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The World
President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping neared modest agreements on restoring military contacts and combating fentanyl trafficking during a summit aimed at steadying relations between the world’s two leading powers. After the two leaders sat down for little more than two hours at a wooded Northern California estate on Wednesday, Biden said in a tweet that the two leaders had “made real progress.” While the summit helped moderate the often bitter tone in U.S.-China relations, it did little to resolve the deep frictions tearing at the countries. (Wall Street Journal)
“Planet Earth is big enough” for both superpowers, Mr. Xi said. He told Mr. Biden that their countries were very different but should be “fully capable of rising above differences.” “For two large countries like China and the United States, turning their back on each other is not an option,” said Mr. Xi, whose own private speeches to his party faithful and his generals have offered a far darker view of two countries that may well be headed to a collision. He added that “conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides.” (New York Times)
Biden and Xi agreed to new talks on Apec sidelines. Biden cited counter-narcotics, artificial intelligence and climate change as issues that the US and China must address jointly. Xi turned quickly to ‘grave’ economic problems, including ‘protectionism’. (South China Morning Post)
Taiwan’s two main opposition parties will form a joint ticket for the January presidential election. The move “comes as opinion polling suggests a joint opposition bid will offer the most likely chance to defeat the ruling, independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party,” which is running Vice President William Lai Ching-te as its candidate. (South China Morning Post)
Can a China-friendly coalition oust Taiwan’s nationalist party? (Semafor)
“Russia has been forced to acknowledge that Ukrainian forces have established bridgeheads on the east bank of the Dnipro River” just two days after denying it. Kremlin-appointed Kherson regional governor Vladimir Saldo “conceded on Wednesday that there was ‘justifiable concern about the presence of Ukrainian armed forces on the left bank of the Dnipro.’” (Times of London)
France has issued an international arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar Assad and three other top officials over chemical weapons attacks a decade ago. It is “the first international arrest warrant issued for Syria's president, whose forces have responded to protests that began in 2011 with a brutal clampdown that UN experts say amounts to war crimes.” (DW)
“UNESCO is urging Cambodian authorities not to carry out forced evictions at the renowned Angkor Wat temple complex” following an Amnesty International report on the impact on residents that accused UNESCO of failing to challenge Cambodia’s government on the matter. UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay “said Wednesday that living conditions for residents at the World Heritage site are a ‘priority.’” (Associated Press)
A review committee has called for “‘urgent action’ to address safety risks in the nation’s aviation system, highlighting issues like staffing shortages among air traffic controllers and outdated technology.” The National Airspace System Safety Review Team, appointed by the FAA in April, “also recommended changes in how the agency is funded, such as more broadly shielding it from government shutdowns.” (New York Times)
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) “inched closer Wednesday to confirming that he could run for president,” telling NBC that he would “absolutely” consider it. Manchin said he “first has to explore whether there's an appetite among voters for a moderate candidate like him.” (NBC News)
Half of U.S. adults say they now get at least some of their news from social media. When it comes to where, “Facebook outpaces all other social media sites. Three-in-ten U.S. adults say they regularly get news there. Slightly fewer (26%) regularly get news on YouTube.” (Pew Research)
Economy
The Elusive Soft Landing Is Coming Into View: The U.S. economy is approaching what most economists had thought either unlikely or impossible: inflation returning to its prepandemic norm without a recession or even much economic weakness, a so-called soft landing. “What we are expecting now is a soft landing,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “We expect the economy to weaken quite a bit, but it does look like we’ll avoid an outright contraction” in gross domestic product. Six months ago, the consensus among economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal was that the economy would enter a recession over the next 12 months. In October’s survey, the average forecast of economists was for no recession. After Tuesday, the probability appears to have dropped further. That, at least, seems to be the verdict of investors who sent stocks up sharply and Treasury bond yields down on news that inflation was surprisingly docile in October. (Wall Street Journal)
