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The World
Taiwan’s President Quietly Met With U.S. Senators Ahead of Kevin McCarthy Sit-Down: A bipartisan group of senators quietly met with Taiwan’s president in New York last week, expressing support for the island’s democracy and touting legislation that would impose stiff economic and financial sanctions against China if it invaded Taiwan. The meeting with Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona was disclosed just as Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and the Biden administration are heading into the most pivotal event in her closely watched travels through the U.S. Ms. Tsai plans to meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) today. (Wall Street Journal)
Mexico’s president has written to China’s leader Xi Jinping to ask for help controlling shipments of fentanyl, as the Latin American country faces US pressure over the opioid that kills tens of thousands of people in the US a year. In the letter, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked for information on shipments of the synthetic drug to Mexico, including who is importing it and in what quantities. “We come to you, President Xi Jinping . . . to ask that you help us for humanitarian reasons,” said the letter, which he read out in his morning news conference on Tuesday. “With this we would have better control of the drug in Mexico.” Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids killed more than 100,000 US citizens in the year to August 2022. The drug is increasingly being cut into illegal street drugs, with overdoses now the leading cause of death for people in the US under 45. (Financial Times)
Germany's center-right opposition wants to raise the heat on Chancellor Olaf Scholz by launching a parliamentary investigation into his alleged connection to a massive tax evasion scandal. The case — which dates back over five years to the time when Scholz was still mayor of the Hamburg city-state — is linked to the broader so-called “Cum Ex” affair, under which the German state was defrauded by over €30 billion as some banks, companies, or individuals claimed tax reimbursements from authorities for alleged costs that never occurred. (Politico EU)
Wisconsin voters gave control of the state’s highest court to liberals for the first time in 15 years, instantly reshaping politics in the Badger State by putting the state laws most celebrated by conservatives at risk of being overturned — including a 19th Century-era ban on abortions. Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly in a race that served as a referendum on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, shattering national spending records and attracting a level of political warfare unseen before in a state judicial race. The Associated Press called the race at 8:55 p.m., less than an hour after polls closed, with Protasiewicz ahead by double digits in a state where statewide races are often decided by one or two percentage points. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Protasiewicz’s win is a big sign that abortion is still a significant motivating factor for voters to show up — albeit in low-turnout, off-year elections — and to pull the lever for liberals. Wisconsin has a 19th-century law on the books right now that bans abortion in nearly all circumstances in the state, and providers have stopped performing the procedure. Protasiewicz’s campaign and her Democratic allies in the state heavily emphasized this message; roughly a third of the TV ads from her side mentioned abortion. (Politico)
Brandon Johnson, a union organizer and former teacher, was elected Chicago mayor, a major victory for the party’s progressive wing as the nation’s third-largest city grapples with high crime and financial challenges. Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, won a close race over former Chicago schools CEO Paul Vallas, who was backed by the police union. It was a momentous win for progressive organizations such as the teachers union, with Johnson winning the highest office of any active teachers union member in recent history, leaders say. It comes as groups such as Our Revolution, a powerful progressive advocacy organization, push to win more offices in local and state office, including in upcoming mayoral elections in Philadelphia and elsewhere. (Chicago Tribune, Associated Press)
Moderate Drinking Has No Health Benefits, Analysis of Decades of Research Finds: For decades, scientific studies suggested moderate drinking was better for most people’s health than not drinking at all, and could even help them live longer. A new analysis of more than 40 years of research has concluded that many of those studies were flawed and that the opposite is true. The review found that the risks of dying prematurely increase significantly for women once they drink 25 grams of alcohol a day, which is less than two standard cocktails containing 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits, two 12-ounce beers or two 5-ounce glasses of wine. The risks to men increase significantly at 45 grams of alcohol a day, or just over three drinks. (New York Times)
‘Tornado alley’ is shifting farther into the US east: Global heating has been seen as the cause for these damaging storms, which are expected to increase significantly this century. A spate of devastating tornadoes that have recently ripped through parts of the eastern and southern US states could portend the sort of damage that will become more commonplace due to changes wrought by global heating, scientists have warned. (The Guardian)
Community colleges are reeling. ‘The reckoning is here.’ Community colleges are far cheaper than four-year schools. Published tuition and fees last year averaged $3,860, versus $39,400 at private and $10,940 at public four-year universities, with many states making community college free. Yet consumers are abandoning them in droves. The number of students at community colleges has fallen 37% since 2010, or by nearly 2.6 million, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Advocates for community colleges defend them as the underdogs of America’s higher education system, left to serve the students who need the most support but without the money to provide it. Critics contend this has become an excuse for poor success rates and for faceless bureaucracies. (Associated Press)
