Flagship

No end in sight for House impasse

Right-wing Republicans paralyzed the U.S. House of Representatives for a second day, repeatedly blocking Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become Speaker. No consensus has emerged over six rounds of voting, leaving the chamber unable to carry out any business — debating legislation, carrying out oversight of the government, or receiving secret national-security updates. Both McCarthy and his opponents have refused to budge. The House reconvenes today for its seventh round of voting.

The chaotic scenes suggest two major issues going forward. First, regardless of who wins, “the fraction of House Republicans who hate their own party and don’t care if it is humiliated and rendered ineffectual will be a problem for any speaker,” National Review, a conservative magazine, noted. Second, Donald Trump’s power over Republicans is waning. The former president — once feared by his colleagues — has been more openly criticized after Republicans’ disappointing midterms performance. Yesterday, he called on them to rally around McCarthy, to no avail.

China’s COVID exit criticized

China is embroiled in disputes with both the World Health Organization and countries worldwide over the fallout from its abrupt abandoning of zero-COVID policies. Beijing urged the WHO to take an “objective and just” position after the international organization criticized China for the narrowness of its definition of COVID-19 deaths, and the opacity of its official statistics: The country has reported around 25 total deaths since it removed restrictions, whereas analysts say thousands could be dying daily. Beijing has also blasted decisions by other countries to screen or bar travelers from China — currently undergoing a brutal COVID-19 surge that is overwhelming health care facilities — as “unacceptable.”

More Western arms to Ukraine

The United States and France separately suggested they would supply armored vehicles to Ukraine. Paris’s proposal was firmer: It said it would deliver light battle tanks to help Kyiv prepare for “a possible Russian offensive” in the spring. U.S. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, said Washington was considering sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The West has gradually provided increasingly advanced weaponry to Kyiv, and will likely continue to do so. “Ukrainian resolve to keep winning in 2023 is firm,” Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, wrote in his newsletter. “But Ukrainians cannot win in 2023 without more assistance from the West.”

Solar power from space

A first trial of a space-based solar power plant is in orbit. On Earth, solar energy is cheap and clean, but intermittent. In space, the sun always shines. A Caltech team designed a lightweight satellite which unfolds to a wide solar array, with microwave transmitters that transfer the gathered energy. It won’t send any power to Earth yet, but will help determine the best photovoltaic cells to use, and demonstrate the project’s feasibility. The pathway to a 70%-renewable global energy system is pretty clear, Ars Technica reports, but the remaining 30% could be tricky: Space-based solar could help along the way.

Sweeping tech worker cull

Amazon and Salesforce announced huge job cuts, the latest tech giants to slash their workforces ahead of a feared recession. Amazon plans to eliminate more than 18,000 jobs, the most by any U.S. tech company so far, while Salesforce said it was cutting about 8,000 jobs. Both firms — like their industry counterparts — acknowledged that they hired too quickly when revenues grew earlier in the pandemic. Still, these cuts may not be enough to placate investors. Tech companies “are not good at cost cutting and they will be late on that,” Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. equities strategist told Bloomberg.

Fed sounds hawkish notes

U.S. central bankers warned investors that interest rates were likely to stay high for a prolonged period. Federal Reserve policymakers said their own projections were “notably above” those of the financial markets, and insisted they would lower inflation — currently above 7% — to their 2% target, minutes of their latest meeting showed. Their remarks sent stocks lower and bond yields higher. They are not alone in their hawkishness: the International Monetary Fund’s no. 2 official told the Financial Times that the Fed should “stay the course,” arguing that “we haven’t turned the corner yet on inflation.”

Peru protests threaten tourism

Escalating demonstrations across Peru risk destabilizing the country’s valuable tourism sector. Recent road closures protesting last month’s ousting of President Pedro Castillo forced more than 2,000 tourists to be evacuated from Machu Picchu, Peru’s most visited tourist attraction, El Comercio reports. Tourism accounts for close to 4% of the country’s GDP and generates around 8% of its jobs. According to Peru’s hotels and restaurants association, political and social instability have already cost the country $2.5 billion in lost tourism revenues.

Romeo and Juliet stars sue

The stars of the 1968 Romeo and Juliet film sued the production company behind the movie for sexual abuse. Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, who are shown naked in the film, were 15 and 16 when it was filmed, and allege that they were tricked into it. It’s not the only film of the era to push young actors unwittingly into such scenes: The most infamous sex scene in Last Tango in Paris was sprung on Maria Schneider, then 19, without her consent. Since 2017 and #MeToo, Hollywood has been reckoning with its own past behavior. Some of that was on camera, as well as off.

Senegalese WWI vets triumph

Senegalese World War I soldiers won a battle with France over their pension rights, coinciding with the release of a new French film highlighting the sacrifices of African soldiers on European battlefields. The “tirailleurs Senegalais,” recruited from French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, had to spend half the year in France to retain their pensions. The rule was “extremely painful” for those forced to live “away from their families,” the granddaughter of a “tirailleur” told the Associated Press. Some 37 still live in France, the youngest of whom is 90. Paris finally relented on the requirement, citing a “principle of tolerance.”

The return of the bookstores

Barnes & Noble, the U.S. bookseller owned by the private equity giant Elliott Management, plans to open 30 new physical stores this year. The plans, reported by Axios, challenge two apparently unquestionable truths: That commerce is increasingly moving online, and that private equity firms do little more than slash costs. Barnes & Noble’s strategy of empowering bookstore managers to court local customers and become part of the community works elsewhere, too. “I love that … our bookshop might have a claim, just like the best boozers, to be ‘a local’,” Tom Rowley, a former journalist at The Economist who quit to found his own bookstore in south London, wrote in his newsletter recently.

Semafor’s Liz Hoffman, Steve Clemons, and Ben Smith will be in Davos this month for the World Economic Forum, where many of the most powerful people in the world come to do deals, show off their good deeds, and get trapped in the snow and forced to talk to us.

They’ll be delivering our frank and transparent reporting on global power in all its deal-making, gossipy, productive, and pretentious grandeur from one of its true centers in a pop-up newsletter, Semafor Davos Daily. Sign up here.

• U.S. President Joe Biden delivers a speech on immigration and border security ahead of a trip to Mexico City for a regional summit.
• The Consumer Electronics Show opens in Las Vegas.
• Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market, the world’s largest, holds its first tuna auction of the year.

All the royalties from one of ABBA’s biggest hits, the single Chiquitita, go directly to the United Nations Children’s Fund. On its release in 1979, ABBA agreed to give 50% of the proceeds to the charity. In 2014, they increased that to 100%, and in 2021 pledged the royalties of a new single, Little Things. Chiquitita, which means “little girl,” has raised nearly $5 million for UNICEF, which has gone to support female education and health in Guatemala, among many other things. ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaeus told the BBC that “the most urgent thing that can be done on this globe is the empowerment of young women and girls … So, early on we said to UNICEF, that’s where we want our money to go.”

BookTok revives British novel

A TikTok user in San Francisco helped propel a little-known 1934 British novel into a global sensation. Cain’s Jawbone, a 100-page murder mystery, was purposely printed out of order for readers to reconfigure to reveal the victims and their killers. But only four people are known to have solved the conundrum. The text, republished in 2019, has surged in popularity since a woman shared videos of herself trying to crack the code. It “has united people around the world in an obsessive quest to unearth the answer,” The Washington Post reported, “prompting many to turn rooms of their homes into “murder walls” plastered with book pages.”

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