A Norwegian cruise ship has been denied permission to dock in Mauritius over fears of a potential cholera outbreak on board.

Local authorities on Sunday denied permission for the Norwegian Dawn vessel, which has 2,184 passengers and 1,026 crew on board, to access the Mauritius capital of Port Louis, citing “potential health risks.”

The ship was on a 12-day itinerary from Cape Town, South Africa to Port Louis that started on Feb. 13.

The Mauritius Ports Authority said Sunday that samples were taken from at least 15 passengers on board. These passengers had been placed in isolation on board the vessel “due to the state of their health,” the port authority said, according to a Google translation.

“As the test results will only be known in approximately 48 hours, passengers who were due to board the ‘Norwegian Dawn’ and begin their cruise from Mauritius today will not be able to do so due to potential health risks. They will have to be relocated to available hotel establishments,” the port authority said.

A spokesperson for the U.S.-headquartered Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings said Sunday that “a small number of guests experienced mild symptoms of a stomach-related illness” during Norwegian Dawn’s South Africa voyage.

On returning to Port Louis, the spokesperson said the vessel’s management team met with local authorities to confirm that precautionary measures were being taken to ensure the wellbeing of those on board.

Multiple media outlets reported the stomach illness on board the ship was suspected to be cholera.

“The health and safety of our guests, crew and the destinations we visit is our top priority. We operate at the highest public health and sanitation standards, and encourage our guests to practice good hygiene and to report any illness-related symptoms to the onboard medical team immediately,” the spokesperson for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings said.

“Additionally, we have elevated our sanitation procedures aboard the ship as part of our routine measures to ensure a safe environment for all on board and will continue to take any necessary measures to protect our guests, crew and destinations we visit,” they added.

The World Health Organization says cholera is an “extremely virulent” disease transmitted through the ingestion of contaminated food or water.

It is rare in the U.S., and infection is often mild or without symptoms, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that symptoms can also be severe. The CDC says cholera symptoms can include diarrhea, vomiting and leg cramps.

Since January last year, the U.N. says that roughly 188,000 cholera cases have been reported across eight southern African countries, including 3,000 related deaths.

TAIPEI — Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party won an unprecedented third-straight presidential term, as incoming leader Lai Ching-te pledged to stay open-minded in his approach toward governance, while committing to forging consensus in a split legislature.

The outcome of the presidential election on Saturday riled Beijing, which has repeatedly labeled Lai as a “stubborn worker for Taiwan independence” and a dangerous separatist. There are also fears this could in turn influence frosty China-U.S. relations and security in the broader Indo-Pacific region, with China having escalated military activity in the Taiwan Strait and other nearby waters.

“As president, I have an important responsibility to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits,” Lai said in a press conference, in an official party translation of his comments in Mandarin. He added though that he is also “determined to safeguard Taiwan from threats and intimidation from China.”

“I will act in accordance with our democratic and free constitutional order, in a manner that is balanced and maintains the cross-Straits status quo,” he added. “Under the principles of dignity and parity, we will use exchanges to replace obstructionism, dialogue to replace confrontation, and confidently present exchanges and cooperation with China.”

The Chinese Communist Party has refused to engage with outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen since she assumed office in 2016. Tsai did not stand at this election because she has served the maximum two presidential terms.

The DPP has not accepted the so-called “1992 Consensus,” disputing the tacit agreement for “one China” between the then-KMT government and Chinese Communist Party officials, which Beijing assumes as the basis for cross-Straits engagement.

Still, in his post-election comments in Mandarin, Lai invoked the official name of Taiwan — the Republic of China — at least twice.

DPP’s Lai — Taiwan’s current vice-president — won more than 40% of the popular vote in Taiwan’s eighth presidential election. DPP is the first party to win the presidential office three times in row since direct presidential elections were introduced in 1996. Beijing had framed the election as a choice between “peace and war, prosperity and decline.”

Kuomintang or KMT, Beijing’s preferred political partner, gained roughly 33% of the vote with Hou You-yi at the top of its ticket. Ko Wen-je — the surly, straight-talking former Taipei mayor who ran under the banner of the Taiwan People’s Party that was formed only in 2019 — received just over 26% of the vote.

Voter turnout appeared to be the second-weakest since direct presidential elections started in Taiwan in 1996. This year, 71.9% of all eligible voters cast their ballots for the presidential election, according to preliminary data from Taiwan’s Central Election Commission.

China dismissed the outcome of Taiwan’s Saturday elections, saying its ruling Democratic Progressive Party does not represent the mainstream public opinion.

“Taiwan is China’s Taiwan,” Chen Binhua, the spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said on Saturday shortly after DPP’s Lai emerged as the winner.

