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The World
In the aftermath of a ferocious storm caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida that killed more than three dozen people in four states, national and local leaders acknowledged Thursday that extreme weather events posed an urgent and ongoing threat. The storm killed at least 43 people in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut and left more than 150,000 homes without power. States of emergency remained in effect across the region by midday Thursday, as officials sought to get a handle on the damage. President Biden said the damage indicated that “extreme storms and the climate crisis are here,” constituting what he called “one of the great challenges of our time.” (New York Times)
A defining element of President Biden’s economic agenda appeared to be in new political jeopardy, after Sen. Joe Manchin III, one of the chamber’s most pivotal swing votes, said the Senate should take a “strategic pause” on advancing its $3.5 trillion tax and spending package. (Washington Post)
Sen. Joe Manchin: Why I Won’t Support Spending Another $3.5 Trillion. Amid inflation, debt and the inevitability of future crises, Congress needs to take a strategic pause. (Wall Street Journal)
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will resign this month, throwing wide open the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's presidential election -- a crucial race that could set the tone for an upcoming lower house campaign. (Nikkei Asian Review)
US-EU tensions aren't just a Trump problem: "Many European diplomats are already infatuated with Biden," a US-based analyst wrote in May about the so-called revival of the transatlantic relationship. Well, that assessment seems to have aged as well as an overripe banana. This week, the EU advised member states to restrict travel from the US because of America's rising COVID infection rate. While that may be true, it could also be, at least in part, a retaliatory move: Brussels is furious that the Biden administration has refused to allow most Europeans to enter the country for 18 months, despite the bloc now having vaccinated more adults than the US. Indeed, this tiff between Brussels and Washington is just the latest development amid ebbing relations between the two. (GZERO Media)
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will “catalyze” the EU to establish its own permanent military force, the union’s foreign policy chief has said, despite years of fruitless debate and opposition from member states. After a meeting of EU defence ministers, Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, said the moment had come to establish an active EU expeditionary force, described by some senior European politicians as an army. (The Guardian)
Russia starts to sow seeds of ‘wheat diplomacy’: Food exports bring in welcome dollars to the sanctions-hit economy but could also extend Moscow’s global reach. Wheat, and especially grain, have become valuable sources of foreign capital in a sanctions-hit economy. Now Russia is slowly making its way across Eurasia, Africa, and Latin America as an agricultural export powerhouse as it looks to reduce its reliance on oil, identify new markets and extend its global diplomatic reach. Some even anticipate Russian grain becoming the Kremlin’s new oil — a commodity through which to keep some countries dependent on its resources — or to at least open doors to others. (Financial Times)
Tens of thousands in Afghanistan are trapped as neighbors close borders. With the airlift over, desperate Afghans try bribes and people smugglers to escape Taliban rule. (Wall Street Journal)
A huge randomized study offers evidence that wearing masks reduces the spread of COVID-19, and that surgical masks work even better than cloth ones. The ambitious study involved more than 340,000 people in 600 villages in Bangladesh. in the villages where the team distributed masks, symptomatic infections were 9.3% lower. Where surgical masks were given out, the results were even better: infections dropped by 11%. Older people benefited most: symptomatic COVID-19 in people over 60 went down by 35% in the villages using surgical masks. (Stanford University, NBC News)
Taiwan received its first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccines, a delivery organised by two tech giants and a charity because of diplomatic pressure from China. (The Guardian)
The Texas abortion ban could force tech to snitch on users. From Facebook fundraisers to Google ads, tech companies could be asked to give up user data in legal cases brought on by the Texas law. (Protocol)
Weather damage grew more costly in the past decade. (Statista)
Economy
US stock markets hit record highs on Thursday ahead of Friday’s keenly watched labor market report which will help set the path of monetary policies that have shored up markets during the pandemic. (Financial Times)
