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The World
Italian prime minister Mario Draghi has admitted that Europe has few tools to deter Russia from a military confrontation with Ukraine, as tension mounts over Moscow’s intentions towards Kyiv. Draghi drew attention to the EU’s lack of its own military force and also pointed to weaknesses in any sanctions that might be directed at the Kremlin. “Do we have missiles, ships, cannons, armies? At the moment we don’t and at the moment Nato has different strategic priorities.” Draghi said economic sanctions would be the only possible means of “deterrence” but Europe was not in a position to give up Russian gas supplies. (Financial Times)
NATO must arm Ukraine to repel invasion by Putin’s Russia, says Lithuania. Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said the western alliance should consider strengthening its military presence in eastern Europe more broadly in response to Russian “blackmail” that threatened the security of countries across the region. (The Times)
President Biden has extended the pause on student-loan payments another 90 days, to May 1, 2022. The Education Department in a separate statement said the pause would allow the administration to assess the impact of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 on student borrowers. The repayment pause has helped 41 million borrowers save $5 billion a month. (Wall Street Journal)
U.S. home sales rose in November as low mortgage-interest rates and a strong job market continued to drive robust demand. Existing-home sales increased 1.9% in November from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.46 million, the highest pace since January. November sales fell 2.0% from a year earlier. Existing-home sales are on track for their strongest year since 2006, and sales in the first 11 months of the year rose 10% from a year earlier. (Wall Street Journal)
The FDA authorized the first pill for Covid-19, offering a highly effective defense against severe illness that will arrive as the country endures another major surge of the pandemic. The drug, developed by Pfizer and known as Paxlovid, is authorized for Covid patients age 12 and over who are vulnerable to becoming severely ill because they are older or have medical conditions such as obesity or diabetes. Tens of millions of Americans — including both vaccinated and unvaccinated people — will be eligible if they get infected with the virus. The treatment could be available within a few days. (New York Times)
Boris Johnson was under growing pressure to set out his plans for a post-Christmas lockdown as the UK reported more than 100,000 new Covid infections and Wales followed Scotland in setting out new restrictions. In the past 24-hour period 106,122 people tested positive for Covid. (The Times)
After the Omicron variant sent reports of new coronavirus cases skyrocketing to record levels in South Africa, case counts have now started falling, and are down by more than 20 percent in the last week. (New York Times)
Walgreens, CVS limit how many at-home Covid tests customers can buy due to demand surge. (CNBC)
Amazon’s cloud-computing unit suffered a new outage today, at least its third this month, which appeared to cause internet issues for some companies. Amazon Web Services said it began investigating connectivity issues at about 7:35 a.m. ET for some servers in its US-East-1 region—which is hosted in Northern Virginia and covers cities including Boston, Houston and Chicago. Within about an hour, AWS said on its status dashboard that it began making progress in restoring power. (Wall Street Journal)
Economy
European gas prices have surged to new record highs as flows from a key Russian pipeline stopped, spooking buyers that have been scrambling to secure supplies during a deepening energy crunch. Gas for delivery in Europe next month, which was already trading at record levels, jumped more than 20% on Tuesday to close at €181 per megawatt hour. (Financial Times)
Coal-fired power generation is set to hit an all-time high. (CNBC)
American consumers felt more optimistic about the economy heading into the last weeks of the holiday season, despite higher inflation and rising Covid-19 case counts. The Conference Board, a private research group, said its consumer confidence index rose to 115.8 in December from 111.9 in November. (Wall Street Journal)
Just 0.01% of bitcoin buyers control 27% of the currency: The top bitcoin holders control a greater share of the cryptocurrency than the most affluent American households control in dollars. A National Bureau of Economic Research study showed that the top 10,000 bitcoin accounts hold 5 million bitcoins, an equivalent of approximately $232 billion. With an estimated 114 million people globally holding the cryptocurrency, according to crypto.com, that means that approximately 0.01% of bitcoin holders control 27% of the 19 million bitcoin in circulation. (Wall Street Journal)
Turkey’s foreign currency reserves have tumbled by billions of dollars since the start of the week, suggesting that aggressive interventions have aided the lira’s bounce back from record lows. The lira had fallen significantly following the latest series of interest rate cuts, but it turned sharply higher on Tuesday after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unveiled a new savings scheme aimed at incentivizing local residents to hold lira deposits. But at the same time, the country’s net foreign assets fell by $5.9bn in the first two days of this week to minus $5.1bn. (Financial Times)
As the pandemic rolled in, companies have leaned more toward sending out elaborate holiday gifts to show appreciation in lieu of swanky holiday shindigs. Holiday gifts from employers might also increase employee engagement. That’s according to a recent survey from Snappy, a personalized corporate gifting company that allows employees to pick their own gifts. The biggest finding? Gifts have the potential to encourage retention. Fifty-nine percent of the over 1,000 survey respondents said “they would be more likely to stay at their job if they received meaningful holiday gifts from their employer.” (Protocol Workplace)
Technology
Americans widely distrust Facebook, TikTok and Instagram with their data: Pulled between not trusting some tech companies and still wanting to use their products, people look to government regulation. According to the survey, 72 percent of Internet users trust Facebook “not much” or “not at all” to responsibly handle their personal information and data on their Internet activity. About 6 in 10 distrust TikTok and Instagram, while slight majorities distrust WhatsApp and YouTube. Google, Apple and Microsoft receive mixed marks for trust, while Amazon is slightly positive with 53 percent trusting the company at least “a good amount.” Only 10 percent say Facebook has a positive impact on society, while 56 percent say it has a negative impact and 33 percent say its impact is neither positive nor negative. Even among those who use Facebook daily, more than three times as many say the social network has a negative rather than a positive impact. (Washington Post)
TikTok beat out Google for the most popular domain in 2021, according to data from web security and performance company Cloudflare's 2021 Year in Review of internet traffic. TikTok rose from No. 7 to spot No. 1 on Cloudflare's ranking of top domains in 2021, and also beat out Facebook this year in social media domains, taking its No. 1 spot. (Axios)
Workplace reporter Anna Kramer crowdsourced some of Protocol’s favorite extensions and bots in her love letter to developers making weird things on the internet. Some of these quirky tools include: (Protocol Workplace)
Docs.new: If you type that little phrase into your browser, you’ll see a brand new Google document.
Video speed controller: Easily slow down, speed up or rewind any video you’re watching with this extension.
Spotify unveils sprawling podcast hub in downtown L.A. The campus — which can accommodate as many as 600 employees — encompasses 18 podcast studios, a theater, an indoor stage and places for musicians to tinker with vintage instruments, including a piano once used by singer-songwriter Norah Jones. (Los Angeles Times)
You can now take Zoom calls from your Amazon television. (The Verge)
Smart Links
30 companies we think could IPO in 2022 (Crunchbase)
How the U.S. could reliably run on clean energy by 2050. (Popular Science)
Supply chain shortages are dimming Christmas displays. (New York Times)
China’s venture investors see 65% drop in fundraising for startups. (The Information)
Wells Fargo delays plans for employee return to office. (Axios)