Bloomberg Businessweek-Europe Edition December 5, 2022

● China is experiencing the largest and most widespread protests of Xi Jinping’s presidency amid growing anger over the country’s Covid Zero policy, which has left it stranded in a third year of mass lockdowns even as the rest of the world moves on from the pandemic. ▷ 16 The government has responded with a mix of concessions, including bolstering vaccination among senior citizens, and a massive police presence to quell unrest. ● Worldwide, there have been more than 643 million coronavirus infections, and 6.6m people have died. ● EU authorities ordered Facebook parent Meta Platforms to pay a fine of €265m ($276 million) for failing to prevent the leak of more than half a billion users’ personal data. Meta said it had cooperated with regulators and made changes after the leak was…

The lesson Chinese President Xi Jinping drew from the fall of the Soviet Union is that leaders must show strength in the face of threats. Now confronting perhaps the greatest challenge to emerge during his rule, Xi should instead show flexibility. Protesters took to the streets in several Chinese cities, including Shanghai and Beijing, to demand an end to the government’s draconian Covid Zero policies; remarkably, some have called for Xi himself to step down. Although the demonstrations over the weekend of Nov. 26-27 were relatively small, that factory workers, university students and middle-class urbanites—in cities from the prosperous eastern coast to the Uyghur heartland of Xinjiang—have united around a single demand will worry authorities deeply. China has seen no similar movement since the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square. The weekend vigils…

▶ Turnout for Georgia’s Dec. 6 runoff between Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker has been setting records. Democrats are keen to pad their one-seat edge. ▶ After a seven-year run, Trevor Noah steps down as host of The Daily Show on Dec. 8 to spend more time doing stand-up. A yet-to-be-named replacement starts on Jan. 17. ▶ Disney+ will introduce an ad-supported tier in the US on Dec. 8 at a monthly cost of $7.99, part of a pledge to make streaming a major focus for growth. ▷ 11 ▶ Former Theranos President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani will be sentenced on Dec. 7 for his fraud conviction, weeks after former CEO Elizabeth Holmes was given 11 years. ▶ After reaching the farthest distance from Earth ever achieved by a human-rated spacecraft, NASA’s Artemis…

If you want to apportion blame for the collapse of FTX, there are quite a few worthy candidates. Start with founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who under the banner of “effective altruism”—a 4chan thread of a moral philosophy—spent lavishly to lure investors onto his crypto trading platform and then, through greed or incompetence, allowed customer funds to be used, and lost, by a hedge fund he also owned, Alameda Research. (So far, Bankman-Fried has seemed to argue that this was an honest mistake stemming from a failure to keep track of customer funds. In other words: an $8 billion oopsie.) Caroline Ellison—chief executive officer of Alameda and Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend—is another worthy candidate, along with members of Bankman-Fried’s inner circle. If you were going to cast a wider net, you could also include the…

On Dec. 6, London’s Odeon Leicester Square theater is scheduled to light up for the premiere of Avatar: The Way of Water. As photographers jostle for a shot and fans clamor for autographs, stars Zoe Saldaña and Sigourney Weaver and director James Cameron will proceed down the red carpet for a screening of the sequel to the top-grossing movie of all time, which has booked sales of $2.9 billion since its release in 2009. It’s the kind of feel-good spectacle Hollywood adores, with hefty doses of glamour, glitter and magic to enthrall the public. The Way of Water has the potential to cast a similar spell on Walt Disney Co., helping the studio’s bosses forget, just for a moment, how badly the pandemic upended their business. Disney got the rights to…

For years, only one customer mattered in the market for lithium and other metals used in electric vehicle batteries: Tesla Inc. The prospect that a new mine might end up feeding Elon Musk’s automaker was enough to persuade cautious lenders to finance a project or convince investors that untested operations had a shot at meeting ambitious sales projections. And as the biggest buyer in a sector filled with startup miners, Tesla wielded unusual power to dictate terms, typically locking in long-term supply deals at fixed prices. An aggressive push into electric vehicles by legacy car manufacturers, and worries over tight markets for lithium and other key materials such as nickel and graphite, is upending those dynamics. Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. have roiled the industry by striking generous pacts…