“This election cannot change the basic pattern and the development of cross-Strait relations, nor can it change the common desire of compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to draw closer,” Chen added, according to a CNBC translation of a report from Xinhua, the official state news agency.

China has never relinquished its claim over Taiwan — which has been self-governing since the Chinese nationalist party, or Kuomintang, fled to the island following its defeat in the Chinese civil war in 1949.

Chinese President Xi Jinping regards reunification with the mainland “a historical inevitability.”

The U.S. response starkly differed, but was broadly consistent with its past positions.

“We … congratulate the Taiwan people for once again demonstrating the strength of their robust democratic system and electoral process,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

“The United States is committed to maintaining cross-Strait peace and stability, and the peaceful resolution of differences, free from coercion and pressure,” he added.

The outcome of the race to control Taiwan’s 113-seat legislature though is far less clear, with the DPP losing its majority. A hung parliament could well hobble Lai’s policy agenda, while heralding a return of the kind of notorious open feuding among Taiwan’s legislators.

“On the legislative elections, the DPP did not hold onto a majority,” Lai said. “This means we did not work hard enough, and there are areas where we must humbly review and look back on.”

As it stands, the new Taiwan government will have its hands full, with voters largely concerned with bread-and-butter issues, particularly stagnant wages at a time of escalating rents and home prices that have been worsened by high inflation.

These issues have largely helped buoy Ko’s popularity as he positioned himself as a political outsider. 

“Taiwan People’s Party got more votes than expected. Ko got 25%, showing there is still a significant number of voters wanting a change,” Wei-Ting Yen, an assistant professor in government at Franklin and Marshall College, told CNBC.

“The social force is there, and the Lai administration has to address the social and economic issues right on,” she said. “People may be supporting the DPP’s foreign policy directions, but they are not necessarily supporting them for domestic policies.”

At the same press conference on Saturday after his two opponents conceded, Lai said he will carefully consider and include policy ideas and positions of his two electoral rivals that further Taiwan’s interests.

In a nod to issues that dominated the presidential election campaign, Lai singled out the financial sustainability of Taiwan’s labor and health insurance, along with the country’s energy transition as urgent issues that he will prioritize in forging consensus.

Lai also said he will appoint the most qualified professionals and personnel regardless of political affiliations in the “spirit of a democratic alliance.”

“The elections have told us that the people expect a strong government and effective checks and balances,” Lai said. “As for the new structure of the new legislature, Taiwan must build a new political environment of communication, consultation, participation, and cooperation.”

Still, Lai also had one eye on the broader strategic significance of his electoral victory — however diminished it may seem in comparison to the DPP’s comfortable victory in the presidential and legislative elections in 2016.

“Through our actions, the Taiwanese people have successfully resisted efforts from external forces to influence this election. We trust that only the people of Taiwan have the right to choose their own president,” Lai said.

Taiwan’s DPP-led government has often accused Beijing of vote interference either by military intimidation or by co-opting Taiwan’s business elite due to their economic reliance on China.

In the run-up to Saturday’s vote, Lai said that Beijing’s meddling is “the most serious” at this elections.

Xi told U.S. counterpart Joe Biden on the sidelines of the APEC leaders summit in November that Taiwan has always been the “most important and sensitive” issue in China-U.S. relations.

Prior to Saturday’s elections, a senior Biden administration official said the White House is preparing for several different outcomes. Biden has pledged to defend Taiwan in the event of a China invasion, a position that has irked Beijing.

Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the island in over two decades. Her trip was one reason that communication between the world’s two leading powers ground to a halt before a tentative resumption only months ago.

“As one of the first and most highly anticipated elections of 2024, Taiwan has achieved a victory for the community of democracy,” Lai said. “We are telling the international community that between democracy and authoritarianism, we will stand on the side of democracy.”

More than 19 million voters in Taiwan headed to the polls on Saturday to decide if the ruling Democratic Progressive Party should earn an unprecedented third consecutive presidential term — or if a leadership change is in order.

The traditional DPP-Kuomintang duopoly is being challenged this year by the emergence of former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je and his Taiwan People’s Party. With a legislative majority also at stake at these elections, there are fears of a hung Parliament, which could hobble policymaking and herald a return of notorious confrontations between feuding legislators.

With China intensifying its rhetoric on its claim over Taiwan, global observers are billing this Taiwan election as highly pivotal for security in the Asia-Pacific at a time of testy U.S.-China relations.

Local voters though are mainly concerned about the incumbent DPP’s patchy policy record. It comes amid stagnant wages in the face of persistently high inflation and rising home prices and rent.

