***** MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2020 ~ VOL. CCLXXVI NO. 134 WSJ.com HHHH$4.
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from the two nations it strad-
dles. After yearslong surveys,
China and Nepal will announce
the peak’s stature Tuesday, Su-
sheel Dangol, the man in
charge of Nepal’s Everest-mea-
surement project, said Sunday.
“The challenge for us was
to prove we could do it,” he
said.
Measuring Everest has al-
ways been a challenge, taxing
the latest surveying technol-
Please turn to page AKATHMANDU, Nepal—How
tall is Mount Everest? Until
now, it depended on whom
you asked. China said it was
29,017 feet. Nepal said it was a
little taller, at 29,028 feet.
The countries have closed
that 11-foot gap and reached
an agreement. The world’s
tallest peak this week will get
a new, unified official heightBYERICBELLMAN
ANDKRISHNAPOKHARELMount Everest Is Getting
An Altitude Adjustment
iiiNepal and China, which straddle peak,
will give it a new, unified height measure
BYAMRITHRAMKUMAR
ANDJOEWALLACERecovery
Hopes
Bolster
Metals
Prices
Investors bet on rise in
manufacturing, helped
by coronavirus vaccines
and stimulus spendingConfirmed daily Covid-
deaths, seven-day
rolling averageSource: Johns Hopkins Center for Systems
Science and EngineeringNote: Data as of Dec. 5. Negative numbers
account for corrections in data.0123456 per million peopleSept. Oct. Nov. Dec.DenmarkFinlandNorwaySwedenU.S.WASHINGTON—President
Trump’s public and private
musings about running again in
2024 are scrambling the calcu-
lus for the large field of fellow
Republicans considering bids.
Most hopefuls have been
quick to show deference. But it
is unclear whether Mr. Trump,
who refuses to concede his loss
to President-elect Joe Biden,
will follow through, and rivals
either way will likely seek ways
to remain viable. Prospective
GOP candidates don’t want to
risk alienating Mr. Trump’s
base by appearing to push him
aside, but they also don’t want
to be left unprepared if he de-
cides not to run.
“For the last 20 years, every-
one who has run for president
has always started off pretend-
ing like they weren’t. You can
still do that with the possibility
of Trump running again,” said
Republican strategist Todd Har-
ris. The 2024 election, he added,
“could be the first time loyalty
to Trump and political ambition
are put on a collision course.”
Mr. Trump—who managed
to get more than 74 million
Please turn to page ABYALEXLEARY
ANDCATHERINELUCEYGOP Field
In Limbo
As Trump
Eyes 2024
About two weeks before
Zappos.com Inc. co-founder
Tony Hsieh died from injuries
in a November house fire, one
of his closest friends in Las
Vegas got a phone call.“Tony is in trouble,” the
caller told Philip Plastina, the
founder of an electronic dance
music group that frequently
performed at Mr. Hsieh’s par-
ties and live events over theByKirsten Grind,
James R. Hagerty
andKatherine Sayrepast decade.
Because of the pandemic,
Mr. Plastina hadn’t seen Mr.
Hsieh since the lauded tech ex-
ecutive relocated from Las Ve-
gas to Park City, Utah, earlier
this year. The caller asked Mr.
Plastina to go to Park City
right away in hopes he could
help pull Mr. Hsieh out of
what the caller described as
escapist tendencies, including
increasing drug and alcohol
abuse.
Mr. Plastina said he texted
two phone numbers he had for
Mr. Hsieh and sent severalemails but received no re-
sponse. Mr. Plastina never
reached his friend.
Mr. Hsieh, 46 years old,
died on Nov. 27, nine days af-
ter firefighters were called to
a home in New London, Conn.,
where he was staying. The
Connecticut medical examiner
has ruled the death an acci-
dent. The fire department is
investigating the fire’s cause.
Many questions remain
about the specific circum-
stances of his death. Close
friends now say it was the cul-
mination of a more than six-month downward spiral. The
entrepreneur brought online
shoe-shopping to the masses
as a co-founder of Zappos and
wrote a bestselling book on
company culture, “Delivering
Happiness.” This year, he
struggled, the friends say.
In August, he retired as
chief executive of Zappos,
which he had run for more
than a decade after selling it
to Amazon.com Inc. for more
than $1 billion.
Mr. Hsieh spoke often about
partying as a central feature
Please turn to page ABefore Zappos Ex-CEO Died:
A Spiral of Alcohol and Drugs
Investors are piling into
wagers on industrial metals
like copper and nickel, betting
that coronavirus vaccines and
stimulus programs will drive a
boom in manufacturing activ-
ity as part of a global eco-
nomic resurgence.
Prices for copper have risen
to their highest level in almost
eight years. Iron ore, the main
ingredient of steel, is one of
the best-performing assets in- Other raw materials,
such as aluminum and zinc,
have added roughly 15% since
the end of September and 40%
or more since mid-May. And
shares of metals producers, in-
cluding Freeport-McMoRan
Inc. and Century Aluminum
Co., are on a tear, climbing
alongside other stocks closely
tied to economic growth.
Industrial metals are the
building blocks of construc-
tion, key to making everything
from houses to electric cars.
