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The World
China’s top diplomat is set to discuss the war in Ukraine with senior Russian officials this week, underscoring Beijing’s deepening ties with Moscow that have caused alarm in western capitals. Wang Yi, China’s most senior foreign policy official, may meet Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of the conflict’s first anniversary, the Kremlin said. The announcement comes a day after the US warned that Beijing was “strongly considering” supporting Russia’s sputtering war effort with arms supplies. “The agenda is obvious and very extensive. We have a lot to talk about,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday, according to Interfax. (Financial Times)
Belarus to form 100,000-150,000 strong volunteer military force. (Reuters)
Tens of thousands of North Koreans and people in South Korea, Japan and China could be exposed to radioactive materials spread through groundwater from an underground nuclear test site, a Seoul-based human rights group said in a report. North Korea secretly conducted six tests of nuclear weapons at the Punggye-ri site in the mountainous North Hamgyong Province between 2006 and 2017, according to the U.S. and South Korean governments. (Reuters)
UK ministers are prepared to resign over Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal if it risks Northern Ireland’s place within the UK, The Times has been told. There is a mounting backlash among Eurosceptic Conservative MPs to the deal. The prime minister spent several hours in his Commons office meeting Brexiteer critics of his deal as he tried to address their concerns yesterday. Sunak told them that no deal had yet been agreed and talks were continuing. He was told he “hasn’t got a hope” of succeeding without the support of the Democratic Unionist Party. Suella Braverman, the home secretary, became the second cabinet minister to warn against abandoning the Northern Ireland Protocol bill, which would allow the government to rip up the UK’s existing Brexit deal. (The Times)
Senior aides of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have been holding secret talks for almost two months in an effort to de-escalate rising tensions in the occupied West Bank, three sources briefed on the matter told Axios. Why it matters: The weeks of secret talks, which have not been previously reported, are among the first pieces of evidence of direct high-level engagement between the Palestinian Authority and the new right-wing Israeli government. The White House has been updated about the backchannel, but it is unclear whether all the leaders of parties part of Netanyahu's coalition, some of them from the far right, are aware of the talks and their contents, the sources said. (Axios)
The Israeli Knesset passed a first and significant bill in the divisive effort by Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition to overhaul Israel’s judiciary. It did so in the face of bitter opposition criticism and after tens of thousands of anti-reform protesters gathered outside the parliament’s Jerusalem gates. The vote was 63 in favor and 47 against, with no abstentions, although some lawmakers boycotted the vote. The legislation now returns to the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee for preparation for its second and third readings, which are expected by the end of March. Paired in a back-to-back vote with a related technical bill, the legislation aims to amend the Basic Law: The Judiciary to cement government control over judicial appointments and revoke the High Court’s ability to review Basic Laws. (Times of Israel)
Three people were killed on Monday when two fresh earthquakes struck the province of Hatay in Turkey, exactly two weeks after the region was devastated by larger tremors that killed almost 45,000 people. Rescue teams were searching for five people who were trapped in the rubble of newly collapsed buildings, Süleyman Soylu, the interior minister, said in a live broadcast. He said that 213 people had been hospitalised with injuries after the quakes measuring 6.4 and 5.8 in magnitude struck just minutes apart. (Financial Times)
What to know about the wild week of extreme weather ahead: Record temperatures — both high and low — significant ice and exceptional snow are likely across the U.S. over the next few days. A meteorological battleground is about to set up over the contiguous United States, with a dynamic jet stream pattern allowing the seasons to wage war with dramatic — and at times disruptive — results. Record cold will become established across the West, with historically warm February weather in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, including temperatures in the 80s to near 90. In between, the air masses will clash — brewing serious trouble. “A massive winter storm is expected to impact much of the U.S. this week with a variety of hazards,” the National Weather Service writes. (Washington Post)
Economy
World’s Largest Four-Day Work Week Trial Finds Few Are Going Back: And about one in six employees in the study said no amount of money would convince them to return to five days a week. The largest-ever trial of the four-day work week found that most UK companies participating are not returning to the five-day standard, and a third are ready to make that change permanent. The study involved 61 organizations and about 2,900 workers who voluntarily adopted truncated work weeks from June to December 2022. Only three organizations decided to the pause the experiment, and two are still considering shorter hours, data released Tuesday showed. The rest were convinced by revenue gains, drops in turnover and lower levels of worker burnout that four is the new five when it comes to work days. (Bloomberg)