“In a two-way presidential race, it’s easy to frame it as a binary, a dichotomous, de facto referendum on China policy. When you have a three-way race, it can’t be nearly as effective a framing,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a non-resident fellow at American think tank Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

“That’s why I talk about change versus continuity, because that allows more variables with policy issues at the domestic level to get into the equation more. That’s Ko Wen-je’s primary effect for me,” he added.

Some of the more common concerns that have emerged in pre-election rallies and debates include lingering resentment over outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen’s controversial rollout of locally manufactured Covid vaccines at the height of the pandemic and criticism of a perceived broader lack of transparency.

These issues have helped buoy Ko’s popularity as he positions himself as a political outsider. Ko has picked Cynthia Wu, the eldest daughter of a prominent business family, as his vice presidential nominee.

“In particular, young voters, who typically do not have strong party affiliations, arguably care more about who can offer solutions to the longstanding issues of low wages and high housing prices, which have not significantly improved over the past DPP and KMT administrations,” said Jing Bo-jiun, senior research fellow in Taiwan Studies at the University of Oxford.

The latest official wage data show average monthly regular earnings of full-time Taiwanese employees rose about 2.2% in October from a year ago, while headline inflation was more than 3% that same month.

“This could be one of the main reasons that TPP’s Ko Wen-je has been popular among the young population, who hope that this non-traditional politician can come up with new policies to improve their lives,” Jing added.

With Tsai stepping aside due to term limits after serving two full terms, Ko will come up against the DPP’s presidential nominee this year: Tsai’s current vice-president Lai Ching-te. He has nominated Hsiao Bi-khim — most recently the Taiwanese envoy to the United States — as his vice president.

If Lai and Hsiao win the Jan. 13 vote for the Taiwan presidential office, it would mark the first time any political party has stayed in office for more than two consecutive terms since Taiwan introduced direct presidential elections in 1996.

The DPP duo will face Kuomintang’s presidential nominee Hou Yu-ih and vice-presidential nominee Jaw Shaw-kong, who is a prominent local television personality and talk show host. Hou was formerly the director-general of Taiwan’s National Police Agency and the current mayor of New Taipei City, the municipality that encloses the city of Taipei but not the capital.

“There is arguably a more anti-establishment streak among younger voters, who see both the KMT and DPP as old, ineffective, and even corrupt party machines. Ko’s stronger support among those 30-ish and lower is a good indicator of this,” said Kevin Luo, an assistant professor in political science at University of Minnesota.

Risking that support, the TPP was in talks with KMT about an alliance to field a team that is less antagonistic toward China. That plan though dramatically fell apart on live television ahead of the nomination deadline in late November when both parties could not agree on the leader for the joint ticket.

This has led to concerns the change vote would split even for the parliamentary election, perhaps even leading to a hung parliament.

“Regarding relations with China or the US, my concern would be that it provides an opportunity for mixed messages from Taiwan, one that China may try to exploit,” said Timothy S. Rich, a professor in political science at Western Kentucky University.

“Overconfidence in US support coupled with an unfriendly legislature would make responding to a growing security threat from China not only more difficult, but could lead to miscalculations,” he added.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden that Taiwan has always been the “most important and sensitive” issue in the China-U.S. relations when they met on the sidelines of the APEC leaders summit in November.

“The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability,” Xi said in his 2024 New Year’s address, according to a CNBC translation.

Biden has pledged to defend Taiwan in the event of a China invasion, irking Beijing.

Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the island in over two decades. Her trip was one reason that communication between the world’s two leading powers grounded to a halt before a tentative resumption only just months ago.

China has never relinquished its claim over Taiwan — which has been self-governing since the Chinese nationalist party, or Kuomintang, fled to the island following its defeat in the Chinese civil war in 1949.

China’s Taiwan affairs office has characterized the self-ruled island’s election as a choice between “peace and war, prosperity and decline.”

The election comes as China has escalated military activity in the Taiwan Strait and other nearby waters as Beijing presses its sovereignty claims over an island it sees as its own.

Taiwan’s DPP-led government has often accused Beijing of vote interference either by military intimidation or by co-opting Taiwan’s business elite due to their economic reliance on China.

“Peace is priceless, and war has no winners,” said DPP’s Lai at a pre-election press conference in Taipei on Tuesday. “China has always meddled whenever there is an election in Taiwan, but this time, it’s the most serious.”

Weeks before the elections in late December, China suspended tax concessions on 12 chemical compound imports from Taiwan in retaliation for what Beijing deems to be a violation of the Cross Straits Service Trade Agreement.

The timing of China’s probe has led Taiwanese government officials to conclude that Beijing’s aims are more political rather than economic.

“This election will not be won over a specific policy or even cross-Strait relations,” said Charles Wu, an assistant professor in political science at University of South Alabama.

