The Last Refuge.
The last penny.
“Truly the indispensable start to my day. It puts the entire world in context for me before I finish my coffee and the information tsunami begins.” — Richard Rushfield, Co-founder and columnist, The Ankler.
1. China submitted the highest number of patent applications in 2024, leading global intellectual property activity, a new report shows. A total of 1.8 million patent applications were filed in China last year, accounting for nearly half of the global total and more than three times the number submitted to the United States, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The US is ranked second on the list, followed by Japan, South Korea and Germany. (Source: scmp.com)
2. China’s credit expansion was the weakest in more than a year last month, dragged down by slower government bond sales and sluggish borrowing demand across the economy. Aggregate financing, a broad measure of credit, increased 815 billion yuan ($115 billion) in October, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data released by the People’s Bank of China on Thursday. That’s the lowest level since July 2024 and well short of the 1.2 trillion-yuan forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey. Financial institutions recorded an expansion of 219 billion yuan of new loans in the month, also worse than expected, with growth in the outstanding stock of loans to the real economy reaching a record low. (Source: bloomberg.com)
3. The private-credit boom is rapidly changing the investments made by U.S. life insurers, with some firms parking more than half the fixed-income assets they need to fund policies and annuities in hard-to-trade debt, according to new research by Moody’s Ratings. Illiquid investments accounted for $685 billion—about 18%—of the $3.8 trillion in fixed-income investments insurers held at the end of 2024. The pace of purchases seems to be increasing, with less-liquid private debt comprising about 23% of the $522 billion of bonds insurance companies bought in the first half of 2025, the report said. The industry’s holdings are unusually concentrated, with just 10 insurers controlling about 43% of the illiquid assets held at the end of 2024, Moody’s found. (Source: wsj.com)
4. Global fossil fuel emissions are on track to soar to record highs in 2025 and show no signs of declining overall, although there are indications of a recent slowdown in China’s emissions, researchers said on Wednesday. This year, nations are projected to emit roughly 38.1 billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide by burning oil, gas and coal for energy and by manufacturing cement, according to data from the Global Carbon Project. Those sources are the largest contributors to human-caused climate change. The total is roughly 1.1 percent more than the world emitted in 2024. Not everywhere saw a large increase. Emissions appear to have stayed nearly flat in China and Europe, but rose significantly in the United States and much of the rest of the world. (Sources: nytimes.com, nature.com)
5. Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of children annually, yet there hasn’t been a major new drug to fight it in more than 25 years. Now, Novartis says it has one. The Swiss company said Wednesday that a potential new treatment cured more than 99% of malaria cases in a late-stage study. The drug candidate may also be able to prevent the spread of drug resistance, a growing threat in sub-Saharan Africa, Novartis said. The new drug, known as GanLum for its components ganaplacide and lumefantrine, promises the biggest innovation in malaria treatments since the introduction in 1999 of combination therapies using a compound called artemisinin. (Source: wsj.com)
6. The wild form of the virus behind polio has been detected in wastewater sampling in Germany, the nation’s main public health body told Reuters on Wednesday, in a setback for efforts to rid the world of the deadly disease. The findings come more than 30 years after the last cases of wild polio virus infections in people were registered in Germany and mark the first wild virus detection from environmental sampling in the country since this type of routine monitoring began in 2021. (Source: reuters.com)
7. Venezuela is deploying weapons, including decades-old Russian-made equipment, and is planning to mount a guerrilla-style resistance or sow chaos in the event of a U.S. air or ground attack, according to sources with knowledge of the efforts and planning documents seen by Reuters. The approach is a tacit admission of the South American country’s shortage of personnel and equipment. The guerrilla-style defense, which the government has termed “prolonged resistance” and mentioned in broadcasts on state television, would involve small military units at more than 280 locations carrying out acts of sabotage and other guerrilla tactics, according to the sources and several years old planning documents for the tactic seen by Reuters. The second strategy, called “anarchization,” would use the intelligence services and armed ruling-party supporters to create disorder on the streets of capital Caracas and make Venezuela ungovernable for foreign forces, said one source with knowledge of defense efforts and another source close to the opposition. (Source: reuters.com)
