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The World
President Biden is planning the first major federal tax hike since 1993 to help pay for the long-term economic program designed as a follow-up to his pandemic-relief bill. Unlike the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 stimulus act, the next initiative, which is expected to be even bigger, won’t rely just on government debt as a funding source. The following are among proposals currently planned or under consideration: (Bloomberg)
Raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%
Paring back tax preferences for so-called pass-through businesses, such as limited-liability companies or partnerships
Raising the income tax rate on individuals earning more than $400,000
Expanding the estate tax’s reach
A higher capital-gains tax rate for individuals earning at least $1 million annually.
U.S. commercial air travel appears to be on the rebound. The TSA said its agents screened more than 1.3 million passengers at airport security checkpoints nationwide on Friday — the most in almost a year. That was followed by more than 1.34 million people on Sunday. Airline stocks climbed Monday. Shares of United Airlines rose 8.3%, while shares of American Airlines climbed 7.7% and Delta shares rose 2.3%. (Associated Press, Wall Street Journal)
Trump voters wary of covid shots give focus group responses that suggest they can be persuaded: Be honest that scientists don’t have all the answers. Tout the number of people who got the vaccines in trials. And don’t show pro-vaccine ads with politicians — not even ones with Donald Trump. That’s what a focus group of vaccine-hesitant Trump voters insisted to politicians and pollsters this weekend, as public health leaders rush to win over the tens of millions of Republicans who say they don’t plan to get a coronavirus shot. (Washington Post)
Countries across Europe have suspended the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine over concerns the jab may cause blood clots, even though medicines regulators and the World Health Organization say there is no evidence of problems. Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the Netherlands became the latest countries to pause the rollout of the jab. Norway, Denmark and Bulgaria suspended their programmes last week. (Financial Times)
Three-quarters of Italians entered a strict lockdown, as the government put in place restrictive measures to fight the rise in infections. A more contagious variant first identified in Britain, combined with a slow vaccine rollout, led to a 15% increase in cases in Italy last week. (New York Times)
Regular booster vaccines against the novel coronavirus will be needed because of mutations that make it more transmissible and better able to evade human immunity, the head of Britain’s effort to sequence the virus’s genomes said. (Reuters)
There is little difference in reluctance to take the coronavirus vaccine among Black and white people in the U.S. 73% of Black people and 70% of White people said that they either planned to get a coronavirus vaccine or had done so already; 25% of Black respondents and 28% of white respondents said they did not plan to get a shot. Latino respondents were slightly more likely to say they would not get vaccinated at 37%, compared with 63% who either had or intended to get a vaccine. (NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey)
Two senior U.S. commanders said fighting in Afghanistan will intensify sharply and Taliban militants could threaten major cities unless a Biden administration diplomatic push to end the 20-year conflict yields results in the next two months. The tight time frame is driven by a May 1 deadline to withdraw the remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan, as required under a deal with the Taliban that President Biden inherited from the Trump administration. Biden has not decided whether to proceed with the withdrawal. (Los Angeles Times)
Half of New Yorkers say Gov. Andrew Cuomo shouldn’t resign from office, while 35% say he should, according to a Siena College Research Institute poll. 35% of respondents surveyed last week said they believed Cuomo had committed sexual harassment, compared with 24% who said he hadn’t and 41% who said they were unsure. The poll found 57% of voters surveyed said they were satisfied with how the governor has handled the allegations. (Wall Street Journal)
Food futurists bullish on hybrid meat: Lab-made and hybrid meat was a subject of high interest at this year’s virtual Future Food-Tech conference, where attendees stressed how a growing global population will pressure the industry to find less resource-intensive protein sources. The discussion follows a record funding year for food- and agriculture-based startups, including alternative meats. This as The growing global population is expected to increase the need for food by 70-100% by 2050. (Crunchbase)
A Vaccine Success Story Unfolds in an Unlikely Corner of U.S.: At the pandemic’s beginning, the Kaiser Family Foundation found more West Virginians were at risk of serious illness from Covid-19 than anywhere else in the country. Among adults, 49% were in the danger zone either because of advanced age or underlying conditions. The state routinely ranks among the worst for obesity, diabetes, and smoking rates. More people per capita die of opioid overdoses than in any other state. Yet thanks to a quick repurposing of West Virginia’s National Guard, well-established local pharmacies with strong community ties, and a robust telephone hotline, the state quickly became second in per-capita inoculations, behind Alaska. It’s now in the top five for its share of fully vaccinated residents as other states have started to catch up. (Bloomberg)
Economy
Graduates jostle in an overcrowded jobs market: University leavers in 2021 are competing for positions against last year’s cohort — and some older people. Employers recognize the problem. Hywel Ball, UK chairman and managing partner of EY, the professional services firm, echoed graduates’ fears: “Many students are facing a really tough jobs market.” (Financial Times)
Business worries intensify over China’s tightening grip on Hong Kong. Meanwhile, American financial giant Vanguard Group has suspended plans to launch a mutual-fund business in China. (Financial Times, Wall Street Journal)
