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The World
U.S. raises concerns over China's counter-espionage push: The United States on Wednesday raised concerns over a Chinese call to encourage its citizens to join counter-espionage work and said it has been closely monitoring the implementation of Beijing's expanded anti-spying law. China's Ministry of State Security on Tuesday said China should encourage its citizens to join counter-espionage work, including creating channels for individuals to report suspicious activity and rewarding them for doing do. (Reuters)
The US is partially evacuating its embassy in Niger, after a military junta seized power in the west African nation last week and some neighbouring countries warned that they may use force unless constitutional order is restored. The state department on Wednesday ordered the departure of non-emergency personnel and family members, a move that may signal a deterioration of the security situation. It highlights the challenges facing Washington as it responds to the military takeover in a country that has been an important regional partner for the US. (Financial Times)
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by at least 60% in July compared to the same month last year, the environment minister, Marina Silva, has told the Guardian. The good news comes ahead of a regional summit that aims to prevent South America’s largest biome from hitting a calamitous tipping point. The exact figure, which is based on the Deter satellite alert system, will be released in the coming days, but independent analysts described the preliminary data as “incredible” and said the improvement compared with the same month last year could be the best since 2005. (The Guardian)
NYC Migrant Crisis Hits Breaking Point in Midtown Manhattan: The migrant crisis is spilling out onto the streets of New York, with hundreds of people sleeping and waiting for help on the sidewalks outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. A block away from JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s headquarters, dozens of people, mostly men, waited for a chance at shelter behind a row of metal fences, marking a new phase in the city’s scramble to house and care for the more than 93,000 people who’ve arrived in the past 18 months. In interviews on Tuesday, a handful said they’d been waiting for days. (Bloomberg)
NYC Considers Central Park Among Sites to House Migrants as Crisis Mounts. “Everything is on the table,” Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said Wednesday at a press conference when asked about housing migrants in city parks. The sites are among 3,000 locations the city is reviewing, she said. (City Lab)
Border arrests surged in July, a blow to Biden migration plan: Apprehensions on the U.S.-Mexico border plunged in June after the administration’s new policies took effect, but rose more than 30% in July. (Texas Tribune)
Some of California’s top politicians are calling on Taylor Swift to postpone her Los Angeles concerts, standing in solidarity with striking hotel workers — and risking scorn from Swifties. California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat, and dozens of elected officials from across the state on Tuesday signed their names to a campaign organized by Unite Here Local 11 to put pressure on the music icon. Swift is scheduled to perform six sold-out shows at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium, beginning Thursday and continuing through Aug. 9. (Politico)
It’s midwinter, but it’s over 100 degrees in South America: It’s the middle of winter in South America, but that hasn’t kept the heat away in Chile, Argentina and surrounding locations. Multiple spells of oddly hot weather have roasted the region in recent weeks. The latest spell early this week has become the most intense, pushing the mercury above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, while setting an August record for Chile. In Buenos Aires, where the average high on Aug. 1 is 58 degrees (14 Celsius), it surpassed 86 (30 Celsius) on Tuesday. (Washington Post)
‘How Do I Do That?’ The New Hires of 2023 Are Unprepared for Work: Remote learning during the pandemic left students short of basic skills. Now companies are trying to teach them on the job. The knock-on effect of years of remote learning during the pandemic is gumming up workplaces around the country. It is one reason professional service jobs are going unfilled and goods aren’t making it to market. It also helps explain why national productivity has fallen for the past five quarters, the longest contraction since at least 1948, according to the U.S. Labor Department. The shortcomings run the gamut from general knowledge, including how to make change at a register, to soft skills such as working with others. Employers are spending more time and resources searching for candidates and often lowering expectations when they hire. Then they are spending millions to fix new employees’ lack of basic skills. (Wall Street Journal)
Economy
Fitch Move Spotlights US Debt Risk as Recession Fear Fades: The move by Fitch Ratings to downgrade US government credit has put a renewed focus on the nation’s debt trajectory, just when the world’s largest economy is shaking off forecasts for a looming recession. In the past week, Chairman Jerome Powell said the Federal Reserve is no longer expecting a US downturn, even after the most aggressive interest rate hikes in decades, and economists at Bank of America Corp. also scrapped their recession forecast. Evidence of enduring strength among consumers and businesses keeps coming in: Data released Wednesday showed US companies added more jobs in July than expected. (Bloomberg)
