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The World
The 2021 Olympics are turning into a $20 billion bust for Japan: The Olympics open on Friday a year late and during a Covid-19 state of emergency in Tokyo. Stadiums and arenas that cost over $7 billion to build or renovate for the Games will be mostly empty after spectators were banned. Japan wanted the Tokyo Olympics to show the country is still a global force despite its declining population and a maturing economy eclipsed by China. Instead, the Olympics has compounded a malaise over the pandemic that has put its leader under pressure to keep his job. (Wall Street Journal)
The deputy head of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee did not rule out a last-minute cancelation of the Olympics as more athletes tested positive for Covid-19 and sponsors ditched plans to attend Friday’s opening ceremony. (The Times)
The official cost estimate for hosting the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games has been raised by 294 billion yen ($2.67 billion) to around 1.644 trillion yen, meaning the event will be much costlier than the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and likely on par with the 2012 London Olympics, the most expensive summer Olympiad in history. (Nikkei Asian Review)
The athletes are being upstaged by political drama as Japan's COVID Olympics open amid a strict regime of isolation, masks and testing that has not prevented outbreaks. (Nikkei Asian Review)
Central Chinese province swamped after heaviest rain in 1,000 years: Floods in one of China’s most populous regions have killed 13 and displaced 100,000 people. Entire avenues and subway tunnels have been submerged underwater in the city of Zhengzhou, provincial capital of Henan in central China. (Reuters, South China Morning Post)
‘Everything is on fire’: Siberia is hit by unprecedented burning. Locals fear for their health and property as smoke from raging forest fires shrouds an entire region of eastern Russia. (The Guardian)
The U.S. and Germany reached an agreement allowing the completion of a controversial Russian natural-gas pipeline. The Biden administration will effectively waive Washington’s longstanding opposition to the pipeline, Nord Stream 2, a change in the U.S. stance, ending years of speculation over the fate of the project, which has come to dominate European energy-sector forecasts. (Wall Street Journal)
Phone numbers belonging to 10 prime ministers, three presidents, and a king were among the list of 50K potential NSO targets, leaked to Amnesty International. (Washington Post)
The number of illegal migrants crossing the Channel into Britain passed the annual record yesterday as the Home Office said 287 migrants reached the UK in 12 boats, taking this year’s total to 8,474. (The Times)
In an effort to identify potential deportees, Canada quietly tested facial recognition technology on millions of unsuspecting travelers at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport in 2016. The six-month initiative, meant to pick out people the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) suspected might try to enter the country using fake identification, is the largest known government deployment of the technology in Canada to date. (Globe and Mail)
Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped by a year and a half in 2020. The decline, which is the largest seen in a single year since World War II, reflects the pandemic’s sustained toll. Black Americans lost 2.9 years of life expectancy while Latinos, who have longer life expectancy than non-Hispanic Blacks or Whites, saw a drop of three years. There was a decrease of 1.2 years among White people. (Washington Post)
Black patients are more likely to experience an adverse safety event than their White counterparts at the same hospital, according to new data from the Urban Institute. Researchers analyzed 11 patient safety indicators and found in six of those, Black adult patients experienced significantly worse patient safety outcomes than White patients of the same age and gender treated in the same hospital. Those disparities persisted even when comparing patients with similar types of insurance coverage. Black patients even experienced worse patient safety events relative to White patients in hospitals that served more Black patients. (Healthcare Dive)
A growing number of top Republicans are urging GOP supporters to get vaccinated as the delta variant surges across the U.S., marking a notable shift away from the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorizing that has gripped much of the party. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was part of the rising chorus; Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican in House leadership, received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine over the weekend and urged others to follow suit. (Washington Post)
