'Beach Trip'
What You Need To Know
Today’s posts that caught my eye:
Next frontier in the abortion wars: Your local CVS. Anti-abortion advocates are organizing pickets outside CVS and Walgreens in early February in at least eight cities, including Washington, D.C., in response to the companies’ plans to take advantage of the Food and Drug Administration’s decision last week allowing retail pharmacies to stock and dispense abortion pills in states where they’re legal.
Japan and the U.S. affirmed that Washington will extend its security umbrella to its treaty ally into space, a move that would seek to protect Japanese satellites as China and Russia ramp up military activity in the arena. The foreign and defense ministers of the two countries issued a joint statement saying that Article 5 of their security treaty, obligates the U.S. to defend Japan if it comes under attack, could be applied to space.
Mouse jigglers and fake PowerPoints: Workers foil bosses’ surveillance attempts. Companies that track employees’ productivity run up against their inventive workarounds.
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The World
The U.S. aviation sector was struggling to return to normal after a nationwide ground stop imposed by the FAA over a computer issue that forced a 90-minute halt to all U.S. departing flights. More than 10,000 flights have been delayed so far and over 1,300 canceled in the first national grounding of flights in about two decades. Many industry officials compared the grounding to what occurred after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. (Reuters)
A historic string of air, rail and supply-chain meltdowns has plagued Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's first two years in office, placing him — for better or worse — at the center of crises affecting millions of people. (Axios)
Brazil’s government deployed additional armed forces across the country to head off expected far-right demonstrations, hours after former president Jair Bolsonaro posted a video online that questioned the result of the October election. (Financial Times)
Brazil rioters plotted openly online, pitched huge ‘party’: The post was one of several thinly coded messages circulating on social media ahead of Sunday’s violent attack on the capital. The map was called “Beach Trip” and was blasted out to more than 18,000 members of a public Telegram channel called, in Portuguese, “Hunting and Fishing.” But instead of outdoor recreation tips, the 43 pins spread across the map of Brazil pointed to cities where bus transportation to the capital could be found for what promoters promised would a huge “party” on Jan. 8. (Politico)
China Stops Reporting Covid Tally as Data Criticism Intensifies: China hasn’t reported daily Covid cases, deaths since Monday. (Bloomberg)
China population: cities unveil new childbirth incentives as first decline in more than 6 decades looms. Couples having a third child or more in Shenzhen will be eligible to a cash allowance of 19,000 yuan (US$2,800). Other cities like Jinan in Shandong province are handing out childcare subsidies and expanding parental leave. (South China Morning Post)
Japan leads world in childless middle-aged women: Difficulty getting married is biggest obstacle to having kids, research finds. (Nikkei Asia Review)
Japan and the U.S. affirmed that Washington will extend its security umbrella to its treaty ally into space, a move that would seek to protect Japanese satellites as China and Russia ramp up military activity in the arena. The foreign and defense ministers of the two countries issued a joint statement saying that Article 5 of their security treaty, obligates the U.S. to defend Japan if it comes under attack, could be applied to space. (Nikkei Asia Review)
Next frontier in the abortion wars: Your local CVS. Anti-abortion advocates are organizing pickets outside CVS and Walgreens in early February in at least eight cities, including Washington, D.C., in response to the companies’ plans to take advantage of the Food and Drug Administration’s decision last week allowing retail pharmacies to stock and dispense abortion pills in states where they’re legal. (Politico)
Talk of prosecuting women for abortion pills roils antiabortion movement: Alabama’s attorney general became the most prominent Republican official yet to suggest that pregnant women could be prosecuted for taking abortion pills. (Washington Post)
More Classified Documents Found in Another Location Linked to Biden: It was the second disclosure in three days of President Biden’s retention of government files dating from his vice presidency. The revelation is sure to intensify Republican attacks on Mr. Biden, who has called former President Trump irresponsible for hoarding sensitive files. (New York Times)
Rep. Barbara Lee tells colleagues she plans to run for Feinstein’s Senate seat in 2024. Lee’s private disclosure comes just a day after Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) launched her campaign to replace Feinstein, 89, who has yet to disclose whether she intends to retire at the end of her term. Other potential Senate candidates from California’s congressional delegation include Reps. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) and Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin). (Los Angeles Times)
Santos refuses to resign amid calls from local N.Y. GOP: Local GOP leaders and a fellow Republican congressman told the New Yorker to resign, with some saying he had lied to them personally in endorsement interviews. (Politico)
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy won’t push Rep. George Santos to resign, says NY voters should decide. (CNBC)
Hate crimes against people of Asian descent fell 90% from last year, according to the San Francisco Police Department data, with just six hate crimes reported in 2022. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Death toll rises to 19 in California as new storms hit battered communities. (Los Angeles Times)
Onslaught of Bay Area storms continues — but the end is finally in sight: The end of the devastating string of major winter storms could be in view, forecasters said Wednesday, offering the first hope of a real reprieve from the violent weather cycle. (San Francisco Chronicle)