“It provides an opportunity to see if citizens in Taiwan would still be willing to let the DPP govern the country for the next four years.”

Correction: The story has been updated to accurately reflect that former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022.

As around half of the world’s adult population heads to the polls in a bumper year of elections, concern over the role of artificial intelligence in disrupting outcomes has topped the list of the biggest risks for 2024, according to a new report.

The World Economic Forum’s “Global Risks Report 2024,” released Wednesday, ranked AI-derived misinformation and disinformation — and its implications for societal polarization — ahead of climate change, war and economic weakness in its top 10 risks over the next two years.

“AI can build out models for influencing large populations of voters in a way that we haven’t seen before,” Carolina Klint, chief commercial officer for Europe at consultancy Marsh McLennan, which co-produced the report, told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro.

“How that is going to play out is going to be quite important for us to watch,” she added.

Looking further ahead, the balance of risks for the next decade shifts toward extreme weather conditions and critical changes to the political world order, with two-thirds of those surveyed anticipating a new multipolar or fragmented world to take shape.

The WEF report, which was also produced in collaboration with Zurich Insurance Group, surveyed over 1,400 global risk experts, policymakers and industry leaders in September 2023 about their biggest global concerns.

The report’s authors said the combined risks are “stretching the world’s adaptative capacity to its limit,” and called on leaders to focus on global cooperation and building guardrails for the most disruptive emerging risks.

“An unstable global order characterized by polarizing narratives and insecurity, the worsening impacts of extreme weather and economic uncertainty are causing accelerating risks – including misinformation and disinformation – to propagate,” Saadia Zahidi, WEF’s managing director, said.

“World leaders must come together to address short-term crises as well as lay the groundwork for a more resilient, sustainable, inclusive future,” she added.

The most cited risks for the next two years were, in order: misinformation and disinformation, extreme weather events, societal polarization, cyber insecurity and interstate armed conflict. Also in the top 10 were lack of economic opportunity, inflation, involuntary migration, economic downturn and pollution.

Extreme weather events, critical change to earth systems, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, natural resource shortages and misinformation and disinformation were named as the most likely risks over the next 10 years. Adverse outcomes from AI technologies was also named as a longer-term concern.

“Artificial intelligence breakthroughs will radically disrupt the risk outlook for organizations with many struggling to react to threats arising from misinformation, disintermediation and strategic miscalculation, Klint said in the report.

“At the same time, companies are having to negotiate supply chains made more complex by geopolitics and climate change and cyber threats from a growing number of malicious actors. It will take a relentless focus to build resilience at organizational, country and international levels – and greater cooperation between the public and private sectors – to navigate this rapidly evolving risk landscape,” she added.

The report comes as global leaders are due to meet next week in Davos, Switzerland for WEF’s annual summit, during which they will discuss global issues including the ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, the economy and technology, under the event’s tagline “Rebuilding Trust.”

It also comes as the world embarks on a historic year of elections, with Taiwan this weekend kickstarting the elections, which are also due in the U.S., India, Russia, South Africa and Mexico.

In a separate 2024 global risks report released Monday, Eurasia Group named the upcoming U.S. election as its top risk for the year, with “ungoverned AI” also ranking among the top five.

Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, said in a press briefing that given the wider reaching ramifications of the election outcome, the consultancy had “no choice” but to rank the risk ahead of the wars between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas.

With the eyes of the world on the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, an unprecedented number of potentially “catastrophic” conflicts are going under the radar, analysts have warned.

The International Rescue Committee earlier this month released its emergency watchlist for 2024, documenting the 20 countries at the greatest risk of security deterioration. These countries account for around 10% of the world’s population but around 70% of its displaced persons, along with approximately 86% of global humanitarian need.

The U.N. estimated in October that more than 114 million people were displaced by war and conflict worldwide. That figure is now likely higher.

IRC President and CEO David Miliband said that for many of the people his organization serves, this is the “worst of times,” as exposure to climate risk, impunity in an ever-growing number of conflict zones and spiraling public debt collide with “diminishing international support.”

“The headlines today are rightly dominated by the crisis in Gaza. There is good reason for that — it is currently the most dangerous place in the world to be a civilian.” Miliband said.

“But the Watchlist is a vital reminder that other parts of the world are on fire as well, for structural reasons relating to conflict, climate and economy. We must be able to address more than one crisis at once.”

Isabelle Arradon, research director at the International Crisis Group, told CNBC earlier this month that conflict fatalities globally are at their highest since 2000.

“All the red flags are there, and on top of that, there is a shortage of means to resolve conflict. There’s a lot of geopolitical competition and less appetite for resolving these deadly conflicts,” she added.

