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The World
China is ramping up efforts to develop home-grown semiconductor talent as it seeks to rapidly fill a shortage of expertise that has been made worse by U.S. efforts to limit Beijing's access to advanced chip technology. Enrollments for undergraduate and post-graduate courses have surged over the past five years thanks to new funds for top universities as well as a boom in smaller private schools focused on shorter-term instruction. (Reuters)
US slaps trade curbs on 5 Chinese firms over alleged role in Uyghur repression. (Reuters)
In Israel, representatives from coalition and opposition parties gathered at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem to begin negotiations over the government’s contentious judicial overhaul plans, in the first face-to-face talks between the sides after three turbulent months of a legislative blitz and nationwide mass protests. A statement from the President’s Office released after the 90-minute meeting said the discussions were conducted in “a positive atmosphere,” and that further meetings would be held today. (Times of Israel)
President Joe Biden urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “walk away” from his current judicial overhaul legislation, saying he was “very concerned” about the health of Israeli democracy, and warning that Israel “cannot continue down this road.” “Like many strong supporters of Israel, I’m very concerned. And I’m concerned that they get this straight,” Biden told reporters. “They cannot continue down this road. And I’ve sort of made that clear,” he added, in remarks plunging US-Israel ties into open crisis. Biden also gave an emphatic “no” when asked whether he would be inviting Netanyahu to the White House, adding: “Not in the near term.” (Times of Israel)
DeSantis to travel to Israel next month ahead of likely 2024 White House bid. (Reuters)
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk urged Russians not to adopt children who she said were "stolen" in Ukraine during the war and deported to Russia. "I strongly recommend that Russian citizens do not adopt Ukrainian orphans who were illegally taken out of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine," Vereshchuk, in charge of social issues, said. "Once again I remind all Russian so-called 'adoptive parents' and 'guardians': sooner or later you will have to answer." According to Ukraine's Ministry of Integration of Occupied Territories, 19,514 Ukrainian children are currently considered illegally deported. (Reuters)
The Scottish Parliament confirmed Humza Yousaf as the country's new leader on Tuesday, with the 37-year-old taking over as Scotland's first minister. Yousaf is Scotland's first Muslim leader and the youngest person to lead the government. He replaces Nicola Sturgeon, who announced last month that she was stepping down after more than eight years as first minister. He has said he wants Scotland to be its own republic and to return to the European Union, saying "Scotland is a European nation." In his victory speech he said, "The people of Scotland need independence now, more than ever before, and we will be the generation that delivers independence." (Semafor)
Protesters and police clashed on the edges of street demonstrations in France as hundreds of thousands of people took part in marches against Emmanuel Macron’s use of constitutional executive powers to push through an unpopular rise in the pension age to 64. While demonstrations in Paris and Nantes were peaceful, with the majority of demonstrators chanting and calling for the pension changes to be scrapped, on the margins in some cities, men in masks or hoods clashed with police. In Paris, police fired teargas and launched a charge after some people at the head of the protest, dressed in black with their faces covered, raided and looted a supermarket and then started a fire as the march approached Place de la Nation in the east of the city. (The Guardian)
The second bomb cyclone to hit California in a week is buffeting the state after two rapidly intensifying storms combined off the West Coast. This "dynamic" storm combo that's set to continue through Wednesday includes a low pressure area rotating south from the Gulf of Alaska and subtropical moisture moving east. Unlike last week's damaging and deadly storm, this one is reaching its peak intensity over the ocean, rather than making landfall in the Bay Area. The low will gradually weaken as it slides south through midweek. (Axios)
Economy
Distress in Office Market Spreads to High-End Buildings: Defaults and vacancies are on the rise at high-end office buildings, in the latest sign that remote work and rising interest rates are spreading pain to more corners of the commercial real-estate market. For much of the pandemic, buildings in central locations that feature modern amenities fared better than their less-pricey peers. Some even were able to increase rents while older, cheaper buildings saw surging vacancy rates and plummeting values. Now, these so-called class-A properties, whose rents generally fall into a city’s top quartile, are increasingly coming under pressure. The amount of U.S. class-A office space in central business districts that is leased fell in the fourth quarter of last year for the first time since 2021, according to Moody’s Analytics. The owners of a number of high-end properties recently defaulted on their mortgages, highlighting the financial strain from rising interest rates and vacancies. (Wall Street Journal)
