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The World
First-time claims for unemployment benefits rose to 861,000 last week, the highest level in four weeks, in the latest setback to the US labor market’s recovery from a winter Covid-19 surge. Economists had expected a small decline to 765,000. California, Illinois and Ohio were among the states reporting the biggest increases in jobless claims. (Financial Times)
Biden administration formally offers to restart nuclear talks with Iran: The U.S. took a major step toward restoring the Iran nuclear deal that the Trump administration abandoned, offering to join European nations in what would be the first substantial diplomacy with Tehran in more than four years. In a series of moves intended to make good on one of Biden’s most significant campaign promises, the administration also backed away from a Trump administration effort to restore United Nations sanctions on Iran. (New York Times)
What does it mean that Facebook decided to block journalism in Australia rather than pay the companies that produce it under legislation now before Parliament, angering a country of arguers who had grown used to Facebook as a regular forum for politics or culture?
Australians discovered it wasn’t just those staples that were missing. Pages for state health departments and emergency services were also wiped clean. The Bureau of Meteorology, providing weather data in the middle of fire season — blank. An opposition candidate running for office in Western Australia, just a few weeks from an election — every message, gone. Even pages for nonprofits providing information to domestic violence victims fell into the Facebook dragnet, along with those for organizations that work with the poor and vulnerable. (New York Times, ABC Australia)
Global leaders will be asked to back Australia in a fight with Facebook over its market power after the social media giant silenced news, health and emergency services in a bid to halt a federal law. Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison raised the shock tactic with Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in the first step of a plan to mobilize global support to stop Facebook “bullying” elected governments. “They may be changing the world, but that doesn’t mean they should run it,” Morrison said. British MPs said that the tech giant is showing a “staggering lack of respect” for democratic processes. (Sydney Morning Herald, The Times)
Google bowed to the pressure at the eleventh hour by agreeing a spate of licensing deals with Australian media companies including Nine, one of the country’s largest media groups and publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald. But most significantly, an accord with News Corp covered all the Murdoch-owned news properties around the world, underlining the way Australia’s aggressive action could reshape the news industry far beyond its own borders. (Financial Times)
“An emergency on top of a pandemic”: Texas hospital workers scramble as winter storm hampered operations. Water disruptions, patient logjams, overflowing emergency rooms, exhausted workers, staffing shortages and power outages created challenging conditions for health care workers across the state. More than 500 cases of carbon monoxide poisoning reported in Houston. (Texas Tribune, Houston Chronicle)
Texas universities: UT-Austin canceled in-person, online classes through Monday morning. Meanwhile, with dwindling food, flooded halls, and unflushable toilets, Texas’ university dorms descend into chaos during winter storm. (The Daily Texan, Texas Tribune)
Fort Worth residents search for drinkable water amid boil orders, frozen pipes. At least 100 people headed to a natural spring in Fort Worth to fill up containers with safe drinking water. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
House lawmakers are set to grill the top executives at Facebook, Google and Twitter at a high-profile congressional hearing on March 25, as Democrats and Republicans take fresh aim at the tech giants for failing to crack down on dangerous political falsehoods and disinformation about the coronavirus. The hearing comes as a second panel of House lawmakers embarks on a new, bipartisan push to toughen the country’s antitrust laws, hoping to crack down on the sort of anticompetitive, monopoly-style tactics they identified at Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google last year. (Washington Post)
The European Union unveiled a new, more assertive foreign trade policy that signals greater cooperation with Washington and warns of unspecified measures it reserves the right to take against China to blunt “negative spillovers” from the approach Beijing takes to trade and investment. Meanwhile, the U.S. and China are headed towards an inevitable divorce, according to an American study on economic ties with China: “Decoupling is likely to continue in one form or another, even if it does evolve in a more measured, targeted way,” the US Chamber of Commerce’s China Centre and Rhodium Group said in a joint report. “In both Washington and Beijing, political trust is at a nadir, and a return to the cooperative engagement policy that dominated the relationship since 1972 is difficult to imagine absent a sea change in both capitals.” (South China Morning Post, South China Morning Post-2)
French President Macron said Europe and the U.S. should urgently allocate up to 5% of their current vaccine supplies to developing countries where Covid-19 vaccination campaigns have scarcely begun, and China and Russia are offering to fill the gap. The Biden administration, however, said its priority is ‘vaccinating Americans’ in rejection of French proposal and will not send vaccines until the supply improves. UK PM Boris Johnson to call on G-7 support for 100-day target to develop new vaccines. (Financial Times, Financial Times-2, CNBC)
Food workers face some of the highest COVID risk: The death risk for essential workers in some sectors was 20–40% higher than expected during the first 8 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Nature)