Sudan

No. 1 on the IRC’s watchlist is Sudan, where fighting erupted in April 2023 between the country’s two military factions, and internationally brokered peace talks in Saudi Arabia yielded no solution.

The conflict has now expanded into “large-scale urban warfare” that is garnering “minimal” international attention and poses a serious risk of regional spillover, the IRC said, with 25 million people in urgent humanitarian need and 6 million displaced.

The Rapid Support Forces — led by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti) and allegedly supported by the UAE and Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar — has expanded a multipronged offensive from the conflict’s epicenter in the capital of Khartoum, leaving a trail of alleged atrocities in the western region of Darfur.

The RSF reportedly pushed into central Sudan for the first time in recent days, prompting further mass exoduses of people from areas previously held by the Sudanese Armed Forces.

The ICG’s Arradon told CNBC that alongside the ongoing risk of further mass atrocities in Darfur is the possibility of an “all-out ethnic conflict” that draws in more armed groups from the region.

“Peace initiatives are very limited right now. Clearly, at the global level, there is a lot of distraction, and so the situation in Sudan is one where I don’t think there’s enough serious engagement right now at a high level for cease-fire negotiations, and so there needs to be a greater push,” she said.

The flow of refugees into neighboring South Sudan and Ethiopia, themselves blighted by internal conflict, the effects of climate change and extreme economic hardship, amplify the risks of spillover, analysts believe.

Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda

Last week’s chaotic election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo marked just the start of a new electoral cycle that will continue through 2024 against a brittle backdrop.

Voting was marred by long delays at polling stations, with some failing to open all day and voting extended into Thursday in some areas of the massive mineral-rich country with 44 million registered voters.

Several opposition candidates called for the election to be canceled, the latest controversy after a campaign blighted by violence as 18 candidates challenged incumbent President Félix Tshisekedi for the leadership.

Partial preliminary results suggest Tshisekedi is well ahead in the vote, but the government on Tuesday banned protests against the election that were called for by five opposition candidates.

The political turbulence comes amid ongoing armed conflict in eastern DRC and widespread poverty, and precedes further regional elections early next year.

The likely prolonged contestation of the results, borne out of long-held suspicions among Tshisekedi’s fragmented opposition about the independence of the electoral commission, could spark further conflict with implications for the wider region, crisis analysts believe.

“We’re very concerned about the risk of a serious crisis. We saw in 2018 already how the contestation of the vote was a big problem, but now we have on top of that M23 [rebels], backed by Rwanda, that is increasing its fighting and coming very close to [the city of] Goma,” Arradon said.

M23 rebels reappeared in the province of North Kivu in eastern DRC in November 2021, and have been accused by human rights groups of multiple apparent war crimes since late 2022 as they expand their offensive.

Neighboring Rwanda has allegedly deployed troops to eastern Congo to provide direct military support to M23, stoking tensions between Kigali and Kinshasa, and prompting U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to repeatedly voice concern about the risk of a “direct confrontation.”

The combination of a fractured and distrustful political backdrop, an ongoing armed rebellion and extreme socioeconomic pressures render the region fertile ground for conflict next year.

Arradon described the situation in DRC and other active and potential conflict zones around the world as “catastrophic.”

“DRC, we’re talking about 6 million displaced. If you look at Myanmar, of course you’ve got this huge population in Bangladesh of displaced Rohingyas, and also displaced within Myanmar itself,” she said.

“We’ve never seen so many people on the move globally, largely due to conflict. It’s not just people on the move, it’s the fact that often civilian populations live side by side with armed groups, and that’s the case in Myanmar, that’s the case in the east of DRC, also in Sudan, in the west and Darfur.”

Myanmar

The civil war in Myanmar has been underway since a February 2021 military coup, and subsequent brutal crackdown on anti-coup protests, triggered an escalation of long-running insurgencies from ethnic armed groups throughout the country.

Government forces have been accused of indiscriminate bombing and both the IRC and IGC fear the tactics may be ramped up in 2024 as ethnic armed groups and resistance forces have made significant gains in the north of the country.

The military currently faces challenges from an alliance of three ethnic armed groups in the northern Shan state, along with one of the country’s largest armed groups in the northwestern Sagaing region and smaller resistance forces in Kayah state, Rakhine State and along the Indian border in the west.

“For first time in decades, military will have to fight numerous, determined and well-armed opponents simultaneously in multiple theatres; it may double down on brutal efforts to reverse tide on battlefield, including scorched-earth tactics and indiscriminate bombing in coming weeks,” the IGC’s latest CrisisWatch report assessed.

The Sahel

Countries across the Sahel have experienced a swathe of military coups over the past couple of years, partly in response to heightened instability as governments struggle to tackle Islamist militant insurgencies spreading throughout the region.