“Americans hit the brakes on retail spending in October as they confronted still-high inflation and steep interest rates.” The Commerce Department says retail sales fell 0.1% in October, “above the 0.3% decline projected by Refinitiv economists but below the revised 0.9% gain recorded in September. Excluding the more volatile measurements of gasoline and autos, sales climbed 0.1% last month.” (Fox Business)
U.S. wholesale prices were down 0.5% in October from September, the first decline since May and the biggest in more than three years. On a year-over-year basis, producer prices “rose 1.3% from October 2022, down from 2.2% in September and the smallest gain since July.” (Associated Press)
The European Commission says the bloc’s economy will grow less than previously forecast this year. Both the EU and the eurozone will grow 0.6% in 2023 according to the EC’s new estimate, 0.2% lower than expected in its September forecast. (Financial Times)
A UAW vote on a tentative contract agreement with General Motors “has run into unexpectedly strong resistance from veteran workers. Voting at most union locals has been completed and the final result, due as early as Thursday evening, will very likely be decided by a narrow margin.” Similar agreements at Ford and Stellantis appear to be on track toward ratification “by comfortable margins, according to running tallies the U.A.W. published online.” (New York Times)
ValueAct Capital “has built a large stake in Walt Disney and sees room for the media and entertainment giant’s stock price to roughly double.” The activist fund “has known the Disney team for more than a decade and has been in contact with management as it built its stake over the last months,” sources said. (New York Post)
Technology
“Microsoft has unveiled its first bespoke chips for artificial intelligence in the cloud.” A general-purpose chip called Cobalt and an AI accelerator called Maia “will be deployed in Microsoft’s Azure data centers next year, supporting its services including OpenAI and Copilot.” The move comes as developers “clamor for alternative suppliers to Nvidia, which dominates the market for AI processors.” (Financial Times)
The new chips “are both built in-house at Microsoft, combined with a deep overhaul of its entire cloud server stack to optimize performance, power, and cost.” (The Verge)
Less than a year after launching “its big AI push earlier this year as part of its Bing search engine, integrating a ChatGPT-like interface directly into its search results,” Microsoft is “dropping the Bing Chat branding and moving to Copilot, the new name for the chat interface you might have used in Bing, Microsoft Edge, and Windows 11.” (The Verge)
Scale AI and the Center for Strategic and International Studies will work together “to develop and fine tune AI models that can be used for international relations strategy” and wargames. Scale “cited ‘cyberattacks, coordinated disinformation campaigns and black-box AI developments from foreign adversaries’ as focuses for the project.” (Semafor)
Meta will allow Facebook and Instagram political ads that question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election to be run on those platforms. Meta “made the change last year, but it hasn’t gained wide attention. The company decided to allow political advertisers to say past elections were ‘rigged’ or ‘stolen’ but prevented them from questioning the legitimacy of ongoing and coming elections.” (Wall Street Journal)
The U.S. Energy Department has announced an investment of as much as $3.5 billion “for companies that produce batteries and the critical minerals that go into them.” DOE wants to strengthen the supply of lithium ion “because even though there is plenty of work underway to develop alternatives, it estimates demand for lithium batteries will increase up to ten times by 2030.” (Associated Press)
GM’s driverless vehicle unit Cruise “will pause all public road operations — both supervised and manual — in an expansion of last month’s pause of driverless operations.” Cruise said in a post online, “This orderly pause is a further step to rebuild public trust while we undergo a full safety review.” (CNBC)
GM snatches key Tesla gigacasting supplier (Reuters)
Smart Links
The new FAFSA rolls out soon — and 1.5 million more students will have maximum Pell Grant eligibility. (CNBC)
EY picks Janet Truncale as the first woman to lead a Big Four firm. (Financial Times)
Cisco Plunges After Corporate Spending Slump Hurts Forecast. (Bloomberg)
Target CEO claims customers are saying ‘a big thank you’ for locking up merchandise. (CNBC)
Sweden opens state-of-the-art plant for sorting plastics for recycling. (Associated Press)
How Facebook went all in on AI. (MIT Technology Review)