Their prices are particularly
sensitive to manufacturing ac-
tivity in China because the
country accounts for roughly
half of global demand for cop-
per and other materials. The
faster-than-expected recovery
there has sparked a reversal in
prices, which had languished
Please turn to page A
Asia and the Middle East.
Eleven refineries from the
U.S. to Japan have said this
year that they intended to
close. Three have announced
partial shutdowns, and at least
an additional five are on the
chopping block, according to
analytics firm IHS Markit.
The thinning out is part of a
global shift in fuel-making
power away from wealthier
countries, where demand is in
long-term decline and there are
many older, smaller refineries.
Newer, larger facilities in coun-
tries such as China generally
are able to produce fuels for
less, benefiting from growingregional markets and shipping
their products overseas.
More than 1.7 million
barrels a day of refining ca-
pacity in countries such as the
U.S. and Japan has disap-
peared or is poised to do so in
2020 and 2021, as China, India
and the Middle East add more
than 2.2 million barrels a day
of fuel-making capability, ac-
cording to the International
Energy Agency.
In comparison, 2.2 million
barrels a day of refining ca-
Please turn to page AA decade ago, Australia was
home to seven refineries. Now,
it has four. Soon, it could have
just one.
Covid-19 is accelerating a
rash of global refinery shut-
downs in the world’s richest
economies. Companies from
energy giant Royal Dutch Shell
PLC to Australian fuel com-
pany Ampol Ltd. are closing fa-
cilities or considering doing so
as they reckon with anemic
fuel demand and growing com-
petition from newer, more effi-
cient fuel-making facilities inBYDAVIDWINNING
ANDREBECCAELLIOTTPandemic Hastens Wave
Of Fuel-Refinery Closures
Investor sets proxy campaign
against Exxon............................. B Pompeo set to begin new
chapter in Kansas................... A
Georgia rejects Trump’s call
to reverse result...................... ASweden Hit by
Surge in Cases
Voluntary approach failed to
halt spread of virus.AINSIDE
BUSINESS & FINANCE
How pricing strategy
helps manage the
pandemic’s impact
on sales.BWORLD NEWS
Japan hopes asteroid
dust can provide clues
about the origin of life
on Earth.ADAVID GRAY/BLOOMBERG NEWS JAXA/ASSOCIATED PRESSADVERTISEMENT
TakeacloserlookonpageR8.
There’salwaysmoretodiscoveraboutETFs.
CONTENTS
Arts in Review... A
Business News....... B
Crossword.............. A
Heard on Street... B
Markets............... B9-
Opinion.............. A15-Outlook....................... A
Personal Journal A11-
Sports....................... A
Technology............... B
U.S. News............. A2-
Weather................... A
World News....... A8-s2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved>What’s
News
Trump’s publicand pri-
vate musings about running
again in 2024 are scram-
bling the calculus for the
large field of fellow Repub-
licans considering bids.A
Lawmakers expectto pass
a one-week spending bill soon
that would keep the govern-
ment funded through Dec.
18 and buy more time for
talks on a long-term funding
measure and virus relief.A
Biden plansto nominate
California Attorney General
Becerra to lead Health and
Human Services and Rochelle
Walensky as CDC chief.A
Presidentsof struggling
U.S. colleges are reacting to
the pandemic by unilaterally
cutting programs, firing pro-
fessors and gutting tenure.A
A U.S. panelconcluded
that exposure to directed
energy was the most likely
cause of medical symptoms
experienced by diplomats
posted in Cuba and China.A
Two papers reportprom-
ising results from studies of
experimental therapies, in-
cluding Crispr gene editing,
for sickle-cell disease.A
Venezuela’sregime
staged congressional elec-
tions that are expected to
give Maduro complete con-
trol of all levers of power.AI
nvestors arepiling into wa-
gers on industrial metals,
betting that coronavirus vac-
cines and stimulus programs
will drive a boom in manu-
facturing activity as part of
a global economic revival.A
Covid-19 isaccelerating a
rash of global refinery shut-
downs in the world’s richest
economies, part of a global
shift in fuel-making power.A
Airbnb plansto boost
the proposed price range of
its initial public offering,
giving it a valuation of as
much as $42 billion.B
Exxon facesthe threat
of a proxy fight from an ac-
tivist investor with a sus-
tainability bent that wants
the energy giant to act
faster to remake itself.B
Google isdeciding whether
to impose severe penalties
on IAC over what the search
giant concluded were decep-
tive marketing practices.B
A governmentwatchdog
found no wrongdoing in the
process that created a now-
halted U.S. loan to Kodak to
make drug ingredients for
the Covid-19 response.A
Chick-fil-A suedmajor
poultry producers, accusing
them of price-fixing that the
chain says led to inflated prices
for chicken purchases.BBusiness&Finance
World-Wide
Venezuelan Government Expected to Tighten Grip in Election
TURNOUT: Voters line up at a polling station in Caracas on Sunday in Venezuela’s legislative elections. Many opposition lead-
ers urged a boycott of the vote, which is expected to give President Nicolás Maduro control of the National Assembly. ACRISTIAN HERNANDEZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESJOURNAL REPORT
Investing in Funds:
The battle over
buybacks.R1-