The Sahel encompasses north-central Africa’s semiarid belt between the Sahara Desert and savanna regions, and includes Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal.

Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Chad have all endured coups and severe instability in the last three years. IGC’s Arradon said security issues had been deepened by the fallout from civil war in Libya to the north, which saw a deluge of weapons move south to supply armed groups in countries with large proportions of their populations in “peripheries that have felt neglected.”

“So this overall security context of populations feeling neglected, plus easy access to weapons, has indeed created a growing security risk in the Sahel region, and the dissatisfaction from these populations has grown,” she added.

… and many more

Alongside these, the IGC also has grave concerns about potential outbreaks of armed conflict in Haiti, Guatemala and Ethiopia, along with the well-documented risk of a Chinese incursion into Taiwan and its global geopolitical implications.

LONDON — European stocks started the final session of 2023 higher, marking a positive end to a solid year.

The regional Stoxx 600 index was up 0.26% in mid-morning trade, with all sectors in the green. Thin trade is expected, while London markets close early.

Spanish pharmaceutical group Grifols was the biggest stock mover, climbing 8.9% after announcing it will sell a 20% stake in Shanghai RAAS, a blood products firm, to China’s Haier for approximately $1.8 billion.

The blue-chip benchmark Stoxx is set to have gained more than 12% in 2023, according to LSEG data, just about reversing its 2022 loss.

Germany’s DAX has risen nearly 20% despite the country’s gloomy economic picture, while France’s CAC 40 and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 have gained 16.3% and 3.64%, respectively.

In the U.S., the S&P 500 index is chasing a new record high to cap off the rally of the last two months.

Latest data releases, including Thursday’s on jobless claims, continue to suggest U.S. economic growth is slowing without grinding to a halt. Market bets currently place a 72.8% probability on the Federal Reserve beginning rate cuts as soon as March 2024, CME’s FedWatch shows.

In the final readings of the year, U.S. annual headline inflation had slowed to 3.1% in November from 6.4% in January.

That compared with a drop to 2.4% from 8.5% in the euro zone, and to 3.9% from 10.1% in the U.K. — both of which have also fueled expectations of rate cuts next year amid sharp economic slowdowns in both economies.

“The apparent loss of U.S. economic momentum in late 2023 suits the view that the full impact of aggressive US Federal Reserve rate hikes may still be in the pipeline,” economists at Berenberg said in a note Friday.

“Nevertheless, the Fed remains on track to pull off the usually elusive feat of a soft landing in 2024. The easing of underlying inflation has encouraged bond and equity markets to play the Fed pivot theme,” they added, though they do not expect the first cut until May 2024.

Data on Spanish inflation will be released on Friday.

U.K. house prices recorded a 1.8% fall in the year to December, according to lender Nationwide, a bigger drop than recent polls suggested but significantly lower than calls made for a fall of up to 10% earlier in 2023.

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The Singapore coffee market is already crowded, but brands continue to open new locations in the city-state in hopes success on the island will kickstart international expansions.

In the last few months, at least five players – China’s Luckin Coffee, Indonesia’s Kenangan Coffee and Fore Coffee, Canada’s Tim Hortons and Taiwanese specialty coffee chain Louisa Coffee have set up shop in Singapore.

Singapore was Luckin’s first major push outside of China, opening 30 outlets since March, according to a CNBC check. Kenangan Coffee has opened four stores since its September arrival while Tim Hortons has two outlets and Fore Coffee and Louisa Coffee each have one outlet.

“We have a pretty grand ambition for our international expansion. We do believe that Singapore and Malaysia are just a stepping stone. And we want to expand to a lot more countries than where we are today,” Edward Tirtanata, co-founder and CEO of Kopi Kenangan, a leading grab-and-go coffee chain in Indonesia, told CNBC.

Launched in 2017, Kopi Kenangan operates more than 800 stores across 45 cities in Indonesia and 22 stores across Malaysia.

Known as Kenangan Coffee in Singapore, the brand has opened outlets at Changi Airport Terminal 2, Jewel Changi Airport mall, as well as Raffles City Shopping Centre and Takashimaya Shopping Centre — all locations that typically feature upscale brands and goods.

“There’s no better country than Singapore to jumpstart our global expansion plan. Why? Singapore is a definite hub of Southeast Asia. [People] all over Southeast Asia fly to Singapore, simply just to transit, to travel or do business,” said Tirtanata of Kopi Kenangan.

“Therefore, we do believe that with a successful entry into Singapore, we will be able to propel our brand further as we expand to more and more countries.”

Singapore’s prominence as a global financial hub has attracted coffee brands to the country.

