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The World
Beijing warned of war as record number of jets enter Taiwan’s air defense zone: China has warned that “war may be triggered at any time” with Taiwan after it deployed a record number of fighter jets into the self-governing island’s air identification zone. The government in Beijing sent 56 military aircraft, including 38 J-16 fighter jets, into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, amounting to 149 flights this month. This has raised concerns that tensions in the region could escalate and turn into a military conflict. Meanwhile, the Taiwan defense minister said tensions with China are the worst in four decades. (The Times, Reuters)
President Biden said that he has spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping about Taiwan and they agreed to abide by the Taiwan agreement, as tensions have ratcheted up between Taipei and Beijing. Biden appeared to be referring to Washington's long-standing "one-China policy" under which it officially recognizes Beijing rather than Taipei, and the Taiwan Relations Act, which makes clear that the U.S. decision to establish diplomatic ties with Beijing instead of Taiwan rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means. (Reuters)
Top US and Chinese officials will hold a meeting this week in Switzerland that will include negotiations about a possible virtual summit between President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart. Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, will meet Yang Jiechi, China’s top foreign policy official, today. (Financial Times)
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will announce a significant rise in the minimum wage within weeks as he pledges to end the “broken” model of a low-wage, low-growth economy. The Times has been told that the prime minister will accept the recommendations of independent advisers that are likely to boost the pay of the lowest earners to about £9.42 an hour. (The Times)
New Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's cabinet starts with a 59% approval rating, an improvement from the previous cabinet's slump but lower than the initial public support for his two most recent predecessors. (Nikkei Asian Review)
Ireland has said it is “confident” it can sign a revised global corporate tax deal that would ditch the 12.5% corporate rate that has been a cornerstone of its economic policy for two decades. This has raised expectations that the country will now join most of the rest of the world in backing a global minimum 15% corporate tax rate, as a meeting of the OECD in Paris on Friday approaches that EU partners are billing as make-or-break. More than 130 countries agreed in July to the principle of a global 15% minimum tax. (Financial Times)
Foreign tourists will not be welcomed back to Australia until at least 2022, the prime minister said in outlining plans for lifting restrictions. The country will prioritize the return of skilled migrants and students, said Prime Minister Scott Morrison, but only after 80% of the full population aged 16 and over is vaccinated. (Associated Press)
Hospitals in less-vaccinated areas are struggling financially as infections mount and stimulus runs out. Covid is burdening U.S. hospitals with extra labor costs at the rate of about $24 billion a year. (Washington Post)
The myth that democracies bungled the pandemic: The argument that authoritarian governments outperform democracies in a crisis has found new life during the coronavirus pandemic. The data tell a different story. (The Atlantic)
President Biden said that Democrats are considering a change to Senate filibuster rules to bypass a Republican blockade over raising the debt limit, which has set the United States on a collision course with a government default. “Oh, I think that’s a real possibility,” Biden said when asked if Democrats were considering the last-resort route. (New York Times)
What’s driving the huge U.S. rent spike? The modest dip in rents last year has given way to an unprecedented price hike in the 100 largest U.S. metro areas this year. Nationally, rents have increased 11% on average compared to last August. The increase is most pronounced in cities like Phoenix, Arizona, and Boise, Idaho, where rents for a two-bedroom apartment have gone up 15% and 21%, respectively. This comes as qualified renters are re-entering the market and as rental units are in short supply, allowing some landlords to institute massive annual increases. (Bloomberg)
Empty offices mean S.F. could miss out on millions in tax revenue. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Analysis of the total carbon dioxide emissions of countries since 1850 has revealed the nations with the greatest historical responsibility for the climate emergency. But six of the top 10 have yet to make ambitious new pledges to cut their emissions before the crucial UN Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in November. The six include China, Russia and Brazil, which come only behind the US as the biggest cumulative polluters. The UK is eighth and Canada is 10th. Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries and the cumulative amount of CO2 emitted is closely linked to the 1.2C of heating the world has already seen. (The Guardian)
Deluge in Italy sets European record: 29 inches in 12 hours. In just 12 hours, 29.2 inches of rain fell in Rossiglione in Italy’s Genoa province, roughly 65 miles south-southwest of Milan and 10 miles north of the Mediterranean coastline. It marked the greatest 12-hour rainfall on record in Europe. (Washington Post)
Economy
