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The World
How do you process a number as staggering as 500,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.? The number is 25% more than the U.S. military death toll in World War II. It would be like imagining every person in a city the size of Atlanta had been lost. Or every postal service worker. This unimaginable number, 500,000, translates into 645 miles of caskets spread end to end or a hundred times more than all the stars visible to the naked eye, according to National Geographic’s visual journalists, who have tried to capture the magnitude of this grim milestone. Meanwhile, President Biden marked the 500,000th coronavirus death in the U.S. as “a truly grim, heartbreaking milestone.” (National Geographic, Washington Post)
President Biden announced changes to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), including a two-week window that only allows businesses with fewer than 20 employees to apply for loans, and efforts to increase racial equity. (ABC News)
The European Union agreed to impose landmark sanctions against several senior Russian security service officials over the Kremlin’s crackdown on the opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his supporters. The sanctions are the first under the EU’s new system to punish human rights violators and ban them from entry into the bloc. Said Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief: “Russia is drifting towards an authoritarian state and driving away from Europe.” (The Times)
Canada became the second country in the world, joining the U.S., to describe China’s treatment of its Uighur minority as a genocide, following a contentious parliamentary vote which is likely to further raise diplomatic tensions between the two nations. Lawmakers approved the non-binding motion, brought forward by opposition Conservatives. (The Guardian)
Top EU diplomats stepped up criticism of China’s crackdown on Hong Kong, as Brussels’ foreign policy leader said the situation in the city ‘keeps deteriorating’ but did not introduce any new sanctions. (South China Morning Post)
Shares in Petrobras tumbled and Brazil’s currency slid against the dollar after President Bolsonaro moved to replace the oil producer’s chief executive following a dispute over fuel prices. Petrobras’s São Paulo-listed stock fell 21%, as investors reacted to the government’s nomination on Friday of an army general with no experience in the oil and gas industry as the new boss of the state-controlled group. (Financial Times)
UK data show that one shot of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine reduces cases among elderly and healthcare, while the UK separately stated that all adults will get vaccinations by July 31. In the U.S., Moderna received “positive feedback” from the FDA on its proposal to increase the number of Covid-19 vaccine doses in each of its vials — upgrading from 5-10 doses to 15. (Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Associated Press)
New research found that 30.2% of who “had sought emergency care for COVID-19 and were given a psychiatric assessment 1 to 4 months after recovery” were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Another 17.3% had depression and 7% had anxiety. Meanwhile, an Israeli study found nearly half of people who contract mild or moderate cases of COVID-19 still experience symptoms six months later. (JAMA, Jerusalem Post)
California approved a $7.6-billion COVID-19 package, including $600 stimulus checks. The pandemic assistance plan also includes $4 billion in grants, tax breaks and fee waivers for small businesses. (Los Angeles Times)
Boris Johnson declared that Britain was on a “one-way road to freedom,” as he announced plans to restart most of society and the economy by May and published a blueprint for reopening pubs, restaurants and shops, allowing holidays and ending social distancing. Sectors of the economy in England will restart “cautiously and irreversibly” in four stages between early next month and mid-June — and may include vaccine passports to unlock mass events. (The Times)
NASA released a short video captured by the agency’s Perseverance spacecraft as it dropped through the Martian atmosphere last week, ending with the successful arrival of the rover on Mars’s surface. It is the first video of its kind sent back to Earth from the planet. “It gives me goose bumps every time I see it,” said David Gruel, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (New York Times)
February is normally the wettest month of the year in downtown L.A., when 3.8 inches of rain would usually fall. This year, next to nothing has fallen. (Los Angeles Times)
How Americans Navigated the News in 2020: A Tumultuous Year in Review. From November 2019 through December 2020, the Pathways project explored how Americans’ news habits and attitudes related to what they heard, perceived and knew about the 2020 presidential election and COVID-19. The research was based on 10 different surveys conducted on the Center’s American Trends Panel, a nationally representative panel of U.S. adults. Takeaways: 1. About a quarter of Republicans, Democrats consistently turned only to news outlets whose audiences aligned with them politically in 2020; 2. Republicans who relied on Trump for news in 2020 diverged from others in GOP in views of COVID-19, election; 3. Misinformation and competing views of reality abounded throughout 2020; 4. Americans who mainly got news via social media knew less about politics and current events, heard more about some unproven stories; 5. Republicans’ views on COVID-19 shifted over course of 2020; Democrats’ hardly budged. (Pew Research Center)
