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The World
Russia Suffers Global Rebuke After Invasion: Counter to some impressions, the U.S. and its allies aren’t the only ones who care about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Gallup surveys in 137 countries show Russia’s image has suffered worldwide since it began its war in Ukraine. For the first time in Gallup’s history of tracking ratings of world leaders, the majority of the world disapproves of Russia’s leadership. Across the 137 countries and territories that Gallup surveyed in 2022, a median of 57% said they disapprove of Russia’s leadership -- a dramatic increase from 38% in 2021 and by far the highest point in Gallup’s trend dating back to 2007. (Gallup)
An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the world was probably on the verge of a new world war and the risks of a nuclear confrontation were rising. "The world is sick and quite probably is on the verge of a new world war," Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Putin's powerful security council, told a conference in Moscow. He said such a new world war was not inevitable but the risks of a nuclear confrontation were growing and more serious than concerns about climate change. (Reuters)
China's planned changes to espionage law alarm foreign businesses: China is preparing to restrict transfers of any information related to national security under an updated counterespionage law, raising fears of a stepped-up crackdown on foreign individuals and companies here. The measure will expand the scope of the law -- now limited to state secrets -- to cover all documents, data, materials or items related to national security and interests. It does not provide further details on what constitutes national security and interests. (Nikkei Asia Review)
As Yoon Visits White House, Public Opinion Headwinds Are Swirling at Home: The South Korean president has taken a bruising in the polls as he seeks closer ties with Japan and the U.S. — but opportunities for a major diplomatic breakthrough exist. (Morning Consult)
Brazil & EU tussle over war but want to talk trade: On his first European trip since taking office in January, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was hoping to win final support for a free trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) that’s been stuck since 2019. So far, he’s been booed in Portugal for his controversial remarks on the war in Ukraine following a visit to China, but he doubled down on this rhetoric in Lisbon over the weekend. Still, neither Lula's position nor the European backlash to his Ukraine balancing act is the real story here. The bigger issue is whether the EU and Mercosur will ever sign on the dotted line amid troublesome LatAm politics and Green jitters across the pond. (GZERO Media)
The U.S. military deployed teams of hackers to foreign networks in 2020, in the days after a major cyberattack on federal agencies was revealed. They hunted for intruders to study their behavior before shutting down their access, according to U.S. officials discussing the events publicly for the first time Monday. Shortly after a long-running breach of SolarWinds Corp. software was disclosed by cybersecurity company FireEye Inc. in December 2020, the U.S. government moved quickly. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, identified around nine federal agencies that had been compromised, said Eric Goldstein, CISA’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, speaking on a panel Monday at the RSA Conference. (WSJ Cybersecurity)
Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his team are vowing to move ahead with their sprawling debt measure as soon as Wednesday, but the path to locking down votes turned murky after a day of internal deliberations. The Californian Republican spent the day holding back-to-back meetings with leadership allies and key holdouts to shore up support before a tentative vote Wednesday. By Tuesday evening, though, the GOP’s whip count remained short of the votes needed for passage, with a cohort of Midwestern Republicans demanding changes to a major tax rollback in the bill. A smaller group of conservatives is also raising concerns of their own over work requirements for certain assistance programs. (Politico)
GOP readies debt ceiling vote as Wall Street braces for a costly standoff: Investors are beginning to hedge against a possible government default, laying bare the stakes of congressional inaction. (Washington Post)
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that failure by Congress to raise the government's debt ceiling - and the resulting default - would trigger an "economic catastrophe" that would send interest rates higher for years to come. (Reuters)
Economy
Visa Sees International Travel Spending Unexpectedly Accelerate: Visa saw overseas spending on the firm’s cards unexpectedly accelerate in the first three months of the year, as the payments giant benefited from an increase in global travel. Cross-border volume jumped 24% in the fiscal second quarter, topping the 20% average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Overall volume on the firm’s cards rose 9% to $3.6 trillion, which was in line with what analysts estimated. (Bloomberg)
U.S. consumer confidence dropped to a nine-month low in April as worries about the future mounted, further heightening the risk that the economy could fall into recession this year. The consumer confidence survey from the Conference Board also suggested that Americans were getting ready to hunker down as dark clouds gather, with the share of them planning to buy major household appliances over the next six months falling to the lowest level since 2011. (Reuters)