Home prices fell for the seventh consecutive month in January, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data. It's the latest sign that the housing market is cooling off after years of blistering growth. The national home price index fell 5.6% on a month-over-month basis as the 20 biggest markets all posted declines. But home prices were still up 3.8% from a year earlier, led by gains in cities like Miami, Tampa and Atlanta. (Axios)
Russia’s Economy Is Starting to Come Undone: The opening months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year drove an increase in oil and natural-gas prices that brought a windfall for Moscow. Those days are over. As the war continues into its second year and Western sanctions bite harder, Russia’s government revenue is being squeezed and its economy has shifted to a lower-growth trajectory, likely for the long term. The country’s biggest exports, gas and oil, have lost major customers. Government finances are strained. The ruble is down over 20% since November against the dollar. The labor force has shrunk as young people are sent to the front or flee the country over fears of being drafted. Uncertainty has curbed business investment. “Russia’s economy is entering a long-term regression,” predicted Alexandra Prokopenko, a former Russian Central Bank official who left the country shortly after the invasion. (Wall Street Journal)
Alibaba plans its biggest restructuring ever, reorganizing its businesses into six independent entities and moving all operational decisions to each unit's CEO. (South China Morning Post)
Technology
The Jobs Most Exposed to ChatGPT: New study finds that AI tools could more quickly handle at least half of the tasks that auditors, interpreters and writers do now. Accountants are among the professionals whose careers are most exposed to the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence, according to a new study. The researchers found that at least half of accounting tasks could be completed much faster with the technology. The same was true for mathematicians, interpreters, writers and nearly 20% of the U.S. workforce, according to the study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and OpenAI, the company that makes the popular AI tool ChatGPT. The jobs that will be least affected by the technology include short-order cooks, motorcycle mechanics and oil-and-gas roustabouts. (Wall Street Journal)
Clearview AI's CEO says the company has run nearly 1M searches for US police and now uses 30B images scraped without users' consent from sites like Facebook. (BBC)
Microsoft launches Security Copilot, a GPT-4-powered assistant to help security professionals with incident investigations, event summaries, reporting, and more. (The Verge)
Microsoft plans a major overhaul for “Windows 12” to modernize the OS with AI, faster updates, and improved security, to better compete with ChromeOS. (Windows Central)
Twitter moved closer to finding the individual responsible for leaking parts of its proprietary source code after a California federal court granted its request to subpoena GitHub, the social media site where the information was posted. GitHub must provide personal identifying information associated with the account FreeSpeechEnthusiast by April 3, according to the order signed by a court clerk on Tuesday. Github didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. (Bloomberg)
Apple debuted its long-anticipated buy now, pay later program in the US, as the $2.5tn tech giant expands further into finance in a challenge to incumbent firms including Klarna and Affirm. The iPhone maker unveiled plans for Apple Pay Later at its developers conference in June. After several months of delays, “select” US consumers will be invited to use the finance tool on Tuesday, the company announced. Apple Pay Later is built into the Wallet function of the iPhone and lets users pay for online goods and in-app services in four payments spread over six weeks. The zero-interest loans of between $50 and $1,000 will be made through a wholly owned subsidiary, Apple Financing. (Financial Times)
Smart Links
Ivy League Prices Are Pushing $90,000 a Year. Yale: up 4%. Dartmouth and Brown: up 5%. (Bloomberg)
Italy Wants to Ban Lab-Grown Meat to Protect Culinary Heritage. (Bloomberg)
Tesla cars lose value faster than rival models after price cuts, data shows. (Financial Times)
Microplastics are messing with the microbiomes of seabirds. (MIT Technology Review)
As AI promises to revolutionize medical note-taking, concerns mount about accuracy and harm. (STAT News)
Levi's Will Use AI Models Alongside Human Ones. (PC Mag)