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The World
Germany and France called for a new EU strategy of closer engagement with Russia to build on discussions with Moscow in the wake of US president Joe Biden’s Geneva summit with Vladimir Putin. Diplomats said Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, wanted the EU to consider inviting the Russian president to a summit with EU leaders, and that the initiative was supported by French president Emmanuel Macron. (Financial Times)
Meanwhile, UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Russia remains a “threat to stability,” as Russia summoned the British ambassador and accused the UK of staging a “crude British provocation” after a Royal Navy warship sailed through Black Sea waters off the coast of Crimea. The Russian defense ministry claimed it fired warning shots to chase away HMS Defender, but the UK denied that any shots were fired directly at the vessel. (Financial Times)
Covid-19 transmission is accelerating in several poorly vaccinated states, primarily in the South plus Missouri and Utah, and more young people are turning up at hospitals. The data present the clearest sign of a rebound in the U.S. in months. In Missouri, Arkansas and Utah, the seven-day average of hospital admissions with confirmed Covid-19 has increased more than 30% in the past two weeks, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. In Mississippi, the hospitalization rate is up 5% in the period. (Bloomberg)
Birthday celebrations might have boosted the spread of COVID-19. In U.S. areas with a lot of cases, households in which someone had a birthday saw a 31% increase in the prevalence of infection in the following two weeks, compared with households that did not have a birthday. If it was a child’s birthday, that went up to 57%. (Nature Briefing, Scientific American)
Nine months after the declaration of a national emergency due to the pandemic, U.S. births fell by 8% in a month. The December drop marked an acceleration in declines in the second part of the year. For the full year, the number of babies born in the country fell 4% to about 3.6 million, the largest decline since 1973, according to a CDC report. (Bloomberg)
President Biden announced new efforts to tackle gun violence and provide money to fund police departments, propelling the White House into the politically contentious debate over how to address a rise in violent crime in many U.S. cities. The president also directed the A.T.F. to revoke the licenses of gun dealers “the first time that they violate federal law” by failing to run background checks. (New York Times)
The U.S. intelligence community concluded last week that the government of Afghanistan could collapse as soon as six months after the American military withdrawal from the country is completed. American intelligence agencies revised their previously more optimistic estimates as the Taliban swept through northern Afghanistan last week, seizing dozens of districts and surrounding major cities. (Wall Street Journal)
Beijing is growing increasingly concerned over a security vacuum emerging in Afghanistan after America withdraws from the war-torn country. China will no longer be able to rely on a U.S. presence to quell some of the security threats posed by Afghanistan on its southwestern border. (Nikkei Asian Review)
Biden is set to launch the next phase of his China policy with a push for high-level meetings with Beijing officials after five months of pursuing a hardline stance. The US and China are discussing a possible meeting between Antony Blinken, secretary of state, and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi at a G20 meeting in Italy next week. (Financial Times)
Mounting digital security threats from China, Russia and elsewhere have driven the European Union to devise a Joint Cyber Unit, intended for launch by 2022, to coordinate a response to attacks anywhere in the bloc. (Nikkei Asian Review)
Lights out at Apple Daily: Hongkongers rushed overnight to buy one of a million copies of Apple Daily’s last edition, which hit the streets in the early hours of Thursday to close the final chapter of the tabloid-style newspaper’s 26 years in business. As queues of customers stretched outside newsstands across Hong Kong, a round of applause erupted in the Apple Daily newsroom at 11.45pm to mark executive editor-in-chief Lam Man-chung sending off the last issue of the newspaper to the printing press. “Keep it up, Apple Daily! Keep it up, Hong Kong!” staff chanted, as the paper’s followers outside its Tseung Kwan O headquarters whistled and clapped in support. (South China Morning Post)