The 1973 Nobel Peace Prize to top U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho, among the most disputed in the award's history, was given in the full knowledge the Vietnam War was unlikely to end any time soon, newly released papers show. Nominations to the Peace Prize remain secret for 50 years. On Jan. 1, documents about the prize awarded to Kissinger and Hanoi's chief negotiator Tho were made available on request. The papers, reviewed by Reuters, reveal Kissinger and Tho were nominated by a member of the Nobel committee, Norwegian academic John Sanness, on Jan. 29, 1973 - two days after the signing of the Paris accords. The nomination letter and the reports prepared on Kissinger and Tho for the committee's deliberations showed it was "fully aware" the accords were "unlikely to hold", said Stein Toennesson, a professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo who reviewed the documents. (Reuters)
Economy
Traders Lose Trust in CPI Data Security in Wake of Volume Shock: The report has spurred outsize market swings in recent months. (Bloomberg)
Prices of services are rising quickly. Prices of goods are falling. Energy is all over the map. Policy makers and market watchers already strip out volatile components of price indexes to understand what is known as core inflation. These days, many are on the hunt for an even narrower measure: a supercore. When the Labor Department releases its latest inflation reading on Thursday, most investors will still look first at the monthly change in the so-called core consumer-price index, which excludes food and energy categories to provide a better sense of inflation’s longer-term trajectory. Some, though, will quickly look past that number to metrics such as core services excluding housing—or even core services excluding housing and medical care. And even that won’t be entirely satisfying. (Wall Street Journal)
Goldman Sachs sacked bankers at its offices in cities from New York and London to Hong Kong, dismissing many employees without paying a bonus for work performed last year while giving some junior bankers 30 minutes to gather their belongings and leave. Around a third of those affected came from the investment banking and global markets division. (Financial Times)
BlackRock Plans to Cut 500 Jobs in First Retrenchment Since 2019. (Bloomberg)
Activist investor Nelson Peltz plans to mount a proxy fight for a seat on Walt Disney Co.’s board, adding to the challenges Robert Iger faces after he recently returned to the role of chief executive at the beleaguered entertainment giant. Disney revealed the activist’s intentions Wednesday afternoon in a statement that said that it is opposed to having him join the board. (Wall Street Journal)
Stripe has cut the internal value of its shares by about 11%, implying a valuation of $63 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. It’s at least the third time since June that the payments startup has cut its internal valuation, following a smaller cut in October, and brings the total reduction to about 40% in the past six months. (The Information)
Technology
Apple is working on adding touch screens to its Mac computers, a move that would defy long-held company orthodoxy and embrace an approach that co-founder Steve Jobs once called “ergonomically terrible.” Apple engineers are actively engaged in the project, indicating that the company is seriously considering producing touch-screen Macs for the first time. (Bloomberg)
Twitter’s Efforts to Court Advertisers Turns Them Off: Twitter’s ad business is not recovering. Clients of WPP-owned GroupM, the world’s largest ad-buying firm, have cut their spending on Twitter by between 40% and 50% since Elon Musk took control of the company in late October. Standard Media Index says it is seeing a smaller amount of forward bookings for Twitter for this month and February compared to past years. (The Information)
In December, Twitter started considering auctioning off usernames to generate revenue; Elon Musk had said he wants to free up 1.5B inactive usernames. (New York Times)
CNET has been using an “AI engine” to write financial explainers under a CNET Money byline since November 2022, reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by a human. (Futurism)
Mouse Jigglers, Fake PowerPoints: Workers Foil Bosses’ Surveillance Attempts: Companies that track employees’ productivity run up against their inventive workarounds. Since the start of the pandemic, an estimated third of medium-to-large U.S. companies have adopted some kind of worker-surveillance system, bringing the overall share of employers using such systems to two out of three. A September report by Microsoft Corp. described a “paranoia” in which 85% of business leaders said they questioned whether their hybrid workforces were being productive (even though, the report said, people generally are working more than ever). That has led to “productivity theater,” the report added, in which some employees try to show they’re busy by doing things like joining meetings they don’t need to be in. Workers nationwide are sharing their ways to outsmart supervisors, guard their personal lives or just avoid looking like shirkers. (Wall Street Journal)
The clinical trials to watch in 2023: Experts weigh in on 11 clinical trials that will shape medicine in the coming year, including trials for: (Nature)
A diabetes drug repurposed against Parkinson’s disease
A CRISPR-based technology for repairing the mutations that cause muscular dystrophy
An oral treatment for sleeping sickness that is safer than the arsenic derivative used previously
Smart Links
UK partners with BioNTech for cancer vaccines. (Reuters)
Microsoft plans to give US salaried staff unlimited Discretionary Time Off plus 10 corporate holidays, leaves of absence, mental health time off. (The Verge)
Siberia sees coldest air in two decades as temperature dips to minus-80. (Washington Post)
IRS gives drenched Californians an extra month to file tax returns. (Los Angeles Times)
Subway Explores Sale That Could Value Sandwich Chain at More Than $10 Billion. (Wall Street Journal)
The famous Bay Bridge lights may soon go dark, unless a bunch of millionaires step in. (Los Angeles Times)
Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger, Ozzy Osbourne, Rod Stewart, Mike Campbell and more remember Jeff Beck after the guitar virtuoso's death at age 78. (Rolling Stone)
Good News
These dogs ride a bus like humans ‘and now the internet is in love’: ‘The puppy bus just took off,’ said Mo Thompson, who runs a dog walking business in Skagway, Alaska. (Washington Post)
Something else you never thought you needed… and likely don’t:
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