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The World
What’s Driving Record Levels of Migration to the U.S. Border? Millions of people are leaving their homes across Latin America in numbers not seen in decades, many of them pressing toward the United States. While migration to the U.S. southern border has always fluctuated, the pandemic and the recession that followed hit Latin America harder than almost anywhere else in the world, plunging millions into hunger, destitution and despair. A generation of progress against extreme poverty was wiped out. Unemployment hit a two-decade high. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine choked off a key pipeline for grain and fertilizer, triggering a spike in food prices. Economic shocks were worsened by violence, as conflicts between armed groups festered in once relatively peaceful countries and raged in places long accustomed to the terror. Amid these events, smugglers and migrants alike have pushed powerful social media campaigns, many rife with misinformation, that have encouraged people to migrate to the United States. (New York Times)
Who Gets In? A Guide to America’s Chaotic Border Rules. On Thursday, the United States will lift a pandemic rule that had been used to immediately kick out hundreds of thousands of migrants who crossed the border illegally over the last three years. Now, those migrants who enter the country illegally will have the opportunity to apply for asylum, which is a legal status people can get if they prove that they would face persecution or other risks at home. That doesn’t mean it will be easy to actually qualify. The Biden administration is set to impose new restrictions on eligibility, and if the process works as planned many migrants would still be deported relatively quickly. But if new arrivals overwhelm the system, it’s possible officials will let many people stay in the country to await asylum hearings. (New York Times)
Turkish presidential candidate Muharrem İnce has withdrawn from the contest days before a tightly fought election, boosting the main opposition contender’s chances of ousting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. İnce, who was Erdoğan’s main opponent in the previous election in 2018, said on Thursday that he would step out of the race for the good of the country. He has been under pressure since an alleged sex tape surfaced earlier this week. The main opposition contender Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who is representing a six-party coalition, has been locked in a tight race with Erdoğan ahead of Sunday’s poll, widely considered one of the most important elections in a generation. A Thursday poll put Kılıçdaroğlu in the lead with 49.3 per cent of the vote, compared with 43.7 per cent for Erdoğan, after distributing undecided voters. (Financial Times)
The Group of Seven wealthy democracies are discussing ways to counter the expanded trade to Russia from China, India and Turkey, which collectively has grown by more than $100 billion and has undermined the effectiveness of economic sanctions against Moscow. The issue is among the topics at a meeting of G-7 finance ministers and central bank chiefs who were in Japan for a three-day meeting. "I expect to discuss the necessary response in terms of maintaining pressure on Russia's ability to wage war," Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said before the meeting in Niigata. In the first quarter of this year, Russia's current account surplus stood at $18.6 billion, down 70% from a year earlier, according to Russia's central bank. G-7 sanctions imposed on Russia shrank energy receipts. (Nikkei Asia)
Efforts for truce said underway as no rockets fired for hours after IDF strikes Gaza: Optimism reportedly growing among Egyptian mediators, between Israel and Islamic Jihad; Jerusalem said continuing strikes, pushing for ceasefire as operation goals seen as achieved. (Times of Israel)
A debt ceiling meeting at the White House between President Joe Biden and congressional leaders set for Friday has been postponed until next week, in what was described as a “positive development” as Washington scrambles to avert a looming fiscal crisis. The White House confirmed that Democratic and Republican staffers would keep working and that “all the principals” — Biden, Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell and Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries — had now “agreed to meet early next week”. One person familiar with the meetings called the change in schedule a “positive development” and insisted talks about raising the debt ceiling were “progressing”. (Financial Times)
Spending cuts on table: White House officials acknowledge that they must accept some spending cuts or strict caps on future spending if they are to strike a deal, two sources said, while insisting they must preserve Biden's signature climate legislation that passed along party lines last year. (Reuters)
McCarthy embraces June 1 default deadline. (Axios)
The Senate health committee passed a package of bills aimed at speeding generic drug competition and reining in drug middlemen business practices. But they failed to pass an ambitious reform to the pharmacy benefit manager sector, despite strong bipartisan support for it. (STAT News)
Economy
Monthly Mortgage Payments Could Surge 22% If US Defaults. Higher mortgage rates are another potential risk facing the economy if the US defaults on its debt. Mortgage rates could soar to 8.4% if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, pushing the mortgage payment on a typical home 22% higher and cooling property sales, according to a report from the real estate firm Zillow. Borrowing $500,000 at 8.4% would mean a monthly payment of more than $3,800, compared with about $3,095 with rates at 6.3%. (Bloomberg)
US employees are more satisfied than ever, new survey finds. A new survey released by The Conference Board on Thursday found that US employees’ job satisfaction overall is the highest it has ever been since the survey began in 1987. Two key reasons for the record satisfaction level, according to Conference Board researchers: A tighter labor market, which has meant employees can command better pay, benefits and working conditions; and greater flexibility in work arrangements. Just over 62% of survey respondents indicated overall satisfaction with their jobs, a 2.1 percentage point increase over the prior year’s survey and a 5 percentage point jump over that recorded in 2020. The lowest level of satisfaction (42.6%) recorded in the history of the survey came in 2010 on the heels of the Great Recession. (CNN, Wall Street Journal)
