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The World
Russia and the U.S clashed head to head at the UN over the situation in Ukraine, as each charged the other with lying about their intentions and promoting panic and hysteria to serve their own ends. In a blistering attack, Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said the U.S. was “provoking escalation” by falsely charging Moscow with preparing to invade Ukraine. “You’re waiting for it to happen, as if you want your words to become a reality,” he said in remarks directed toward U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. His remarks followed charges by Thomas-Greenfield that Russia was “attempting, without any factual basis, to paint Ukraine and Western countries as the aggressors to fabricate a pretext for attack” by positioning more than 100,000 heavily armed troops it has amassed on Ukraine’s border. (Washington Post)
Russia has delivered a written response to U.S. proposal on Ukraine crisis. The letter comes ahead of today’s phone call between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. "It would be unproductive to negotiate in public, so we’ll leave it up to Russia if they want to discuss their response," the U.S. State Department said. (Axios)
Poland is preparing to take in up to a million “real refugees” from Ukraine if Russia invades. Ministers in Slovakia and the Czech Republic estimate that tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees might arrive if Russia attacked. Poland, which shares a 330-mile land border with Ukraine and already has a substantial Ukrainian community, expects to receive considerably more. (The Times)
The five things you need to know about the partygate report: 1) Failures of leadership in 10 Downing Street. Gray lists 16 “gatherings” that took place in Downing Street and Whitehall between May 2020 and April 2021, during coronavirus restrictions. 2) Number 10’s structure has become dysfunctional Gray’s report highlights how the number of staff in 10 Downing Street has steadily grown alongside the responsibilities of the prime minister. 3) The police are investigating 12 government events. 4) The partygate scandal is far from over. Soon after the Gray report was published, the Met revealed it had been handed 300 photographs of alleged government parties along with 500 documents containing messages and witness statements. 5) Tory MPs have likely suspended their final judgment. Number 10’s decision to commit to publishing Gray’s full report means that a final judgment by some Conservative MPs on whether to seek a no-confidence vote in Johnson’s leadership has likely been delayed. (Financial Times)
Boris Johnson had to cancel a scheduled call with President Putin to discuss the Ukraine crisis after the release of the Gray report compelled him to give a statement to parliament. The prime minister had said he would warn Putin to “step back from the brink” during a call before he travels to Ukraine today to show solidarity with President Zelensky. (The Times)
The lower house of Japan's parliament adopted a resolution expressing concern over Uyghur and Hong Kong human rights, just days before China opens the Beijing Winter Olympics. The statement, however, stopped short of directly criticizing China and did not even mention the country by name. The phrase "human rights violations" in an early draft was also changed to "human rights situation" -- striking a far more cautious tone than similar resolutions from the U.S. and Europe. (Nikkei Asia Review)
Team Taiwan says it will be at Beijing Games opening ceremony, while Beijing Games organizers hope to have 30% capacity in venues. (Reuters)
Coronavirus vaccines for children younger than 5 could be available far sooner than expected — perhaps by the end of February — under a plan that would lead to the potential authorization of a two-shot regimen in the coming weeks. Pfizer and its partner, BioNTech are expected to submit to the FDA as early as today a request for emergency-use authorization for the vaccine for children 6 months to 5 years old, which would make it the first vaccine available for that age group. (Washington Post)
Economy
Spotify’s Joe Rogan problem isn’t going away: Despite its surface similarities, Mr. Rogan’s Spotify standoff is different from most other clashes between creators and tech platforms in a few key ways. YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are ad-supported businesses; Spotify, by contrast, makes most of its money from subscriptions, so it’s unlikely to suffer financially from its handling of Mr. Rogan unless there’s a wave of account cancellations. But Spotify has a different constituency to worry about: stars. A leading music streaming service like Spotify needs to have popular hits in its library, which means that, in theory, musicians with enough firepower could force change simply by threatening to remove their albums. (As a viral tweet last week put it: “Taylor Swift could end Joe Rogan with a single tweet at Spotify.”) (New York Times)
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is having his first Facebook moment. (Reuters)
