Your Wednesday Briefing: A downed U.S. drone

By Amelia Nierenberg

Writer, Briefings

Good morning. We’re covering the downing of a U.S. drone over the Black Sea and a rebound in U.S. markets.

A downed drone

A Russian fighter jet struck a U.S. surveillance drone over the Black Sea, U.S. officials said, hitting its propeller and causing its loss in international waters. Russia denied that there had been a collision, saying the drone’s own maneuvers caused it to crash.

If a collision is confirmed, it would be the first known physical contact between the two nations’ militaries as a result of the war in Ukraine.

U.S. officials said the drone’s operators brought the craft down in the Black Sea after the collision, which the U.S. military said was the result of “reckless” actions by Russian pilots. The U.S. aircraft was conducting “routine operations in international airspace,” an Air Force general said.

A White House spokesman said that there had been similar “intercepts” by Russian aircraft in recent weeks, calling them “not an uncommon occurrence,” but that this was the first to result “in the splashing of one of our drones.” He called the behavior of the Russians “unsafe and unprofessional.”

Context: Russia’s invasion has turned the Black Sea, which is dominated by the Russian Navy, into a battle zone. Ukraine has attacked Russian naval vessels there, most notably in April, when a Ukrainian missile sank the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

Response: The State Department summoned Russia’s ambassador in Washington to receive the U.S.’s formal objection over the drone downing.

Other updates:

• Russia pounded towns in the southern Kherson region, Ukrainian officials said, as Ukraine prepared for a counteroffensive.
• Russia said it would extend a deal allowing Ukraine to export grain, but only for 60 days rather than the 120 sought by Ukraine.
• Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner private military company, said his force would recede after the battle for Bakhmut. The shift coincides with speculation about Prigozhin’s political ambitions.

U.S. economy seems to stabilize

Markets closed up yesterday, after investors seemed to shrug off the recent collapse of two midsize banks and the threat of a crisis appeared to wane. Fresh inflation data, largely in line with expectations, also added to the sense of relief.

• Stocks: The S&P 500 jumped 1.7 percent yesterday. Midsize banking stocks, which had plummeted on Monday, rebounded.

• Banks: The Justice Department opened an investigation into the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, my colleagues report.
• Inflation: It eased to 6 percent on an annual basis, which matched an expected slowdown. But in February inflation rose over the prior month.

Now, all eyes are on the Federal Reserve.

Some of the inflation details were worrying, including the costs of housing and other goods and services. Generally, that would indicate that the Fed would keep raising rates in hopes of cooling down the economy.

But higher interest rates raise costs for companies, and were at the root of the banking stress. Fewer or smaller rate increases could help stocks to rebound after the deep uncertainty set off by the banking crisis.

In other business news: Meta will lay off another 10,000 people, roughly 13 percent of its workforce.

Xi reins in the economy

Xi Jinping is dealing with China’s economic problems the same way that he has approached issues for most of his decade in power: by getting the Communist Party more involved.

At the annual gathering of China’s national legislature, which ended Monday, Xi introduced a series of sweeping changes to the regulatory framework that would allow the party to assert more direct control over financial policy and bank regulation.

China’s economy, which is growing near its slowest pace in decades, is teetering from a real estate sector in crisis. Xi needs bankers to comply with his vision and allocate capital in the ways that China wants its money spent, without jeopardizing the financial system.

Heads are already starting to roll. Last month, Tian Huiyu, the former head of one of China’s biggest commercial lenders was charged with abuse of power and insider trading. And Bao Fan, a prominent investment banker, vanished.

Challenges: The financial sector is struggling to respond to the shaky balance sheets of local governments — overrun with debt after paying for “zero Covid” policies — and banks that lend to them.

Related: China will start issuing visas to foreign tourists again today, Reuters reports.

Analysis: On “The Ezra Klein Show,” Dan Wang, an expert on U.S.-China competition, explores how China’s growth trajectory halted.

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THE LATEST NEWS

• The leaders of the U.S., Britain and Australia unveiled plans to develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, part of an effort to counter China.

• Major protests are expected in France today before both houses of Parliament vote tomorrow on President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform.
• The 2026 World Cup will have 48 teams, up from the current 32, and 24 more games.

• Cyclone Freddy, a record-breaking storm, killed nearly 200 people in Malawi.
• A multibillion-dollar oil project led by French and Chinese companies in Uganda and Tanzania could threaten pristine habitats and Lake Victoria, a source of freshwater for 40 million people.
• In Antakya, a Turkish city hit hard by the earthquake, the damage is so profound that officials estimate that 80 percent of the remaining buildings will need to be demolished.

Amy Wax, a tenured law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has said publicly that “on average, Blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites” and that the U.S. is “better off with fewer Asians.”

The university is now grappling with a conundrum: Is she exercising her right to free speech, or should she be fired?

Lives lived: Dr. Jiang Yanyong, who helped expose China’s SARS crisis in 2003, was celebrated as a hero, then punished for denouncing the Tiananmen Square crackdown. He died at 91.

Masatoshi Ito introduced the American convenience store 7-Eleven to Japan, starting a retail revolution there. He died at 98.

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ARTS AND IDEAS

A new chatbot

OpenAI unveiled an update to ChatGPT, its revolutionary chatbot, just four months after the program stunned the tech world with its ability to answer complex questions and mimic human emotions. The update, called GPT-4, ups the ante in the lucrative AI arms race.

My colleagues tested GPT-4. It’s more precise, but it has a few of the old quirks.

• Developments: It can achieve impressive scores on standardized tests like the SAT, summarize complex news articles and wow doctors with its medical advice. It can answer questions about images; for example, if it’s given a photo of the inside of a fridge, it can suggest recipes based on what’s inside. Its jokes are almost funny.
• Challenges: GPT-4 still makes things up, a problem that researchers call “hallucination.” It can’t really talk about the future.

“Though it’s an awfully good test taker,” my colleagues write, GPT-4 “is not on the verge of matching human intelligence.”

Society: Chatbots are shifting the way we learn and work. But even the most impressive systems tend to complement, not replace, skilled workers. Morgan Stanley Wealth Management is building a system that will serve information from company documents to financial advisers.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

Start brining your homemade corned beef so it’s ready for St. Patrick’s Day this Friday.

In “Y/N,” a bored young woman in thrall to a K-pop band buys a one-way ticket to Seoul.

In “Punch,” by the New Zealand writer-director Welby Ings, a young boxer befriends a queer outcast and shifts his priorities.

How to make friends as an introvert.

Play the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Gossip (three letters).

Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Amelia

P.S. Paul Sonne, who has covered national security for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, is our newest Russia correspondent.

“The Daily” is on the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.

Send us your feedback. You can reach us at briefing@nytimes.com.

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