The biggest US banks will be hit with nearly $16bn in extra fees over two years under a FDIC plan to recover its losses associated with rescuing Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. The FDIC proposed that roughly 113 banks would be subject to a so-called “special assessment”. Larger lenders whose assets total at least $50bn would pay more than 95 per cent of the total cost. The figure includes both behemoths such as JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America as well as the regional lenders that have been at the heart of the US’s recent banking turmoil. (Financial Times)
Jamie Dimon said it’s time for regulators to help put an end to turmoil in the banking industry, but he’s already predicting policymakers will take away the wrong lessons from this year’s upheaval. “I think it’s going to get worse for banks — more regulations, more rules and more requirements,’’ JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s chief executive officer said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “If you overdo certain rules, requirements, regulations — there are some of these community banks that tell me they have more compliance people than loan officers.’’ (Bloomberg)
Marriages in which wives outearn their husbands are not only more common, but less likely to end in divorce than in the past. Couples married in the late 1960s and 1970s were 70% more likely to divorce when wives earned the same or slightly more than their husbands compared with couples where the husband earned more, according to research from Christine Schwartz and Pilar Gonalons-Pons, sociologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively. For couples married in the 1990s, however, the divorce rate for those with female breadwinners had fallen to 4% higher than male breadwinners. (Wall Street Journal)
Consumers in some countries might not bat an eye at rising macaroni prices. But in Italy, where the food is part of the national identity, skyrocketing pasta prices are cause for a national crisis. Italy's Industry Minister Adolfo Urso has convened a crisis commission to discuss the country's soaring pasta costs. The cost of the staple food rose 17.5% during the past year through March, Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported. That's more than twice the rate of inflation in Italy, which stood at 8.1% in March, European Central Bank data shows. In nearly all of the pasta-crazed country's provinces, where roughly 60% of people eat pasta daily, the average cost of the staple has exceeded $2.20 per kilo, the Washington Post reported. And in Siena, a city in Tuscany, pasta jumped from about $1.50 a kilo a year ago to $2.37, a 58% increase, consumer-rights group Assoutenti found. (CBS)
Technology
NBCUniversal’s head of advertising Linda Yaccarino is in talks to become the new CEO of Twitter, according to people familiar with the situation. Ms. Yaccarino, chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCU, has been with NBCU for more than a decade, where she has been an industry advocate for finding better ways to measure the effectiveness of advertising. As head of NBCU’s advertising sales, she was key in the launch of the company’s ad-supported Peacock streaming service. Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, said in a tweet Thursday that he had hired a new CEO, but didn’t say who it was. “She will be starting in ~6 weeks!” Mr. Musk said in the tweet. (Wall Street Journal)
Twitter has become the latest social media platform to launch an encrypted messaging service. Direct messages sent on Twitter will be end-to-end encrypted - this means private messages can only be read by the sender and the recipient. Musk said it meant he could not see users' messages "even if there was a gun to my head". But he warned that this is an early version, and people should "try it, but don't trust it yet". (BBC)
Disney Shares Fall as Streaming Losses Jolt Investors: The shares declined nearly 9% after Disney said traditional TV income fell sharply and streaming is still a long way from profitability. (Wall Street Journal)
Peloton recalls over 2 million bikes due to faulty seats. Peloton is eager for people to know it’s more than “that bike company.” Unfortunately, those bikes are at the heart of the beleaguered fitness company’s latest woes. Peloton and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a voluntary recall of 2.2 million Peloton Bikes after 35 reports of seats either breaking or falling off during use. (The Verge)
Another bill to childproof the internet just made it out of committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee just approved the STOP CSAM Act, a bill that would penalize tech companies for not removing child sexual abuse material from their platforms once alerted to it. The committee has been on a roll teeing up floor votes on these kinds of bills over the last few weeks. While removing CSAM is an admirable goal, many of these bills have civil liberties experts spooked over their potential to chill encryption adoption and free speech online. (The Verge)
Kids use AI more than their parents. There's a stark divide between parents and their kids when it comes to experimenting with cutting-edge technology. That's the takeaway from a new poll from Common Sense Media. Only 30% of parents say they've used ChatGPT, compared with 58% of students between the ages of 12 and 18. Kids are talking about the tech more, too. Only 30% of parents have heard a lot about ChatGPT, compared with 54% of students. Kids are also using AI without their parents' knowledge, the survey found. 50% of students report using ChatGPT for school, while just 26% of parents say their kids have used it for school. Why it matters: ChatGPT is just one example illustrating a broader trend in technology. Whether it's AI, TikTok, crypto or Discord, kids are often ahead of their parents in using and understanding the next generation of tech. (Axios)
Smart Links
With UK food price inflation at 46-year high, lawmakers launch probe. (Reuters)
MSG Is Finally Getting Its Revenge (The Atlantic)
4 More States Pass ‘Science of Reading’ Mandates. (Education Week)
Young Workers Value Work-Life Balance. They’re Just Bad at It. (Wall Street Journal)
Airlines’ First Class Makeovers Give the Rich Hotel Rooms in the Sky. (Bloomberg)