“It’s one of these things where if you have a restaurant chain, you want to open in New York City, in London,” said Peng T. Ong, co-founder and managing partner at Monk’s Hill Ventures.

“I think they’re here in Singapore because we are a financial center. And they want their future investors to know about us,” said Ong.

“It gives them, especially venture-funded ones, very good visibility for international investors,” said Jianggan Li, founder and CEO of tech research firm Momentum Works.

Luckin Coffee declined to comment, saying that it is “still a beginner” in the overseas market. It overtook Starbucks as the largest coffee chain in China this year.

A Starbucks spokesperson told CNBC: “We welcome competition because it expands the coffee market and accelerates adoption and vacancy of coffee consumption.”

Singaporeans of all ages, genders and income levels love coffee. A July 2022 survey conducted in Singapore revealed that nearly 55% of respondents said they bought coffee in the week prior to the survey.

This compares to the wider Asia-Pacific region which has the lowest per capita consumption of coffee in the world, a Euromonitor International study revealed. The report also noted that coffee consumption is growing slowly as the dominant instant coffee category is mature.

The world’s largest coffee chains like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts already have well established footprints in Singapore.

Starbucks has more than 140 stores in Singapore while The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf has more than 70 outlets and homegrown chain Huggs has 20, according to their websites.

There’s plenty of local competition too. Singapore’s Housing and Development Board said in May there are 776 coffee shops located in residential areas or neighborhood shop houses.

Many international coffee chains open locations in upscale malls and commercial areas. Their prices also tend to be higher than local options.

A cup of cold brew coffee from Starbucks costs about 6.30 Singapore dollars ($4.73). A cup of black coffee at a local coffee shop retails for SG$1.20 Singapore dollars on average, according to CEIC data.

According to data from Momentum Works that accounted for cost of living and disposable income in key global cities, Starbucks is seen as less premium in Singapore. This gives Singapore “a broader base for international brands.”

“If you sell coffee for SG$4 or SG$5, I don’t think people will have problems paying that amount of money,” said Li of Momentum Works.

“The question is how big you want to become in Singapore? But I think everybody knows that they can’t become too big in Singapore, but having Singapore as a market is relatively easy to to operate,” said Li.

Singapore has retained its lead as the world’s best business environment for the next five years, thanks to factors such as economic and political stability, according to Economist Intelligence Unit’s rankings for the second quarter of 2023.

Tencent lost about $43.5 billion in market value on Friday after China surprised financial markets with a fresh set of rules aimed at curbing excessive gaming and spending.

The draft guidelines from China’s National Press and Publication Administration sank the Hong Kong-listed shares of Tencent, NetEase and Bilibili — among the largest online gaming-related counters in the world’s biggest online gaming market.

“The most recent regulatory move on the online gaming industry is the last thing the market was hoping to hear out of Beijing,” Brian Tycangco, an analyst at Stansberry Research told CNBC.  

“While well intended, the move casts doubt on the viability of existing business models that mostly are built around incentive or rewards to attract users and boost loyalty,” he added.

Shenzhen-based Tencent, which owns WeChat and generated over a fifth of its third-quarter revenue from domestic online gaming, saw its shares tumble about 12.4% to close at HK$274, its lowest closing level since end-November 2022.

NetEase, 80% of whose third-quarter revenue came from domestic online gaming, plunged 24.6% to close at HK$122. Friday’s losses wiped out about 115.1 billion Hong Kong dollars ($14.7 billion) off NetEase’s market capitalization.

Bilibili, a social media site that derived 17.1% of its total third-quarter net revenue from Chinese domestic gaming, saw its shares slide 9.7% to close at HK$80.30, its lowest since November 2022 — shaving about 2.4 billion Hong Kong dollars ($307 million) off its market capitalization.

The Hang Seng Index closed down 1.7% on Friday ahead of a four-day holiday weekend, while the China Enterprises Index of the largest offshore mainland blue-chip names listed in Hong Kong ended down 2.3%.

“I’m confident we’ll get more clarity on these new rules in the coming days and weeks. But investors don’t want to wait around for the dust to settle. Better coordination between industry and regulators will benefit everyone in the future,” Tycangco said.

New draft guidelines released by China’s top gaming regulator require owners of online games to abstain from providing or condoning high-value or expensive transactions in virtual entities whether by auction or speculative activity, among other things.

Daily login rewards will also be banned, while recharging limits must be imposed with pop-up warnings issued to users who display “irrational consumption behavior,” the National Press and Publication Administration said.

“These new measures do not fundamentally alter the online gaming business model and operations,” Vigo Zhang, vice-president of Tencent Games, told CNBC. “They clarify the authorities’ support for the online gaming industry, providing instructive guidance encouraging the innovation of high quality games.”

