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The World
President Biden said the U.S. was committed to evacuating every American out of Afghanistan, even if that may mean extending the military mission beyond his Aug. 31 deadline for a total withdrawal. (New York Times)
UK Cabinet ministers, MPs and the head of the armed forces have united in their criticism of the Biden administration over Afghanistan, fueling concerns about the “special relationship.” The Commons was recalled for an extraordinary session yesterday, in which politicians on all sides described the US withdrawal, which led to a rapid Taliban takeover, as “shameful.” Boris Johnson suggested America was to blame for the chaotic scenes in the country. (The Times)
The people of Afghanistan are facing “dire” financial prospects, the former head of its central bank has warned, cautioning that an acute shortage of dollars and higher inflation will fuel the flow of migrants out of the country. Ajmal Ahmady, who escaped Kabul on Sunday, told the Financial Times that Afghanistan had been dependent on bulk shipments of dollar reserves from the US and was now rapidly running short, leading to the likelihood of higher food prices and capital controls. (Financial Times)
Who is welcoming Afghan refugees? European countries like France, Germany, Italy and Spain are rushing to evacuate journalists, activists, and Afghan allies. The mayors of Liverpool, Manchester, Rome and Florence have said they would welcome refugees. Countries like Albania, North Macedonia, Qatar and Uganda have agreed to the U.S.’s request to temporarily house refugees while they await approval. Some U.S. cities are expecting to resettle over a thousand refugees over the coming days. The mayors of Baltimore and Missouri’s Kansas City and St. Louis in Missouri have stated they are prepared to welcome them. And a bipartisan group of governors, including Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, have offered to take in more refugees. Other Republican governors, like those of Georgia, Nebraska, and Utah, have also signaled their support. (Bloomberg)
The Taliban have been handed a huge financial and geopolitical edge in relations with the world's biggest powers as the militant group seizes control of Afghanistan for a second time. In 2010, a report by US military experts and geologists estimated that Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest countries, was sitting on nearly $1 trillion (€850 billion) in mineral wealth, thanks to huge iron, copper, lithium, cobalt and rare-earth deposits. In the subsequent decade, most of those resources remained untouched due to ongoing violence in the country. Meanwhile, the value of many of those minerals has skyrocketed, sparked by the global transition to green energy. A follow-up report by the Afghan government in 2017 estimated that Kabul's new mineral wealth may be as high as $3 trillion, including fossil fuels. (Deutsche Welle)
President Xi Jinping has called for stronger “regulation of high incomes” in the latest sign that a 10-month campaign targeting China’s largest technology companies is rapidly expanding to encompass broader social goals. State media reported that a meeting of the Chinese Communist party’s Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission on Tuesday, chaired by Xi, had emphasized the need to “regulate excessively high incomes and encourage high-income groups and enterprises to return more to society.” The committee added that while the party had allowed some people and regions to “get rich first” in the early decades of China’s reform and opening period, it was now prioritizing “common prosperity for all.” (Financial Times)
A new runway in the Taiwan Strait has put Beijing’s jets ever closer to Taiwan. The £340 million project would be between the isles of Dasha and Xiaosha near Pingtan island — at the closest possible point from the mainland to Taiwan and its capital Taipei. The plan was disclosed a day after the Chinese military began its latest round of live-fire war games involving ships, anti-submarine aircraft and fighter jets near Taiwan. (The Times)
The U.S. Transportation Department said it will limit some flights from Chinese carriers to 40% passenger capacity for four weeks after the Chinese government imposed similar limits on four United Airlines flights. (Reuters)
Iran has nearly doubled its enrichment capacity dedicated to purifying uranium close to the levels required for nuclear weapons, signaling it won’t de-escalate its atomic activities before meeting again with world powers. Inspectors verified on Aug. 15 that Iran introduced a second cascade of nuclear centrifuges to produced uranium enriched to 60% purity at a fuel plant in Natanz, the IAEA said in reply to questions. The machines spin at supersonic speeds to separate the uranium isotopes needed to induce fission. (Bloomberg)
Burnout, delta variant boost demand for traveling nurses again. Hospitals are probably paying 10% to 20% more than they were during previous Covid-19 waves for travel nurses. Aya Healthcare showed a 14.3% increase in available jobs from Aug. 9 to Monday with the greatest need in states like Texas, California, Florida, New York and Tennessee. (Healthcare Dive)
Caldor fire in El Dorado County (CA) explodes to more than 50,000 acres, leveling parts of a California town and forcing thousands to evacuate. (Los Angeles Times, Washington Post)
Minnesota's drought reaches levels not seen since 1988 and the Dust Bowl. (Star Tribune)
Economy
A majority of Federal Reserve officials believe the U.S. central bank could start withdrawing a massive pandemic stimulus program later this year, according to a record of their latest meeting. Minutes from the July meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee showed that officials had accelerated discussions on an eventual end to the $120bn-a-month asset purchase program that has been in place since the onset of the Covid-19 economic crisis. (Financial Times)
Delta surge dampens Americans’ appetite to go out: Retailers, gyms and restaurants had seen activity surpassing pre-pandemic, i.e. 2019 levels for the larger part of July, before seeing the number of visits drop 30 to 50 percent below 2019 totals through the first week of August. (Statista)