General Motors is temporarily halting production at six of its North American factories as a result of the global chip shortage. It’s the latest major automaker to be affected by the tight supply of essential computer chips. Four of GM’s US-based plants will be affected: Fort Wayne, IN; Wentzville, MO; Spring Hill, TN; and Lansing, MI. Four other factories in Mexico and Canada will also go dark for several weeks as GM works to shore up its supply of chips. The halt in production will affect GM’s most profitable vehicles, including pickup trucks and SUVs. (The Verge)
Companies make EEOC diversity disclosures public amid investor pressure. Companies are required to report workplace diversity information to the government, and most of the S&P 100 are now voluntarily making it public. (Wall Street Journal)
As more and more employers nix college degrees as a hiring requirement, students are choosing cheaper, faster alternatives to college like coding boot camps. The cost of college keeps climbing, and federal student loan debt sits at a whopping $1.6 trillion. Students are debating whether college is worth it — especially when it may no longer be necessary to get a high-paying job. College enrollment was down around 5% this spring compared with the spring of 2020, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. That's nearly 730,000 fewer students. (Axios)
The blank-check boom has turned into a rout. More than six months after the SPAC craze crested, a broad selloff has wiped about $75 billion off the value of companies that came public through special-purpose acquisition companies. A group of 137 SPACs that closed mergers by mid-February have lost 25% of their combined value. At one point last month, the pullback topped $100 billion. (Wall Street Journal)
Reddit is seeking to hire investment bankers and lawyers ahead of an IPO that may occur as soon as early 2022, following a $10B valuation in August. (Reuters)
Technology
The technology sector is booming as never before, driven by a need for investment that cuts across every business in every sector. Technology deals have become intensely competitive, but there are still opportunities for operational improvement in complex situations, say CD&R’s Stephen Shapiro, Russ Fradin and Jeff Hawn. (Buyouts Insider)
European Union regulators fined Facebook’s chat service WhatsApp 225 million euros, equivalent to around $266 million, for failing to tell the bloc’s residents enough about what it does with their data, ramping up privacy enforcement against U.S. tech companies. The second large EU privacy fine against a U.S. tech company in two months was issued Thursday by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission on behalf of a board representing all of its EU counterparts. It came as part of a decision that found WhatsApp didn’t live up to requirements to tell Europeans how their personal information is gathered and used, including regarding the sharing of their information with other Facebook units. (Wall Street Journal)
Apple begins prompting iOS 15 users for consent to enable Personalized Ads for their Apple ID, which was previously on by default and led to antitrust scrutiny. (9to5Mac)
Amazon's big HR problem: Amazon is facing a potential reckoning over mounting allegations that its culture fosters an environment of discrimination and sexual harassment. Several women have filed public lawsuits against the company, including individuals that remain employed by the tech giant. And after hundreds of AWS employees recently signed a petition alleging that the internal process to review such claims is not "fair, objective or transparent," Amazon solicited an outside firm to conduct an investigation into the cloud giant. Attention may now turn to the top brass at Amazon. While much of the blame so-far seems centered on the company's human resources department, Protocol reported that in at least one instance a recommendation from that HR team is said to have been overruled by senior Amazon execs. (Source Code)
U.S. podcast advertising spend increased by almost a quarter in the first five months of 2021. The number of advertisers also increased 15%. (Media Radar)
Spotify is now producing the audio section of US airline Delta’s in-flight seatback entertainment. The service contains mixtapes of music, and 42 podcast series. Spotify’s original deal with Delta was announced two years ago: at that time it was podcast-only, and Delta was seeing around 16.5m passengers every month; JetBlue also signed with Spotify in November 2019. (PodNews)
Smart Links
Why Bitcoin’s price got stuck at $50,000. (Wall Street Journal)
More out-of-state students don’t bring colleges higher tuition revenue: Study. (Chronicle of Higher Ed)
Mayor suggests Helsinki declare itself an English-language city. (The Guardian)
Pandemic spurs rise of infections contracted at healthcare facilities. (Healthcare Dive)
The $150 million machine keeping Moore’s Law alive. (Wired)
How virtual Burning Man became a VR events success story. (Protocol)