More than a quarter of Covid-19 patients in Hong Kong this month had been vaccinated, most of them imported cases, raising concerns over the government’s scheme of halving quarantine periods for most arriving travelers. (South China Morning Post)
Chicago expands travel advisory again and mayor warns restrictions could return as COVID-19 numbers creep up. (Chicago Tribune)
Sixth Texas Democrat in Washington, D.C., tests positive for COVID-19. (Texas Tribune)
Americans are driving more and accidents are on the rise: Progressive Corp. reported a 47% year-over-year second-quarter increase in accident volume as well as an 8% surge in claims costs. (Wall Street Journal)
Economy
JPMorgan Chase is granting Jamie Dimon a “special award” of 1.5m share options that it said reflected the board’s desire for one of the longest-serving chief executives on Wall Street to stay at the bank for a “significant number of years”. JPMorgan’s internal model forecasts that the options would yield a profit to 65-year-old Dimon of about $49m after a 10-year vesting schedule. (Financial Times)
Shareholder pressure on companies to address race and other diversity issues has risen to record levels this year. Investor support for resolutions that focused on diversity soared this year. The average of investor support for diversity-related resolutions globally in 1H21 was 42.4%, compared with 23.9% over the whole of 2020, data showed. (Financial Times)
While Apple Pay’s rumored “buy now, pay later” service is perhaps the most prominent signal of BNPL’s growth potential, awareness and usage of BNPL services such as Affirm and Afterpay is on the rise without any signs of slowing down. 17% of U.S. adults said they used a BNPL service to make a purchase in June, a figure that rises to roughly one-quarter among younger consumers. Credit card ownership is four times that of BNPL usage among the general public, but it’s only twice that of BNPL usage among the country’s youngest adults. (Morning Consult)
Cryptocurrency markets have come under renewed pressure after top US officials said they expect to issue recommendations on stablecoins, important assets in the digital economy, in the coming months. The crypto retreat comes as global financial watchdogs have been clamping down on the sector after years of almost unrestrained growth. (Financial Times)
The time to embrace central bank digital currencies is now. (Financial Times)
U.S. Senators ask Team USA to boycott China’s digital yuan at 2022 Olympics. (Coindesk)
Montana boomtown Billings jumps to No. 1 on WSJ/Realtor.com housing market index. The rankings show how the housing boom has ignited homebuying in smaller to midsize cities around the U.S. (Wall Street Journal)
Technology
President Biden picked Jonathan Kanter to serve as the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for antitrust, in a major win for progressive Democrats who accused the agency of failing to aggressively pursue major tech companies’ anti-competitive and privacy violations. (Politico)
Netflix bleeds subscribers in US and Canada with no sign of recovery: Netflix lost 430,000 subscribers in the US and Canada in 2Q21 and issued weaker than expected forecasts for later in the year, rekindling investor doubts over how the streaming group will fare after the economic reopening. The company predicted it would add 3.5m subscribers in 3Q21; analysts had forecast that Netflix would add 5.9m subscribers during that period. (Financial Times)
Netflix revealed that its initial efforts in gaming will be focused on mobile games and that the games will be included with users’ Netflix subscriptions. The news comes just days after the company said it hired former EA and Oculus exec Mike Verdu to head up its gaming work. (The Verge)
Venmo said it's removing its global feed, meaning users will no longer be able to see payments between people they don't know. The change comes as part of a redesign of the Venmo app, which also includes a refreshed look, new discover features and expanded privacy controls. Venmo said people will still be allowed to see transactions between friends, noting that the friends feed will now be the only social feed in the app. (Cnet)
Tesla will allow other electric vehicles to access its global network of chargers later this year, CEO Elon Musk tweeted. The comment follows years of chatter by Musk that signaled the company was amenable to the idea. Until now, there have never been any details about how or when the company would open up its Supercharger network of 25,000 chargers. Details are still slim. (TechCrunch)
Smart Links
HBO Max to stream free episodes inside Snapchat for co-watching with friends. (TechCrunch)
An ‘Airbnb for pools’ is making a splash this summer. (Wall Street Journal)
Samsung will announce new foldables on August 11. (TechCrunch)
Square launches suite of savings, checking and loan services in major banking push. (ZDNet)
Huawei equipment quality still insufficient says UK. (Financial Times)
Why is the sun red? Wildfire smoke from a continent away spreads to New York. (New York Times)