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The World
China has developed 400 nuclear warheads and is on course to expand its arsenal to 1,500 weapons by the middle of the next decade as its continues a dramatic expansion of its nuclear forces. The Pentagon said Beijing “probably accelerated” its nuclear expansion last year and was on track to have a stockpile of 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035. That would give it almost as many warheads as the US and Russia have deployed under the limits of the New Start arms control agreement. (Financial Times, Statista)
Congressional leaders agreed to head off a nationwide strike by railroad workers, promising to pass legislation quickly that would avert a work stoppage and prevent damage to the economy despite their misgivings about intervening in the dispute. (Wall Street Journal)
U.S. Senate passes same-sex marriage protection bill. A similar, but not identical, bill passed the House of Representatives earlier this year with support from 47 Republicans and all Democrats. The House would need to approve the Senate version before it is sent to President Joe Biden to sign into law. (Reuters)
A bill proposed by a Texas lawmaker would prohibit businesses from receiving tax subsidies if they assist local employees in getting abortions outside the state. House Bill 787, filed last week ahead of the legislative session that begins in January, was offered by Republican state Representative Jared Patterson, who represents a district in the northern Dallas suburbs. (Bloomberg)
Chaos over grades, finals and ongoing classes erupts as UC strike continues: The nation’s largest ever strike of higher-education academic workers — teaching assistants, tutors, graduate student researchers and postdoctoral scholars — entered its third week, triggering growing anxiety and uncertainty over how to handle the most critical work at the end of fall term: final papers, projects and exams. “People are losing their minds,” said Kip Fulbeck, a UC Santa Barbara art professor. (Los Angeles Times)
Hundreds of UC Faculty Members Stop Teaching as Strike Continues: Professors say it’s an act of solidarity. (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Eisai, Biogen Alzheimer's drug slows cognitive decline, safety for some becomes focus: A closely watched new treatment for Alzheimer’s disease held up to scrutiny in a detailed scientific presentation, as its developers, partners Eisai and Biogen, begin the lengthy process of turning this medicine into what they hope could be a groundbreaking therapy. The drug, lecanemab, slowed the cognitive and functional decline of patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s by 27% relative to placebo in a roughly 2,000-volunteer clinical trial. In the 18-month study, Eisai’s drug also dramatically reduced patients’ levels of beta-amyloid, a toxic protein in the brain thought to drive the advance of Alzheimer’s, and the drug showed statistically significant benefits on three backup measures of cognition and function. (STAT News)
Striking inequalities in US infant and maternal health: Newly released Stanford research finds a stark reality for many Black women, whether they are rich or poor: Black mothers and their newborns of all income levels do significantly worse, health-wise, than their white counterparts. The disparities identified in the study of California births are so large, in fact, that Black women and their infants of the highest-income households fare worse on average than the lowest-income white mothers and their infants. (Stanford University)
After three years in prison, ‘CRISPR babies’ scientist is attempting a comeback: He Jiankui, the Chinese biophysicist who created the first gene-edited children, had been quiet since completing a three-year prison sentence in April, leaving many to wonder whether he had plans to return to scientific research. Earlier this month, we got his answer. On Nov. 9, He posted photos to Twitter of himself sitting at a computer in a white office. “Today I moved in my new office in Beijing,” he wrote. “This is the first day for Jiankui He Lab.” Videos and messages posted to He’s Weibo account indicate that it is located in the Daxing district of Beijing, and that it will be focused on developing affordable gene therapies. In another post on the Chinese social media app, he wrote that the first rare disease he’d like to tackle is Duchenne muscular dystrophy. (STAT News)
Economy
U.S. consumer confidence fell for the second straight month in November amid ongoing high inflation, rising interest rates, and layoffs in the tech sector. The Conference Board reported that November’s figure is the lowest since July. (Associated Press)
‘Wild ride’: Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson predicts double-digit percentage drop will hit stocks in early 2023. Wilson, who serves as the firm’s chief U.S. equity strategist and chief investment officer, believes the S&P could drop as much as 24% from Tuesday’s close in early 2023. (CNBC)
Bank of America’s chief U.S. economist Michael Gapen says the worst of the price hikes are over. Gapen argues that year-on-year inflation, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), will sink to just 3.2% by the fourth quarter of next year. That’s quite the drop from June’s 9.1% peak, and October’s 7.7% figure. (Fortune)
Europe's energy crisis has highlighted the weaknesses in the region's energy system that must be overcome on the way to net zero. “We're at the beginning of a very long path,” says Michele Della Vigna. “We think we need to unlock an extra $1 trillion dollars per annum of global investment in energy over the next five years.” Due to years of underinvestment, higher oil, gas and coal prices — which are likely to be a reality for most of decade — will accelerate the energy transition. Also, uncertainty around global regulation has slowed the pace of investment in energy. (Goldman Sachs Podcast)
