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The World
European Union leaders called on all E.U.- based airlines to stop flying over Belarus and began the process of banning Belarusian airlines from flying over the bloc’s airspace or landing in its airports — effectively severing the country’s direct air connections to Western Europe. European leaders agreed to “targeted” economic measures that are expected to be aimed at companies and oligarchs accused of financing president Alexander Lukashenko’s 27-year rule. The Belarusian foreign ministry branded the criticism as “baseless,” while Russia called the EU response “shocking.” (New York Times, Financial Times)
The Group of Seven top advanced economies are close to an accord on the corporate taxation of multinationals, paving the way for a global deal later in the year to create new rules for the imposition of levies on the world’s largest companies. A G7 pact could be sealed as early as Friday after progress was made among top officials in recent days — and would be a powerful force and prerequisite for a deal in the formal negotiations taking place at the OECD in Paris and directed by the wider G20. An OECD agreement would probably lead to the largest shake-up in international corporate taxation for a century, severely curtailing the ability of companies to shift profits to low tax jurisdictions and ensuring that U.S. digital giants paid more tax in the countries where they made sales. (Financial Times)
A new and potentially more contagious coronavirus variant has begun to outpace other virus versions in Britain, putting pressure on the government to shorten people’s wait for second doses of vaccines and illustrating the risks of a faltering global immunization drive. The new variant, which has become dominant in India, may be responsible in part for a grievous wave of infections across Southeast Asia, including Nepal, where people have been dying in hospital corridors and courtyards. (New York Times)
Vaccinated Americans are increasingly going out this spring—but not as much as their unvaccinated counterparts. The vaccinated are “proceeding with cautious optimism,” said Derrick Fung, chief executive of Cardify. People who aren’t vaccinated tend to be more risk tolerant and are already living a relatively normal life, Fung added. “As places open up, they’re the ones leading the charge.” (Wall Street Journal)
Study: Culture influences mask wearing. In the U.S. and globally, cultures with a high level of collectivism tend to encourage masking during the pandemic. They found that a U.S. state’s collectivism rating is a strong and consistent predictor of mask usage no matter what. For example, Hawaii, has the highest collectivism rating in the U.S., and the second-highest level of mask usage (slightly behind Rhode Island). On the other end of the spectrum, a handful of states from the Great Plains and Mountain West have both low collectivism scores and low levels of mask wearing, including Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, and Kansas. (MIT News)
DeSantis signs Big Tech censorship bill, despite constitutional concerns: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law the Stop Social Media Censorship Act, which greatly limits large social media platforms’ ability to moderate or restrict user content — and it almost certainly will become the first such law to be struck down in court. The bill is a legislative distillation of Republican anger over recent episodes of supposed anti-conservative bias, like Twitter and Facebook shutting down Trump’s account and suppressing the spread of the infamous New York Post Hunter Biden story. It imposes heavy fines—up to $250,000 per day—on any platform that deactivates the account of a candidate for political office, and it prohibits platforms from taking action against “journalistic enterprises.” (Orlando Sentinel, Wired)
For more than 400 colleges and universities, it’s being billed as the ticket to a normal year on campus: Require all students to be vaccinated for the coronavirus before they can matriculate next fall. From just one university in March, to a dozen by the first week of April, the floodgates have now opened with at least 403 colleges announcing a mandatory vaccine. Yet a look at the geographic spread of the universities reveals a stark, if unsurprising, divide: The overwhelming majority of the colleges that are requiring the immunization are in blue states. Only 32 — 8% — are in states that voted for Donald Trump, according to a tracker created by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Seven of those were added Friday, when Indiana University and its satellite campuses became rare public universities in Republican-controlled states mandating vaccines. (New York Times)
NYC & LA schools will reopen fully, five days a week in the fall. (Los Angeles Times)
56% of Republicans believe the election was rigged or the result of illegal voting, and 53% think Donald Trump is the actual President, not Joe Biden. Only 30% of Republicans feel confident that absentee or mail-in ballots were accurately counted, compared to 86% of Democrats and 55% of independents. As a result, 87% of Republicans believe it is important that the government place new limits on voting to protect elections from fraud. Finally, 63% percent of Republicans think Donald Trump should run for President again in 2024, compared to only 8% of Democrats and 23% of independents. (Ipsos Poll)
Economy
The boss is back but the workers are staying at home: Many chief executives who have returned to the office are struggling to convince staff to join them. Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. As of May 5, the “back-to-work” barometer published by Kastle Systems, the maker of office security systems, showed just 16.3% occupancy in New York offices, up 0.1% from the previous week and just a few percentage points from November. (Financial Times)
