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The World
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is vowing to hold a vote on an emergency aid package with funding for Israel and Ukraine “as soon as the week of December 4th.” The legislation may also include funding for Taiwan and border security. Schumer said the Senate will also act on appropriations bills, the National Defense Authorization Act, and pending nominations during the remaining three weeks in session this year, and “appeared to threaten to keep the Senate in session past its Dec. 15 adjournment date, telling senators to ‘be prepared to stay in Washington until we finish our work.’” (Axios)
House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner told NBC that “new U.S. aid for Ukraine and Israel will be difficult to pass before the end of the year.” Congressional Republicans “are seeking to link their approval for the foreign military assistance to stricter border policies.” (Bloomberg)
President Biden will not attend a major United Nations climate summit that begins Thursday in Dubai, skipping an event expected to be attended by King Charles III, Pope Francis and leaders from nearly 200 countries, a White House official said Sunday. The official, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the president’s schedule, did not give a reason Mr. Biden will not make an appearance at the two-week summit, known as COP28. But senior White House aides suggested that the war between Israel and Hamas had consumed the president in recent weeks and days. (New York Times)
Argentina’s President-elect Javier Milei traveled to the U.S. Sunday night for stops in New York and Washington. A U.S. official confirmed that Milei will meet with Biden Administration officials during the trip. Milei also dispatched his incoming foreign minister to Brazil to invite President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to Milei’s December 10 inauguration. (Bloomberg)
The foreign ministers of China, Japan, and South Korea met in the South Korean city of Busan on Sunday and agreed to hold a leaders' summit at the earliest mutually convenient time. In 2008, the three Asian economic powers “agreed to hold trilateral summits every year in order to improve regional cooperation.” But the pandemic and “strained bilateral relations between Japan and South Korea over historical disputes have been stumbling blocks.” (DW)
The approval rating of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his Cabinet has sunk to an all-time low of 30% in a Nikkei/TV Tokyo poll. While a majority of respondents said Kishida should remain in office until the end of the current term next September, 30% said he should step down immediately. (Nikkei Asia)
China’s National Health Commission “said a combination of pathogens is causing a surge in acute respiratory infections across the country, reiterating previous comments aimed at easing concerns a novel virus may be the source.” The commission said influenza, pneumonia, and rhinovirus are among the viruses circulating. (Bloomberg)
“Dutch anti-Islam politician” Geert Wilders said in a post on X, “Today, tomorrow or the day after…I will be prime minister of this beautiful country.” (Reuters)
Wilders “has said he will compromise on his hardline manifesto in order to convince other parties to back him as prime minister.” Wilders “has toned down his pledges to ban the Koran and mosques in the Netherlands and said he would ‘continue to moderate’ his policies as his party envoy was due to resume coalition talks on Monday.” (Financial Times)
The August death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin “has rattled the mercenary group’s once-cozy relations with the Central African Republic, which is now weighing offers from Russia and Western countries” including the U.S. to replace Wagner “as its primary security guarantor. The outcome of this struggle could be a bellwether for the group’s future on the continent, where the Central African Republic is perhaps the most deeply enmeshed among the handful of African nations partnering with Wagner.” (New York Times)
Owners Keep Zombie Malls Alive Even When Towns Want to Pull the Plug: There are hundreds of zombie malls throughout the U.S. like the Berkshire Mall, more dead than alive. The older, low-end ones have lost at least half and, in some cases, more than 70% of their value since the industry’s peak in late 2016, according to real-estate research firm Green Street. As values fall below the balances of their outstanding debt, owners usually stop paying the mortgages and look to either renegotiate with their lenders or hand back the keys. That’s when Namdar Realty and Mason like to swoop in. The New York-based real-estate partners are among the most prolific purchasers of U.S. malls. They make money by buying malls cheap and keeping them going, even as town officials beg them to pull the plug. (Wall Street Journal)
Economy
U.S. retail sales on Black Friday rose 2.5% from last year according to Mastercard SpendingPulse. The National Retail Federation says approximately 182 million Americans will shop in stores or online between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. (Wall Street Journal)
Black Friday e-commerce spending in the U.S. hit a record $9.8 billion, up 7.5% from 2022. (CNBC)
“Adobe Analytics forecasts that shoppers will spend a record $12 billion Monday, 5.4% more than last year, representing what it says will be the largest-ever e-commerce shopping day in the U.S.” (Reuters)
Are Holiday Season Discounts Worth It? (Statista)
Nissan says “the impact of Brexit on its UK operations is now negligible.” Nissan, which announced a £2 billion upgrade of a major UK plant last week, had “previously been one of the most vocal critics of the decision to leave the EU.” (Times of London)
An upcoming sale of shares in OpenAI is set to test how much the past week’s leadership chaos has cost the company and its backers, though big investors are bullish about securing a high valuation. The employee stock sale, which had been planned before the sacking last week of chief executive Sam Altman and expected to value the company at $86bn, will continue as planned, according to two investors with direct knowledge of the matter. (Financial Times)
Lionsgate’s “Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and Ridley Scott’s historical epic “Napoleon” led the box office over the Thanksgiving weekend while Disney’s “Wish” fell “startlingly short of box office expectations, tallying just $31.7 million over its first five days in theaters.” Analysts had projected an opening of $45 million to $55 million. (CNBC)
Technology
The successful prosecution of Binance’s Changpeng Zhao last week “removed the top executive at the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, a key target in its efforts to clean up a market with a Wild West reputation.” Zhao’s departure from Binance “underscores the sharp reversal of fortune for the top crypto chiefs who garnered the most hype and attention during the market boom years of 2020 and 2021.” (Financial Times)
Russia has added Meta spokesperson Andy Stone to a wanted list maintained by the country’s interior ministry. Stone “was included on the list Sunday, weeks after Russian authorities in October classified Meta as a ‘terrorist and extremist’ organization, opening the way for possible criminal proceedings against Russian residents using its platforms.” Details of the case against Stone were not revealed, with the ministry database “stating only that he is wanted on criminal charges.” (Associated Press)
“Thousands of cyberattacks have inundated Europe’s energy grid” since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. E.ON CEO Leonhard Birnbaum said, “The crooks are becoming better by the day, so we need to become better by the day. I'm worried now and I will be even more worried in the future.” (Politico)
Battery giants including China’s CATL and Sweden’s Northvolt AB “are starting to put their money on new sodium-based technology, a sign that there could be yet another shakeup in the industry that’s crucial for the energy transition.” While sodium, which is “cheaper and far more abundant than lithium,” has the potential to transform the sector, it has “yet to be used on a large scale, partly due to the better range and performance of similarly sized lithium cells.” (Bloomberg)
Smart Links
Electric heat costs way less than reports say, new data suggests. (The Guardian)
Humanity’s Future or an Unwelcome Interloper: SpaceX’s Starbase Transforms a Corner of Texas. (Wall Street Journal)
‘Treasure trove’ of new CRISPR systems holds promise for genome editing. (Nature)
The looming office space real estate shortage. Yes, shortage. (CNBC)