A bipartisan group of centrist senators will head to the White House today to brief President Biden on their infrastructure framework after lawmakers said they had signed off on an outline for how to fund and finance billions of dollars for roads, bridges and other public-works projects. After two lengthy meetings with White House officials on Wednesday, a few senators said they had struck an agreement on the overall framework for an infrastructure plan and would personally update Biden as they worked to finalize some details. (New York Times)
Gov. Gavin Newsom will face a recall election later this year, California's Secretary of State confirmed. This will be the second time in California's history that a gubernatorial recall campaign has succeeded in getting on the ballot, out of a total of 55 attempts. (Axios)
In what appears to be the first vaccine-mandate lawsuit filed against a college, eight Indiana University students sued the Board of Trustees over a policy requiring Covid-19 vaccines for students and employees. The eight student plaintiffs — who include undergraduate and graduate students — object to both the vaccine mandate and the alternative requirements. (Chronicle of Higher Ed)
The U.S. ranks last in media trust — at 29% — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries, The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021 found. That’s worse than Poland, worse than the Philippines, worse than Peru. (Finland leads at 65%.) Globally, trust in the news has grown, on average, by six percentage points in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic – with 44% saying they trust most news most of the time. Interest in local news and willingness to pay for it was not strong. Only 21% in the U.S. said that they pay for news online. Of those who do, 31% said they pay for The New York Times, 24% for The Washington Post and only 23% for the site of a local or regional paper. The most popular local news topic, by a wide margin (62%), was weather. Staples of local newspaper coverage like politics (33%) and education (16%) lagged. Those surveyed indicated a preference for local broadcast (52%) as a source over newspapers (16%). (Poynter Institute, Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021)
Economy
U.S. new home sales tumble to one-year low as prices soar. Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said inflation should retreat by year end from its current elevated level as supply bottlenecks get worked out, adding she sees little evidence inflation expectations are becoming unanchored. (Reuters-1, Reuters-2)
White House’s National Economic Council Director Brian Deese called on the US to embrace openly an “industrial strategy” to shore up its manufacturing base, including partnering with allies to bolster crucial supply chains and better compete with China. Deese said the pandemic had exposed “unique economic vulnerabilities” in US production, from medical supplies to computer chips, delivering a “wake-up call” to policymakers. (Financial Times)
Offer remote work, or lose your best prospects to someone who will. That's what Facebook thinks the future looks like, according to Miranda Kalinowski, the company's head of recruiting. Facebook has expanded its plans for remote work in recent weeks, a quick shortcut to expand its talent pool. "There's no secret to the fact that across the tech sector, we've got a huge opportunity to attract more [remote] candidates who have been from underrepresented groups that we may not have been able to attract in the past," Kalinowski said. She's pretty sure a lot of other companies are going to do the same … but she's OK if they don't. "Companies that are not able to offer it will see themselves at a distinct disadvantage," she said, and Facebook stands to be one of the beneficiaries. (Protocol)
Do chance meetings at the office boost innovation? There’s no evidence of it. (New York Times)
The New York Times wants staff back in the office at least 3 days a week in September. (Insider)
The pandemic did not cost U.K. women as many jobs as expected. In fact, the employment rate for men in the U.K. dropped 2.4%, while it only dropped 0.8% for women. (Broadsheet)
In India, remote work proved to help close gender gaps within mid-management to senior positions. In 2020, 43% of Indian businesses hired women for mid-management to senior level positions in comparison to just 18% the prior year. (Quartz)
Deutsche Bank AG’s female employees in the U.S. represent about 21% of the firm’s top ranks and Black staff account for around 5%, according to data released by the bank For the U.S. as a whole, 37% of staff are women and 8% are Black. There were no Asian or Latinx employees among senior and executive leadership, even though Asian people represent almost 28% of the German bank’s workforce and Latinx people account for a little more than 9%. (Bloomberg)
