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The World
European Union government officials recommended that passengers flying from China to the EU should have a negative COVID-19 test before they board. The IPCR also recommended that EU governments test and sequence wastewater in airports with international flights and planes arriving from China. (Reuters)
China threatens ‘countermeasures’ over other countries’ Covid travel restrictions: US among several countries defending virus tests for China passengers as Beijing threatens to retaliate. (The Guardian)
China is underreporting deaths from Covid-19, a senior W.H.O. official said as he urged use of a broader definition that would more fully capture the mortality impact of the country’s first big wave of Covid infection. (STAT News)
France to send ‘tank killer’ armored vehicles to Ukraine: The move signals that France, with one of the biggest defense budgets in NATO, is committed to supporting Ukraine against Russia as the war approaches its second year. (Financial Times)
U.S. edges closer to sending armored weaponry to Ukraine: President Biden acknowledged that Bradley fighting vehicles are under consideration for delivery to Kyiv. (Washington Post)
The U.S. Embassy in Cuba resumed visa and consular services for the first time since a series of unexplained health incidents among diplomatic staff in 2017 slashed the American presence in Havana. (Associated Press)
Data published by a respected environmental think tank indicates Germany likely missed its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions again last year, despite a big effort by the new government to expand the renewable energy use. Agora Energiewende think tank said in a report that the country released the equivalent of 761 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the main planet-warming gas, in 2022. This was slightly below the previous year but still above Germany’s target of cutting emissions by 40% by 2020. (Associated Press)
Bolivian farmers vs. the government: Political trouble is brewing in Bolivia. For over a week now, farmers have been blocking roads in and out of the agricultural hub of Santa Cruz after the region's governor, right-wing opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho, was arrested for his alleged involvement in the 2019 ouster of then-leftist President Evo Morales. Camacho lost the 2020 presidential election to Morales’ protégé, Luis Arce, and the two have butted heads ever since. But there's more to it: The protesters also want the national government to carry out a long-delayed census that would give Santa Cruz — a relatively affluent region populated mainly by non-Indigenous Bolivians — more tax revenues and seats in Congress. The protesters won't go home until Camacho goes free, and meanwhile, the standoff is costing Bolivia millions of dollars in lost agricultural trade. (GZERO Media)
Californians Warned to Stay Off Roads as Major Storm Looms: More than 75,000 without power around Bay Area, PG&E says. The eye of the “bomb cyclone” bringing an intense winter storm to California will remain offshore, but its impacts have landed with full force. Heavy rains are coming down, with the most severe weather expected over the next several hours. Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in response to the extreme weather, authorizing California’s national guard to support with the anticipated damage. (Bloomberg, SF Chronicle)
Economy
Federal Reserve officials warned they would need to see “substantially more evidence” of easing inflation before they are convinced that price pressures are under control as they backed fresh rate rises this year, according to an account of their most recent meeting. Minutes from the December gathering, when the US central bank raised its benchmark rate by half a percentage point, showed the Fed intends to continue squeezing the economy to try to tackle price pressures, which they warned could “prove to be more persistent than anticipated”. (Financial Times)
Falling French inflation sparks hope of end to Europe’s price surge: Lower energy prices helped push inflation down in France. (Financial Times)
Asia stocks hit 4-month high on reopening of Chinese economy. (Reuters)
Share of new car buyers with a monthly payment over $1,000 hits record high. (CNBC)
The latest data on the labor market out Wednesday shows that, at least as of November, it remained remarkably robust — for better and worse. By the numbers: There were 10.5 million job openings in November, unchanged from the prior month (which was revised slightly higher), according to new data on job openings and labor turnover (JOLTS). Why it matters: The labor market remains resilient, a bright spot for American workers. But the data also points to certain types of jobs that continue to be out of whack, with far too much demand for the number of available workers. (Axios)
Shopify Tells Employees to Just Say No to Meetings: Shopify said it’s conducting a “calendar purge,” removing all recurring meetings with more than two people “in perpetuity,” while reupping a rule that no meetings at all can be held on Wednesdays. Big meetings of more than 50 people will get shoehorned into a six-hour window on Thursdays, with a limit of one a week. The company’s leaders will also encourage workers to decline other meetings, and remove themselves from large internal chat groups. (Bloomberg)
