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The World
Disease, the rich-poor gap, climate change and conflicts within and among nations will pose greater challenges in coming decades, with the pandemic already worsening some of those problems, a U.S. intelligence report said. The rivalry between China and a U.S.-led coalition of Western nations likely will intensify, fueled by military power shifts, demographics, technology and “hardening divisions over governance models,” said Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World, produced by the U.S. National Intelligence Council Regional powers and non-state actors may exert greater influence, with the likely result “a more conflict-prone and volatile geopolitical environment” and weakened international cooperation, it said. (Reuters, Global Trends 2040)
The Biden administration is calling for the world’s biggest multinational companies to pay levies to national governments based on their sales in each country, as part of an ambitious proposal for a global minimum tax. The plan would apply to the global profits of the very largest companies, including big US technology groups, regardless of their physical presence in a given country. (Financial Times)
More than 3,600 U.S. health care workers perished in the first year of the pandemic. Meanwhile, nearly 20% of the U.S. population now is fully vaccinated. (Kaiser Family Foundation, Washington Post)
An international group of 24 scientists and researchers said that a joint China-W.H.O. study provided no credible answers about how the pandemic began, and more rigorous investigations are required — with or without Beijing’s involvement. (Reuters)
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that compulsory vaccinations would not contravene human rights law — and may be necessary in democratic societies. Although the ruling did not deal directly with Covid-19 vaccines, experts believe it could have implications for the vaccination drive against the virus, especially for those who have so far stated a refusal to accept the jab. (Deutsche Welle)
Canada’s vaccine rollout has been among the slowest in major economies, and the country is imposing fresh lockdowns as coronavirus variants spread. Meanwhile, Argentina curtails leisure, public transport use after hitting new Covid-19 record. (Wall Street Journal, Reuters)
More than 50 police officers have been hurt and 10 people arrested as a result of rioting over the past 10 days, in several towns and cities across Northern Ireland. With parts of Belfast scarred and amid a growing political crisis, the Northern Ireland assembly united in its condemnation of a seventh night of rioting. Police and politicians called it the worst violence in Northern Ireland in more than a decade, triggered in part by pro-British Protestant unionists who fear that their home is drifting away from Britain in the new realities of a post-Brexit world. (BBC News, The Guardian, Washington Post)
The U.S. appears unlikely to rejoin the 34-nation Open Skies Treaty over its concerns about Russian noncompliance, with the Biden administration telling international partners in a recent diplomatic memo obtained by Defense News that doing so would send the “wrong message” to Russia. (Defense News)
Angela Merkel called on the Kremlin to unwind its recent military buildup near eastern Ukraine. The number of Russian troops at the border is now greater “than at any time since 2014,” when war in eastern Ukraine first broke out and Russia seized the Crimea region. (Deutsche Welle, Agence France-Presse)
Calling gun violence in the U.S. “an international embarrassment,” President Biden took a set of initial steps to address the problem, starting with a crackdown on the proliferation of so-called ghost guns, or firearms assembled from kits. Acknowledging that more aggressive actions like banning assault weapons, closing background check loopholes and stripping gun manufacturers of their immunity from liability lawsuits would have to wait for Congressional action, he said it was nonetheless vital to do what he could on his own to confront what he called an epidemic of shootings that are killing roughly 100 Americans a day. (New York Times)
California officials estimated that roughly 3 in 10 guns recovered from crimes in the state are ghost weapons. (Los Angeles Times)
JetBlue Airways is the first company to end a pause in PAC contributions following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and disclose giving to one of the Republican lawmakers objecting to the Electoral College vote count. A $1,000 contribution from the airline’s corporate political action committee to Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) was listed in the report filed with the F.E.C on April 5. Malliotakis was among nearly 150 lawmakers who objected to the Electoral College vote certification on Jan. 6. (Bloomberg Government)
46% of parents don’t want their kids to go straight to a four-year college. The anti-college sentiment runs greater among Republican, white and rural parents. In lieu of a four-year college, 16% of parents were interested in non-college vocational training and 22% preferred to see their children consider an array of other options, including starting a business, joining the military, getting a job or doing community service. (Hechinger Report, Gallup)
Economy
Based on an analysis of more than 150 companies, after women join the top management team, firms become more open to change and less open to risk, and they tend to shift from an M&A-focused strategy to more investment into internal R&D. In other words, when women join the C-suite, they don’t just bring new perspectives — they actually shift how the C-suite thinks about innovation, ultimately enabling these firms to consider a wider variety of strategies for creating value. (Harvard Business Review)
With about half the Amazon union ballots counted late Thursday, votes against unionization had a more than 2-to-1 advantage over those in favor. When the counting paused, there were 1,100 votes against unionization and 463 in support. The incomplete tally put Amazon on the cusp of defeating the most serious organized-labor threat in the company’s history. Amazon has challenged hundreds of ballots. (New York Times, The Guardian)
