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US, Ukraine near minerals deal

The US and Ukraine neared agreement on a critical minerals deal. Washington and Kyiv have publicly sparred as US President Donald Trump has pressed for preferential access to Ukraine’s mineral reserves, seeing it as payback for American military backing, though critics characterized his efforts as a shakedown. Reports differed on what Washington was offering in exchange: Axios said it would keep Ukraine “free, sovereign, and secure,” but The New York Times said no security guarantees were agreed. Trump sees the deal as part of efforts to end the war, alongside a rapprochement with Moscow, though analysts warned that Russia was unlikely to change tack even if it reached a peace deal.

Europe courts Trump

European leaders moved to placate US President Donald Trump while taking steps to shore up the continent’s defenses as Washington retreats. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said ahead of a Washington trip that Trump had “changed the global conversation” for the better, but struck a contrasting tone by calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “barbaric” and reiterating that Britain was willing to deploy troops. And French President Emmanuel Macron spent a joint press conference “praising, flattering and gently cajoling” Trump, the BBC reported, but insisted that peace must not mean “surrender.” Behind the scenes, a French official told The Daily Telegraph that Paris may move nuclear-armed aircraft into Germany to maintain a deterrent against Russia if the US withdraws.

What experts got wrong

Mainstream assumptions about economic growth and the energy transition are now shown to be false and analysts must grapple with how they got them so wrong, experts argued in separate essays. US President Donald Trump’s reelection “reflects a deep disenchantment with an economic system that,” despite stellar growth, “has concentrated wealth at the very top,” the economics professor Mariana Mazzucato argued in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs. The energy expert Daniel Yergin, meanwhile, coauthored a piece noting that countries were far off track in cutting carbon emissions, making the case that officials and analysts must reexamine “policies and investment in light of the complicated realities,” and understand “why the key assumptions behind the transition have fallen short.”

US-Africa trade deal in peril

A quarter-century-old US-Africa trade deal is unlikely to be renewed when it expires in September. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) allows sub-Saharan countries duty-free access to US markets, but one Washington insider told Semafor’s Yinka Adegoke that the deal is “80% dead.” AGOA imports to the US account for around $10 billion a year, and the act has enjoyed broad bipartisan support, but it has been caught in the fallout surrounding the dismantling of USAID. Still, AGOA is not considered a huge success, and if turned into something more transactional it could “finally start to be transformative for more African countries,” Adegoke wrote.

US drops Caracas regime change

Washington will not pursue regime change in Caracas, the US special envoy said, as it seeks the support of Venezuela’s autocratic leadership on deporting undocumented migrants. During his first term, Donald Trump vowed to exert “maximum pressure” on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, even recognizing an opposition politician as the country’s legitimate ruler. But since returning to office, Trump has pursued closer ties to Maduro, who has been cracking down on critics following a disputed election victory last year. The rapprochement has left Venezuela’s opposition with few options. “A bad agreement now does not eliminate the crisis [in Venezuela] — it only postpones and worsens it,” an exiled journalist wrote in The Hill.

Syria launches national talks

Syria launched a national dialogue aimed at charting its future, the latest in a series of optimistic developments that also point to the challenges facing the country. The one-day meeting was hamstrung by the absence of the main Kurdish militia, which was not invited, and of other groups which said the talks came with too little notice. Still, positive signs abound: The European Union suspended some energy and transport sanctions in order to support Syria’s democratic development, while a small but growing number of Syrian Jews are returning, The Wall Street Journal noted, a sign of their confidence in authorities’ protection of minorities. “Welcome back,” one neighbor told a returning rabbi. “This is your home.”

China’s vexing military corruption

Chinese authorities expelled a former defense executive from the Communist Party for corruption, the latest in a series of graft-related removals at the top of Beijing’s military apparatus. His ousting brings the number of top security officials and executives purged from China’s ranks in recent years to 18, including 14 generals, according to Reuters. Among the most high-profile was an admiral who sat on the People’s Liberation Army’s top committee headed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Beijing’s long-running anti-graft campaign makes clear that corruption is “an endemic problem” in China’s armed forces and that Xi is “serious” about rooting it out, a Brookings Institution expert argued, but also that “the persistence of corruption undermines Xi’s confidence in the PLA.”

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Tesla’s much-needed self-driving boost

Tesla debuted its full self-driving mode in China. The move, in Shanghai, appears to be a response to its Chinese rival BYD offering advanced autonomous features last month. The electric carmaker’s stock briefly rallied on the news, before falling again. While sales in China are up, its growth is being squeezed by BYD and other lower-cost manufacturers. Sales in Europe, meanwhile, fell 45% year-on-year to a two-year low even though demand for other electric vehicles surged, apparently driven by CEO Elon Musk’s unpopularity: Polls in Germany and the UK found he was widely disliked. Some analysts, though, said that despite Musk’s political involvement, Tesla’s technological advances were continuing, leaving a strong bull case.

Anthropic unveils latest AI

Anthropic unveiled its latest “hybrid reasoning” artificial intelligence model, which appears to be especially good at solving coding problems. Claude 3.7 Sonnet users can choose between quick responses like those of ChatGPT, or extended chain-of-thought reasoning in which it shows its working. AIs are moving away from the chatbot model, which is verbally fluent but prone to hallucinations — nonsensical outputs — and towards more autonomous and contemplative systems: Anthropic also released Claude Code, which can write its own programs from users’ written or spoken prompts. The AI race is “incredibly fast,” The Verge reported, and “Anthropic appears to be in the lead” — and the future seems to be single AIs that can do everything, rather than standalone models for different forms of reasoning.

Kidman seeks female directors

Nicole Kidman has worked with 19 female directors over the last eight years as part of a deliberate effort to boost women filmmakers. Just 15% of movies released in 2023 were made by women, and the actress told Time magazine that there was a double standard: Male directors are more likely to get a second chance if their first film isn’t a success, whereas women are under pressure to “be perfect,” a situation that “can only be changed by actually being in the films of women.” Her most recent film, Babygirl, directed by Halina Reijn, is the latest example, and her next, Holland, from Mimi Cave, comes out in March.

• The UN COP16 biodiversity summit opens in Rome.
• Nigeria hosts an energy conference in Abuja, with OPEC’s secretary general in attendance.
• Milan Fashion Week opens.

The number of days in advance a new AI-backed system can predict weather. The European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts can also track tropical cyclones a further 12 hours ahead, while providing 20% more accurate estimates than conventional methods. Given that the costs of natural disasters has increased in recent decades, forecasting progress could have a significant impact on the global economy. “This milestone will transform weather science and predictions,” the director general of ECMWF told the Financial Times.

Hymns of Bantu by Abel Selaocoe. The South African cellist “makes alchemy out of blended Western and African traditions,” according to NPR, turning to chants and throat singing on his latest album as well as strings and wood. Selaocoe told the radio station that on the album, “percussion is imitating the language, melodic instruments are imitating the voice,” and that his work finds parallels between classical Western composers and traditional South African musical forms. Listen to Hymns of Bantu on Spotify.

Large corporations are shopping for underground bunkers that can survive a nuclear blast to protect their data centers and C-suite employees as geopolitical tensions rise. The first adopters are primarily cryptocurrency firms, companies that build the facilities told Semafor’s Rachyl Jones.

Larry Hall, owner of Kansas-based Survival Condo, said he recently priced an underground data center and executive suite space to a crypto company for $64 million. The pitch is the apocalypse. “The nuclear clock is moving closer to midnight,” he said.