These latest draft rules come at a time, given the broader China technology industry was just emerging from a broader crackdown that started in late 2020.

Just over a year ago, Tencent secured rights to five of the 45 foreign game licenses approved by the National Press and Publication Administration in the first batch of approvals since Beijing’s crackdown on the video-games sector that started in August 2021.

At the country’s annual legislative meetings in 2021, China President Xi Jinping blamed addiction to online gaming for rising myopia and the adverse psychological well-being of the country’s young.

Later that year, the National Press and Publication Administration proposed that children under 18 be should not allowed to play online games for more than three hours a week, limiting them to legal game time only between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Fridays, weekends and public holidays starting in early September.

In August, the Cyberspace Administration of China proposed rules to limit the smartphone screen time of people under the age of 18 to a maximum of two hours per day.

— CNBC’s Lim Hui Jie and Arjun Kharpal contributed to this story.

(Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the milestone after the slide in Tencent’s share price.)

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Chairman Mark Liu plans to retire in 2024, the company said in a statement Tuesday.

“Chairman Dr. Mark Liu has decided not to seek the nomination of TSMC board membership for the next term and will retire from the company after the 2024 annual shareholders meeting,” said TSMC.

The board plans to have vice chairman and CEO C.C. Wei succeed Liu’s role, subject to shareholders’ approval.

Liu joined TSMC in 1993 and assumed the role of chairman after founder Morris Chang’s retirement in June 2018.

TSMC is the top producer of the world’s most advanced processors. The Taiwanese firm manufactures semiconductors for companies like Apple and Nvidia, often based on architecture from chip design firm Arm. 

TSMC currently manufactures 3-nanometer chips and plans to start 2-nanometer mass production in 2025. “Nanometer” in semiconductors refers to the size of individual transistors on a chip. The smaller the size of the transistor, the more of them can be packed onto a single semiconductor. As such, smaller nanometer sizes typically yield more powerful and efficient chips.

In October, TSMC reported a third-quarter profit of 211 billion Taiwan dollars ($6.69 billion), beating analyst expectations.

TSMC in September approved an investment in Arm of up to $100 million as the British firm went public.

China reported Friday its industrial output expanded at the fastest pace since February 2022 in November, though retail sales growth missed expectations, pointing to a patchy recovery in the world’s second-largest economy.

Economists are approaching the China data with some caution, given a low base effect. The country was in the final months of its stringent zero-Covid curbs in the last quarter of 2022, which had adversely impacted the economy.

“The data is a mixed bag,” Miao Ouyang, Bank of America’s Greater China economist, told CNBC. “If you look at the whole set of data, it still shows that domestic demand is still on the weak side…and [the government] still definitely needs to do more to stabilize the economy.”

China’s industrial output grew 6.6% in November from a year earlier, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics Friday. This outpaced expectations for 5.6% in a Reuters poll and follows a 4.6% rise in October.

Retail sales climbed 10.1% in November from a year ago, the fastest pace of growth since May — though analysts had expected a 12.5% spike following a low base in 2022. Retail sales rose 7.6% in October.

“Year-on-year growth in retail sales also rose in November, thanks mainly to faster automobile and Covid-sensitive restaurant sales growth on the back of favorable base effects, although this is well below market (high) expectations and implies a negative sequential growth,” Goldman Sachs economists led by Lisheng Wang wrote in a note.

Fixed asset investment in urban areas cumulatively grew 2.9% in the first 11 months of the year, compared with expectations for 3% growth. China’s urban unemployment rate stayed at 5% in November.

Hong Kong shares, among this year’s underperformers in Asia Pacific, saw gains briefly accelerate after the release of Friday’s data. The Hang Seng pared those gains to eventually close up 2.4% on the day.

The CSI 300 benchmark of the largest blue chips listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen gave up modest gains to close down 0.3% on the day.

The post-Covid recovery of the world’s second-largest economy has so far fallen short of expectations, plagued by a festering real estate crisis, debt risks and chronic youth unemployment.

A slew of policy support measures have not sufficiently lifted economic sentiment, igniting calls for Beijing to amp up its stimulus amid fears of a deepening slowdown.

Still, there are several green shoots that point to Beijing’s focus on growth, while also underscoring the depths of the real estate malaise.

On a cumulative basis in the first 11 months, investments in infrastructure and manufacturing increased 5.8% and 6.3%, year-on-year, respectively; retail sales rose 7.2%, while real estate development investment dropped 9.4%, China’s NBS said.

Official data released earlier Friday showed that China’s new home prices fell for the fifth straight month in November, underscoring weak confidence in demand and investment as some of the largest real estate developers are facing serious debt problems as Beijing strives to deleverage its once-bloated real estate sector.