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The World
Some of the biggest U.S. employers of entry-level workers are adding tens of thousands of new positions. Many are raising wages or adding perks to entice workers from other jobs or off the sidelines of the labor market. Amazon said it would hire 75,000 more workers and offer $1,000 signing bonuses in some locations. McDonald’s said it wants to hire 10,000 employees at company-owned restaurants in the next three months and that it would raise pay at those locations. (Wall Street Journal)
McDonald’s also is raising hourly wages for more than 36,500 of its existing employees. Denny’s said labor shortages were “the primary headwind” preventing franchisees from extending opening hours. (Financial Times)
More than 1.9 million Americans in Alabama, Mississippi and 14 other Republican-led states are set to have their unemployment checks slashed significantly starting in June, as GOP governors seek to restrict jobless assistance in an effort to force more people to return to work. Arizona and Ohio became the latest states on Thursday to announce plans to scale back benefits. (Washington Post)
Colonial Pipeline paid some $5M ransom in cryptocurrency within hours of the attack, but the hackers' decrypting tool was so slow that it had to use its own backups. The payment came shortly after attack got underway last week. (Bloomberg)
The new C.D.C. recommendations that people who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus can stop wearing masks and maintaining social distance in most settings caught state officials and businesses by surprise and raised a host of difficult questions about how the guidelines would be carried out. It came as a surprise to many people in public health and was a stark contrast with the views of a large majority of epidemiologists surveyed in the last two weeks by The New York Times. (New York Times, New York Times-2)
India recorded more than 4,000 Covid-19 deaths for a second straight day as infections stayed below 400,000, and extended the interval between doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to up to 16 weeks amid a dire shortage of shots in the country. (Reuters)
Only 52% of Americans have a great deal of trust in CDC, while only 37% of Americans said they had a lot of trust in the NIH or FDA. Further, state health departments have the trust of 41% of Americans, and local health departments only did slightly better at 44%. (NPR, Johnson Foundation/Harvard Poll)
What will inspire people to get vaccinated? 57% of unvaccinated adults said a $1,000 savings bond would sway them to get a COVID-19 shot, while 43% said as much about a smaller $50 reward. 57% of unvaccinated adults who are employed said they’d get a COVID-19 shot if it were required to work in-person. 44% of unvaccinated adults said they were nervous about the potential long-term effects of the vaccine, while 32% are concerned about the short-term effects and 39% believe there is too much conflicting information about the shot right now. (Morning Consult)
Israeli ground forces carried out attacks on the Gaza Strip in an escalation of a conflict with Palestinian militants that had been waged by airstrikes from Israel and rockets from Gaza. It was not immediately clear if the attack was the prelude to a ground invasion against Hamas. Meanwhile, in Israel, warnings of ‘civil war’ emerge as Arabs and Jews face off violently in the streets. (New York Times)
The violence is impacting the battle to replace Prime Minister Netanyahu: Yamina leader Naftali Bennett surrendered to pressure from the Right to not form a government with Ra'am (United Arab List) head Mansour Abbas, telling Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid the idea was off the table. (Jerusalem Post)
Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is set to defeat the country’s current leader Jair Bolsonaro by a wide margin in next year’s presidential runoff, according to a survey by Datafolha. Lula would capture 41% of votes in the first round of the election, compared to Bolsonaro’s 23%, the poll released late Wednesday said. In a potential second and final round, Lula would handily win with 55% of votes compared to Bolsonaro’s 32%, the survey showed. (Bloomberg)
The most powerful U.K. fleet to be assembled in decades is preparing to set sail this month on a tour of 40 countries, focused on the Indo-Pacific, in an effort to show British military muscle in a region where the U.S. is seeking to counter Chinese influence. The approach seeks to cement the “special relationship” with the U.S. while bolstering alliances within NATO and across the globe. (Wall Street Journal)
Asian cities face the greatest risk from environmental issues including air pollution and natural disasters, according to a new research report. Of the 100 most vulnerable cities, 99 are in Asia. Of those, 37 are in China and 43 are in India, the world’s first and third biggest emitters of greenhouse gases respectively. Globally, 1.5 billion people live in 414 cities that are at high risk from pollution, water shortages, extreme heat, natural hazards and the physical impacts of climate change. (Bloomberg)