8. Ukraine’s justice and energy ministers submitted their resignations yesterday after President Volodymyr Zelensky called for them to step down — as the fallout from a wide-ranging corruption investigation rocked Ukraine’s political establishment and threatened to implicate top government officials and a former business partner of the Ukrainian leader. Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko announced Justice Minister German Galushchenko’s suspension earlier Wednesday, but the president’s call just hours later for Galushchenko and Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk to step down went much further. (Source: washinigtonpost.com)
9. The diplomatic spat between China and Japan’s new prime minister took a turn for the worse yesterday when an influential Chinese state media outlet said Sanae Takaichi may have to “pay a price” for her comments on Taiwan. Yuyuan Tantian, a blog affiliated with state broadcaster CCTV that is often used to send foreign policy signals, called Takaichi a “political opportunist” who is hyping up the Taiwan issue as an excuse to strengthen the political control of her minority government and expand Japan’s military budget. “How dare Takaichi make a comment like that? Did she get kicked in the head by a donkey?” the blog post said, using Chinese slang that roughly translates to being stupid. “If Takaichi keeps crossing the line and talking crap, she might have to pay a price,” it stated. (Sources: washingtonpost.com, mp.weixin.qq.com)
10. Microsoft is expanding its ambitious data center build-out with an AI “super factory,” a set of two-story structures in Atlanta aimed at connecting seamlessly with infrastructure in other areas to harness immense computing power. The company is doubling its total data-center footprint over the next two years. One of its most important new sites is the factory in Atlanta that it (unveiled yesterday). The site, part of its Fairwater network of artificial-intelligence centers, is a new class of Microsoft hubs built for AI training. It will contain hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics processing units and dedicated high-speed connections to other Fairwater locations. OpenAI is one of Fairwater’s largest customers. The site also will be used by others including France’s Mistral AI and Elon Musk’s xAI—and for training Microsoft’s proprietary models. Microsoft spent more than $34 billion on capital expenditures during its fiscal first quarter and said it would increase its total infrastructure investments over the next fiscal year. It is among several tech companies pouring a combined $400 billion into AI efforts this year. (Source: wsj.com)
11. Waymo is hitting the highway. The company said starting Wednesday its robotaxis — already a common sight on some city streets — are expanding their routes to freeways and interstates around San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix. And in the Bay Area, riders can now get dropped off or picked up curbside in driverless cars at San Jose Mineta International Airport. Other regions will get highway service soon, Waymo said. The highway rollout will be gradual in LA, where Waymo cars with nobody in the driver’s seats are increasingly common downtown and in many residential neighborhoods. But around San Francisco as of this week, the expansion encompasses the entire peninsula to the south of the city, including Silicon Valley hot spots like Palo Alto and Mountain View. (Source: apnews.com. Italics mine.)
12. The brain is the last refuge of our private thoughts. Who can imagine being unable to keep one’s thoughts to oneself? While we remain far from true mind-reading technology, science has taken steps towards decoding our thoughts. Neurotechnology, a fast-evolving field dedicated to understanding the brain and creating technologies that interact with it, can access, assess and even manipulate our neural systems. This year, neurotechnology took a leap forwards when Meta conducted a series of experiments integrating magnetoencephalography (MEG) — a brain scanning technology which measures the magnetic fields generated by brain activity — with generative artificial intelligence. Meta says it decoded “visual representations in the brain” with millisecond precision. Growing numbers of people are using neurotechnology without being aware of how sensitive the data it collects is. Fitness, stress-tracking and other wellness applications integrated into smartphones or used in “wearable” form as headphones, earbuds, smart-glasses or wristbands capture a surprising amount of data on our state of mind, including on the brain’s levels of attention and focus, stress and anxiety, fatigue, relaxation and calmness, and positive or negative mood. Right now, in most jurisdictions around the world, there is no law preventing tech companies from using our neurological data, let alone one prohibiting them from selling it to third parties. Because brain patterns are unique to each individual, losing control of this data poses a direct threat to our mental privacy and our freedom of thought — two core human rights. (Source: ft.com. Italics mine.)