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq posted their worst month since March 2020. The S&P 500 rallied Monday but lost 5.3% in January as expectations for higher interest rates eroded enthusiasm for stocks. The Nasdaq fell 9% for the month but surged Monday as stocks advanced for the second straight session. (Wall Street Journal)
Bill Ackman scored on the pandemic shutdown and bounceback: As the coronavirus emerged, Bill Ackman made billions betting that the market was misjudging the virus’s economic toll. Then he did it again a year later. In two complex debt investments—one presaging the economy’s swift shutdown and the other its fevered reopening—Ackman made nearly $4 billion in profit on an outlay of about $200 million. In short, he called the pandemic’s economic fallout coming and going. (Wall Street Journal)
Exxon will move its headquarters from the Dallas suburbs to Houston. The arrival of Exxon's top brass and some 250 workers from Irving will bolster Houston’s standing as the nation’s “energy capital,” attracting more energy investment and corporate relocations to the region, area leaders said. (Houston Chronicle)
Sustainable flying: Would you purchase carbon offsets for air travel? Airlines such as Delta, United, and British Airways have options to pay a small surcharge to offset carbon emissions for seats on the flight. More than a third of Americans surveyed in a National Geographic and Morning Consult poll said they’d be willing to shell out some extra cash when paying for an airline ticket to help protect the environment. Millennials are more in favor of carbon offsets. (National Geographic)
Technology
The U.S. is pressing the EU to revise rules targeting digital giants to make them focus less on American companies and ensure they will also cover tech firms from outside the U.S., according to a new paper distributed to Brussels officials. (Politico EU)
Sony is buying Bungie, the developer of Destiny and the original creator of Halo, for $3.6 billion. The acquisition arrives shortly after Microsoft’s announcement that it intends to acquire Activision Blizzard in a deal worth $68.7 billion. Bungie will continue to be a multiplatform and independent studio and publisher, and it will sit alongside the company’s PlayStation Studios developers. (The Verge)
When it comes to video games, most people think of the PC or game consoles like the PlayStation or Xbox. However, the smartphone has long since overtaken these platforms and is now the device most frequently used for video games. According to the Statista Global Consumer Survey, 54% of U.S. adults use their smartphone to play games regularly. Consoles only come in a distant second place for Americans - around a third regularly play on one of these devices. PC/laptop takes third place with 32% of the survey participants. (Statista)
Streaming-video services get a surge of subscribers when they launch a hotly anticipated show or movie. But many of these new customers unsubscribe within a few months, according to new data, a challenge even for the industry’s deep-pocketed giants. The data, which subscriber-measurement company Antenna provided to The Wall Street Journal, illustrate the extent to which the streaming wars require all players to consistently churn out popular and often expensive programming to keep fickle subscribers satisfied. “You constantly need new content,” said Michael Nathanson, an analyst for MoffettNathanson. (Wall Street Journal)
Following his fiery Twitter tirades, Bolt founder Ryan Breslow is no longer CEO — and he says it’s his choice: Ryan Breslow, who founded the “one-click” checkout tech company Bolt as a Stanford student and dropped out of college to build it, is stepping away as the company’s CEO seven years into his reign. Breslow, who says the decision is his own, is being replaced as CEO by Maju Kuruvilla, who joined the company as its chief product and technology officer in 2019 and became its COO in August of last year. Breslow is assuming the role of executive chairman. Of course, it’s easy to wonder how closely the move is also tied to the attention that Breslow, 27, attracted after publishing a series of tweets last Monday afternoon and who was back at it this past weekend. (TechCrunch)
The sudden hit Wordle, in which once a day players get six chances to guess a five-letter word, has been acquired by The New York Times Company. The purchase reflects the growing importance of games, like crosswords and Spelling Bee, in the company’s quest to increase digital subscriptions to 10 million by 2025. Wordle was acquired from its creator, Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, for a price “in the low seven figures,” The Times said. The company said the game would initially remain free to new and existing players. (New York Times)
Smart Links
U.S. flooding losses will spike 26% by 2050 due to climate change. (Washington Post)
Teachers are quitting, and companies are hot to hire them. (Wall Street Journal)
UK tech IPOs raised a record £6.6B in 2021, up from £3.1B in 2020, across 37 IPOs, compared to just eight in 2020. (City A.M.)
Thailand resumes quarantine-free tourism. (Nikkei Asia Review)
Government workers in Belgium won’t have to field emails after hours, under ‘right to disconnect’ rule. (Washington Post)
Domino's will pay people to pick up their own pizza. (Axios)