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The World
Senior Republican lawmakers lined up to slam the fledgling multilateral global minimum tax agreement, accusing Biden of harming U.S. competitiveness, ceding taxing rights to other countries, and failing to solve a long-running battle over digital taxes. Pat Toomey, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, called it“crazy,” adding: “Certainly the whole fact that they had to try to persuade all these other countries to make sure they raise their taxes is a confession of the damage we’re doing to our own country. They certainly wouldn’t have the votes to approve a treaty of this kind that they’re contemplating.” Wyoming Senator John Barrasso said the deal was “wrong” for the US. “This tax will be anti-competitive, anti-US, and harmful for us as we try to continue to grow the economy at a time when we’re coming out of a pandemic.” Utah’s Mike Lee tweeted: “This is what a cartel looks like.” (Financial Times)
Biden’s international meetings begin today with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and end six days later with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden will use this week’s G7 summit to encourage allies to take a harder stance towards Beijing, as the US president capped a string of new actions with an executive order to boost scrutiny of Chinese software and apps. (Washington Post, Financial Times)
Biden, Johnson agree to open U.S.-U.K. travel as soon as possible, while the two leaders also plan to unveil a revised Atlantic Charter, modeled on the 1941 Churchill-Roosevelt agreement. (Wall Street Journal)
Myanmar’s military junta formally charged detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other officials with corruption, according to the country’s ministry of information. “The Anti-Corruption Commission has inspected corruption cases against ex-state counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” the ministry said. “She was found guilty of committing corruption using her rank.” (Bloomberg)
Russia outlawed organizations founded by jailed opposition activist Alexei Navalny by ruling them “extremist,” a label that bans his supporters from running in elections and threatens them with years in prison. A Moscow court said that Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and his nationwide network of political activists should be classified alongside Isis and al-Qaeda, in a move that rights groups say is part of a Kremlin campaign to silence opposition to Putin ahead of parliamentary elections in September. (Financial Times)
The Chinese military conducted amphibious landing exercises off China’s southeastern coast, one day after the US landed a C-17 strategic transport aircraft on the self-governed island of Taiwan. The drill in the Taiwan Strait — which is shared by the island and China — came as the country’s defence ministry condemned the US landing as a “very vicious political provocation.” (The Times)
The U.S. and China held their third trade talks in 2 weeks with ‘candid, pragmatic exchange of views.’ China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao spoke with his American counterpart Gina Raimondo on Thursday. It follows similar discussions between Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai as well as US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. (South China Morning Post)
JBS USA Holdings Inc. paid an $11 million ransom to cybercriminals who last week temporarily knocked out plants that process roughly one-fifth of the nation’s meat supply. The ransom payment, in bitcoin, was made to shield JBS meat plants from further disruption and limit the potential impact on restaurants, grocery stores and farmers that rely on JBS, said Andre Nogueira, chief executive of JBS’s U.S. division. “It was very painful to pay the criminals, but we did the right thing for our customers,” Nogueira said. (Wall Street Journal)
Pipeline investigation upends the idea that bitcoin is untraceable: The F.B.I.’s recovery of Bitcoins paid in the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack showed cryptocurrencies are not as hard to track as it might seem. (New York Times)
El Salvador became the first country to make bitcoin legal tender. The country’s legislature passed the bill with 62 of 84 possible votes. Bitcoin entrepreneurs were thrilled by the decision as 70% of Salvadorans do not have access to traditional financial services. (Financial Times)
Bitcoin fall has strategists eyeing a possible drop to $20,000. (Bloomberg)
With a month and a half remaining before the beginning of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, Americans feel less good about about huge delegations from all over the world gathering in one place. (CivicScience)
The American Hospital Association sent a letter to the CEO of the nation's largest commercial insurer, UnitedHealthcare, asking the payer to abandon a new ER policy that could potentially deny coverage if a visit is later deemed a non-emergency. AHA called the policy "dangerous" and said it will lead to a "chilling effect," as patients may avoid the ER over fears a visit may not be covered. (Healthcare Dive)
Fear of coronavirus will no longer be acceptable reason for Texans on unemployment to turn down job offers. The state's unemployment agency is ending that exemption June 26, when out-of-work Texans will also stop receiving an extra $300 in federal jobless benefits. (Texas Tribune)
As Covid-19 origins get another look, nearly half of the public backs Wuhan Lab theory. Only about a quarter of U.S. adults believe the virus moved naturally from animals to humans. (Morning Consult)
Economy
IBM told U.S. employees they will be going back to work at company offices the week of Sept. 7, according to a staff memo Tuesday from Chief Human Resources Officer Nickle LaMoreaux. LaMoreaux cited “improving U.S. clinical conditions and broad access to Covid-19 vaccines” for the company’s decision to reopen U.S. offices fully in September. (Bloomberg)