13. If you thought AI-generated videos were getting scary realistic, you now have one more worry to add to that list. According to music streaming platform Deezer, an overwhelming majority of people cannot tell AI-generated music apart from the real deal written and performed by actual humans. In a joint survey with market research company Ipsos, Deezer asked 9,000 people across eight countries —the United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Japan—to listen to songs and determine whether or not they were AI-generated. A whopping 97% of the respondents failed this task. (Source: gizmodo.com)
14. America’s Roman Catholic bishops on Wednesday rebuked the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign in a rare and near-unanimous statement that framed the immigration crisis in starkly moral terms. The statement, passed at the bishops’ annual conference in Baltimore, did not call out President Trump by name, but the context was clear. The bishops said they “oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and “pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.” “We as Catholic bishops love our country and pray for its peace and prosperity,” the statement said. “For this very reason, we feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.” (Source: nytimes.com)
15. Amid the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, President Trump’s approval ratings remain low. An AP-NORC poll, fielded just before several Senate Democrats moved to end the shutdown, finds that only three in ten adults approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, health care, or the federal government. Overall, 62% disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president, while 36% approve. (Source: apnorc.org)
16. Astronomers using the James Webb telescope may have discovered some of the universe’s first stars, and they may offer clues to how galaxies form. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and a phenomenon first predicted by Albert Einstein, the scientists spotted the early stars, known as Population III stars, in a distant cluster called LAP1-B, located 13 billion light-years from Earth. They described their results Oct. 27 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. (Sources: livescience.com, iopscience.iop.org)
17. The sun’s strong blasts that have erupted since Sunday have made themselves felt here on Earth. Our star has released three large blobs of plasma and magnetic field, which resemble big chunks of twisted rope, known as coronal mass ejections. The sun spits these CMEs out at more than 1 million miles per hour, and they commonly follow solar flares—eruptions of radiation from the sun. Yesterday, scientists observed the strongest solar flare so far this year, which was near the top of the scale at an X5.1 rating. So far, as of the time of this writing, two of the three recent CMEs made their way to Earth over the night of Nov. 11 and painted stunning auroras as south as Florida and Mexico amid a severe geomagnetic storm. (Sources: nautil.us, npr.org. The photographs are amazing.)
Quick Links: Tom Standage’s ten trends to watch in 2026. Is a deadly asteroid about to hit Earth? Meet the man who can tell you. News Items has learned that the end is not near. IEA: Oil market faces growing surplus as inventories climb. China’s massive surplus is everywhere. China’s ‘unprecedented’ plan to reengineer its universities. Latinos have grown from 5% of the U.S. population in 1970 to 20% in 2023. The American penny died yesterday in Philadelphia. It was 232 years old.
Financialization Links: ‘Total Portfolio Approach’ is shaking up how trillions get managed. John Authers: The sustained appeal of emerging market assets since the turn of the year has more to do with Washington’s “America First” philosophy than anything else. US drew $900 million from IMF account as Argentina debt payment loomed. Wall Street chiefs flock to White House dinner with Donald Trump. Jon Gray is reshaping Blackstone into everybody’s investing megastore. The seven deadly sins of corporate exuberance.
Political Links: You may have heard: Trump signs spending bill, ending longest shutdown in U.S. history. The secret meeting that ended the shutdown. How Trump is creating his own police force. White House signals it will cut tariffs to help ease high food prices. Petition forcing Epstein vote succeeds over White House objections. Epstein wrote that Trump knew of sexual abuse but didn’t participate. New research reveals that people find AI-delivered political arguments convincing. The never-ending EU shakedown of US tech companies continues. Coalition led by Iraqi PM Sudani comes first in Iraq’s election.
Science/Technology Links: ‘Godfather of AI’ becomes first person to hit one million citations. IBM has unveiled two unprecedentedly complex quantum computers: Nighthawk and Loon. OpenAI’s running costs may be a lot more than previously thought. Companies begin to see a return on AI agents. Why AI struggles with the “odd one out”. Whose brain-computer interface holds the most promise? New ultrasound technique could help aging and injured brains. Smart drug strikes a hidden RNA weak point in cancer cells. GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy may extend the lives of colon cancer patients. Women have supercharged immune systems and we now know why. This Russian robot needs a bit of fine-tuning.
War: Trump has promised peace for Gaza. Private documents paint a grim picture. The documents also suggest the administration is committed to the peace agreement, despite its complexity. Israel’s president says ‘shocking’ settler violence against Palestinians must end. Trump asks Israel’s president to pardon Netanyahu from corruption charges. Deadly blasts in India and Pakistan set region on edge. India’s government said Monday’s explosion in New Delhi was a “terrorist incident.” Afghan nationals carried out two suicide bombings in Pakistan, says minister. Pakistan-Afghanistan clash looms after militant attacks in Islamabad. China stages invasion of the ‘robot wolves’ with sights set on Taiwan.
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