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The World
Secretary of State Antony Blinken “pledged in Tel Aviv that Israel will never have to defend itself alone for as long as America exists.” Blinken “expressed horror at the killings, invoked the Holocaust and his own family’s experiences in the Nazi era, and said he was working energetically to ensure the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict did not spread.” Prime Minister Netanyahu “told Blinken his visit ‘is another tangible example of America’s unequivocal support for Israel.’” (Times of Israel)
The Pentagon has completed its first transfer of missiles for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system since the Hamas attacks. The “initial Tamir interceptors — owned by the US military but located in Israel — will be followed by more from American inventories elsewhere to ensure that Israel has the capabilities to sustain its air-defense systems.” (Bloomberg)
New York Police Department officers “have been ordered to report in uniform on Friday, following calls for global protests by an ex-Hamas chief. The department has cancelled all time-off for officers on the day.” (The Independent)
US ‘ill-prepared’ for nuclear challenge from China and Russia, says report: The US must expand or restructure its nuclear arsenal to tackle the “existential challenge” posed by the growing nuclear threat from China and existing risk from Russia, a new report by a congressionally mandated commission has said. The bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the US, which is tasked with examining American strategic policy, warned that Washington was “ill-prepared” to tackle the challenge posed by having two peer nuclear adversaries for the first time. “The new global environment is fundamentally different than anything experienced in the past, even in the darkest days of the cold war,” the panel warned in the report. “The US is on the cusp of having not one, but two nuclear peer adversaries, each with ambitions to change the international status quo, by force, if necessary,” it said. (Financial Times)
A U.S. reconnaissance aircraft passed through the Taiwan Strait for the first time in three months. The Chinese military said it monitored the flight of the P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine patrol aircraft by deploying its own jets. (South China Morning Post)
Asset manager Vanguard “is acting as a pipeline through which US investment dollars are being funnelled into Chinese military companies and corporations sanctioned over human rights abuses,” according to a new report by the Coalition for a Prosperous America. (Financial Times)
Serbia “is relying on Chinese arms suppliers as tensions ratchet up with its smaller neighbor Kosovo, seeking to fill the void left by Russian defense companies” that are focused on the war in Ukraine. Serbia’s “main Western arms suppliers — France, Germany and the U.S. — were surprised by an unprecedented military buildup along its border with Kosovo in late September.” (Nikkei Asia)
Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) dropped out of the race for House speaker Thursday night, further throwing the House into chaos as Republicans openly ponder whether their fractured conference is capable of electing anyone as speaker. It was another stunning development in what has been a weeks-long devolution of the House Republican Conference that started with a brutal fight over spending. Republicans narrowly avoided a catastrophic government shutdown, but Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s reliance on Democratic votes to pass a short-term spending bill led to his ouster as House speaker days later — a historic first. The House has been without a leader for the ensuing nine days. Scalise made it as the speaker nominee for less than 36 hours. When he bowed out, Scalise did not back another candidate for speaker. The Republican conference plans to restart the nomination process Friday. (Washington Post)
“Of 16 federal government agencies and departments included in the latest Gallup survey, just four receive positive job-performance ratings from a majority of Americans, making 2023 the third consecutive year of relatively low readings.” (Gallup)
Economy
“Recent progress bringing inflation down stalled in September, offering the latest sign that the path to fully extinguishing price pressures could be bumpy.” The consumer price index increased 0.4% on the month and 3.7% from a year ago, above respective forecasts for 0.3% and 3.6%. (Wall Street Journal)
China is considering forming a state-backed stabilization fund to shore up confidence in its $9.5 trillion stock market, according to people familiar with the matter. After at least two rounds of consultation with industry participants over a period of months, financial regulators including the China Securities Regulatory Commission recently submitted a preliminary plan to the nation’s top leadership, said the people, who asked not be identified discussing a private matter. (Bloomberg)
