The main events by the morning: December 13

• Xi Jinping declined an invitation from Donald Trump to attend his inauguration. Instead of the Chinese President, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States and his wife will attend the ceremony, which corresponds to standard diplomatic protocol. The invitation itself turned out to be unexpected for Beijing, where they are accustomed to the strictness of diplomatic norms and take into account the difficult dynamics of relations between the United States and China.

• Israel has begun preparations for strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. This became possible after the destruction of 86% of Syrian air defense systems, which significantly strengthened Israel's control over the airspace and provided security for such operations.

• Trump's imposition of tariffs on goods from China, Canada and Mexico could lead to a 1.1% reduction in US GDP. A study by the Institute for the Study of Asian Economics and the Japanese organization JETRO showed that raising tariffs on a wide range of imported goods will cause prices and unemployment to rise. The greatest damage is expected in industries such as agriculture and mining.

• UAE banks have increased the processing time for payments from Russian companies to an average of two weeks. This is 30% longer than last year, due to tougher sanctions against the Russian financial sector. The November restrictions further complicated the work of banks, which began to review interaction schemes and strengthened payment verification.

• Russian developers will face the termination of payments from Google Play. Starting from December 26, the platform suspends payments for applications for an indefinite period if bank accounts are registered in Russia. Earlier, in May 2022, Google had already banned developers from Russia from downloading and updating paid applications. Both old projects and paid features in new applications will fall under the new restrictions.