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The World
US greenhouse gas emissions rose again in 2022 despite climate goals. (Financial Times)
Sweden plans new law to enable nuclear plant construction. (Financial Times)
The fate of a tiny village has sparked heated debate in Germany over the country’s continued use of coal and whether tackling climate change justifies breaking the law. Environmental activists have been locked in a standoff with police who started eviction operations on Wednesday in the hamlet of Luetzerath, west of Cologne, that’s due to be bulldozed for the expansion of a nearby lignite mine. Some stones and fireworks were thrown at officers in riot gear as they moved into the village, clearing roadblocks and removing protesters. (Associated Press)
The U.S. and its allies are preparing their next round of sanctions on Russia’s oil industry, aiming to cap the sales prices of Russian exports of refined petroleum products in an expansion of novel penalties the West has imposed on the country’s crude. In meetings across Europe this week, Treasury officials are discussing the details of the coming sanctions on Russian oil products, which are set to go into effect Feb. 5. The penalties will set two price limits on Russian refined products: one on high-value exports such as diesel and another on low-value ones such as fuel oil, according to people familiar with the plans. (Wall Street Journal)
China Stops Reporting Covid Tally as Data Criticism Intensifies: China hasn’t reported daily Covid cases, deaths since Monday. (Bloomberg)
China population: cities unveil new childbirth incentives as first decline in more than 6 decades looms. Couples having a third child or more in Shenzhen will be eligible to a cash allowance of 19,000 yuan (US$2,800). Other cities like Jinan in Shandong province are handing out childcare subsidies and expanding parental leave. (South China Morning Post)
Japan leads world in childless middle-aged women: Difficulty getting married is biggest obstacle to having kids, research finds. (Nikkei Asia Review)
Japan and the U.S. affirmed that Washington will extend its security umbrella to its treaty ally into space, a move that would seek to protect Japanese satellites as China and Russia ramp up military activity in the arena. The foreign and defense ministers of the two countries issued a joint statement saying that Article 5 of their security treaty, obligates the U.S. to defend Japan if it comes under attack, could be applied to space. (Nikkei Asia Review)
Germany’s competition regulator said Google should give its users more control over how and whether it mingles data from its various services, like its search engine and YouTube, part of a fresh wave of regulatory enforcement in Europe for big tech companies. The country’s Federal Cartel Office said that its preliminary conclusions found Google is violating a new German digital-competition law passed in 2021, and that it expects to order the company to give users more specific and clear control over the extent to which their data is combined from various services. (Wall Street Journal)
Economy
Traders Lose Trust in CPI Data Security in Wake of Volume Shock: The report has spurred outsize market swings in recent months. (Bloomberg)
Prices of services are rising quickly. Prices of goods are falling. Energy is all over the map. Policy makers and market watchers already strip out volatile components of price indexes to understand what is known as core inflation. These days, many are on the hunt for an even narrower measure: a supercore. When the Labor Department releases its latest inflation reading on Thursday, most investors will still look first at the monthly change in the so-called core consumer-price index, which excludes food and energy categories to provide a better sense of inflation’s longer-term trajectory. Some, though, will quickly look past that number to metrics such as core services excluding housing—or even core services excluding housing and medical care. And even that won’t be entirely satisfying. (Wall Street Journal)
Gold is shining once again, as investors bet that cooling inflation in the U.S. will slow the pace of Fed rate hikes and make the precious metal more attractive. Gold futures were at an eight-month high, climbing 14% since late November to hit $1,882 per ounce on Wednesday. Investors tend to flock to assets that offer regular returns, such as government bonds, when interest rates are rising. Gold prices slumped in April last year as the US Federal Reserve started to hike interest rates in a bid to tame runaway inflation. (CNN)
The FTC is facing fierce opposition to its proposed ban on employee noncompete agreements. But if FTC chair Lina Khan can jump those hurdles, it would have significant consequences for mergers and acquisitions. What to know: The FTC laid out its new plan in a whopping 216-page document, arguing that a tool created to retain top talent has evolved into an abusive mechanism that covers around one in five American workers, including some that earn minimum wage. Its proposed ban would exempt any seller with at least a 25% ownership stake in an acquired business, and also would be retroactive. (Axios)
Japan's GDP shrank 0.2% in November on a month-on-month seasonally adjusted basis, as inflation hits private spending. However, if December GDP grew at the October-November average rate, Japan's economy would have expanded by 2.9% in real terms in the final quarter, compared with the September period, the JCER said. (Nikkei Asia)
