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The World
Federal investigators arrested a 21-year-old air national guardsman who they believe is linked to a trove of leaked classified U.S. intelligence documents, which have upended relations with American allies and exposed weaknesses in the Ukrainian military. The man, whom The New York Times was first to identify as Jack Teixeira, is a member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard and is tied to an online group where the leaked documents first appeared. Airman Teixeira oversaw an online Discord group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games. (New York Times)
Suspect had patriotic family, reckless online identity: As a newly minted member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard returned home from training, his mother took to her flower shop’s Facebook page to express pride in his accomplishments. “Jack is on his way home today, tech school complete, ready to start his career in the Air National Guard!” said the post, dated June 3, 2021. It was accompanied by a photograph of a patriotic-themed balloon tied to a mailbox and emblazoned, “Welcome home!” Patriotic zeal appeared common around Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira, 21, who had followed in the footsteps of numerous family members to join the military. Teixeira, slim and boyish in photographs taken in his blue dress uniform, had been assigned to manage and troubleshoot computers and communications systems for the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, according to the Air Force. Investigators now think there’s a more troubling, reckless side to Teixeira — and the fallout is only beginning. (Washington Post)
France protesters stormed the headquarters of luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE as the nationwide protest movement against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension overhaul morphed into a populist rebuke of France’s establishment. Video footage captured a crowd of men waving flares and banners as they forced their way through the entrance of the luxury group’s headquarters on Paris’s tony Avenue Montaigne. Another video clip shows the crowd proceeding up an escalator to a reception area that leads to higher floors where LVMH Chief Executive Bernard Arnault, the world’s richest man, has offices along with other top executives. (Wall Street Journal)
North Korea said it had tested a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Hwasong-18, to "radically promote" the country's nuclear counterattack capability, state media reported. Leader Kim Jong Un guided the test, and warned it would make enemies "experience a clearer security crisis, and constantly strike extreme uneasiness and horror into them by taking fatal and offensive counter-actions until they abandon their senseless thinking and reckless acts". (Reuters)
WTA returns to China despite concerns for tennis star Peng Shuai: Tour cannot confirm player’s safety but says others would ‘pay an extraordinary price’ for staying away. (Financial Times)
The number of workers under the age of 35 in Russia hit its lowest recorded level last year as 1.3 million young people left the workforce, Russian news site RBC reported. Young people made up just under 30% of the workforce in 2022, the lowest share since records began in 2006, according to RBC, citing data from audit and consulting firm FinExpertiza. The percentage of older Russian workers, meanwhile, increased last year as a result of pension reform, RBC reported. About 336,000 people between the ages of 60 and 69 entered the workforce. But emigration also contributed to the diminishing number of young workers. An estimated 500,000 Russians left the country in 2022; many of those were young people who fled to other countries to avoid being drafted to fight in Russia's war against Ukraine. (Semafor)
Taiwan's success in the semiconductor industry is fueling a boom in house prices that is spreading from north to south, with highly paid workers at major chipmakers pushing the property market to buck the trend of a global slowdown. Nowhere is the economic impact of the chip industry on the housing market more visible than in Taiwan’s main tech hub Hsinchu, just 30 minutes south of Taipei by high-speed rail. Luxury apartment complexes are being built just a stone’s throw from the Science Park in the city’s north, where the headquarters of the world’s biggest chip manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., and other companies are located, churning out crucial chips. (Bloomberg)
Texas billionaire Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas. The justice didn’t disclose the deal. The transaction is the first known instance of money flowing from Crow to the Supreme Court justice. The sale netted the GOP megadonor two vacant lots and the house where Thomas’ mother was living. (Texas Tribune)
Authorities lock down California Capitol after ‘credible threat’. Legislators and their staff huddled inside offices for several hours Thursday after police warned of a “credible threat” against the California Capitol from a man police said had fired on a nearby hospital the night before. The California Highway Patrol said they were searching for the man suspected of firing on a Kaiser Permanente hospital building in the Sacramento suburb of Roseville and had made threats that prompted the lockdown of the Capitol and the postponement of a legislative floor session. No injuries were reported from the shooting, officials said. (Politico)
