity crisis from FTX, per an announcement from the CEO of FTX. “Our teams are working on clearing out the withdrawal backlog as is,” CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said regarding the pause of withdrawals on FTX assets. “This will clear out liquidity crunches; all assets will be covered 1:1. This is one of the main reasons we’ve asked Binance to come in.” (Bitcoin Magazine)
FTX venture investors fear total wipeout in Binance rescue deal. Four of FTX’s backers told The Information that the fate of their equity stakes remained unknown, and that they were still trying to figure out how they would be impacted by the Binance deal. Another investor said they were fielding texts from limited partners throughout the day, with these institutional investors worried about the value of stakes going to zero. (The Information)
Technology
Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to begin widespread job cuts on Wednesday, part of a plan to reduce costs at the social-media giant following disappointing earnings and a drop in revenue. Employees who are affected will be told starting Wednesday morning, and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg spoke to executives to prepare them for the cuts. On the executive call, Zuckerberg said he was accountable for the company’s “missteps,” according to the Wall Street Journal. (Bloomberg)
Salesforce is preparing for a major round of layoffs that could affect as many as 2,500 workers across the software vendor, in a bid to cut costs amid a new activist investor challenge and harsh economic conditions. Investors are increasingly demanding a greater return from Salesforce, which has always funneled its profits toward growth, including spending billions to acquire companies like Slack and Tableau. (Protocol)
TikTok overhauls US business following advertising slump: Chinese-owned social platform makes sweeping leadership changes in its largest market. (Financial Times)
Andreessen Horowitz is 'betting heavily' on edtech for the next decade, says general partner Katherine Boyle. (Insider)
Internet and extremism experts predict more hate speech and conspiracy theories on Musk’s Twitter. Under Elon Musk’s leadership, extremists could flock back to Twitter under the guise of “free speech,” and researchers are gearing up to study their impact. (Scientific American)
Netflix is warming up to the idea of offering live sports on its platform—as long as it can do so without breaking the bank, according to people familiar with the discussions. The company recently bid for the streaming rights for the ATP tennis tour for some European countries, including France and the U.K., but dropped out, one of the people said. It also discussed bidding for a series of other events including U.K. rights to the Women’s Tennis Association and cycling competitions, the people said. (WSJ)
Walmart has deployed AI-powered negotiations software with a text-based interface (i.e., a chatbot) to connect with suppliers. So far, the chatbot is negotiating and closing agreements with 68% of suppliers approached, with each side gaining something it values. (HBR)
Google’s cloud deals hit a wall. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat told analysts last week that some customers of Google’s cloud servers and productivity apps “are taking longer to decide, and some have committed to deals with shorter terms or smaller deal sizes, which we attribute to a more challenging [macroeconomic] environment.” (The Information)
Smart Links
U.S. labor market is less tight than it appears. (Harvard Business Review)
Musk Sells $3.95 Billion of Tesla Stock After Buying Twitter. (Bloomberg)
An Indian city of 8 million that turned a garbage-clogged lake into a natural biofilter provides a lesson on how to adapt to climate change (Fortune)
Putin’s Stalin phase (Foreign Affairs)
Go get a new job now, before it’s too late (New York Magazine)
Economic growth no longer means higher carbon emissions (The Economist)
2022 Midterms: Have More People Voted Early? (Statista)