India’s leading banks should underscore the resilience of Asia’s third-largest economy when they report next week, while the IT industry may confirm it remains under pressure. Credit growth for India’s top lenders continued in July-September, preliminary operating numbers showed earlier this month, though margins were under pressure as the central bank held interest rates at the highest since 2018 and required that additional fund be parked with it, sapping liquidity. Banks have struggled to pass on the 250 basis points of rate hikes since last year amid stiff competition. (Bloomberg)
Kumar Galhotra, who runs Ford’s internal combustion engine business, says the company “has reached the limit of how much money it will spend to get a contract agreement with the striking United Auto Workers union.” His comments “are starkly different from those made by UAW President Shawn Fain Wednesday when he announced an escalation of the union’s strike by walking out at Ford’s largest and most profitable factory. The apparently widening labor rift indicates that Ford and the union may be in for a lengthy strike.” (Associated Press)
“The UAW strike against the Ford Kentucky Truck Plant is a signal that hourly workers are willing to inflict − and sustain − increasingly serious financial pain to achieve their goals during labor negotiations, as the union and the Detroit Three approach a full month without resolution.” Ford released a list of 13 plants that the action “directly affects, where layoffs and closure could happen within days.” (USA Today)
Talks between SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers “broke down Wednesday, with the entertainment companies saying negotiations on a new contract have been suspended.” The studio organization “said the talks had been called off because the sides remained too divided,” but SAG-AFTRA accused the alliance of using “bullying tactics” against striking actors. (Los Angeles Times)
“SAG-AFTRA says talks began to break down Wednesday after studio executives walked away from the bargaining table in response to the actors union's newest contract proposal pushing for a greater share of revenue from streaming projects.” (Axios)
Technology
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy “voiced doubt over Montana’s ‘paternalistic’ ban of TikTok during a hearing Thursday in the first courtroom challenge to the only statewide ban” targeting the video app. Molloy said Montana “had not substantiated its claims that TikTok users’ data was being ‘stolen’ or misused.” Molloy said, “Your argument just confuses me. You need to protect consumers from having their data stolen. But everybody on TikTok voluntarily gives their personal data. If they want to give that information to whatever the platform is, how is it you can protect them?” (Washington Post)
Google made changes to its advertising platform that “significantly limits the amount of information marketers have about where their spending is going,” according to Columbia Business School marketing expert Kinshuk Jerath, who testified on behalf of the federal government in its antitrust case against Alphabet. Jerath said, “Google controls the rules and influences the outcomes of its auctions and these auctions are a black box to advertisers.” (Bloomberg)
OpenAI “quietly revised all of the ‘Core values’ listed on its website in recent weeks, putting a greater emphasis on the development of AGI — artificial general intelligence.” Sam Altman, CEO of the ChatGPT creator, “has described AGI as ‘the equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a co-worker.’” (Semafor)
Chinese companies that produce batteries essential to electric vehicles “are pursuing deals with U.S. free-trade partners South Korea and Morocco, seeking to tap growing demand in America and bypass rules aimed at shutting them out of the market.” At least four Chinese firms plan to build plants in Morocco, which “sits on over 70% of the world’s known phosphate reserve, a raw material key to EV batteries.” (Wall Street Journal)
About half of India’s 1.4 billion people are still not connected to the Internet, and “billionaire Mukesh Ambani is betting a new web-enabled mobile phone that costs about $12 can change that and win yet more customers for his dominant wireless-network provider” Reliance Jio Infocomm. (Wall Street Journal)
Smart Links
Vladimir Putin is in Kyrgyzstan, leaving Russia for the first time since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him in March. (South China Morning Post)
OPEC and the International Energy Agency continue to disagree on oil prospects for 2024. (Reuters)
Disney is going all-in on sports betting just four years after Bob Iger said sports betting could not coexist with Disney’s brand. (Wall Street Journal)
The SEC never interviewed Tesla whistleblowers who filed a complaint two years ago. (CNBC)
T-Mobile is switching users to more expensive plans, and is calling it not a price hike, just “a different cost.” (Ars Technica)