Flagship

Florida braces for Milton

Florida is bracing for communication outages and shortages of critical supplies at hospitals ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall Wednesday night. Millions have evacuated, and while hospitals are either closing or putting up barricades, US federal officials are looking to fly in IV fluids from overseas plants. iPhone users, meanwhile, were urged to use a software update that allows them to send satellite messages even when cellular service goes down. And if all else fails, amateur radio enthusiasts are preparing to deploy in Florida to amplify calls of supply requests and road closures and to relay personal messages. Radios can’t replace phone calls from loved ones, one enthusiast acknowledged, but “a message saying ‘I’m OK, everyone’s fine, don’t worry,’ that beats the heck out of not knowing.”

Iran minister visits Saudi Arabia

A top Iranian official began a diplomatic tour of the Gulf Wednesday, as the leaders of Israel and the US held their first conversation since August. The diplomatic engagements highlighted the tension gripping the Middle East as Israel prepares for a retaliatory strike on Iran. Tehran’s foreign minister met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before heading to Qatar, with hopes of garnering regional support from Gulf countries that have sought to remain neutral in the escalating Iran-Israel conflict. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after a Washington visit from Israel’s defense minister was canceled. US officials have reportedly grown frustrated that Israel hasn’t divulged its planned military response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel.

Germany predicts its economy will shrink

Germany reversed its growth forecast for 2024 and now expects its economy to shrink for the second straight year. “The situation is not satisfactory,” said its economic minister, who had previously forecast a 0.3% increase and now predicts a 0.2% contraction. The world’s third-largest economy has been beset by high interest rates and energy costs, lagging consumer spending, and heightened competition from China. Germany’s auto sector especially is feeling the weight of the likely recession. Car production and demand have suffered this year: New car sales fell again in September, while Volkswagen said it can’t rule out plant closures in Germany. When the car sector has a cough, “Germany has the flu,” KPMG’s global automotive head told CNBC.

Comparing China’s economy to the West

China’s recently announced stimulus measures won’t revive the country’s economy unless it makes a “journey to the West,” the author of a yearslong study on Beijing’s economic path said. The Atlantic Council and Rhodium Group’s report, which compared China’s approach with that of other advanced economies, found that even though officials vowed in 2013 to give the market a “decisive” role, leader Xi Jinping’s rejection of Western market norms, coupled with the state’s heavy hand in the economy, have dented the chances for real reform. That involvement is especially visible through the strong presence of state-owned enterprises. The policies have led foreign investment to drop, while data obstacles and delays “have a chilling effect on open discussion of economic problems in China.”

NKorea cuts off all links to South

North Korea plans to completely cut off all road and rail links to the South, months after ruling out any chance of reunification of the two neighbors. Pyongyang has been fortifying its border defenses since January, laying mines and removing rail infrastructure — around the same time, leader Kim Jong Un shut down organizations tasked with eventual reunification. In South Korea, many young people now oppose unification, but the government still appoints officials to be governors of North Korean provinces should the peninsula ever become one again, The New York Times reported. “The younger generations… are so inured to tensions with North Korea they don’t realize that the peace they enjoy is not permanent,” the South Korean governor of one North Korean province said.

Indian business titan dies

Indian business titan and philanthropist Ratan Tata died aged 86, sparking an outpouring of global tributes. Tata Group’s former chairman became one of the world’s most recognizable business leaders after transforming his family’s 156-year-old company into a $100 billion global empire, acquiring major international brands like Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley tea, before retiring in 2012. He had recently backed startups including e-scooter maker Ola and Goodfellows, a website aiming to foster intergenerational friendship. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Tata “leaves an extraordinary business and philanthropic legacy,” while Indian billionaire Anand Mahindra highlighted Tata’s role in placing “India’s economy… on the cusp of a historic leap forward.”

Renewable energy’s startling growth

Renewable energy sources are on course to meet half of total global electricity demand by 2030. An International Energy Agency report forecast that the world would add 5,500 gigawatts of new renewable sources in the next five years, roughly equal to the entire power capacity of China, the European Union, India, and the US combined. The report emphasized the need for improved infrastructure to integrate the new energy sources: In some countries, up to 10% of renewably generated electricity isn’t used, because of periodic oversupply and inadequate grids. It came as a research firm projected that the world has “avoided the most catastrophic projections” of global warming, but was still on track for temperatures to exceed a 2°C rise.

What’s in store for the advanced manufacturing workforce in the U.S.? Join Governor Polis (D), Colorado, Neera Tanden, Domestic Policy Advisor to President Biden, and other industry leaders in Washington, D.C., on October 21st to discuss how the United States’ looks to maintain a competitive edge.

October 21, 2024 | Washington, D.C. | Request Invitation

India rushes to boost oil production

India is racing to extract its oil reserves before the green energy transition reduces demand. Estimates of how much oil India has differ widely, but even conservative calculations put it at eight billion barrels in unexplored basins. The country, though, remains a minor player in the oil market, and the government seems to want to make up for lost time, partly to reduce reliance on imported oil. India’s oil minister told the Financial Times that “it’s a race” against the energy transition, and that India would alter regulations and seek more than $100 billion in overseas investment to boost production. Just 10% of India’s oil fields are explored: The country “took its eye off the ball,” forcing it to spend $150 billion annually on imports, the minister said.

What Nobel ‘greatness’ means

The metric used to award the Nobel Prize for Literature — “greatness” — seems increasingly at odds with how our society views successful works of art, The New York Times’ A.O. Scott argued. The public now deems something great based on popularity, money, and celebrity — but when it comes to the Nobel Prize, greatness “may even be the opposite of popularity… The great books are the ones you’re supposed to feel bad about not having read.” (We at Flagship have the same philosophy about newsletters.) A former film critic, Scott invoked Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola’s recent box office flop, saying that the maximalist film recalls “the confusing swirl of emotions aroused annually by the literature Nobel, the most timely and authentic thing about it.”

Tennis line judges replaced by tech

The Wimbledon tennis championships will abolish line judges after 147 years. The white-trousered and blue-blazered officials’ role is to yell a noise roughly approximating to “out” when they judge that a ball has fallen outside the line. But since 2007 they have been aided, and sometimes overridden, by electronic systems. Both the Australian and US Opens have removed human judges, a process sped up during the pandemic by the need to reduce the number of people on the court. But Wimbledon’s grass surfaces are more challenging, as are the clay courts of the French Open, which from next year will be the only Grand Slam to retain line judges.

Oct. 10:

• French President Emmanuel Macron hosts Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris.
• US presidential candidate Kamala Harris campaigns in Las Vegas.
• A documentary on Elton John, Never Too Late, premieres at the London Film Festival.

An exhibition marking 50 years of hip-hop jewelry celebrates the dazzling, diamond-encrusted tradition “in all its blinged-out glory,” Artnet wrote. Gold grills, jeweled medallions, and T-Pain’s infamous “Big Ass Chain” are museum artifacts in Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry, which traces the genre’s evolution from the streets of the Bronx to the cultural mainstream. Pieces from artists including Nicki Minaj and the Notorious B.I.G. don’t merely represent conspicuous consumption, but rather the overcoming of societal obstacles to achieve entrepreneurial success, said the curator of the exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. “Both as a cultural symbol and as an aesthetic, hip-hop jewelry reflects deeper issues about wealth, identity, and the American Dream.”

• Brazilian local elections provide a far-right foothold.
• The New York Times is testing a new puzzle called Zorse.
• Ethiopian lawmakers choose a new president.