Mark Zuckerberg says all Facebook employees can request to work remotely full-time if their job allows, while office-based staff will need to be in 50%+ of the time, and more. (CNBC)
Employers and employees found that remote work is both more feasible and boosts productivity than previously thought, according to Stanford Professor of Economics Nicholas Bloom, who found that most full time workers expect to continue working remotely at least two or three days a week. Bloom predicts that the new normal will be a hybrid arrangement with 20% of the workday at home. (Stanford Business)
Although many people have been working from home for over a year, workplace harassment has persisted, even virtually. According to a Project Include report, 25% of respondents said they experienced an increase of gender-based harassment during the pandemic. In addition, 10% said there was an increase of race based hostility, 23% of workers 50 years or older reported a jump in age-related abuse. (New York Times)
Banks to Companies: No More Deposits, Please. Some banks, awash in deposits, are encouraging corporate clients to spend the cash on their businesses or move it elsewhere. (Wall Street Journal)
The Fed is paying 0.00%, and still depositors are flocking: The Fed’s none-too-generous interest rate attracted $497 billion in funds on June 8. (Bloomberg Businessweek)
German finance minister Olaf Scholz has played down the surge in inflation in Germany in May, calling it a “temporary phenomenon.” Scholz blamed the rise on “adjustment effects”, singling out the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic in certain sectors of the economy, which has disrupted supply chains and pushed up demand for everything from raw materials to semiconductors. (Financial Times)
Sequoia Capital, one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms, is mulling a set of sweeping changes to the way it distributes investment returns, a move that could help it avoid tax increases proposed by the Biden administration. First, Sequoia would make an early, pre-initial public offering distribution of some shares in portfolio companies, rather than waiting until after an IPO. Second, instead of distributing the shares directly to its general partners, Sequoia would hold the shares in a special purpose vehicle; no immediate payout would be made. (Bloomberg)
May was huge for global VC funding: Venture investors put $43.7 billion to work globally in May 2021. It was the third-highest monthly funding total in the past decade, just behind March and April, with dealmaking buoyed by robust valuations and plenty of buzzy exits. (Crunchbase)
Bloomberg's plan to take on Davos and the world's greatest challenges: Michael unveiled the inaugural members of a new group to focus on solving its biggest problems, including what comes next as emerging economies prepare for recovery, will also impact the rest of the world. Members of the first Bloomberg New Economy Catalysts cohort span six continents and are focused on technology and policy in emerging economies. The forum, hosted by the former New York City mayor, Henry Kissinger and Hank Paulson, aims to draw roughly 400 business executives, government officials and academics to discuss climate, cities, finance, trade and public health. (Axios)
Technology
Fastly, the company hit by a major outage that caused many of the world’s top websites to go offline briefly this week, blamed the problem on a software bug that was triggered when a customer changed a setting. Meanwhile, Fastly shares rose 11% in the aftermath of the outage. (Associated Press, Fastly, Financial Times)
How a company you’ve probably never heard of caused half the internet to go dark. (Recode)
More App fees news: Instagram's Adam Mosseri says Facebook plans to help creators avoid Apple's 30% cut by “facilitating transactions that happen in other places,” while the ounders of Fanhouse, an OnlyFans-like platform, say Apple is demanding they start paying “30% of creator earnings” by August or be removed from the App Store. (CNBC, The Verge)
Johnson & Johnson faces some 15.5 billion potential cyberattacks each day, according to Marene Allison, J&J’s chief information security officer. She brackets them into four main threats: Nation-state attacks; criminals; hacktivists; and insiders. (Wall Street Journal)
A Swedish maker of lithium-ion batteries, Northvolt, raised $2.75 billion in new equity funding. The company, founded by former Tesla executives, is the leader in the European domestic supply chain for lithium-ion batteries. It represents the anticipated surge in electric car sales—which could more than quadruple in the next four years. (Axios, Bloomberg)
MoviePass, the failed subscription service that promised unlimited moviegoing for $9.95 a month, agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission accusations that it knowingly deceived customers, making the service difficult to use, and exposed their personal data. The F.T.C. revealed the elaborate obstacles that MoviePass executives made the most active users overcome, including forcing them to reset their passwords and setting unannounced limits on their accounts. (New York Times)
From iPhones to iPads: The Apple gadgets you should — and shouldn’t — buy right now. It’s a bad time to purchase an iPhone. The same goes for AirPods and Apple Watches. But it’s a good time to get an iPad. (Wall Street Journal)
Smart Links
G-7 plans 1 billion-shot giveaway as U.S. buys 500 million doses. (Bloomberg)
Sir Richard Branson may make a last-ditch effort to beat Jeff Bezos into space. (ArsTechnica)
Heavier plane passengers mean new airline safety limits: An FAA weight rule change could result in more fliers getting bumped + baggage delays. (Wall Street Journal)
Two members of an FDA advisory committee quit after approval of Alzheimer’s drug. (Washington Post)
U.K. home sales logjam sees record 700,000 pending deals in the pipeline. (Mansion Global)
Biden revokes and replaces Trump orders banning TikTok and WeChat. (The Verge)
Expect an Orwellian future if AI isn't kept in check, Microsoft exec Brad Smith says. (LiveScience)