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The World
Governments bought Chinese telecom gear despite warnings: Despite federal efforts to block Chinese telecom equipment from U.S. supply chains, state and local governments across the country continued to buy products designated a threat to national security, a new report finds. U.S. officials warn Chinese telecom equipment could make the U.S. vulnerable to economic espionage or digital sabotage. State and local governments should better align themselves with federal policies in order to keep the gear out of schools, hospitals and other critical infrastructure across the country, according to a report published today by Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). Federal agencies have been banned since 2018 from procuring products from Chinese tech companies Huawei, ZTE, Hikvision, Dahua, and Hytera. (Axios)
German exporters rethink €100bn ‘love affair’ with China: Geopolitical tensions, zero-Covid policy and domestic competition endanger trading relationship. (Financial Times)
Russia conducted its first major nuclear drills since the start of its war on Ukraine and president Vladimir Putin made unfounded claims that Kyiv was seeking to develop a “dirty bomb”, as Moscow continued to ramp up the rhetoric over possible nuclear use in the conflict. The Russian armed forces on Wednesday practised what defence minister Sergei Shoigu called a “mass nuclear strike with strategic attack forces in response to a nuclear attack by our adversary”, as Putin monitored events via videoconference from the Kremlin. (Financial Times)
South Korea said it had agreed with the United States and Japan that a resumption of nuclear testing by North Korea would have to be met with an "unparalleled" response. Washington and its allies believe North Korea could be about to resume nuclear bomb testing for the first time since 2017, but experts say they have few good options for preventing or responding to such a move. (Reuters)
‘It will be extremely close’: bellwether state holds key to Brazil election on Oct. 30. (The Guardian)
Tesla is under criminal investigation in the United States over claims that the company's electric vehicles can drive themselves. The U.S. Department of Justice launched the previously undisclosed probe last year following more than a dozen crashes, some of them fatal, involving Tesla’s driver assistance system Autopilot, which was activated during the accidents, the people said. (Reuters)
Bird flu on the rampage: Outbreaks of a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza are leaving a path of destruction across Europe and North America, on a scale that has not been previously seen. Domestic bird culls once kept the virus in check, but sustained circulation in wild birds has become the norm since the early 2000s. Over the past year, transmission in wild birds has ramped up dramatically. “Something is quite different about this virus”, says wildlife-disease researcher Rebecca Poulson. (Nature)
The US is exporting record volumes of oil and taking on a bigger role as a fuel supplier in response to the global energy crunch caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, even as tensions flare over petrol prices at home. Combined US exports of crude oil and refined petroleum products surged to 11.4mn barrels a day last week. (Financial Times)
About 3 in 5 Voters Support Strategic Petroleum Reserve Oil Release: Roughly half of Republicans and 7 in 10 Democrats support the measure, which comes as the Biden administration releases 15 million barrels of oil from the SPR. (Morning Consult)
Economy
Boston leaped over San Francisco to land in second place on the list of most expensive US rental markets, with New York still holding the crown. The median one-bedroom rent in Boston jumped 5.9% this month from September, to $3,060, according to a new report on metropolitan areas from Zumper, a rental-listing company. In San Francisco, it dropped 2.6% to $3,020. New York’s median fell 2.3% to $3,860. (City Lab)
Boston Properties warns office vacancy rates will keep rising. (Crain’s New York Business)
Remote workers could be the first to go: As recession winds blow and the prospect of layoffs grows, are those who seldom visit the office and have little direct physical contact with their supervisors more likely to be fired than those who work at desks just a few feet away? in one large-scale survey, 60% of managers said remote workers would probably be laid off first. (Los Angeles Times)
At Least 2 in 3 Voters Back Stock Trading Ban for Officials Across the Government. The share of voters who “strongly support” a ban on stock trading among members of Congress has climbed 5 percentage points since January, following fresh reports of possible insider trading. (Morning Consult)
Andreessen’s flagship crypto fund shed around 40% of its value in the first half of this year. That decline is much larger than the 10% to 20% drops recorded by other venture funds, which have largely avoided the risky practice of purchasing volatile cryptocurrencies, according to fund investors. Despite the record cash pile, Andreessen has dramatically slowed the pace of its crypto investments this year. (Wall Street Journal)
Funding to Latine-founded US companies falls sharply in 2022: Venture funding is down all around, but this year’s pullback is hitting Latine-funded companies in the U.S. particularly hard. Funding to Latine-funded companies fell more than 80% in third-quarter 2022, both quarter over quarter and year over year. (Crunchbase)
Technology
Meta shares plummet on weak fourth-quarter forecast and earnings miss. Meta reported a second straight quarterly revenue decline and is forecasting another drop in the fourth quarter. The company’s Reality Labs division, which houses its VR headsets, lost over $9 billion in the first three quarters. The stock plunged in extended trading after already losing two-thirds of its value so far this year. (CNBC)
Mark Zuckerberg has a message to all his metaverse critics out there: He doesn’t care what you think. Not only is he not cutting back on augmented and virtual reality investments to take account of the economic slump, he plans to spend even more money! In reporting third-quarter earnings Wednesday, Facebook owner Meta Platforms—showing a stunning 4% drop in revenue—revealed that losses at the Reality Labs division developing AR and VR gear for the futuristic metaverse jumped 31% from the second quarter. That puts the annualized metaverse investment at nearly $15 billion, well above the $10 billion annual figure the company had previously given. Moreover, the losses will “grow significantly” next year, Meta said. (The Information)
Banks Begin Funding Musk’s Twitter Takeover: It is the latest sign that the $44 billion deal for the social-media company is on track to close by the end of the week. (Wall Street Journal)
Apple’s App Store taxes NFTs: Apple released new rules for the App Store this week, which could have major implications for NFTs and crypto payments companies. The rules confirm that the App Store’s fees on digital goods would also apply to NFTs. People are already touchy about Apple’s fees — it’s the same reason Epic Games has sued Apple, my colleague Nick Statt points out — but the idea of applying the App Store tax to crypto products has really riled some people up. (Protocol)
CNN CEO Chris Licht has finished a six-month business review, as part of a plan to eliminate 1,000+ Warner Bros. Discovery jobs before the end of 2022. (CNBC)
Advertisers Hit the Brakes Amid Economic Uncertainty. (Statista)
Smart Links
Apple Is Working on a 16-Inch iPad, Further Blurring Line With Laptops. (The Information)
Accounting Errors to Cost Executives Their Bonuses Under SEC Rule. (Wall Street Journal)
Zillow lays off 300 employees in latest workforce shift. (TechCrunch)
Augusta National Golf Club Under Investigation in DOJ Antitrust Probe. (Wall Street Journal)
Starbucks Reserve to open in Empire State Building next month. (Crain’s New York Business)