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The World
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Charles "CQ" Brown and Chinese counterpart Gen. Liu Zhenli spoke by video teleconference. It was “the first time in more than a year that the countries' military leaders spoke — and comes more than a month after President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to resume high-level military-to-military communications.” (Axios)
Container rates hit $10,000 as ocean freight inflation soars in Red Sea crisis: With 158 vessels carrying approximately $105 billion in ocean freight being diverted away from the Red Sea amid the risk of continuing Houthis’ attacks, cargo prices are soaring. Just when Covid supply chain inflation seemed vanquished, ocean freight rates are increasing 40 percent on some trade routes and container prices reaching $10,000, with some logistics executives concerned about “opportunistic” price gouging. (CNBC)
The Biden Administration “is quietly signaling new support for seizing more than $300 billion in Russian central bank assets stashed in Western nations, and has begun urgent discussions with allies about using the funds to aid Ukraine’s war effort.” Until recently, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had argued that such an action without congressional authorization was impossible, but with an impasse over funding, the White House “has begun taking another look” at whether it can do so under existing authority. (New York Times)
Viktor Orbán says the European Commission “is blackmailing Hungary by withholding billions in frozen funds over rule-of-law concerns. Orbán said the blackmail is ‘a fact,’ even admitted by the blackmailers themselves — members of the European Parliament.” Orbán told reporters, “You cannot blame me for doing everything I can to promote Hungary’s interests in such a blackmailed situation.” (Politico)
A new reactor at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex appears to be operating for the first time, the U.N. nuclear watchdog and independent experts said, which would mean an additional potential source of plutonium for nuclear weapons. North Korea has for years used spent fuel from a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon to produce plutonium for its nuclear arsenal but a telltale discharge of warm water from a larger light-water reactor suggests it is coming online, too, the International Atomic Energy Agency said. (Reuters)
At least 14 people were killed and 25 injured “in the worst mass shooting in modern Czech history.” The suspected shooter “was a master’s student of history at Charles University where the shootings happened.” Prague Police Chief Martin Vondrasek said police believed the suspect first “killed his father in his hometown of Hostoun, 13 miles west of Prague, and that he had travelled to the capital with the intention of killing himself.” (Times of London)
More than 15 million people have signed up for health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s federal marketplace so far this year, a 33% increase over this time in 2022. Federal health officials “project that more than 19 million people will enroll in 2024 coverage by the end of the current enrollment period next month.” (New York Times)
Economy
“The misery index — the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate — is ending 2023 at 6.8%. That's its lowest point since the pandemic hit in March 2020 and well below the 8.3% average for the century to date.” (Axios)
New jobless claims were up by 2,000 to 205,000 for the week ending December 16, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The four-week average of claims, “which smooths out week-to-week ups and downs, fell by 1,500 to 212,000. Overall, 1.87 million Americans were collecting jobless benefits the week that ended Dec. 9, little changed from the week before.” (Associated Press)
U.S. mortgage rates fell again this week to “an average of 6.67% in the week ending December 21, down from 6.95% the previous week, according to data from Freddie Mac released Thursday. A year ago, the average 30-year fixed-rate was 6.27%.” (CNN)
The purchase of U.S. Steel “by a Japanese company ‘appears to deserve serious scrutiny,’” President Biden’s top economic adviser Lael Brainard said. Brainard said Nippon Steel’s proposed $14.1 billion acquisition of the “iconic American-owned company” could have a significant impact “on national security and supply chain reliability.” (Bloomberg)
Angola said it will leave OPEC “in a blow to the Saudi-led oil producer group that has sought in recent months to rally support for further output cuts to prop up oil prices.” Oil Minister Diamantino Azevedo said OPEC “no longer served the country’s interests. It joins other mid-sized producers Ecuador and Qatar that have left OPEC in the last decade.” (CNBC)
China and Russia will work together “in developing widebody passenger jets, Arctic shipping corridors and artificial intelligence after their leaders vowed to broaden cooperation amid tensions” with the U.S. Beijing “is hoping to develop next-generation wide-bodied passenger planes — a move that would further challenge the dominance of Boeing and Airbus in China.” (South China Morning Post)
Nike is seeking “as much as $2 billion in cost savings amid streamlining efforts.” The move comes after Nike “reported China sales that fell short of market expectations.” Sales in the Greater China region rose four percent in the most recent quarter, “but still came in lower than expected.” (Bloomberg)
Robert M. Solow, Groundbreaking Economist and Nobelist, Dies at 99: Robert M. Solow, who won a Nobel in economic science in 1987 for his theory that advances in technology, rather than increases in capital and labor, have been the primary drivers of economic growth in the United States, died on Thursday at his home in Lexington, Mass. He was 99. Professor Solow (pronounced solo) taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he and a fellow Nobel laureate, Paul A. Samuelson, forged the M.I.T. style of economic analysis, which emerged as a leading approach in the second half of the 20th century and played an important role in economic policymaking. His work demonstrated the power of bringing mathematics to bear on important economic debates and simplifying the analysis by focusing on a small number of variables at a time. (New York Times)
Technology
“The Pentagon has struggled for years to make the jump to cloud computing,” and a year into a $9 billion effort contracted with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, less than two percent of the funding “earmarked for the program has been committed. The slow start reflects lingering fears over the security of commercial cloud technologies, even as the Pentagon’s tech planners say this initiative is key to propelling the United States into next-generation warfare capabilities.” (Washington Post)
China has banned “exports of technology for making rare-earth magnets and imposed other restrictions related to the vital industrial metals, in an apparent response to moves by the U.S. and Japan to reduce their reliance on Chinese suppliers.” The move comes as the U.S. and other countries “seek to build supply chains that do not rely on China amid mounting economic security concerns.” (Nikkei Asia)
The Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 have been pulled “from the company’s online store. Apple has removed the devices from sale due to a forthcoming import ban imposed by the US International Trade Commission” that will take full effect on Tuesday. Both watches “will disappear from Apple’s brick-and-mortar stores after December 24th.” (The Verge)
X suffered its biggest outage since Elon Musk acquired it, with more than 94,000 users worldwide reporting issues. The outage lasted about an hour. X “has had several outages since Musk bought it for $44 billion in late 2022, but until this week none had been bigger than July that year, when some 50,000 users were affected.” (Bloomberg)
X became “a top trending topic on Chinese equivalent Weibo” during the outage,” even though X is not directly accessible in mainland China. The topic #TwitterDown topped the trending list on Weibo on Thursday afternoon and stayed on it around two-and-a-half hours, attracting 190 million views and 83,000 engagements.” (South China Morning Post)
Smart Links
GM, Ford vehicles to lose US EV tax credits Jan. 1. (Reuters)
Government makes an app to cut down government’s role in solar permitting. (Ars Technica)
China’s renminbi surpasses Japanese yen to rank fourth in global payments. (Financial Times)
Lawmakers praise workers for landmark Wells Fargo union branch vote in New Mexico. (CNBC)
The science events to watch for in 2024. (Nature)