Home Prices Rose in February for First Time Since June. (Wall Street Journal)
‘How to Buy Gold’ Hits a Google Record as Crypto Investors Chase World’s Oldest Asset. (Wall Street Journal)
Several of the world’s largest consumer goods companies have quelled fears over a global contraction in household spending after their results showed shoppers were still stomaching price rises on a wide range of products from burgers to baby food and toilet rolls. While some executives cautioned that customer budgets remain under pressure, companies on both sides of the Atlantic reported resilient first-quarter sales after they successfully passed on historic increases in the cost of raw materials to consumers. (Financial Times)
The Line Is Blurring Between Remote Workers and Tourists: While tourism agencies’ historic target audience has been three-day weekend visitors, remote work and the rise of digital nomads means that stays are increasingly in the 30-day range. According to Deloitte’s 2023 Travel Outlook, travelers willing to bring work with them take twice as many trips and, of those “laptop luggers,” more than a third are adding three or more days to their vacation to accommodate working remotely while traveling. Airbnb reported in May 2022 that long-term stays of more than 28 days were their fastest-growing category by trip length compared to 2019, more than doubling in size from Q1 2019. And United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has declared a “permanent structural change” in the industry as business and leisure travel have become indistinguishable. These two developments — a growing, restless class of remote workers, and a tourism market of people who spend more of their time traveling — are more than related; they’re different facets of the same phenomenon. The line between remote workers and tourists is blurring. (City Lab)
Earnings & Updates:
Google reported a second straight drop in advertising revenue, extending a rare decline as the company navigates economic concerns and tries to capitalize on recent advances in artificial intelligence. (Wall Street Journal)
Microsoft earnings beat as cloud growth comes in better than feared. Growth from Azure and other cloud services slowed to 27% from 31% in the prior quarter but was still faster than expected. (CNBC)
Chipotle Mexican Grill earnings beat on prices, new stores. (Reuters)
Gap will cut more than 500 workers in latest layoffs, as struggling retailer tries to reduce costs. (CNBC)
UPS package volume drops as retail sales deal blow: Its domestic package volume was down 5.4% in the first quarter, compared with a year earlier — worse than Goldman Sachs' estimate of a 3.3% decline. (Axios)
Technology
Apple is working on an artificial intelligence-powered health coaching service and new technology for tracking emotions, its latest attempt to lock in users with health and wellness features. The new coaching service — codenamed Quartz — is designed to keep users motivated to exercise, improve eating habits and help them sleep better, according to people with knowledge of the project. The idea is to use AI and data from an Apple Watch to make suggestions and create coaching programs tailored to specific users, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the initiatives haven’t been announced yet. (Bloomberg)
AI may put half of China’s jobs at risk: Analysing a company’s business status, identifying financial risks and preparing financial reports are some examples of how generative AI services could take on some of the workload of the professionals, wrote Liu Qin, a professor at the Shanghai National Accounting Institute, in an article in the journal Friends of Accounting. “Accountants should embrace new technologies and boost their work efficiency with AI systems while cultivating creativity,” Liu said. “This is how they can hold an invincible position in the workplace.” (South China Morning Post)
The EU is looking to agree on blocwide rules for generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT as early as this year, European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager told Nikkei. The bloc will weigh labeling requirement for works made by ChatGPT and similar tools: "It would be good to pass it as fast as possible," said Vestager, who is in charge of EU policies on competition and AI. (Nikkei Asia Review)
ChatGPT users can now turn off their chat history, OpenAI announced. Any conversations that take place while chat history is disabled will not be used to train OpenAI’s models or appear in the “history” sidebar. OpenAI said it will keep the new conversations for 30 days, but it will only review them if it is necessary to monitor for abuse. (CNBC)
Smart Links
Top Colleges for High-Paying Jobs in Data Science: New ranking puts Princeton at No. 1 and Berkeley first among public schools. (Wall Street Journal)
More US cities will lose air service as regional airlines struggle to survive. (Forbes)
EU tweaks draft patent rules making it easier for patent holders to sue. (Reuters)
Former New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern appointed to two Harvard Kennedy School fellowships. (Harvard Kennedy School)
What creative companies and jazz bands have in common: Companies that follow fewer and simpler rules are often the best innovators. (Stanford Engineering)