Flagship

Trump pleads not guilty

Former U.S. President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty in a case in Georgia accusing him of seeking to overturn the 2020 election result. It came as the state’s governor rejected calls from Trump and his supporters to target the prosecutor who brought the case against the former president, and as two leaders of the Proud Boys far-right group were sentenced to a combined 32 years in prison for their role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump partisans. The Georgia case is arguably the most threatening of the four Trump faces as he campaigns to return to the White House, one which he could not dismiss or issue a pardon for were he to win the presidency.

Despite his mounting legal woes, Trump remains the overwhelming frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and officials around the world are again considering the possibility of him in the Oval Office. He would represent a return to American isolationism, which is “unfamiliar terrain” for policy elites in countries such as India, the strategic studies scholar C. Raja Mohan wrote in The Indian Express. And across the Atlantic, Trump’s return would ensure that “the U.S. becomes, for its allies, a different country altogether,” the director of the London-based think tank Chatham House wrote.

Xi likely skipping G-20

Chinese leader Xi Jinping will likely skip the G-20 summit in New Delhi this month, Reuters reported. Xi’s absence, which came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would not attend, undermines the importance of the Sep. 9-10 meeting and derails the widely hoped-for possibility of in-person talks between Xi and U.S. President Joe Biden, aimed at lowering their two countries’ sky-high tensions. It also amounts to a major snub to the host, particularly as Xi flew to South Africa for a BRICS summit just last month. Beijing-Delhi relations have been especially poor since border skirmishes in 2020, and most recently over a new map issued by China that claims disputed territory as its own.

Dozens killed in DRC anti-UN protests

At least 48 people were killed in a crackdown on anti-United Nations protests in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Dozens died last year in similar demonstrations, including four U.N. peacekeepers. Despite the U.N. spending almost $1 billion a year in its peacekeeping efforts in DRC — one of its largest and costliest missions in the world — it remains widely unpopular throughout the country. The U.N. secretary general has hinted that the mission is in its final phase, in apparent recognition of its failure. Meanwhile armed militias have continued to make inroads throughout the country, recapturing territory they had been displaced from.

Small modular reactors gain momentum

An investment boom in small modular reactors is changing the nuclear industry. The U.S. Air Force announced plans this week to use an SMR to power an Alaska air base, a first for the federal government. The Financial Times’s Gillian Tett reported that investor interest is rising elsewhere: NuScale, the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower, Hitachi, and Britain’s Rolls-Royce are all backing the technology. Tett argued that a recognition of increased electricity demand, a need for reliable zero-carbon energy without need for battery storage, and the rapid advances in small, cheap reactors is driving the change.

EU inflation cools, giving ECB a decision

Eurozone inflation slowed slightly to 5.3%, but remains well above the European Central Bank’s 2% target. The news will make the ECB’s already difficult decision over whether or not to continue interest-rate rises even harder. The eurozone has seen the biggest set of rate rises in the history of the single currency, and pushing it higher risks a painful recession, particularly with other major central banks such as the Federal Reserve also having hiked rates significantly. But without further rises, inflation could remain entrenched.

Family border crossings hit record

A record number of migrant families crossed the U.S. border in August, despite soaring temperatures and the White House’s efforts to discourage crossings. For the first time in Joe Biden’s presidency, more people crossed the border in family groups than as single adults. Families are a challenge for border control: The law says that if detained, migrant family groups must be quickly released and allowed to live and work in the U.S. until their humanitarian claims can be heard. Court backlogs mean it may take years for the cases to be processed. “Family groups have been an Achilles’ heel for U.S. immigration enforcement for over a decade,” The Washington Post reported.

Employees’ de facto four-day weeks

Post-pandemic working arrangements mean that more employees than ever are unofficially giving themselves Friday off. One Wall Street analyst described a Friday schedule of “log into Teams, check email, then live my life.” In the 1960s, “summer Fridays” were a thing, allegedly so “executives could beat the traffic to the Hamptons.” They became rarer, but since COVID-19 and a labor shortage shifted the balance of power toward workers, employees have been increasingly negotiating WFH flexible-hour Fridays. In-office attendance on Friday last week was 31.3%, compared to 55.9% on Tuesday. “Friday is just a dead day,” one economics professor said. We’re writing Flagship in our pajamas, and hope you are reading in bed.

WordPress’s sale of the century

WordPress now sells internet domains with a 100-year lease. The blog-hosting site says it will “secure your online presence for a century,” for the low, low cost of $38,000. In return, it will register your website for 100 years, and back it up on multiple servers and the Internet Archive. Whether the Internet Archive, or even the concept of the “website” as it currently exists, will be around in 2123 is anyone’s guess — as TechCrunch points out, tech companies that have survived 100 years look nothing like they did in 1923. IBM, for example, no longer makes mechanical calculators. But WordPress, which at 20 is fairly old for a web-based firm, is betting that it can last another 100.

AI wins at physical sport for first time

An artificial intelligence system beat the best human pilots at drone racing. It’s the first time a robot has beaten a human champion at a physical sport. Drone-racing pilots competed to control quadcopters or other flying radio-controlled aircraft through 3D courses, using only the cameras on the drone to steer. The drones moved fast — more than 60 mph — and the AI, like its human competitors, could only use onboard cameras to estimate speed and location. As recently as 2019, the best drones took twice as long as the best humans. But Swift, developed by Swiss researchers, beat three champion racers in 15 out of 25 races, a “milestone” in robotics, according to its makers.

Anguilla’s .ai domain-name windfall

Anguilla, a small British-held island in the Caribbean, has found a new revenue stream: Its domain-name suffix, .ai. It is making tens of millions of dollars a year licensing internet addresses: Stability.ai, Character.ai, and Elon Musk’s X.ai are registered with Anguilla domains, while Google.ai, Facebook.ai, and Microsoft.ai all showcase those firms’ AI services, Bloomberg reported. Nearly 300,000 .ai addresses have been registered, and Anguilla — annual GDP $288 million — will get an estimated $30 million check this year. Tuvalu, a South Pacific island nation, saw a similar windfall: It was granted the .tv domain in 1995, and now earns about 1/12th of its annual income from it.

• Benin President Patrice Talon meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing.
• Belarus hosts the opening of military drills for the Russia-led CSTO bloc.
• Ferrari, which tells the story of Enzo Ferrari, premieres at the Venice International Film Festival.

The share of the population that is Catholic in Mongolia, where Pope Francis arrived today. Despite the country having fewer than 1,500 Catholics, Francis hopes that Ulaanbaatar can act as a facilitator to improve the Vatican’s thorny relationship with neighboring China, which has recently cracked down on its Catholic minority. In a sign of its commitment to the region, the Vatican elevated an Italian missionary in Ulaanbaatar to the prominent position of cardinal last year. When asked on the flight there whether such diplomacy was hard, Pope Francis said, “Yes, you can’t imagine how hard it is,” adding, “And at times it takes a sense of humor.”

A newly released video game that was in development for seven years was hailed a “landmark.” Starfield — which allows players to explore over 1,000 stars and planets, and claims to feature several days’ worth of content — scored 87 out of 100 on a review-aggregation site. The game is also a landmark for Microsoft, available exclusively on its Xbox platform and Windows PCs and aimed at bolstering demand for the tech giant’s gaming services. “Timeless classics … feel downright limited by comparison, yet share that wonderful sense of adventure waiting around every corner,” one reviewer wrote. “Trust me when I say you don’t want to miss this.”

• Why the Gabon coup is different from other military African takeovers
• African governments are clamping down on TikTok over “inappropriate content.”
• Why the first auction for offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico was a bust.