The market value of office towers in Manhattan has plummeted 25% in one year. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest private-sector employer in New York City, wrote that remote work would “significantly reduce our need for real estate.” For every 100 employees, he said, his bank “may need seats for only 60 on average.” (New York Times)
U.K. fintech firm Revolut is expanding its definition of remote work to include overseas. The London-based firm will soon let its 2,000 employees work from a different country for two months a year. (The Information)
Private equity paid a record amount for deals in 1Q21, reaching an all-time high of $250.6 Billion — spiking nearly 116% over the same period last year as competition for deals heats up. (PE Hub)
McDonald's to hire 25,000 staff in Texas this month. (Reuters)
What if businesses could learn from their worst mistakes without actually making them? How might the same progress and innovation occur, without firms incurring the costs associated with such errors? The results of a recent study about close calls in health care suggest that when people feel secure about speaking up at work, incidents in which catastrophe is narrowly averted rise to the surface, spurring important growth and systems improvement. “People don't pay enough attention, especially in the business world, to the potential goldmine of near-misses,” says Harvard Business School Professor Amy C. Edmondson, who studies psychological safety and organizational learning. Incidents that almost result in loss or harm often pass unnoticed, in part because workers worry about being associated with vulnerability or failure. But when leaders frame near misses as free learning opportunities and express the value of resilience to their teams, the likelihood that workers will report such incidents increases. (Harvard Business School)
Technology
Production of some MacBooks and iPads has been postponed due to the global component shortage, Nikkei Asia has learned, in a sign that even Apple, with its massive procurement power, is not immune from the unprecedented supply crunch. (Nikkei Asian Review)
After hitting carmakers like Tesla and Sony’s PlayStation 5, chip shortages have now spread to China’s vast home appliances industry. Amid a global shortage in semiconductors, the country produces about two-thirds of the world’s air conditioners, televisions and microwave ovens, and about half of refrigerators and washing machines. Meanwhile, a Taiwan drought is pitting chip makers against farmers. (South China Morning Post, New York Times)
Procter & Gamble helped develop a technique being tested in China to gather iPhone data for targeted ads, a step intended to give companies a way around Apple’s new privacy tools, according to people familiar with the matter. The move is part of a broader effort by the consumer-goods giant to prepare for an era in which new rules and consumer preferences limit the amount of data available to marketers. (Wall Street Journal)
Epic v. Apple is almost here: Apple and Epic both filed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law documents. The trial is set to begin on May 3, and will last until May 24. Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers has given each side 45 hours to argue its case, and both companies plan to call their highest executives to the stand. As part of its filing, Apple argues that the App Store doesn't lead the gaming market and so cannot be considered a monopoly. Meanwhile, Epic accuses Apple of using app vetting as a “pretext” to take a commission. (Source Code, 9to5Mac)
Global IT spending is expected to rise 8.4% to $4.1 trillion this year, but the rebound to pre-pandemic spending levels won’t spread evenly across industries. (Wall Street Journal)
Miami Mayor Tries to Build a Tech Mecca, One Tweet at a Time: The viral moment that turned Francis Suarez, the mayor of Miami, into a tech recruiter happened on Dec. 4, shortly before 9 p.m. Miami time. On Twitter, Delian Asparouhov, a Founders Fund venture capitalist, had mused: “ok guys hear me out, what if we move silicon valley to miami”? “How can I help?” Suarez responded. His tweet started bounding across the internet. Suarez printed T-shirts with the phrase, in Miami Vice pink and blue. A venture capitalist with Miami ties, Shervin Pishevar, papered a billboard with the mayor’s face and a pitch—“Thinking about moving to Miami? DM me.”—on the Bay Area stretch of U.S. Highway 101. Suarez even started a YouTube talk show, Cafecito Talk, where he interviews Miami boosters and would-be migrants. (Cafecito is a Spanish word for coffee.) Given that he’s become Miami’s most visible hype man—tweeting with Elon Musk at 3 a.m. about boring a tunnel under the Miami River—you’d never guess he has a relatively powerless job. Suarez, 43, doesn’t personally control a budget or a major workforce and dedicates significant time to his side gig as a real estate lawyer. That’s a relatively common arrangement in South Florida, where the tiered government structure generally means that the county mayor reigns supreme. And in Miami, a city manager, not the mayor, directs day-to-day municipal operations. Yet Suarez has slipped into so many buzzy narratives in the past year that his fame has become a power unto itself. (Bloomberg)
Smart Links
New York’s wealthiest look for exits as state readies hefty tax increase. (CNBC)
‘Stay-at-home parent’ will soon be an employment option on LinkedIn. (Washington Post)
Hackers scraped data from 500 million LinkedIn users — about 2/3 of the platform's userbase — and posted it for sale online. (Insider)
Error-riddled data sets are warping our sense of how good AI really is. (MIT Technology Review)
Impossible Foods in talks to list on the stock market. (Reuters)
How brain cells repair their DNA reveals 'hot spots' of aging and disease. (Salk Institute)
Golf courses target those who think 18 holes is just too many. (Wall Street Journal)
UPS is testing electric helicopter mail carriers. (Fast Company)