Flagship

Google loses Play Store monopoly case

A San Francisco jury ruled that Google’s Play Store illegally suppresses competition. Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, sued both Apple and Google in 2020, claiming that their app stores were an abuse of monopolistic power, forcing app developers to pay billions in fees. Epic lost its case against Apple in 2021, but won against Google yesterday. The antitrust analyst Matt Stoller said the verdict will make it easier for judges, “generally afraid of being the first to make a precedent-setting decision,” to rule against Google in other competition trials. It also shows that “big tech is not above the law,” Stoller wrote in his newsletter. “[Skeptics think] the powerful will always win … But that just isn’t true.”

COP28 deal in doubt over ‘phase out’

Several nations threatened to walk away from a COP28 climate deal after language referring to a “phase out” of fossil fuels was removed from a draft text. The European Union said the draft was “unacceptable,” while the U.S. and U.K. called it weak. COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber also heads Abu Dhabi’s national oil company, and expectations were low ahead of the summit. Optimism grew when al-Jaber appeared to back a stronger deal, and an early draft included phase-out language. But oil-producing nations have reportedly blocked the phrase. All 198 countries must agree on any deal, and a compromise is still possible. Elsewhere, the summit has made concrete progress, agreeing a first-ever deal on food emissions and a pledge to triple renewable energy capacity.

Trump case goes to Supreme Court

The U.S. special counsel who charged Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether the ex-president was immune from prosecution for crimes allegedly committed in office. The move — described as a “HUGE gambit” by one legal analyst — came amid growing signs suggesting Trump is not simply the frontrunner in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but the election more broadly: A recent Wall Street Journal poll put Trump 4 percentage points ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden in a head-to-head clash, with the lead widening if third-party candidates were taken into account.

Zelenskyy pushes for US support

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed for greater U.S. support against Russia while on a trip to Washington. Zelenskyy was due to meet with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden today and has argued American aid delays to Ukraine were “dreams come true” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The trip came as Ukrainian and Western officials warned Moscow was attempting major assaults across the two countries’ frontline, and was beginning a campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Meduza reported. U.S. and Ukrainian military leaders are debating new strategies to revive Kyiv’s effort, according to The New York Times, but are grappling with what The Wall Street Journal described as “weakened militaries and empty arsenals in Europe.”

Israel to step up Hezbollah response

Israel warned it would respond to increased attacks by Hezbollah, threatening an expansion of the war into Lebanon. There have been constant exchanges of fire along the Lebanon border since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas, and Israel’s war minister told the U.S. secretary of state that it had to remove the “threat to the civilian population.” Meanwhile Israel said it would open up two more checkpoints to examine aid entering Gaza. International agencies have struggled to get supplies to Gazans, partly because every shipment is checked before crossing in from Egypt. The new checkpoints will “double the amount of humanitarian aid,” the Israeli army said.

Beijing-Manila dispute heats up

The Philippines’ top military commander was aboard a vessel Manila said was rammed by Chinese boats, the latest sign of rising tensions in the South China Sea. The Philippines is among several countries accusing China of expansion into their maritime territory. The two countries’ dispute centers on a ship that ran aground in 1999 along a reef claimed by both nations. The vessel is still in place, slowly decaying but with a skeleton Philippine crew aboard. Manila undertakes regular risky resupply missions to the boat to maintain its claim, while Chinese ships try to block them. “Of all the world’s hot spots, the South China Sea is one of the least remarked on and most potentially explosive,” The Atlantic noted.

DRC ceasefire agreed

A 72-hour ceasefire was agreed in the conflict between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda-backed rebel groups. Tensions rose after Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — who is campaigning for reelection next week — compared Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s autocratic leader, to Adolf Hitler, vowing Kagame would “end up” like the German dictator. Kinshasa accuses Kigali of backing the M23 rebel group in a bid to destabilize the eastern part of the DRC. Almost 7 million people have been displaced as a result of violence in the east of DRC, the BBC reported.

Guatemala ‘coup’ attempt

The U.S. imposed visa restrictions on nearly 300 Guatemalan officials it accused of “anti-democratic” moves to prevent Bernardo Arévalo, the president-elect, from taking power next month. Guatemalan prosecutors asked a court to strip Arévalo of his legal immunity last week, claiming he had won the election through irregularities. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the crackdown was “extremely disturbing,” while the European Union called it “an attempt at a coup d’etat.” Arévalo, a progressive congressman, has vowed to fight corruption and democratic backsliding in Guatemala, where graft is rampant: The country ranked 150th in Transparency International’s 2022 corruption perceptions index, down from 101 in 2010.

Winter may make ChatGPT ‘lazy’

ChatGPT seems to be “lazier” in December, and users are wondering if that’s because it learnt that humans are lazier then too. One developer noted that if the model is told it’s December, its answers are 5% shorter than if it’s told it’s May. Others noticed ChatGPT refusing to complete tasks after Thanksgiving. OpenAI has acknowledged reports of laziness. The “winter break hypothesis” is not proved, but it would be no stranger than other aspects of the bot’s psychology, as it were: ChatGPT definitely works better if you tell it to “take a deep breath” and that you “have no hands.” The fact that the winter-break problem is a realistic possibility “shows how weird the world of AI language models has become,” Ars Technica reported.

Smelly cheese is a hit

A cheese that may be the world’s smelliest is flying off British supermarket shelves. The “Minger” — British slang for someone ugly or disgusting — launched seven years ago and, despite its powerful smell, sold well and won awards. Now the supermarket chain Asda has picked it up, and its manufacturer is overrun with orders. “It’s almost like an ‘I dare you to eat it’ kind of thing, like hot peppers,” one expert said. Whether the Minger’s “horrendous” smell is really the world’s worst is unclear — “You can’t prove something like that,” its maker Rory Stone told The New York Times. “We know it smells, and we know it’s not very nice.” But it tastes good: “The only problem now is I’ve run out of cheese,” said Stone.

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• South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol begins a state visit in the Netherlands.
• British lawmakers vote on the prime minister’s controversial bill to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda, weeks after the Supreme Court ruled the policy unlawful.
• Following Caesar, a travel narrative exploring ancient Rome, is published.

Tim McDonnell is Semafor's Climate & Energy Editor, and is covering the COP28 summit in Dubai. Subscribe to his Net Zero newsletter for more from the talks. Sign up here.

An Indian film inspired by the long-running Archie comics was released on Netflix. Director Zoya Akhtar sets Riverdale — the fictional town home to lead characters Archie, Veronica, and Betty — in a hill station in 1960s India, diving into the nostalgia the U.S. comics still evoke for many readers in the country. “Unlike the dark reimagining of Riverdale,” noted a review in The Hindustan Times, referring to an earlier American series inspired by the comics, The Archies zooms into the romance and youth of the series alongside a central conflict that pits identity and public interest against that of big business. “Akhtar deserves credit for marrying worlds that might at the outset seem entirely divergent,” said the reviewer.

• One of the most highly trafficked financial news sites is creating AI-generated stories that bear an uncanny resemblance to articles published by competitors.
• NBC News has demanded that Donald Trump’s campaign remove a video that includes audio deceptively edited to seem like it comes from an NBC reporter.
• Google’s annual Year in Search list was predictably topped by major news events — the Israel and Ukraine wars, earthquakes, and shootings — as well as surprising, lighter topics.