Disney employees fight mandate to work at offices four days a week: A petition asking CEO Bob Iger to rethink the policy has more than 2,300 signatures. (Washington Post)
Investors Worry Too-Hot Economy Will Put Fed on More Aggressive Rate Path: A recent string of hot data have convinced some investors that there may be “no landing.” Two separate inflation readings released last week showed both consumer prices and producer prices rose more than economists had expected in January. Retail sales posted their biggest monthly gain in nearly two years. Investors have been viewing almost everything the past year through the lens of how it might affect the Fed’s interest-rate policy. Their growing fear is that if the U.S. economy remains too hot, it will force the Fed to raise interest rates higher and hold them there for longer than they anticipate. That would raise the chances of a sharp downturn, which in turn, would likely lead to more pain for markets. (Wall Street Journal)
Fundraising by venture-capital firms hit a nine-year low in 4Q22, as the macroeconomic pressures that already weighed on technology startups began to affect the investors who underpin the industry. Venture firms raised $20.6 billion in new funds in the fourth quarter. That was a 65% drop from the year-earlier quarter and the lowest fourth-quarter amount since 2013, according to data firm Preqin Ltd., which tracks venture-fund data. The amount was also less than half the level raised in the preceding three months, the first time fundraising volumes decreased from the third to fourth quarter since 2009. (Wall Street Journal)
International funding for Chinese start-ups dried up last year, pushing many fledgling technology companies to raise capital and list at home instead of on Wall Street. Dollar investments in the country’s new companies fell by nearly three-quarters last year, declining to 19 per cent of the total capital put into start-ups from 39 per cent in 2021, according to new data from research group ITJuzi. (Financial Times)
Food Companies to Ex-Employees: Come Back, Please Some food retailers and manufacturers are trying to fill staffing gaps with their former workers, who typically require less training. (Wall Street Journal)
Technology
AI is starting to pick who gets laid off: A fleet of artificial intelligence tools become ingrained in office life. Human resources managers use machine learning software to analyze millions of employment related data points, churning out recommendations of who to interview, hire, promote or help retain. But as Silicon Valley’s fortunes turn, that software is likely dealing with a more daunting task: helping decide who gets cut, according to human resources analysts and workforce experts. (Washington Post)
A Wharton School professor whose classes required using ChatGPT to write essays says students fact-checked and quickly understood AI's accuracy and bias issues: I fully embraced AI for my classes this semester, requiring students to use AI tools in a number of ways. This policy attracted a lot of interest, and I thought it worthwhile to reflect on how it is going so far. The short answer is: great! But I have learned some early lessons that I think are worth passing on. First, as background, I required AI use in slightly different ways across three separate undergraduate and masters-level entrepreneurship and innovation classes. One class was built on extensive AI use: I required students use AI to help them generate ideas, produce written material, help create apps, generate images, and more. Another class had assignments that required students to use AI, and other assignments where AI was optional. For the final class, I introduced them to AI tools and suggested their use, but did not have specific AI assignments. All of the classes had the same AI policy, and I provided every class with my guides to using AI, writing with ChatGPT, and generating ideas with ChatGPT. (One Useful Thing)
Executives, engineers, scientists, and other employees experimenting with ChatGPT and other AI tools to speed up tasks or avoid being left behind. One easy use: Writing letters. (Wall Street Journal)
Microsoft is preparing to launch a new version of Microsoft Teams next month that has been rebuilt from the ground up to significantly improve its system resource usage on PCs and laptops. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the software giant has recently started testing this new Teams client broadly inside Microsoft, with plans to roll out a preview to Microsoft Teams users in March. Known as Microsoft Teams 2.0 or 2.1 internally, Microsoft has been working on this new Teams client for years. The app should use 50 percent less memory, tax the CPU less, and result in better battery life on laptops. (The Verge)
Brain implant startup backed by Bezos and Gates is testing mind-controlled computing on humans. Synchron is part of an emerging crop of companies testing technology in the brain-computer interface industry. The system is implanted through the blood vessels and allows patients to operate technology using only their minds. “It helps them engage in ways that we take for granted,” Synchron CEO Tom Oxley said. (CNBC)
Smart Links
A Quarter of London Companies Downsize Offices for Flexible Work. (Bloomberg)
The 10 highest-paying college majors, five years after graduation. (CNBC)
Shoplifting deterrents drive down sales. (Axios)
Italy faces new drought alert as Venice canals run dry. (Reuters)
Britain facing tomatoes shortage after overseas harvests disrupted. (Reuters)