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The World
President Biden offered a renewed sense of optimism and directed states to make all adult Americans eligible to receive coronavirus vaccines no later than May 1, using a somber but hopeful prime-time address to the nation to say Americans may be able to “mark our independence from this virus” by the Fourth of July. Biden also Biden pitched the newly signed coronavirus relief bill: ‘The American Rescue Plan meets the moment.’ (New York Times, Washington Post)
Americans have begun leaving home more often, according to University of Maryland researchers tracking the movement of cellphones. The number of daily trips per person — when a cellphone moved more than a mile from home — had hovered around 90% of pre-pandemic levels since rebounding over the summer. By the first week of March, the number of trips surpassed those taken each day in the same week last year, before stay-at-home orders kicked in, by as much as 13.6%. (Washington Post)
The Pfizer coronavirus vaccine is about 97% effective against severe cases and 94% against asymptomatic infections, new data jointly released by the company and Israel shows. (Jerusalem Post)
NIAID director Anthony Fauci said that he's "very much" concerned about a post-COVID mental health pandemic. Three in four adults in the U.S. reported a high stress level related to the pandemic, while one in four essential workers have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder. Two in three Americans said they are sleeping "more or less than they wanted to since the pandemic started," while nearly one in four reported drinking more alcohol to cope with stress. Black Americans were most likely to report "feelings of concern about the future." (Axios)
America’s drone war against terrorists has come to a halt after Biden ordered that the White House will decide which strikes are carried out by the CIA and the Pentagon’s special operations forces. In the first two months of the new administration there have been no reported drone strikes against al-Qaeda or Islamic State targets in countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen or Libya, pending a review of their use. (The Times)
The U.S., Australia, Japan, and India are on the verge of joining hands to build a rare-earth procurement chain to counter the dominance China plays in supplying these crucial elements to makers of everything from smartphones to high-performance motors to EV batteries. China currently produces nearly 60% of the world's rare earths, and its market power has posed supply concerns. (Nikkei Asian Review)
Britain and Australia are among countries ready for an imminent influx of Hongkongers amid fears that Beijing will soon bar dissidents from leaving. China’s grip on the city tightened when the National People’s Congress voted 2,895-0, with one abstention, for elections changes that will give Beijing a veto on candidates deemed unpatriotic. (The Times)
Most Americans support a tough stance toward China on human rights, economic issues: 89% of U.S. adults consider China a competitor or enemy, rather than a partner. More broadly, 48% think limiting China’s power and influence should be a top foreign policy priority for the U.S., up from 32% in 2018. Today, 67% of Americans have “cold” feelings toward China on a “feeling thermometer,” giving the country a rating of less than 50 on a 0 to 100 scale. This is up from just 46% who said the same in 2018. The intensity of these negative feelings has also increased: The share who say they have “very cold” feelings toward China (0-24 on the same scale) has roughly doubled from 23% to 47%. (Pew Research Center)
Israel has targeted at least a dozen vessels bound for Syria and mostly carrying Iranian oil out of concern that petroleum profits are funding extremism in the Middle East, U.S. and regional officials say, in a new front in the conflict between Israel and Iran. Since late 2019, Israel has used weaponry including water mines to strike Iranian vessels or those carrying Iranian cargo as they navigate toward Syria in the Red Sea and in other areas of the region. (Wall Street Journal)
New York State lawmakers opened an impeachment inquiry into Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the surest sign yet that the governor was seeing his party turn against him amid growing scrutiny of a recent series of sexual harassment accusations. Meanwhile, Cuomo may face a more immediate legal problem as the Albany Police Department got involved following a referral by the New York State Police and Cuomo's own staff that could put his latest accuser before detectives. Further, Cuomo aides called former staffers to discredit an accuser. Some recipients of the calls said that the outreach felt like attempts to intimidate them. (New York Times, Axios, Wall Street Journal)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Austin to stop it from imposing a local mask order. "I told Travis County & The City of Austin to comply with state mask law," Paxton tweeted. "They blew me off. So, once again, I’m dragging them to court." (Texas Tribune)