U.S. banks are sitting on a pile of cash that could turn into billions of dollars of profits. In the coming months, banks are expected to free up tens of billions of dollars in reserves they set aside to cover soured loans — $236.6 billion in total reserves in December — losses that still haven’t materialized a year into a pandemic that shut down swaths of the U.S. economy. (Wall Street Journal)
Can Karen Lynch vaccinate America? The $269-billion retail pharmacy chain CVS Health is on a mission to transform itself into a health care company and they recently got a new CEO — Karen Lynch, the highest-ranked female Fortune 500 chief in the list’s history. (CVS, after its 2018 Aetna acquisition, is No. 5 on the list; the largest company to be run by a woman prior to Lynch’s promotion was Mary Barra’s General Motors.) But it’s not just Lynch’s big new job that puts CVS in the spotlight. The pharmacy is now at the center of the United States’ COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Lynch, who took over Feb. 1, has all eyes on her not just as the most-watched woman in corporate America, but as an executive overseeing a task critical to the nation’s public health. (Fortune)
Grab Your Lanyard. Trade Shows Are Plotting a Comeback. The roughly $11 billion U.S. trade-show and exhibition industry is slowly coming back to life after a largely lost year due to coronavirus. A full recovery isn’t expected for about two years, industry executives say, and many questions now face organizers and the businesses that rely on lanyard-clad masses: How quickly can shows, which require months of planning, come back on the calendar? Are attendees ready to crowd into expo halls and hotel bars with strangers again? And, after a year of remote networking, do they feel they need to? (Wall Street Journal)
Brexit transition contributes to record drop in EU trade. (Statista)
Technology
Chinese users of the instant messenger Signal knew that the good times wouldn’t last long. The app, which is used for encrypted conversations, is unavailable in mainland China as of the morning of March 16, a test by TechCrunch shows. The website of the app has been banned in mainland China since March 15, according to censorship tracking website Greatfire.org. (TechCrunch)
Listening on a mobile device now accounts for 30% of all time spent listening to audio by those age 13+ in the U.S., an increase of 67% since 2014. The gap between listening on a traditional radio receiver and a mobile device among those age 13+ has narrowed remarkably quickly since 2014: 31 percentage points separated the two in 2014 and only five percentage points separate the two today. The traditional AM/FM radio receiver does account for the largest share of audio consumed but has decreased the most since the survey began, now accounting for 35% of all audio consumption compared to 49% in 2014. (Edison Research)
Tech survey: Protocol asked 1,504 tech employees at all levels, from all over the U.S., what they think about tech: (Protocol)
78% of employees said the tech industry is too powerful. And when we asked only about Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Alphabet, the number was practically identical.
56% said that U.S. restrictions on Chinese tech companies have gone too far, and 58% said they worry about the repercussions of a cold war with China. Far more people think tech should avoid working with law enforcement than think it should avoid working with China.
Regulation is a popular idea. 73% of employees said they wanted regulation for AI, and more than 71% of those familiar with Section 230 said it needs to be reformed.
News Corp struck a three-year deal to provide news to Facebook in Australia, ending a battle between two billionaire-owned empires being watched worldwide as a possible template for regulating Big Tech. The Rupert Murdoch-controlled publisher said on Monday the agreement would allow it to “provide access to trusted news and information to millions of Facebook users” in the country through the social media network’s dedicated news tab. Financial details were not disclosed. (Financial Times)
It took Google eight years to reach $10 billion in sales, the fastest ever for a U.S. startup. In the current SPAC frenzy, a spate of electric-vehicle companies planning listings are vowing to beat its record—in some cases by several years. (Wall Street Journal)
Britain’s largest independent chain of petrol stations is to spend £400 million on installing 3,000 fast electric chargers across its nationwide estate. In one of the biggest boosts to the government’s plans to build infrastructure for battery-powered cars, Motor Fuel Group (MFG), which operates 918 forecourts in the UK, plans to install chargers enabling drivers to add 100 miles of range in less than 10 minutes. MFG operates under brands including Esso, BP, Shell, Murco, Texaco and Jet. (The Times)
From Remote Work to Hybrid Work: The Tech You’ll Need to Link Home and Office: Some days you’ll go to the office, some days you’ll work from home. Your tech life is about to get messy. Here are some solutions. (Wall Street Journal)
Smart Links
U.S. solar industry predicts installations will quadruple by 2030. (Reuters)
Social media to the rescue? Vaccine selfies and videos have a positive impact on vaccination rates. (WGBH)
Nebraska takes aim at Colorado’s meat-free day by declaring it's own pro-meat day. (The Guardian)
Read to succeed -- in math; study shows how reading skill shapes more than just reading. (University of Buffalo)
Cava looks to convert Zoe’s restaurants as it sets its sights on growth in suburbia. (CNBC)
After cracking the “sum of cubes” puzzle for 42, mathematicians discover a new solution for 3. (MIT News)
Live Events
Today, 12 pm ET: The Vaccine Rollout: Perspectives from the States. How do states plan COVID-19 vaccine prioritization and distribution? What’s worked well and not so well? And what are next steps on statewide vaccine rollouts, event as coronavirus variants spread? Hear firsthand insights from state health commissioners and health policy experts in this dynamic discussion presented by The Forum at the Harvard Chan School jointly with Reuters. (Harvard Chan School of Public Health)