Nearly 61% of U.S households paid no federal income taxes during pandemic-stricken year of 2020, because of declines in income and boosts to government subsidies that wiped away tax liabilities. The 60.6% proportion for last year compares with 43.3% over the five years before the pandemic struck. (Bloomberg)
Robinhood is now primarily a crypto business. The trading app’s first quarterly results since its July initial public offering showed that trading in cryptocurrencies made up more than half of all transaction-based revenue. Further cementing Robinhood’s ties to internet culture, nearly two-thirds of the crypto revenue came from dogecoin, the digital currency based on a popular meme. (The Information)
Companies might be required to report workforce stats to the SEC: Workforce turnover, skills training and diversity information would be included in the report. (Protocol)
Walt Disney World in Florida is permanently retiring its free, line-skipping FastPass system and for the first time will charge $15 a person for the privilege, opening up a potentially colossal new revenue stream. Before the pandemic, the No. 1 theme park at the resort, the Magic Kingdom, attracted 21 million visitors annually. (New York Times)
Is it time to hire a head of remote? Says Darren Murph, head of remote at GitLab: “A head of remote pressure tests the entire organizational design to make sure that all culture and workflow operates well in a location-agnostic way. Everything from elementary school all the way through university teaches you how to function in a workplace with four walls and a roof. It's vastly different in an intentional fully virtual environment. You can leverage new tools, you can use common tools in uncommon ways — that's step one. Step two of my role is to be both an internal and external advocate for remote-first principles to make sure that the people who joined GitLab as well as those who have been here for a really long time are kept up to date on what we're doing to thrive as a remote team, what new tools we are piloting, what new workflows we're incorporating and how our values are iterating over time.” (Protocol)
They’d rather quit than end the remote work dream: Forced returns to the office and pay cuts for remote workers are clashing with those who never want to come back. (Wired UK)
Return-to-work programs, helping people who left the workforce for a period of time to get back to their careers, have been around for about 20 years. That means that the programs are "coming of age" with long-term results to show how they've affected the careers of women, caregivers, and others who have participated. (Harvard Business Review)
Here are the new 2021 unicorn startups founded by women. (Crunchbase)
Technology
A new investigation into Apple's censorship of terms used to create product engravings shows that the multinational has not only broadly censored political speech in mainland China, but has partially applied its China censored keyword lists — "thoughtlessly reappropriated" from Chinese sources — to Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The report, published Wednesday by The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, a research lab studying digital threats to civil society, discovered Apple's 1,105 censored keywords were applied "inconsistently" across six regions in Apple's free engraving service, which allows users to put custom names or messages on products like Airpods. (Protocol, Citizen Lab)
Apple says researchers can vet its child safety features. But it’s suing a startup that does just that. (MIT Technology Review)
Apple says SharePlay won’t be included in the initial iOS 15 release this fall. (9to5Mac)
Facebook, for the first time, shared a report on the most widely viewed domains, links, posts, and Pages on Facebook in the US during Q2. Facebook framed the report as an extension of its ongoing transparency efforts. But the information contained in it also serves another purpose: countering the idea that far-right pages and accounts dominate the site in the U.S. (Protocol, Facebook)
Facebook is ready to launch its digital wallet, according to David Marcus, the executive who spearheaded the social media group’s move into digital currencies. In a memo, Marcus said that Novi, a digital currency wallet that will be integrated into Facebook apps, was “ready to come to market”, adding that it had secured licenses or regulatory approvals in “nearly every” U.S. state. He said that the wallet would offer free person-to-person payments both domestically and internationally, describing Facebook as “a challenger in the payments industry.” (Financial Times)
T-Mobile hack exposed data of more than 40 million people. The cellphone carrier said the stolen data included first and last names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and driver’s license information from a subset of current and potential customers. (Wall Street Journal)
Tesla's AI Day is today. Elon Musk is expected to deliver a keynote, and attendees could hear about the company's efforts in supercomputing and neural networks. (Source Code)
New York City is a scooter-free metropolis no longer. On Tuesday three companies — Bird, Lime, and VeoRide — deposited 1,000 scooters each in the East Bronx, officially kicking off a pilot project to see how battery-powered two-wheelers fare on the mean streets of New York. This will be the first time that venture capital-backed scooter companies will be permitted to operate within the five boroughs. (The Verge)
Smart Links
Austin is capital of homes selling at super premiums. (Wall Street Journal)
Landlords from Florida to California are jacking up rents at record speeds. (Bloomberg)
What is “hot-desking,” and why is it so hot right now? (Protocol)
Amazon provides free Covid test kits for employees in California. (The Information)
Junior bankers have seized the upper hand on Wall Street, for now. (Bloomberg)
Top Fed official warns massive bond purchases are ill-suited for US economy. (Financial Times)
Autocorrect errors in Excel still creating genomics headache. (Nature)
Leaky sewers are likely responsible for large amounts of medications in streams. (American Chemical Society)
Venture capitalists are slinking away from the payday lending space, one decade after rushing in. (Axios)
Why do Chief Data Officers have such short tenures? (Harvard Business Review)