World in Brief - The Economist Roundup

 

World in Brief

The Economist Roundup

February 7, 2024

Joe Biden accused Donald Trump of weaponising immigration. Mr Trump has urged Republicans to kill a bipartisan bill promising stricter border controls in return for aid for Ukraine and Israel. Meanwhile a court in Washington, DC, ruled that being a former president did not make Mr Trump immune from being prosecuted for plotting to overturn the 2020 election. He will probably appeal to the Supreme Court. The House also rejected Republicans’ legally dubious attempt to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland-security secretary, for his handling of the southern border.

 

American, Qatari and Egyptian negotiators prepared a fresh effort to push their ceasefire plan for Gaza. Their proposal reportedly calls for a ceasefire in return for hostage releases. Hamas gave its initial response on Tuesday, although details were not disclosed. Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, said he would discuss the response with Israeli officials when he visits the country on Wednesday.

 

Four bolts were removed and not replaced from the panel that blew off a Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, according to a preliminary report by America’s National Transportation Safety Board. The mistake was discovered from a picture showing the boltless panel, which had been sent between employees. The incident is the latest blow to the planemaker’s reputation.

 

Fox, Warner Bros Discovery and Disney’s ESPN will launch a streaming service that combines all the sports broadcasts offered by their traditional TV networks later this year. It is aimed at Americans who have spurned TV for streaming. The joint venture will aggregate around $16bn-worth of sports rights, which have become more expensive as sports leagues charge higher fees for live broadcast rights.

 

Sebastián Piñera, a former president of Chile and billionaire businessman, died in a helicopter crash. The country declared another period of national mourning; it is already observing one after a forest fire, which began on Friday, killed at least 131 people. Mr Piñera, who was 74, served two separate terms as Chile’s leader.

 

Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commision, ditched a plan to cut the use of pesticides by the continent’s farmers by half. She said it had become a “symbol of polarisation”. Farmers from all over the EU have been protesting against the bloc’s environmental regulations. Shares in Bayer, a pesticide giant, jumped by 2% following the news.

Russia’s economy sticks to its guns

In the months following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia’s economy teetered on the edge of recession. However, after the imposition of international sanctions caused a brief period of chaos, the economy steadied. Figures released on Wednesday are expected to show that GDP is growing by around 4% a year. That means that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is overseeing one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

But Mr Putin faces a paradox. The economy is growing too fast. In recent months the finance ministry has injected lots of money into the economy, especially to boost the war effort. That is pushing up inflation, which is around 7% a year. Wages are soaring because demand for labour is sky high while supply is constrained (the figures will also show that unemployment is close to its all-time low). High inflation is uncomfortable. But, compared with what many Russians expected two years ago, their economy has proved remarkably resilient.

Azerbaijan’s political black hole

President Ilhem Aliyev, who succeeded his father in 2003, is up for re-election on Wednesday. He is all but certain to win. Political opposition has been silenced—at least 13 journalists have been arrested on trumped-up charges of smuggling, extortion and hooliganism in the run-up to the poll. Azerbaijan now ranks 151st out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders, below Sudan and Libya.

Mr Aliyev, who called the election a year earlier than constitutionally mandated, is riding high. He has benefited from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The war had preoccupied regional and Western leaders when Azerbaijan moved to re-capture Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist ethnic-Armenian enclave, in September 2023. More than 100,000 people have since fled the territory for fear of persecution. And as the EU sought to wean itself off Russian gas, it agreed to double gas imports from Azerbaijan by 2027. As Azerbaijan gears up to host the COP29 climate summit this November, Mr Aliyev looks unstoppable.