Millions of Americans refinanced last year—but fewer Black and Latino homeowners did. From January to October of last year, only 6% of Black borrowers refinanced their mortgages, versus 12% of white borrowers. Of an estimated $5.3 billion of savings for all households that refinanced during the 10-month period examined in the Fed report, only $198 million, or 3.7%, went to Black households. (Wall Street Journal)
Amazon and other tech giants are racing to buy up renewable energy. The race to secure electricity deals for power-hungry data centers has tech companies reshaping the renewable-energy market and grappling with a new challenge: how to ensure their investments actually reduce emissions. (Wall Street Journal)
Central banks have stepped up their attacks on cryptocurrencies, arguing that bitcoin has “few redeeming public interest attributes” amid an escalating battle over the future of finance and payments. (The Times)
China's Bitcoin crackdown is driving miners toward freewheeling Texas, as the heavily deregulated state struggles with severe power supply issues. (Nikkei Asian Review)
Cryptocurrency experts say these 4 factors are driving change in the industry: 1) Mainstream adoption; 2) Price volatility; 3) Regulatory pressure; 4) Beyond Bitcoin. (Crunchbase)
Technology
Voters favor tech regulation but are less supportive of measures they perceive to hamper their favorite services, according to a poll conducted by Morning Consult and commissioned by tech-funded advocacy group Chamber of Progress. The survey results come just hours before the House Judiciary Committee is set to debate a series of antitrust bills aimed at reining in the power of the largest tech firms. The bills follow an investigation by the panel that found that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google hold monopoly power. (CNBC, Progress Chamber)
GOP riven by infighting over Big Tech crackdown: The finger-pointing underscores that the politics of antitrust laws designed to take on Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook don’t cut neatly across ideological lines. (Politico)
The NFL is exploring options for its media properties including selling stakes to strategic partners. The league hired Goldman Sachs to explore potential partnerships for the properties, which include the NFL Network and RedZone pay-TV channels as well as NFL.com. (Wall Street Journal)
Peloton removed the free feature “Just Run” option on their treadmill. Instead, the company is requiring customers to pay the monthly subscription fee, $39, in order to unlock the feature — To use the machine one must subscribe to their video exercise programs. This change occurred after the recall of their Tread and Tread+. (PCMag)
Viewers of YouTube are now increasingly watching it on television sets. But despite the shift, some traditional TV advertisers are still balking at moving their ad dollars to the service. Nearly 40% of ads that air on YouTube in the U.S. are now watched on television sets, up from just 12% two years ago. The change suggests that the viewing habits of YouTube’s audience are beginning to more closely resemble those of audiences for other streaming services. Netflix has said that over 70% of its audience watches the service on TVs. (The Information)
Canadian lawmakers passed a controversial bill that aims to regulate programming distributed by media streaming services and social platforms like Facebook and YouTube, a measure that critics warn could infringe on individual speech. The legislation drafted by Justin Trudeau’s government is meant to subject tech giants to the same requirements as traditional broadcasters -- effectively compelling companies like Netflix and TikTok to finance and promote Canadian content. It’s among the most far-reaching plans by governments anywhere to regulate the algorithms tech companies use to amplify or recommend content. The legislation needs to win passage through the Senate. (Bloomberg)
Scholars on LinkedIn are being blocked in China “without telling them why.” Affected users say the Microsoft-owned social networking site is obstructing them over “prohibited content” without further explanation. (Wall Street Journal)
Smart Links
Warren Buffett resigns from Gates Foundation, has donated half his fortune. (Reuters)
The top 10 U.S. CEOs of 2021, according to Glassdoor (BCG’s Lesser is No. 1). (CNBC)
Up to 2,000 overseas fans allowed to attend Euro 2020 final at Wembley. (The Times)
AR can improve the lives of older adults, so why are apps designed mainly for youngsters? (Science Daily)
Tech companies lag behind their Black Lives Matter pledges. (MIT Sloan School of Management)
Undergraduate enrollment is down, but trends are encouraging for women in STEM. (Diverse Ed)
In Massachusetts, public colleges send debt collectors after nearly 12,000 students. (Hechinger Report)
New network of European sleeper trains planned: French start-up aims to run ‘hotels on rails’ from Paris to 12 cities from 2024. (The Guardian)