The price of bitcoin broke $50,000 for the first time in about a month as expectations mount that the SEC will soon approve a bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund. The prices of other digital currencies and crypto-related stocks rose as well. Further, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said that he has no plans to ban crypto during a House Committee on Financial Services meeting. He said ultimately, that decision “would be up to Congress.” (The Information)
U.S. Bank, the fifth-biggest retail bank in the nation, launched its cryptocurrency custody service for fund managers. The offering will help investment managers store private keys for bitcoin, bitcoin cash and litecoin with the help of sub-custodian NYDIG. (CNBC)
No real slowdown as funding for cybersecurity surpasses $14B for year. While cybersecurity couldn’t quite match last quarter’s record-setting fundraising total, it showed almost no signs of slowing down. Now the only real question that remains is: Will total funding for the year hit $20 billion? (Crunchbase)
Digital health funding reaches new heights with $21.3B so far this year: Overall deal volume decreased, though, with 169 deals in Q3 compared to 223 deals in Q2. The third quarter also saw fewer megadeals of $100 million or above. (Healthcare Dive)
Banks rushed to work with the Apple Pay mobile wallet when it debuted in 2014. They have some regrets. Some banks are pushing back, nudging card network Visa Inc. V -0.20% to change the way it processes certain Apple Pay transactions. The change would trim the fees that banks pay to Apple. Visa plans to implement the change next year. Apple executives have told Visa executives they oppose the change. The two companies are in discussions and it is possible the planned change won’t kick in. (Wall Street Journal)
Freelance platform Upwork found in its "Future Workforce Report" that 40.7 million Americans are expected to hold permanently remote roles within the next five years. Other findings: (Protocol, Upwork)
The number of fully remote and partially remote workers will increase over the next five years. Fully remote workers will consist of almost 28% of the workforce and over 20% of workers will be partially remote.
60% of survey respondents said their organization is already making changes to the structure or cadence of team meetings. And over 50% said their companies were making changes to internal communications.
Technology
Damning testimony from a former Facebook employee has reignited bipartisan support for reining in the tech sector, with members of the US Congress vowing to tighten rules for big companies. Senior members of the Senate commerce committee said they were looking at a range of legislation to crack down on Facebook and other big Silicon Valley groups after Frances Haugen told senators on Tuesday how the social media company repeatedly prioritized profits over user safety. (Financial Times)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to his own platform to reject claims made by a former employee in testimony before Congress. The Facebook founder insisted in the post, which he said was previously shared within the organization, that Haugen's testimony "doesn't reflect the company we know." He continued: "We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health. It's difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives." (Axios, Facebook)
More details about the October 4 outage: During one of these routine maintenance jobs, a command was issued with the intention to assess the availability of global backbone capacity, which unintentionally took down all the connections in our backbone network, effectively disconnecting Facebook data centers globally. Our systems are designed to audit commands like these to prevent mistakes like this, but a bug in that audit tool prevented it from properly stopping the command. This change caused a complete disconnection of our server connections between our data centers and the internet. And that total loss of connection caused a second issue that made things worse. (Facebook Engineering)
The scale of deals in gaming in 2021 is already double the full dollar amount from 2020, according to a new industry report. 2021 has seen a dizzying amount of mergers, acquisitions and investments as everyone wants in on the sector, and as the big players already inside it are spending a lot to get bigger. Industry analysts at Drake Star Partners have counted some 844 transactions in the first nine months of this year, totaling $71 billion for announced and/or closed deals. (Axios, Drake Star Partners)
Review: Microsoft wants Windows 11 to feel familiar. While the company has attempted drastic changes to the user interface of Windows in the past and failed, Windows 11 feels like a subtle and considered attempt to modernize an operating system that’s existed for more than 35 years. The changes alone make Windows 11 look different, but once you get used to them it’s certainly the same feel of Windows underneath. Windows 11 is a refreshing approach to this old and familiar home, but it often feels like the home renovation phase isn’t finished. Some features you might be familiar with are missing, others that were promised haven’t arrived just yet, and there’s still too much of the crusty old parts of Windows hanging around. (The Verge)
Smart Links
Meet the 44 newcomers joining The Forbes 400 list of America’s richest people. (Forbes)
Ken Griffin sees young people making ‘grave mistake’ working at home. (Bloomberg)
New York Public Library is eliminating late fees. (Bloomberg)
VCs keep betting on China even as public stocks sink. (The Information)
Vietnam urban rail projects fall years late as payments lag. (Nikkei Asian Review)
Udemy files to go public on back of growing B2B incomes. (TechCrunch)
Cotton prices surge to highest level in a decade. (Wall Street Journal)
Tina Turner sells entire catalog to BMG — its single largest artist acquisition ever. (Rolling Stone)