Qatar is to supply liquefied natural gas to Germany under a 15-year deal, as the European economic powerhouse scrambles to replace Russian gas supplies that have been cut during the ongoing war in Ukraine. Officials gave no dollar value for the deal, which would begin in 2026. (Associated Press)
DeFi and Web3 were the emerging technologies of choice for the world's top-15 most successful VC firms in 3Q22, according to PitchBook’s latest quarterly emerging tech indicator. Those sectors drew a combined $879 million in investment in Q3 across 24 deals. Just behind them were fintech, with $737 million of investment across 24 deals, and biotech, with $726 million of investment across 11 deals. (Protocol)
The healthcare services sector has continued to attract private equity investors this year. While opportunities for platform acquisitions have shrunk, relatively steady add-on activity suggests PE investments are still fueling the consolidation trends in this highly fragmented segment. Private equity firms and PE-backed companies struck an estimated 725 healthcare services deals during the first three quarters of 2022, according to PitchBook's latest Healthcare Services Report. That's already higher than 2020's tally, but the pace is unlikely to surpass last year's record, which was an anomaly, said PitchBook PE analyst Rebecca Springer, who authored the report. (PitchBook)
Technology
Republicans Ron DeSantis, Ken Buck, Mike Lee, Marsha Blackburn, others mention legislative action to curb Apple's app market power after Musk tweets about Apple. Removing Twitter from the App Store would be a “huge, huge mistake and a really raw exercise of monopolistic power,” DeSantis said. (Forbes)
Internal messages show Twitter's EMEA ad revenue dropped 15% YoY, weekly bookings are down 49%; source: Blue is delayed as Twitter seeks to skirt App Store fees. (The Platformer)
iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max model shipments could miss market expectations by up to 20 million units in the holiday quarter due to labor unrest at a major Chinese factory, TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said. (Reuters)
Apple’s manufacturing partner Foxconn is trying yet another special payout to workers in China to soothe unrest and restore production at the world’s biggest iPhone factory, a flashpoint in Beijing’s efforts to sustain its economy while fighting Covid infections. Foxconn is offering workers who left the Zhengzhou complex between Oct. 1 and Nov. 10 an extra 30 yuan ($4.20) an hour on top of their regular wages through December and January, as well as a returnee bonus of 500 yuan. They can get a 3,000 yuan bonus after staying 30 days, plus another 6,000 yuan in January if they work 23 days or more. (Bloomberg)
World semiconductor market to shrink 4% in 2023 as server investment slows. (Nikkei Asia Review)
A leaked Amazon memo may help explain why the tech giant is pushing out so many recruiters. According to an October 2021 internal paper labeled as “Amazon confidential,” the tech giant has been working for at least the last year to hand over some of its recruiters’ tasks to an AI technology that aims to predict which job applicants across certain corporate and warehouse jobs will be successful in a given role and fast-track them to an interview — without a human recruiter’s involvement. The technology works in part by finding similarities between the resumes of current, well-performing Amazon employees and those of job applicants applying for similar jobs. (Recode)
When layoffs happen at tech companies, the recruiting positions are the first to go. (Wall Street Journal)
Amazon’s cloud unit plans to add employees next year and keep building new data centers, a sign that a hiring freeze elsewhere in the company hasn’t derailed investment plans for its most profitable business. (Bloomberg)
Huge audiences tuned into football and soccer over Thanksgiving weekend, with the NFL, World Cup and college football all drawing record viewership. That was particularly good news for Fox Corp., which aired the three most-watched games on three consecutive days. (Axios)
Thanksgiving: The New York Giants-Dallas Cowboys matchup was the most-watched NFL regular-season game ever, averaging 42 million viewers across live TV and streaming.
Friday: USA-England drew over 15.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched men's soccer match ever on English-language TV in America.
Saturday: Ohio State-Michigan drew 17 million viewers, making it the most-watched regular-season college football game in Fox's history and the most-watched regular-season game on any network since 2011.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma living in Tokyo since China’s tech crackdown: Once the richest business leader in China, Ma has been living in central Tokyo for almost six months, amid Beijing’s continuing crackdown on the country’s technology sector and its most powerful businessmen. Ma’s months-long stay in Japan with his family has included stints in hot spring and ski resorts in the countryside outside Tokyo and regular trips to the US and Israel. Ma has largely disappeared from public view since he criticized Chinese regulators two years ago, accusing the state banks of having a “pawnshop mentality” and calling for bold new players that could extend credit to the collateral poor. (Financial Times)
Smart Links
501(c)(4): Billionaires Change How They Give Away Their Fortunes to Avoid Taxes and Keep Control. (Bloomberg)
UK bans Chinese cameras from government buildings. (Politico EU)
Croatia, heading to enter euro zone, adopts first budget in euros. (Reuters)
UN: Great Barrier Reef should be on heritage ‘danger’ list. (Associated Press)
Outdoor Air-Conditioning Cools the World Cup. But Is It Sustainable? (Scientific American)
Google provided FBI with location data for more than 5,000 devices as part of the federal investigation into the Jan. 6 attack. (Wired)
Rural Colorado Tries to Fill Health Worker Gaps With Apprenticeships. (Kaiser Health News)