Economy
New Yelp data showed nearly a half million businesses have opened in America during the coronavirus pandemic, an optimistic sign of the state of the U.S. economic recovery. That’s down just 14% compared with the year-ago period. More than 15% of the new entities were restaurant and food businesses. (CNBC)
The Washington Post is planning to start reopening its newsroom in July, almost 16 months after directing employees to work remotely during the pandemic. Publisher Fred Ryan told staff that workers 10 percent of the workforce will start returning to the office on July 6, with everyone else back "sometime this fall. (The Hill)
The net worth of U.S. households finished 2020 at the highest level on record. Household net worth ended 4Q20 at $130.2 trillion — up 5.6% from 3Q20 and 10% from the end of 2019. (Wall Street Journal)
And yet — Americans extracted more cash from their homes through cash-out refinancings in 2020 than in any year since the financial crisis. U.S. homeowners cashed out $152.7 billion in home equity last year, a 42% increase from 2019 and the most since 2007, according to mortgage-finance giant Freddie Mac. (Wall Street Journal)
When SPAC-Man Chamath Palihapitiya speaks, Reddit and Wall Street listen: Palihapitiya is the man of the market moment. The founder of tech-investing firm Social Capital Holdings Inc. has charmed Wall Street to raise billions of dollars to bring startups public. Amateur traders hang on his every word for clues about his next target—and for the insults he hurls at the high-finance elite. (Hedge funds, he said last April, deserved to get wiped out when coronavirus shutdowns devastated the economy.) Wall Street has always had its rock stars. Warren Buffett’s carnival-like annual meeting, after all, is nicknamed “Woodstock for Capitalists.” But Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive who now has 1.4 million Twitter followers, belongs to a new class of market influencers—social-media savants who’ve figured out how to take shots at the establishment while taking its money. (Wall Street Journal)
Boomers Strongly Prefer Cash, Cards: Gen Z adults, millennials more likely than older groups to say they'd use app, phone for payments. (Morning Consult)
Technology
How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation: The company’s AI algorithms gave it an insatiable habit for lies and hate speech. Now the man who built them can't fix the problem. Everything the company does and chooses not to do flows from a single motivation: Zuckerberg’s relentless desire for growth. Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, a director of AI at Facebook, supercharged that growth. His team got pigeonholed into targeting AI bias, because preventing such bias helps the company avoid proposed regulation that might, if passed, hamper that growth. Facebook leadership has also repeatedly weakened or halted many initiatives meant to clean up misinformation on the platform because doing so would undermine that growth. In other words, Candela’s work—whatever its merits on the specific problem of tackling AI bias—is essentially irrelevant to fixing the bigger problems of misinformation, extremism, and political polarization. (MIT Technology Review)
Citizen Browser project's Split Screen tool shows Facebook's different News Feeds for Trump and Biden voters, based on data from 2,500+ users across the US. (The Markup)
How Yahoo News reached 1 million followers on TikTok in 1 year: The account, started by a 24-year-old special projects editor, uses a combination of partner footage, original reporting, and tongue-in-cheek humor to deliver news (starting with a tongue-in-cheek bio: “Yes, we still exist.”). (Neiman Lab)
Netflix knows you share your password. It’s testing a way to stop you: Restricting people from sharing passwords could force some to pay for their own accounts — but it also might drive others to give up on Netflix and turn to one of the other myriad streaming options. (Washington Post)
If Big Tech has our data, why are targeted ads so terrible? ‘Facebook says my advertiser-friendly interests include rugby, greetings cards and Gothic fashion — all wide of the mark’ (Financial Times)
In-flight internet provider Gogo says it is pushing its 5G rollout back a year, to 2022, due to the global chip shortage. (Light Reading)
Smart Links
Could tying executive pay to ESG goals drive sustainability in private equity? (Private Equity News)
Hollywood’s $10 billion opportunity: McKinsey study says anti-Black bias hurts revenue. (CNBC)
National Guard’s Capitol presence after riot to cost $521 million. (Wall Street Journal)
The latest Windows 10 update could cause your printer to crash your PC. (The Verge)
Will daylight saving time ever end? (City Lab)
Rome luxury homes saw robust end to 2020. (Mansion Global)