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff sent a letter to employees informing them that the company was laying off about 10% of its employees. A closer look at the numbers shows that Salesforce continued to hire aggressively even after the brunt of the pandemic had faded and the economic downturn was already underway. At the end of October, Salesforce had 79,824 employees. Cutting that figure by 10% will bring its headcount down to 71,842, only slightly below where it was at this time last year, judging by Salesforce’s headcount disclosures. To approach its pre-pandemic headcount levels (it employed nearly 50,000 people in Jan. 2020), Salesforce would have to make much deeper cuts. (The Information)
UK PM Rishi Sunak’s strike law to let bosses sack workers and sue unions: Employers will be able to sue unions and sack staff under government plans to curb the right to strike. Sunak is poised to announce legislation to enforce “minimum service levels” in six sectors, including the health service, rail, education, fire and border security. The laws, which will be announced as soon as today, will require a proportion of union members to continue working to retain a “minimum level” of service. (The Times)
Pakistan's government has ordered shopping centres and markets to close early every day as the country faces an economic crisis. Defence minister Khawaja Asif says the measures will save the South Asian nation around 62bn Pakistani rupees ($274.3m; £228.9m). Pakistan generates most of its power using imported fossil fuels. Global energy prices jumped last year, putting further pressure on the country's already dwindling finances. (BBC News)
Technology
Wall Street’s War for Tech Talent Is Cooling Off: With deal activity stalled and tech companies laying off workers by the thousands, Wall Street’s war with Silicon Valley over tech talent has cooled. Goldman Sachs’ plan to scrap substantial pieces of its unprofitable digital bank, Marcus, has caused particular concern among tech workers in the finance sector. (The Information)
Amazon layoffs will affect more than 18,000 employees, the highest reduction tally revealed in the past year at a major technology company as the industry pares back amid economic uncertainty. (Wall Street Journal)
Vimeo lays off 11% of its workforce, citing “an uncertain economic environment”, after cutting 6% in July 2022; the company had 1,200+ workers in December 2021. (Insider)
China is pausing massive investments aimed at building a chip industry to compete with the US, as a nationwide Covid resurgence strains the world’s No. 2 economy and Beijing’s finances. Top officials are discussing ways to move away from costly subsidies that have so far borne little fruit and encouraged both graft and American sanctions. (Bloomberg)
Dell looks to phase out 'made in China' chips by 2024: 'This trend looks irreversible,' supplier exec says of tech industry's production shift. (Nikkei Asia Review)
Chip designer Arm targets car market for growth. (Financial Times)
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has been fined almost €400mn by the EU’s main privacy regulator for breaching the bloc’s privacy rules, in a move that some experts believe could threaten a primary source of revenue for the company. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission issued two separate fines on Wednesday — €210mn for Facebook breaking the bloc’s landmark data privacy rules, and €180mn to Instagram for similar violations. The ruling also orders Meta to align its approach to processing user data with EU law within three months. (Financial Times)
Google Hires Top AI Ethics Expert From Microsoft: Google has hired Mira Lane, a longtime Microsoft executive who specializes in the ethics of artificial intelligence, to join its team focused on technology and society. The move, which Lane confirmed, comes as Google and the tech industry at large grapple with the ethical implications of increasingly sophisticated AI models. At Microsoft, Lane led a multidisciplinary team that worked on issues related to ethical data collection, generative AI technologies, facial recognition and responsible product design. (The Information)
Records of 235 million Twitter accounts and the email addresses used to register them have been posted to an online hacking forum, setting the stage for anonymous handles to be linked to real-world identities. (Washington Post)
Researchers find API security flaws in almost 20 car manufacturers' systems that could let hackers unlock, start, and track cars, plus access customers' data. (Bleeping Computer)
Smart Links
Chinese researchers claim success in breaking encryption with quantum computers. (Financial Times)
Europe is looking to funnel heat generated by data centers to homes. (Wall Street Journal)
Musk’s Server Cuts at Twitter Could Inspire Other CEOs. (The Information)
California’s endangered salmon population plummets amid new threat. (Los Angeles Times)
Investors conclude that Tesla is a carmaker, not a tech firm (The Economist)
Burned by layoffs, tech workers are rethinking risk (TechCrunch)