Insiders at collapsed Signature Bank sold more than $100 million of shares in the years after the bank pivoted to attract cryptocurrency companies and became a stock-market darling, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Sales over the past three years by the bank’s chairman, its former chief executive officer and his successor accounted for about half of the amount sold. All three served on the board committee tasked with overseeing the bank’s risk profile over the past year. The insider transactions at Signature weren’t widely known because of where they were filed and how the transactions were described in the documents. (Wall Street Journal)
U.S. journalists’ beats vary widely by gender and other factors: Men account for 83% of the surveyed journalists who indicated that they cover sports, far higher than the 15% who are women. Men also account for majorities of those who cover political news (60%) and news about science and technology (58%). By comparison, women are more likely than men to cover three of the 11 news beats studied: health, education and families, and social issues and policy. For instance, women account for nearly two-thirds (64%) of surveyed journalists who cover news about health, while only about a third (34%) are men. (Pew Research Center)
Economy
US Home Prices Seen Rebounding After an Expected $1 Trillion Plunge This Year: US residential real estate may lose close to $1 trillion in value this year, but that loss will be transient as home prices are expected to rebound, according to a new poll. Respondents expect prices to fall 2% nationally this year, which implies that the value of the US housing market will fall to $46.9 trillion from $47.9 trillion at the end of 2022, per results of the poll conducted by housing analytics firm Pulsenomics. (Bloomberg)
EU housing market boom ends with first quarterly price fall since 2015: Prices fall in 15 of the bloc’s 27 member states as rising borrowing costs and tighter lending standards hit demand. (Financial Times)
Bitcoin Liquidity Is Drying Up as Crypto ‘Tourists’ Recoil From Industry Disorder: By just about any measure, Bitcoin liquidity remains low, despite the cryptocurrency’s eye-catching upsurge this year. Investors have been paying more on trades because of slippage, or the difference between the expected price of a transaction and the price at which it’s fully executed, a sign of worsening liquidity, according to Conor Ryder at Kaiko. The higher the difficulty in trading, the more investors are exposed to potential volatile price swings. (Bloomberg)
The job market is (still) weird. Employers seem to be pulling back from their breakneck, hire-at-all-cost stance of 2022. But at the same time, notwithstanding headlines about tech and media layoffs, they aren't actually cutting jobs. Meanwhile, workers feel as empowered as ever, still quitting at historically high rates, evidently confident they can find new work. (Axios)
Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. is shutting down its corporate-restructuring practice after numerous lawsuits and government investigations concerning the division’s work advising troubled borrowers, people familiar with the matter said. McKinsey has announced internally that its restructuring division would close, the people said. The consulting firm laid off some partners in its restructuring unit, called McKinsey RTS, while others are being absorbed into other practices, they said. (Wall Street Journal)
Lithium Prices Are Down, Cheaper Batteries and EVs Could Follow. Lithium prices are reversing after a two-year tear, a potential boost for consumers and auto makers that got hit by rising battery costs last year. Prices for lithium are down more than 30% this year, ending the two-year run that pushed up the value of the key battery material by a factor of 12, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. The drop takes prices back to more sustainable levels after their epic run, traders say. (Wall Street Journal)
Technology
China’s New Tech Weapon: Dragging Its Feet on Global Merger Approvals: Officials withhold clearance until their demands—often focused on benefiting Beijing’s rivals—are met. Chinese regulators recently have slowed down their merger reviews of a number of proposed acquisitions by U.S. companies, including Intel’ $5.2 billion takeover of Israel-based Tower Semiconductor and chip maker MaxLinear Inc.’s $3.8 billion purchase of Silicon Motion Technology of Taiwan, according to people close to the process. (Wall Street Journal)
Hospitals pledge to protect patient privacy. Almost all their websites leak visitor data like a sieve. A new study found that 99% of U.S. hospitals employed online data trackers in 2021 that transmitted visitors’ information to a broad network of outside parties, including major technology companies, data brokers, and private equity firms. The data captured included visits to pages on specific conditions such as depression, breast cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. The ubiquitous use of the tracking tools may clash with the privacy expectations — if not the legal protections — that consumers take for granted as they browse online in search of medical care and information. (STAT News)
Anti-plagiarism service Turnitin, used by 10K+ institutions, launches a tool to detect AI-generated text in academia, claiming 98% confidence vs. OpenAI's 26%. (Financial Times)
Piper Sandler survey of 5,690 US teens in February 2023: 29% owned a VR device, but of those, 14% used it weekly, flat vs. fall 2022, and only 4% used it daily. (CNBC)
The takeaways from Stanford’s 386-page report on the state of AI. (TechCrunch)
AI development has flipped over the last decade from academia-led to industry-led, by a large margin, and this shows no sign of changing.
It’s becoming difficult to test models on traditional benchmarks and a new paradigm may be needed here.
The energy footprint of AI training and use is becoming considerable, but we have yet to see how it may add efficiencies elsewhere.
The number of “AI incidents and controversies” has increased by a factor of 26 since 2012, which actually seems a bit low.
AI-related skills and job postings are increasing, but not as fast as you’d think.
Policymakers, however, are falling over themselves trying to write a definitive AI bill, a fool’s errand if there ever was one.
Investment has temporarily stalled, but that’s after an astronomic increase over the last decade.
Smart Links
GM Cuts 5,000 Salaried Jobs Through Voluntary Buyouts. (Bloomberg)
Spotify shows how the live audio boom has gone bust. (Hot Pod)
TikTok fined $16M by UK watchdog over use of children’s data. (The Hill)
How tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India. (Rest of World)
How the hip replacement became the hot Gen-X surgery. (Boston Globe)
The Masters Is Feeling the Shockwaves of LIV Golf. (Wall Street Journal)