U.S. Downgrade Sparks Selloff in Stocks and Bonds: U.S. stocks and bonds suffered a wave of selling after America’s credit downgrade, sending Treasury yields to the highest levels of the year and major indexes toward their worst session in months. The S&P 500 fell 1.4%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 2.2%, its worst one-day performance since February. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 348 points, or 1%, dragged down by shares of Intel and Microsoft. The declines followed a global selloff in markets in Europe and Asia. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 4.077%, its highest level since November, as bond prices fell. (Wall Street Journal)
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon calls Fitch Ratings U.S. downgrade ‘ridiculous’ but says it ‘doesn’t really matter’. (CNBC)
America’s Fiscal Time Bomb Ticks Even Louder: Fitch’s downgrade of the U.S. debt rating only caused a flutter in markets, but fiscal strains will soon get harder to ignore. (Wall Street Journal)
Apple Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said that their new high-yield savings account has reached $10 billion in US deposits, showing strength in the face of speculation that the partners may be headed for a breakup. Since the service launched in April, 97% of users have chosen to get their Apple Daily Cash — a cash-back reward program — deposited into the account, the iPhone maker said in a statement Wednesday. The savings account is built into the Wallet app on iPhones and allows users to transfer money in and out like a traditional account, yielding 4.15% in interest. (Bloomberg)
India, Israel lead the way in Asian venture market drop: Earlier this year India surpassed China as the world’s most populous nation, but its startup industry is headed in the other direction, especially compared to its neighbor. Funding to startups based in India plummeted 72% in Q2, Crunchbase data shows. (Crunchbase News)
Fortune’s Global 500 ranks the 500 largest companies in the world by revenue—an even more challenging cohort to become a part of than the well-known Fortune 500, which only includes U.S. businesses. The smallest company on the Global 500 has revenues of $30.9 billion, compared to $7.2 billion for the Fortune 500. On the new edition of the Global 500 out today, 29 of the 500 businesses are led by female CEOs. That’s up 20% from last year’s 24 female chief executives, for a total share of 5.8%. The Global 500 trails the Fortune 500, where women now run 10.4% of businesses. (The Broadsheet)
Technology
The Bill Comes Due for Microsoft’s AI Push: For the past year, Microsoft has been racing to add capacity to its Azure cloud computing platform, especially for customers seeking to train and run artificial intelligence applications. Now the cost of that effort is becoming visible: Microsoft’s second quarter capital expenditures were the highest quarterly capex in the company’s history. (The Information)
Cisco’s ex-CEO just raised $175M for his new startup: John Chambers, the former longtime CEO of networking giant Cisco, has raised $175 million for his new networking startup, which aims to take on his former employer with simpler, more modern networking technology. (Crunchbase News)
Amazon mastered the internet. Grocery stores are a different story: Lawsuits and layoffs now litter Amazon’s years-long path to conquering the brick-and-mortar grocery store. With its cashier-less checkout and computerized shopping carts, Amazon Fresh was supposed to revolutionize grocery shopping when it launched at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. But the high-tech stores have proved more frustrating than fun for some customers, current and former employees say. In February, as the company cut costs and laid off workers amid economic head winds, Amazon pressed pause on its grocery expansion, halting projects in more than a dozen locations and leaving prospective landlords and locals in the lurch. (Washington Post)
Hollywood’s Pain Is YouTube’s Advertising Gain: The Hollywood labor strikes have proven a boon for YouTube, with Google’s video-streaming service luring television ad buyers who are worried about committing to traditional TV ads while actors and writers remain on the picket lines. That, combined with YouTube’s push into live sports with National Football League games starting in September and growing usage of YouTube on TV sets, is prompting a dramatic reshuffling of TV ad spending this summer. Top executives at several advertising agencies told The Information they’ll commit at least 10% to 20% more with YouTube this fall than they did last year. Ad spending commitments to traditional TV networks, meanwhile, are down 15%, multiple senior ad-buying executives said. (The Information)
Google updates its generative AI-based Search Generative Experience with more multimedia, faster responses, and additional context for links in its summary box. (The Verge)
Microsoft rolls out spatial audio for Teams on Windows and macOS after months of testing; each user has a distinct audio position based on their screen location. (The Verge)
Smart Links
Small businesses boost US private payrolls in July. (Reuters)
DoorDash Sees Record Orders, Showing Appetite For Delivery. (Bloomberg)
How Airbnb hosts keep evading city crackdowns. (City Lab)
AMD CEO: Forthcoming MI300 Chip Could Boost Data Center Revenue. (The Information)
CVS announces restructuring plan after profit falls 37%. (Healthcare Dive)