“Now the fun really starts,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, said. That’s because NASA safely landed a new robotic rover on Mars, beginning its most ambitious effort in decades to directly study whether there was ever life on the now barren red planet. While the agency has completed other missions to Mars, the $2.7 billion robotic explorer, named Perseverance, carries scientific tools that will bring advanced capabilities to the search for life beyond Earth. The rover, about the size of a car, can use its sophisticated cameras, lasers that can analyze the chemical makeup of Martian rocks and ground-penetrating radar to identify the chemical signatures of fossilized microbial life that may have thrived on Mars when it was a planet full of flowing water. (New York Times)
Economy
Pay gap for U.S. female executives narrows but persists: Among companies in the Russell 3000 index, covering most of the investable U.S. stock market, the highest paid women earned 84.6 cents for every dollar earned by male counterparts in 2019, up from 81.5 cents in 2015. The study’s author said the narrower difference pointed to progress that should continue as companies file disclosures in coming weeks showing 2020 compensation. But the persistent gap reflects a lack of top female leaders and how those now in place often hold lower-paid posts like heads of marketing or human resources. (Reuters)
Twitter commits that 25% of its executives will be from underrepresented minorities by 2025. (CNBC)
Pandemic to widen skill gaps as workplaces change: Tens of millions of workers in developed economies will have to retrain for secure careers in post-COVID labour markets reshaped by the pandemic and the remote working revolution, a report by consultancy McKinsey said. The analysis concluded the pandemic’s biggest impacts will be concentrated in four work areas: leisure and travel venues; on-site customer interaction such as in retail and hospitality; computer-based office work; and production and warehousing. (Reuters)
How to Stay Motivated When (Still) Stuck at Home: It’s no surprise that many are dealing with frustration, anger, and burnout. Quite simply: We’ve had enough. Here’s how to motivate and thrive: First, feel your anger and release it in healthy ways. Second, question what changes you can make to your situation — and accept what you aren’t changing. Third, develop a strategy for moving forward within these realities. Finally, remember to take care of yourself, physically and mentally. (Harvard Business Review)
Walmart said it would raise wages for about 425,000 of its employees. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said the company supports raising the federal minimum but there are parts of the country that should be lower than others, and increases should be paced out. The company is keeping its starting wage at $11 an hour. (Wall Street Journal)
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev offered an apology for the company’s decision to temporarily curb trading in some stocks, including GameStop , on Jan. 28 amid extraordinary volatility. Lawmakers took different positions on the implications of the trading frenzy. Democrats focused questions for Tenev on whether Robinhood’s simplified app and commission-free business model helps or hurts individual investors. Several Republicans praised the executives for helping to lower transaction costs for small traders and called for less regulation of Wall Street. (Wall Street Journal)
Private equity firms expect to see a wave of M&A activity during 2H21, spurred by a waning pandemic and the specter of higher capital gains taxes. (Chief Investment Officer, Citizens Financial Group)
Myanmar's coup has created a minefield for business, as fears of a digital crackdown undercut hope that the junta will improve on Suu Kyi's policies. (Nikkei Asian Review)
Technology
Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces: The new way to play, network and escape video calls. Even if it’s a pandemic-boosted fad, there are real reasons chatty, audio-only social media makes sense. (Wall Street Journal)
Google is releasing a developer preview for the next version of Android, Android 12, for Pixel devices. As is the norm for Google, the very first previews of Android are full of a lot of developer-facing changes. Android 12 has updates to how the OS handles images, video, and future security updates. (The Verge)
Job listings show Apple is looking to hire engineers to start work on 6G, which industry watchers don't expect will be rolled out broadly until about 2030, as the company wants to rely less on others for new technology. (Bloomberg)
The New York Times debuted a Slack app that provides a daily recommended read, a “save for later” button, and alerts users if a link they shared was discussed in other channels. (Neiman Labs, NYT Open)
Startup M&A poised to rise as automakers rev up EV plans: As large automakers signal a future free from the combustion engine, more startups developing electric-vehicle technology could come into play as acquisition targets. The expected spike in M&A interest follows multiple quarters of sky-high venture investment in the EV space. (Crunchbase)
Smart Links
CMO Next 2021: The annual list highlights chief marketing officers who are redefining the role (Forbes)
Ivy League cancels spring sports season. (Wall Street Journal)
Coursera launches 'activism in sports' class taught by Chris Webber. (EdScoop)
Nearly all NYC restaurants could not pay December rent. (Specialty Food)
Scientists extract million-year-old DNA from Siberian mammoth remains. (Financial Times)
An unleashed Jeff Bezos will seek to shift space venture Blue Origin into hyperdrive. (Reuters)
Facebook’s misleading campaign against Apple’s privacy policy. (Harvard Business Review)
New theory sheds new light on cataclysm that killed the dinosaurs. (Harvard Gazette, Scientific Reports)