Biden administration moves toward making the pandemic work-from-home experiment permanent for many federal workers. (Washington Post)
Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch to ban trainee brokers from making cold calls. In shift for program that dates back to 1945, recruits will now be directed to use internal referrals and LinkedIn messages to prospect for new clients. (Wall Street Journal)
CLOs are back: Issuance of new collateralized loan obligations, which buy up loans to companies with junk credit ratings and package them into securities, totaled over $59 billion as of May 20. That is the highest ever figure for that period in data going back to 2005. (Wall Street Journal)
Even by the standards of a record-breaking global credit binge, China’s corporate bond tab stands out: $1.3 trillion of domestic debt payable in the next 12 months. That’s 30% more than what U.S. companies owe, 63% more than in all of Europe and enough money to buy Tesla Inc. twice over. What’s more, it’s all coming due at a time when Chinese borrowers are defaulting on onshore debt at an unprecedented pace. The combination has investors bracing for another turbulent stretch for the world’s second-largest credit market. (Caixin Global)
Singapore exits pandemic-induced recession as economy grows 1.3%. But experts are cautious about the outlook for the second quarter, saying a rise in infections and new restrictions may dampen prospects. (South China Morning Post)
The four-year vesting period is dying. Stripe, Lyft and Coinbase have all shortened their golden-handcuff period to one year, but not everyone is thrilled with the new way of thinking about comp. (Protocol)
While they are great for the environment, electric vehicles pose a problem for highway construction and maintenance as gas taxes are the largest source of funding. States like CA, MA, and NY have their sights set on phasing out gas-powered cars by 2035, but along with that comes a loss of tax revenue from gas sales. In the US, this revenue accounts for 40% of transportation funding. (Wired)
JPMorgan is taking another crack at healthcare. The bank is building a new unit focused on employee healthcare following the collapse of Haven, its partnership with Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway. (Wall Street Journal)
Technology
Epic v. Apple came to a close with a series of contentious back-and-forth debates in place of traditional closing arguments — a session known in legal circles as a “hot tubbing.” Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers wanted both companies to make their case for what the relevant market should be — is it mobile gaming, the entire gaming market, or the entirety of the iOS app ecosystem — and what kind of remedy might be appropriate. In a barrage of tough questioning from lawyers from both sides, Gonzalez Rogers did not tip her hand as to what her final verdict will say. But she gave both sides reason to worry and rejoice at various points during the four-hour court session. (Protocol, Washington Post)
Retail and restaurant automation are on fire: Touchscreens, kiosks, headless commerce, drones and even food delivery robots are the present and the future of the retail and restaurant industries as those sectors grapple with continued labor shortages. That spells growth for startups focused on automation technologies. (Crunchbase)
US podcast ad revenues grew to $842m in 2020, up from $708m. Revenue is projected to grow to $2.1bn by 2023. Dynamically-inserted ads grew from 48% to 67% of revenue. Meanwhile, Samsung is the biggest new podcast advertiser in April, according to Magellan AI, spending $1.4m. BetterHelp is still the biggest spender in US podcasting.(Podnews, Podnews-2)
Big Sur 11.4 fixes a bug that let malware capture screenshots and camera footage using other apps' permissions; researchers found ~400 instances of the malware. Meanwhile, Apple released iOS 14.6 with Apple Card Family, Podcasts Subscriptions, and more. (Forbes, 9to5Mac)
Meeting multitasking: A new study of Microsoft employees finds that people multitask more frequently in larger and longer meetings, and that multitasking happens far more often in recurring meetings than during ad hoc meetings. Meetings held in the morning have higher rates of multitasking than at other times of day, and multitasking takes place six times as often in video meetings lasting more than 80 minutes compared with meetings that take 20 minutes or less. Microsoft shared the details of what it calls the largest study to date of multitasking and remote teams this week as part of a human-computer interaction conference. Researchers from Amazon, Microsoft, and University College London examined logs of Outlook email and OneDrive cloud file activity for almost 100,000 US Microsoft employees to get a sense of how often people multitask in video meetings and why. (Wired)
Microsoft shows off its next generation of Teams Rooms, “where experiences are immersive and connections feel natural.” (Microsoft)
Smart Links
Gene therapy, high-tech goggles restore some vision to blind people. (Wall Street Journal, Nature)
At least 100 U.S. towns have bought Chinese surveillance tech tied to Uighur abuses. (TechCrunch)
Indonesian toll roads draw interest of foreign pension funds. (Financial Times)
Half of New York voters stand by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, poll finds. (Wall Street Journal)
AI-enabled EKGs find difference between numerical age and biological age significantly affects health. (Mayo Clinic)
Research reveals why some find the sound of others eating so irritating. (The Guardian)
A third of large U.S. newspapers experienced layoffs in 2020, more than in 2019. (Pew Research Center)