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The World
Germany said the West would agree to impose more sanctions on Russia in the coming days after Ukraine accused Russian forces of war crimes near Kyiv, ratcheting up the already vast economic pressure on Russia over its invasion. Russia denied its forces were responsible for the deaths of civilians in the town of Bucha and said Ukraine had staged a performance for the Western media. Reuters saw corpses strewn across the town. One appeared to have his hands bound with white cloth, and to have been shot in the mouth. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of carrying out a genocide. (Reuters)
Outrage widens over Russian attacks Zelensky now calls a ‘genocide’. (Washington Post)
Exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky calls on other Russian tycoons to break with Putin: “Public figures cannot leave quietly and then sit quietly. If you have left, then you should publicly dissociate yourself or we should be forced to suspect that you are acting on [the Kremlin’s] behalf,” Khodorkovsky said in an interview last week in his London office. “You should step up to the microphone and say that Putin is a war criminal and that what he is doing is a crime, that the war against Ukraine is a crime. Say this, and then we’ll understand that Putin doesn’t have a hold over you.” (Washington Post)
Viktor Orban won a fourth consecutive and fifth overall term as Hungary’s prime minister after taking a decisive majority in elections, setting him on a collision course with the EU, which has criticised the premier for eroding democracy. “We won so big you can see it from the moon, let alone from Brussels,” Orban told supporters in central Budapest. Orban, a populist conservative, has held power for 12 years, making him the EU’s longest-serving leader. He has extended control over most walks of life on the way to forming a self-styled “illiberal democracy” in which checks and balances have been weakened and the premier’s associates have become the business elite. (Financial Times)
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has said she will not be seeking a second term, after first revealing the decision to her de facto cabinet in an early morning meeting. Lam announced the decision at her daily Covid-19 press conference on Monday, while thanking her team and her family for their support. Two sources close to the government told the Post Lam had already informed Beijing of her intentions. (South China Morning Post)
President Alvi of Pakistan dissolved its parliament, setting the country on course for early elections, after a failed attempt to unseat Imran Khan as prime minister. The deputy speaker of parliament refused to hold a vote of confidence that Khan had been expected to lose. The prime minister and his allies claimed that America had conspired with the opposition to try to oust him. (The Times)
Explainer: What political upheaval in Pakistan means for rest of the world. (Reuters)
China sent the military and thousands of healthcare workers into Shanghai to help execute COVID-19 tests for all of its 26 million residents on Monday, in one of its biggest ever public health responses. Some residents were asked to wake up before dawn for nucleic acid testing at their housing compounds, many queuing up in their pajamas. The People's Liberation Army dispatched more than 2,000 medical personnel recruited from across the army, navy and joint logistics support forces to Shanghai. (Reuters)
Shanghai residents plead for food and medicine as authorities lock down city. Children separated from their parents as officials struggle to contain Covid outbreak. (Financial Times)
American motorists press the accelerator despite oil shortfall: US oil use this year has averaged almost 21mn barrels a day over the past month, according to preliminary government statistics, up 8 per cent from a year ago and back to pre-pandemic levels. Sales of petrol, diesel and especially jet fuel are all up — and likely to go higher as the summer holidays approach. The strong demand in the world’s largest oil consumer is an unheralded factor in the increasingly tight world petroleum market, helping to drive the price of crude above $100 a barrel. (Financial Times)
Americans Remain Largely Dissatisfied With Direction of U.S.: About one-quarter of Americans, 24%, say they are satisfied with the way things are currently going in the U.S., which is statistically similar to February's 21% and roughly in line with most readings since last August. The exception to this was 17% in January during a surge in COVID-19 cases attributed to the omicron variant. (Gallup)
Economy
The case for a half-point interest rate increase at the Federal Reserve’s next policy meeting in May has grown, according to Mary Daly, president of the US central bank’s San Francisco branch, in the latest sign that it is readying aggressive moves to root out high inflation. Daly joins an expanding group of Fed officials who have jettisoned a gradual approach to scaling back support for the economy in the aftermath of the pandemic-induced recession. “The case for 50, barring any negative surprise between now and the next meeting, has grown,” said Daly in an interview with the Financial Times. “I’m more confident that taking these early adjustments would be appropriate.” (Financial Times)
US chief executives are on track to reap record rewards this year, raising the prospect of fresh clashes with investors and employees as the gap between their earnings and those of their staff widens to a historic multiple in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. For the 280 S&P 500 companies that have reported figures this year, the median chief executive’s pay has jumped to a record $14.2mn for 2021, up from $13.5mn in 2020, according to ISS Corporate Solutions. Equilar, another data company that tracks chief executive rewards at the biggest companies by revenue, said the median among 196 companies that have reported this year has rocketed 20 per cent to $14.3mn, after having dipped to $12mn in 2020. (Financial Times)
City firms are sponsoring overseas recruits to come to work for them in the UK at the fastest rate since before Britain left the European Union, according to Home Office figures. About 200 foreign-based workers a week are being hired by British banks, fund managers, insurers and other City firms as the search for talent intensifies and as visa rules are relaxed. (The Times)
A Los Angeles court has found a California law mandating that publicly traded companies include people from underrepresented communities on their boards unconstitutional, ruling in favor of a conservative group seeking an injunction against the measure. (Reuters)
Technology
Why Apple Is Preparing to Let You Subscribe to Your iPhone: Apple Inc. is working on an iPhone hardware subscription service that will shake up the buying process, letting users essentially lease their device and get a new model annually. As with other services of this nature, Apple’s rationale for doing this is very simple: making more money. (Bloomberg)
Apple is working on a secret project to “break out” from its existing financial system. Apple is serious about making a splash in the financial services world. In addition to working on a hardware subscription service and a “buy now, pay later” offering, the company is developing its own financial back-end and payment-processing technology to support future services with little reliance on partners. (Bloomberg)
Taiwan aims to forge closer ties with the U.S. on electric vehicles, the metaverse and next-generation communication technologies as Washington pushes to bring supply chains onshore, the island's top trade promotion organization said. (Nikkei Asia Review)
Interviews:
PlayStation's Jim Ryan: Our games could suffer if they went straight into PS Plus. The platform holder's CEO discusses the potential for games subscription services. "We feel like we are in a good virtuous cycle with the studios," explains PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan, "where the investment delivers success, which enables yet more investment, which delivers yet more success. We like that cycle and we think our gamers like that cycle." He continues: "[In terms of] putting our own games into this service, or any of our services, upon their release... as you well know, this is not a road that we've gone down in the past. And it's not a road that we're going to go down with this new service. We feel if we were to do that with the games that we make at PlayStation Studios, that virtuous cycle will be broken. The level of investment that we need to make in our studios would not be possible, and we think the knock-on effect on the quality of the games that we make would not be something that gamers want." (GamesIndusry.biz)
Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation says the government's crypto donation platform has raised $70M+ as of April 1. (The Block)
Smart Links
Leftwinger Mélenchon courts youth vote as he eyes French election run-off spot. (Financial Times)
Airlines cancel hundreds of weekend flights as thunderstorms sweep through Florida. (CNBC)
Crypto refugees fleeing Ukraine find a haven in bitcoin-friendly Portugal. (Bloomberg)
What is an oligarch, really, and what is their influence on Russia? (Washington Post)
Sustainable packaging investment accelerates. (Crunchbase)