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The World
“Saudi Arabia assured the Biden administration that the kingdom is still interested in pursuing an agreement that would normalize relations with Israel after the war in Gaza ends,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday. (Axios)
FBI Director Christopher Wray says there is “an ‘elevated’ terrorism risk in the U.S. following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel — including a possibility of homegrown supporters of the jihadist group engaging in violence.” Wray said in Senate testimony, “We assess that the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called ‘caliphate’ several years ago.” (New York Post)
New House Speaker Mike Johnson “faced an immediate backlash over his first key legislative decision,” a proposal to fund emergency aid to Israel by cutting Internal Revenue Service funding. Johnson’s “gambit was swiftly rejected by lawmakers in both parties.” (Washington Post)
The White House confirmed that President Biden will meet with Xi Jinping “on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco in November.” The confirmation “follows months of work between the two countries to set up a sit-down for the two leaders around the APEC meeting.” (Bloomberg)
U.S. President Joe Biden is unlikely to attend a gathering of world leaders in November focused on climate change, according to two U.S. officials and another person briefed on the event's planning. The 28th meeting of the United Nations "Conference of the Parties" on climate, known as COP28, takes places from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a major oil producer. (Reuters)
China has signaled a further tightening of centralized Communist party control over its $61tn financial sector at a closely watched quinquennial policy conference that featured warnings of widespread weak governance and deep-rooted risks in the industry. The two-day central financial work conference, chaired by President Xi Jinping, was held as Beijing searches for a new economic growth model while struggling with an anaemic post-coronavirus pandemic recovery and growing geopolitical uncertainty. (Financial Times)
“Less than a decade after Saudi Arabia decided to make a push into global sports, the Kingdom is set to claim the prize it covets most: the soccer World Cup.” Saudi Arabia is the only remaining bidder for the 2034 tournament after Australia formally withdrew from the process. (Wall Street Journal)
The Interior Department has approved a plan to install as many as 176 giant wind turbines off the coast of Virginia, “clearing the way for what would be the nation’s largest offshore wind farm yet. The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, to be built by Dominion Energy, is the fifth commercial-scale offshore wind project approved by the Biden administration.” If completed, it would produce enough electricity to power more than 900,000 homes. (New York Times)
The National Association of Realtors and large residential brokerages have been found liable “for about $1.8 billion in damages after determining they conspired to keep commissions for home sales artificially high.” Under U.S. federal antitrust rules, “the presiding judge could triple the damages verdict, which would total more than $5 billion. The plaintiffs also have asked the judge to order changes to how the industry operates.” (Wall Street Journal)
US media veterans back new trading firm with financial news arm: A group of veteran US financial journalists is teaming up with investors to launch a trading firm that is designed to trade on market-moving news unearthed by its own investigative reporting. The business, founded by investor Nathaniel Brooks Horwitz and writer Sam Koppelman, would comprise two entities: a trading fund and a group of analysts and journalists producing stories based on publicly available material, according to several people familiar with the matter. The fund would place trades before articles were published, and then publish its research and trading thesis, they said, but would not trade on information that was not publicly available. The start-up, called Hunterbrook, had raised $10mn in seed funding and is targeting a $100mn launch for its fund, according to two people involved. (Financial Times)
Economy
The Labor Department’s Employment Cost Index, “which tracks what employers spend on compensation, rose 1.1% in the third quarter.” (Axios)
Chinese manufacturing activity contracted in October. “The country’s official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index came in at 49.5 this month, missing forecasts and trailing a reading of 50.2 in September. A reading below 50 marks contraction against the previous month.” The contraction was a disappointment following “better-than-expected gross domestic product growth” of 4.9% in the third quarter. (Financial Times)
Eurozone inflation “slid to 2.9% from 4.3% in September — its lowest rate in over two years. While analysts had expected the rate to remain above 3%, instead it is closer to the 2% target of the European Central Bank.” (DW)
“Commercial real-estate lending is shrinking to historically low levels, threatening a rise in defaults on expiring debt and a sharp decline in new construction of warehouses, apartments and other property types.” (Wall Street Journal)
Morgan Stanley “may pay as much as $1 billion and promise to tighten its internal controls to resolve a long-running U.S. probe into how it handled private stock sales. Authorities have spent more than four years investigating whether Morgan Stanley improperly tipped off favored hedge-fund clients to big blocks of stock coming on the market.” (Semafor)
WeWork Plans to File for Bankruptcy as Early as Next Week: Once a venture capital-backed star with an astronomical valuation, the flexible-office-space provider is now preparing for chapter 11 protection. (Wall Street Journal)
Technology
Apple has notified a number of Indian opposition lawmakers that their phones “were likely targets of state-sponsored attackers, prompting several of the individuals to express concern about the possible use of surveillance by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.” Those warned included members of the Congress Party including the party’s spokesperson. (Wall Street Journal)
Microsoft is rolling out a major Windows 11 update that “contains a chatbot called Copilot that bears some resemblance to startup OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT.” Copilot is a generative AI that can create human-like text and other content with just a few words of human direction. It relies on underlying large language models that Microsoft-backed OpenAI has trained on voluminous sets of data to compose email text, answer questions and automatically perform actions in Windows, augmenting its knowledge with information from websites.” (CNBC)
A California jury found that there was not a manufacturing defect in the Autopilot driver-assistance system of a Tesla “that veered off an interstate and hit a tree outside of Los Angeles in 2019. The driver ultimately died of injuries suffered in the crash.” The verdict “amounts to a reputational win for Tesla” but may have limited impact on other outstanding litigation due to “the narrow nature of the decision.” (Wall Street Journal)
Toyota will invest an additional $8 billion in its North Carolina battery manufacturing plant, bringing its total investment to nearly $14 billion. Toyota will also add about 3,000 jobs, for a total of more than 5,000. The investment “is the largest by a foreign automaker in its U.S. plant since Washington in 2022 passed the Inflation Reduction Act.” (Financial Times)
Google DeepMind boss hits back at Meta AI chief over ‘fearmongering’ claim: Google DeepMind boss Demis Hassabis told CNBC that the company wasn’t trying to achieve “regulatory capture” when it came to the discussion on how best to approach AI. Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, said that DeepMind’s Hassabis, along with other AI CEOs, were “doing massive corporate lobbying” to ensure only a handful of big tech companies end up controlling AI. Hassabis said that it was important to start a conversation about regulating potentially superintelligent artificial intelligence now rather than later because, if left too long, the consequences could be grim. (CNBC)
Despite several video games with record sales in 2023 and strong overall sales, the industry is still facing layoffs, fewer job openings, and studio closures. (Gamesindustry.biz)
Smart Links
US seeks to block JetBlue’s Spirit Airlines deal at trial. (Reuters)
AI Regulation Is Needed to Support US Workers in Future, Business Officials Say. (Bloomberg)
Elon Musk coming to Rishi Sunak’s AI summit. (Politico)
Canada backs Ukraine's entry to CPTPP, trade minister says. (Nikkei Asia)
Apple introduces new M3 chip lineup, starting with the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max. (Ars Technica)