Economy
A seismic shift is under way, one that is moving vast amounts of Wall Street wealth from New York to South Florida. For the past several years, Wall Street has been colonizing the Sunshine State, attracted to more favorable tax policies and sunnier climes. And the momentum is only accelerating amid the pandemic. (Wall Street Journal)
More Americans are looking to move as remote work gains acceptance during Covid pandemic. Nearly 20% of people in the country are working from home full time as of December and 28% of Americans have considered relocating during the pandemic, NPD said. In addition, 20% more consumers are planning to move this year compared with the prior year. (CNBC, NPD Group)
Nearly 4.5 million U.S. homes are at severe risk of flooding, while homeowners are facing down $18.8 billion in flood damage annually. Even worse, insurance premiums set by the federal government would fail to cover even one quarter of the potential damage. The specificity is a potential game changer, as historically, homeowners were mostly able to understand their risks through outdated federal flood zone maps designed in the '70s. The data comes at a moment when climate change is exacerbating flooding that already costs the U.S. billions of dollars each year. (Bloomberg Green)
Blue-collar jobs are booming as Covid-19 boosts housing and e-commerce demand. Residential construction, package delivery and warehousing jobs exceed pre-pandemic levels, and some companies can’t find enough workers. (Wall Street Journal)
McKinsey’s 650 senior partners have begun voting on whether Kevin Sneader should serve a second term at the helm of a consultancy that has faced a succession of crises since his appointment in 2018. (Financial Times)
Insurance startup Oscar Health could raise as much as $1.05 billion in its IPO, following contracting revenue and rising losses last year. New York City-based Oscar is planning an IPO of 31 million shares at an estimated price of $32 to $34 per share, placing the company at a market capitalization of $6.7 billion at the upper end of that pricing range. (Healthcare Dive)
Technology
Facebook said it’s working to restore news pages in Australia after reaching an agreement with the government over disputed media legislation. Restrictions on news sharing on Facebook’s Australian platform should be lifted “in the coming days,” William Easton, managing director of Facebook Australia, said. (Bloomberg)
Apple will soon let you unlock your iPhone as long as you’re wearing an Apple Watch. That means it will be a lot easier to unlock your phone while wearing a mask, which you currently have to remove for Face ID to work. The feature will launch sometime this spring when Apple rolls out iOS 14.5 for iPhones and the corresponding Apple Watch update. Meanwhile, Apple sold 80M new iPhones globally in 4Q20, overtaking Samsung to become the largest smartphone vendor, increasing its market share by ~15%. (CNBC, MacRumors)
Reddit released its 2020 Transparency Report showing the amount of requests that required the platform to remove content or disclose private user data. Out of 3.37 billion pieces of content created on Reddit in 2020, 233 million were removed for a variety of reasons. The majority was spam but other reasons include harassment, minor sexualization and violence. The report also contained some interesting data on the governments around the world making the most content removal requests. (Reddit, Statista)
Cameo Generated $100 Million Last Year From Celebrity Shout-Out Videos: In 2020, the company pulled in gross revenue of $100 million, 75% of which Cameo paid to talent. That was up 4.5 times the year prior, and the company sent out 1.3 million Cameos last year alone. The No. 1 best-seller was Brian Baumgartner (Kevin from “The Office”), followed by former NFL quarterback Brett Favre, Snoop Dogg and Gilbert Gottfried. In fifth place was The Bachelor host Chris Harrison. (Variety)
Scientists want your smartphone to sniff out cancer—just like a dog. A new study shows that it’s possible to detect cancer via smell, just like dogs do. Now researchers want to embed this technology into phones. (Fast Company)
Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen are now co-hosts of a Spotify-exclusive podcast — Renegades: Born in the USA. They’ll discuss “race, fatherhood, marriage, and the state of America,” and the first two episodes premiere today for both free and premium Spotify users. The first season will contain eight episodes total. Meanwhile, Spotify is expanding into 80 new markets, mostly countries in Africa, Eastern Europe and the Pacific — and announced Spotify HiFi, a lossless streaming tier coming later this year. (The Verge, Spotify, Spotify-2)
Smart Links
Will SPACs outpace traditional IPOs this year? (Crunchbase)
University of Washington study: People are more likely to believe sexual harassment claims from women who are young and ‘conventionally attractive.’ (Seattle Times)
Should we allow criticism while brainstorming? In cooperative settings, criticism can boost creativity; in competitive settings, criticism should be prohibited. (MIT Sloan)
Chief of Cherokee Nation wants Jeep to stop using tribe’s name on SUVs. (CNBC)
Cord cutting in 2020: Pay TV industry lost 5.5 million subscribers. (Protocol)
New York City will reopen its movie theaters for the first time in nearly a year. (The Verge)
She rowed across the Atlantic, joining a new wave of extreme endurance athletes. (New York Times)