What’s bigger than a megacity? China’s planned city clusters: China has urbanized with unprecedented speed. About 20 years ago, only 30% of the Chinese population lived in cities; today it’s 60%. That translates to roughly 400 million people—more than the entire US population—moving into China’s cities in the past two decades. And this migration isn’t over; 70% of China’s population is expected to be urban by 2035. To accommodate the influx, China has shifted from expanding individual cities to systematically building out massive city clusters, each of which will be home to as many as a hundred million people. Cities in a cluster will collaborate economically, ecologically, and politically, the thinking goes, in turn boosting each region’s competitiveness. By 2035, five major city clusters are expected to be established in China: the Jing-Jin-Ji cluster in the north, the Yangtze River Delta cluster (east), the Pearl River Delta cluster (south), the Cheng-Yu cluster (west), and the Yangtze River Middle Reaches cluster in central China. (MIT Technology Review)
Economy
New contenders are emerging in the race to get rid of the London interbank offered rate by year-end. Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase traded the first complex derivative using a Bloomberg index crafted to replace Libor, exchanging $250 million worth of an interest-rate swap earlier this month. The transaction between the two large Wall Street firms marks a shift in the yearslong plan to move away from the troubled rate underpinning trillions of dollars in financial contracts, with some analysts now saying multiple benchmarks are likely to replace Libor instead of just one. (Wall Street Journal)
Airbnb’s CEO predicted the “travel rebound of the century,” as the company’s 1Q21 revenue rose 5% as vacationers return to travel. Gross booking value rose some 52% as users opted for full homes and destinations outside cities. (Financial Times, CNBC)
Airbnb is confronting a fresh threat from regulators intent on limiting the number of homes they allow to be rented out to tourists. In cities around the world, but especially in Europe, authorities are taking steps to tighten the rules that apply to short-term rentals. (The Information)
Airbnb pricing algorithm led to increased racial disparities, study finds. The low uptake of ‘Smart Pricing’ feature among black hosts increased the earnings gap. (Financial Times)
Startups and VCs bank on subprime lending alternatives: Fintech startups are increasingly leaning into lending for the more than one-third of Americans with subprime credit scores. Their vision is to turn a negative connotation into one that not only helps short-term borrowers, but builds their credit and provides financial education. (Crunchbase)
The management of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues is moving up the board agenda for private equity, however climate risk exposure requires greater scrutiny, according to a new survey released by PwC. (Private Equity Wire)
Technology
Amazon is hiring another 1,900 employees for HQ2, its second headquarters in Arlington, VA. Notably, nearly half of the jobs Amazon lists there are for its Amazon Web Services division. (Protocol)
Remote and hybrid work options and e-learning drove demand Notebook PCs to 81% YoY shipment growth. The jump occurred despite supply chain shortages, meaning that there is still pent-up demand going forward in 2021. (Strategy Analytics)
Collective, a subscription-based service that handles back office tasks like accounting for the self-employed, raises $20M Series A led by General Catalyst. (TechCrunch)
Disney+ subscriber growth is slowing like Netflix’s — with one worrisome difference: Disney charges far less for Disney+ than Netflix charges its average customer, making slowing growth more worrying if it continues. Disney shares fell more than 4% in after-hours trading. (CNBC)
Vice Media, the youth-focused news and entertainment group, has launched a free-to-watch online television channel to capitalise on the boom in streaming as it prepares for a stock market listing. Vice has been revisiting its business model while aiming to keep its reputation for edgy content and sway with millennials. (Financial Times)
The Secret Origins of Amazon’s Alexa: In 2011, Jeff Bezos dreamt up a talking device. But making the virtual assistant sound intelligent proved far more difficult than anyone could have imagined. (Wired)
Smart Links
Focus on outliers creates flawed snap judgments: Our quick scan of a crowd isn't as reliable as we think. (Duke University)
Tech vs. Journalism: Inside the nasty battle between Silicon Valley and the reporters who write about it. (NY Magazine)
MasterClass raises $225M, more than triples valuation in one year. (CNBC)
Faraway NASA probe detects the eerie hum of interstellar space. (Reuters)
The case for letting people work from home forever. (Wired)
New system cleans messy data tables automatically. (MIT News)
Obit: Spencer Silver, an inventor of Post-it Notes, is dead at 80. (New York Times)
Why is China making a permanent enemy of India? (Nikkei Asian Review)