Sharply Fewer in U.S. See Energy Situation as "Very Serious": Americans show significantly less concern about the U.S. energy situation now than they did a year ago, with 34%, down from 44%, describing the situation as “very serious.” The 2022 spike came amid sharply rising gas prices and was the highest percentage seeing the situation as very serious since 2011. The record-high 58% viewing the energy situation as very serious was recorded in 2001, amid rolling blackouts in California. (Gallup)
Economy
Gold prices hit their highest level of the year on Thursday, driven by bets that inflation will remain sticky despite recent declines. The most actively traded gold-futures contract rose to $2,055.30 a troy ounce, up 13% year to date. That also put it within striking distance of its record high, reached in the summer of 2020. Some investors value gold as a hedge against inflation, expecting the precious metal to hold up in value if other assets fall. Its rally this week, however, comes after two closely watched data prints showed that inflation is slowing. The rising gold price shows investors are wagering that the Fed will pull back from its rate-hiking campaign even with inflation readings well above the central bank’s 2% target. (Wall Street Journal)
Manhattan Rents Reach Record High With Busy Season Yet to Come: The median monthly rate rose to a record-high $4,175 in March, according to a report by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. That’s up $25 from the previous peak, reached in July, and almost 13% more than a year ago. (Bloomberg)
Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has called on developing countries to work towards replacing the US dollar with their own currencies in international trade, lending his voice to Beijing’s efforts to end the greenback’s dominance of global commerce. Kicking off his first state visit to China since taking office in January, Lula called for the countries of the so-called Brics group of nations — which in addition to Brazil and China includes Russia, India and South Africa — to come up with their own alternative currency for use in trade. “Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar,” Lula said in an impassioned speech at the New Development Bank in Shanghai. (Financial Times)
Singapore has asked the world’s biggest banks to avoid discussing the origins of the significant sums of money flowing into the city over the past year, as wealthy Chinese funnel billions into the Asian financial hub. The tacit directive from the Monetary Authority of Singapore was given during a February 20 meeting of an industry group made up of bankers and regulators, according to multiple people who attended. The flow from China into Singapore has become a politically sensitive issue domestically, and the MAS wants banks to keep public discussion of the phenomenon to a minimum. (Financial Times)
Walmart agreed to sell its Bonobos menswear line to WHP Global and Express Inc. for $75 million — $235 million less than what the retail giant paid for the business in 2017. WHP, which owns such brands as Anne Klein and Joseph Abboud, will pay $50 million for the Bonobos brand. Express, which is partly owned by WHP, will acquire the Bonobos operating assets and related liabilities for $25 million. (Bloomberg)
Technology
Apple is in talks with suppliers to make MacBooks in Thailand as the company continues to expand its manufacturing footprint outside of China amid geopolitical uncertainties. The company has also been mass producing its Apple Watch in Thailand for more than a year, sources told Nikkei Asia, further underscoring the growing importance of the country, and Southeast Asia more broadly, as an alternative production base to China. (Nikkei Asia)
Apple made $7B+ worth of iPhones in India in the FY ended March 2023 and exported ~$5B worth; ~7% of iPhones are now made in India, up from ~1% in 2021. (Bloomberg)
Amazon wants investors to know it won’t be left behind in the latest Big Tech arms race over artificial intelligence. In a letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company is “investing heavily” in large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, the same technology that underpins ChatGPT and other similar AI chatbots. “We have been working on our own LLMs for a while now, believe it will transform and improve virtually every customer experience, and will continue to invest substantially in these models across all of our consumer, seller, brand, and creator experiences,” Jassy wrote in his letter to shareholders. (CNN)
Databricks released Dolly 2.0, reportedly the first open source, instruction-following large language model (LLM) for commercial use that's been fine-tuned on a human-generated data set. It could serve as a compelling starting point for homebrew ChatGPT competitors. Databricks is an American enterprise software company founded in 2013 by the creators of Apache Spark. They provide a web-based platform for working with Spark for big data and machine learning. (Ars Technica)
Smart Links
Delta reports record advance bookings as summer travel season approaches. (Axios)
DoorDash’s Secret to Success: Stable, Experienced Management Team. (The Information)
EY UK warned to expect staff exits and cost cuts after failure of split. (Financial Times)
Don’t tell anything to a chatbot you want to keep private (CNN)