Activist investor Nelson Peltz plans to mount a proxy fight for a seat on Walt Disney Co.’s board, adding to the challenges Robert Iger faces after he recently returned to the role of chief executive at the beleaguered entertainment giant. Disney revealed the activist’s intentions Wednesday afternoon in a statement that said that it is opposed to having him join the board. (Wall Street Journal)
Stripe has cut the internal value of its shares by about 11%, implying a valuation of $63 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. It’s at least the third time since June that the payments startup has cut its internal valuation, following a smaller cut in October, and brings the total reduction to about 40% in the past six months. (The Information)
Mouse Jigglers, Fake PowerPoints: Workers Foil Bosses’ Surveillance Attempts: Companies that track employees’ productivity run up against their inventive workarounds. Since the start of the pandemic, an estimated third of medium-to-large U.S. companies have adopted some kind of worker-surveillance system, bringing the overall share of employers using such systems to two out of three. A September report by Microsoft Corp. described a “paranoia” in which 85% of business leaders said they questioned whether their hybrid workforces were being productive (even though, the report said, people generally are working more than ever). That has led to “productivity theater,” the report added, in which some employees try to show they’re busy by doing things like joining meetings they don’t need to be in. Workers nationwide are sharing their ways to outsmart supervisors, guard their personal lives or just avoid looking like shirkers. (Wall Street Journal)
Technology
Apple is working on adding touch screens to its Mac computers, a move that would defy long-held company orthodoxy and embrace an approach that co-founder Steve Jobs once called “ergonomically terrible.” Apple engineers are actively engaged in the project, indicating that the company is seriously considering producing touch-screen Macs for the first time. (Bloomberg)
CNET has been using an “AI engine” to write financial explainers under a CNET Money byline since November 2022, reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by a human. (Futurism)
Researchers working on China’s “artificial sun” project have discovered a never-before-seen mode of plasma operation that could lead to more stable and effective generation of nuclear fusion energy. The breakthrough could help future fusion experiments create a safe, clean and near-limitless energy source for humanity, the researchers said. The “super I-mode” was first discovered at the Hefei-based Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor during a record-breaking 17-minute operation in December 2021. (South China Morning Post)
Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star – the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a planet’s surface. The world is 95% Earth’s size and likely rocky. Astronomers previously discovered three planets in this system, called TOI 700 b, c, and d. Planet d also orbits in the habitable zone. But scientists needed an additional year of TESS observations to discover TOI 700 e. Scientists define the optimistic habitable zone as the range of distances from a star where liquid surface water could be present at some point in a planet’s history. This area extends to either side of the conservative habitable zone, the range where researchers hypothesize liquid water could exist over most of the planet’s lifetime. (NASA)
Like the tobacco, oil, gun, opioid and vaping industries before them, the big U.S. social media companies are now facing lawsuits brought by public entities that seek to hold them accountable for a huge societal problem — in their case, the mental health crisis among youth. But the new lawsuits — one by the public school district in Seattle last week, with a second filed by a suburban district Monday and almost certainly more to come — face an uncertain legal road. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments next month over the extent to which federal law protects the tech industry from such claims when social media algorithms push potentially harmful content. Even if the high court were to clear the way for lawsuits like Seattle’s, the district has a daunting challenge in proving the industry’s liability. (Associated Press)
OpenAI this week signaled it’ll soon begin charging for ChatGPT, its viral AI-powered chatbot that can write essays, emails, poems and even computer code. In an announcement on the company’s official Discord server, OpenAI said that it’s “starting to think about how to monetize ChatGPT” as one of the ways to “ensure [the tool’s] long-term viability.” The monetized version of ChatGPT will be called ChatGPT Professional, apparently. That’s according to a waitlist link OpenAI posted in the Discord server, which asks a range of questions about payment preferences including “At what price (per month) would you consider ChatGPT to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it?” (TechCrunch)
Smart Links
Microsoft plans to give US salaried staff unlimited Discretionary Time Off plus 10 corporate holidays, leaves of absence, mental health time off. (The Verge)
Elon Musk's drop in fortunes breaks world record (BBC)
Are tech layoffs a sign of looming Bay Area recession? Here’s what experts say. (San Francisco Chronicle)
UK partners with BioNTech for cancer vaccines. (Reuters)
Microsoft plans to give US salaried staff unlimited Discretionary Time Off plus 10 corporate holidays, leaves of absence, mental health time off. (The Verge)
IRS gives drenched Californians an extra month to file tax returns. (Los Angeles Times)
Subway Explores Sale That Could Value Sandwich Chain at More Than $10 Billion. (Wall Street Journal)