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The World
As the House of Representatives prepares to give final approval to the $1.9 trillion relief package today, 70% of U.S. adults say they favor the legislation. Only 28% oppose the bill. While congressional votes on the legislation have been deeply divided along partisan lines, 41% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents support the measure. The bill draws overwhelming support from Democrats and Democratic leaners (94% favor). (Pew Research Center)
What’s in the Third Covid-19 Stimulus Package? The current Senate legislation includes $1,400 checks for individuals making less than $75,000 annually and for married couples making less than $150,000 before phasing down—the largest individual section, totaling $410 billion. The package contains tens of billions of dollars to facilitate the vaccine rollout and $130 billion for schools. (Wall Street Journal)
Vaccines and Testing: Roughly 7% of the funding will be directed toward Covid-19 treatment, including testing and contact tracing.
State, Local Government Aid: $360 billion to state and local governments, with $10 billion put toward infrastructure projects.
Unemployment Benefits and Tax Credits: Senate Democrats voted to extend a $300 weekly jobless aid supplement through Sept. 6, and made the first $10,200 of the 2020 benefits nontaxable for households making less than $150,000.
The 10 states that saw tax collections dive the most because of the pandemic saw revenue fall from 5.6% to over 40% from 2019 to 2020. Those states are the most likely to benefit from the state and municipal aid included in the $1.9 trillion package. Six of the 10 states with the largest revenue drops have two Republican senators. (Axios)
The head of the Department of Homeland Security appealed for volunteers to help cope with “overwhelming numbers” of migrants trying to cross the southern border. Sec. Mayorkas made the plea in an email to staff amid a surge of arrivals, with the number of unaccompanied children in custody tripling in the past fortnight to more than 3,250. Meanwhile, TX Gov. Greg Abbott traveled to the border to declare a crisis and accused the president of aiding cartels and human smugglers. (The Times, Texas Tribune)
Immigration arrests have fallen sharply: The number of immigrants taken into custody by ICE officers fell more than 60% in February compared with the last three months of the Trump administration. Deportations fell by nearly the same amount, ICE statistics show. (Washington Post)
China and the U.S. are in talks for their top diplomats to meet in Alaska in a bid to reset the relationship. The Chinese delegation could include two heavyweights and be led by Yang Jiechi, the Communist Party official in charge of foreign affairs who often serves as President Xi Jinping’s envoy. Meanwhile, the top American regional commander warned the US is losing its military edge in the Indo-Pacific as China appears to be preparing for aggressive action. (South China Morning Post, Financial Times)
China’s campaign of persecution against its Uighur ethnic minority has violated every article in the UN genocide convention, a landmark independent review found. The report by more than 50 international law experts is the first legal non-governmental examination of a swelling body of evidence over Beijing’s treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang province. It adds that the government under President Xi bears responsibility for an “ongoing genocide.” (The Times)
The Biden administration’s review of its policy towards North Korea is expected to be completed “within the next month or so,” a senior official of the administration told Reuters while declining to say what direction it might take. (Reuters)
The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine appears to be highly effective against a more contagious variant first discovered in Brazil, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, raising hopes that ongoing vaccination efforts will help curb its spread. (Washington Post, NEJM)
25% of Americans — and a third of Republicans — say they don’t plan to get the vaccine. Alaska became the first state to make COVID vaccine available to everyone over 16, while an Israeli study finds vaccine antibodies in breast milk. (Monmouth poll, Anchorage Daily News, Jerusalem Post)
Economy
The European Union is bringing rules into effect today that seek to regulate the fast-growing sustainable-finance industry for the first time. Managers of funds that invest in line with environmental, social or governance considerations, known as ESG, will have to put forward a tangible, measurable plan for how they will do so. This will apply to all asset managers that raise money in the EU, whether they are based within its borders or not, from March 10. (Wall Street Journal)
Shares of technology firms and special-purpose acquisition companies surged, bouncing back after a weekslong streak of declines that pushed some popular SPACs down 20% or more in a month. The Nasdaq surged 3.7% for its biggest advance since November. At the same time, a selloff in government bonds paused for the first time in five sessions. Meanwhile, a Richard Branson-backed SPAC seeks to raise $500 million through a U.S. IPO (Wall Street Journal, Reuters)
Mastercard exec says almost 75% of apparel sales were made online last month, as restaurant reopenings boost recovery in US jobs market. (CNBC, Financial Times)
One Year Into the Pandemic, The Latest on What Consumers Want Brands to Say and Do: Consumers have elevated brands’ role in society amid the pandemic, holding them more responsible for employee wellbeing, community livelihood and the protecting the environment, among other things. Sentiments around corporate and CEO activism have weakened; Americans are embracing more light-hearted ads; and a deep understanding of consumer attitudes toward and expectations of brands is especially critical as a post-pandemic future approaches. Relevant messaging, activations, and business strategies will be inspired by memories of pre-pandemic times, shaped by events of the past year, and dictated by shoppers’ evolving realities as reopenings progress. (Morning Consult)
Technology
Google is marking 10 years of Chromebooks by unveiling new features for Chrome OS. The biggest addition is a new Phone Hub feature that connects an Android phone to a Chromebook. It allows Chrome OS users to respond to texts, check a phone’s battery life, enable its Wi-Fi hotspot, and locate a device easily. (The Verge)
Apple Podcasts will no longer use the word “subscribe” in a few weeks. Listeners will be invited to “follow” their favorite podcasts instead. The new wording will be in iOS 14.5, which should be released later this month (and is available in beta). This seemingly small change could dramatically affect the industry. Tom Webster from Edison Research says 47% of people who don’t currently listen to podcasts think that 'subscribing’ to a podcast will cost money. (PodNews)
TikTok nearly doubles its European headcount in 6 months — and is eying a third London base; BuzzFeed announces layoffs at HuffPost, affecting 47 US employees, three weeks after acquiring the site from Verizon Media; HuffPost Canada will close; (Insider, Huffington Post)
CNN’s Jeff Zucker and Technicolor vice chair Melinda “Mindy” Mount have joined the board of directors of Group Nine Acquisition Corp., the blank-check company looking to roll up other digital businesses with Group Nine Media. Group Nine Acquisition Corp. went public in January, ultimately raising $230 million in gross proceeds for an acquisition, merger or other business combination with companies in digital media, social media, e-commerce, events, and/or digital publishing and marketing. GNAC is headed by chairman/CEO Ben Lerer, who concurrently serves as CEO of Group Nine Media. (Variety)
President Biden is expected to nominate Lina Khan, a critic of Big Tech’s market power, to a seat on the Federal Trade Commission, according to people familiar with the situation, in a move that could signal more aggressive application of laws to ensure competition. Khan is a law professor at Columbia University and former Democratic staffer at the FTC and Congress. She was one of the House antitrust subcommittee staffers who wrote an October report that concluded Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google hold significant and durable market power, resulting in “less innovation, fewer choices for consumers, and a weakened democracy." (Wall Street Journal)
Smart Links
Parents' demand for summer camp spikes. (Axios)
Soaring home prices are starting to alarm policymakers. (Politico)
Golden Globes organization hires diversity consultant, outside law firm. (Los Angeles Times)
Disney Plus surpasses 100 million subscribers. (The Verge)
China is building the (cheap) smart homes of the future. (Protocol)
Inside the fall of Watson Health: How IBM’s audacious plan to ‘change the face of health care’ with AI fell apart. (STAT News)