'Thanksgiving Dinner'
What You Need To Know
Today’s posts that caught my eye:
Thanksgiving dinner will cost a whopping 20% more than it did last year.
Yale Law School and Harvard Law School are pulling out of the U.S. News & World Report law-school ranking that they have dominated for decades.
Upside’s cell-cultured chicken is first to receive FDA blessing for its production method.
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The World
President Xi of China was caught on camera at the G20 summit scolding Justin Trudeau of Canada over alleged leaks of their private conversation to the media. Canadian television cameras caught the incident where Xi talked to Trudeau after reports the Canadian leader had questioned him over alleged Chinese interference in his country’s domestic elections. (The Times)
A bill limiting the use of nondisclosure agreements to silence victims of workplace sexual harassment and assault appears poised to become law in the U.S. The Speak Out Act already passed the Senate unanimously in September and is likely headed for a House vote Wednesday. If it passes, it's a win for victims of mistreatment — and not only for those who want to speak publicly but for their colleagues who might be unaware that others are facing harassment or assault. (Axios)
Republicans win U.S. House majority, setting stage for divided government: Republicans were projected to win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, setting the stage for two years of divided government as President Joe Biden's Democratic Party held control of the Senate. The victory gives Republicans the power to rein in Biden's agenda, as well as to launch potentially politically damaging probes of his administration and family, though it falls far short of the "red wave" the party had hoped for. (Reuters)
The Senate took a step toward providing federal protections for same-sex marriage, a critical move toward passing landmark legislation in the twilight of the Democratic-held Congress that would signal a remarkable shift in American politics and culture. With 12 Republicans joining Democrats in advancing the Respect for Marriage Act, the 62-37 vote represented a rare and notable demonstration of bipartisanship by a lame duck Congress as lawmakers looked toward an era of political gridlock in a divided Washington. (New York Times)
Iranian police open fire at Tehran metro station and beat women on train: Video footage shows people running for exits and police with batons beating women in metro carriages. (The Guardian)
North Korea warned of "fiercer military responses" to U.S. efforts to boost its security presence in the region with its allies, state media said, saying Washington is taking a "gamble it will regret". North Korea's foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, slammed a recent trilateral summit between the United States, South Korea and Japan, during which the leaders criticized Pyongyang's weapons tests and pledged greater security cooperation. (Reuters)
Europe faces ‘cancer epidemic’ after estimated 1m cases missed during Covid. Experts have warned that Europe faces a “cancer epidemic” unless urgent action is taken to boost treatment and research, after an estimated 1m diagnoses were missed during the pandemic. (The Guardian)
An MIT study finds that children from different socioeconomic backgrounds tend to have different brain patterns associated with reading difficulty. In a new study, which included brain scans of more than 150 children as they performed tasks related to reading, researchers found that when students from higher socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds struggled with reading, it could usually be explained by differences in their ability to piece sounds together into words, a skill known as phonological processing. However, when students from lower SES backgrounds struggled, it was best explained by differences in their ability to rapidly name words or letters, a task associated with orthographic processing, or visual interpretation of words and letters. (MIT News)
Yale Law School and Harvard Law School are pulling out of the U.S. News & World Report law-school ranking that they have dominated for decades, issuing a significant blow to the credibility and power of the high-profile rankings. Yale, which long held the No. 1 spot, says the ranking discourages support for low-income students and public-interest careers. “The U.S. News rankings are profoundly flawed,” Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken said. “Its approach not only fails to advance the legal profession, but stands squarely in the way of progress.” (Wall Street Journal)
Elite Universities Aim To Attract More Community College Transfer Students Via New Pipeline. A new effort to increase the number of community college students transferring to some of America’s most elite colleges and universities was launched, focused in particular on increasing enrollment by students from lower-income backgrounds and communities of color. (Forbes)
New research confirms what many know from experience — New York is a terrible city for driving. Chicago, Miami, Austin, Texas and Los Angeles round out the top five worst cities for driving in Circuit's ranking of 47 cities based on congestion level, number and length of of traffic jams, hours lost during congestion, driving speeds and distracted-driving fatalities. New York City had the highest congestion level, number of traffic jams, length of traffic jams, and tied with Philadelphia for having the worst driving speed, according to the study. (Bloomberg)
In October, the FDA confirmed that where is a nationwide shortage of Adderall. The agency’s site maintains that the shortage is continuing, although some manufacturers have the medication available. An FDA spokesman said the agency expected supply issues to resolve in the next 30 to 60 days. Teva Pharmaceuticals, one of the major Adderall producers, had trouble hiring workers over a year ago, which caused manufacturing delays. A spokeswoman for Teva told The Times that those delays have been resolved, but that the company is now facing “a surge in demand,” which is the predominant cause for back orders. (New York Times)
The Last 8 Years Have Been the Warmest on Record. (Statista)
Economy
Thanksgiving dinner will cost a whopping 20% more than it did last year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. A feast for 10 with 12 menu items including a turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie mix will cost $64.05 on average — up $10.74 from last year. That breaks down to about $6.50 per person, according to the annual survey. The price of a 16-pound turkey is $28.96 on average this year, up 21% from 2021, according to the survey. Inflation cooled last month but still remains elevated at 7.7% for the year ending in October. (CNN)
UK inflation jumps to 41-year high of 11.1%. Soaring energy costs drove UK inflation to a fresh high in October, the latest piece of bad news for an economy sliding into recession. The annual rate of inflation rose to 11.1% in October, up from 10.1% in the 12 months to September, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. The sharp increase in living costs was caused by rising gas and electricity prices, despite a government energy price guarantee, which caps energy bills at £2,500 ($2,970) for the typical household. Food price inflation rose to 16.4%. (CNN)
Less than a third of Japanese companies are rolling out mechanisms to address human rights abuses in their supply chains, according to a Nikkei survey, demonstrating how much ground needs to be covered in running sustainable businesses. (Nikkei Asia)
China jobs: Beijing vows new support for graduates as youth unemployment woes continue. Authorities will streamline employment registration and introduce policies to encourage public and private sector firms to create more jobs. Officials in Beijing expect the number of university graduates to reach 11.58 million in 2023, an increase of 820,000 from this year. (South China Morning Post)
A reimagining of the global economic order could mean supply chains that are shorter and ‘more regional,’ McKinsey says in a new report. Over the last two years there’s been a shift in trade due to battered supply chains amid the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and rising tensions between the U.S. and China. The disruption has prompted speculation that trade will, in the future, be less global, thereby making the world less connected. But there’s another possibility: What’s happening now is that global connections are merely “reconfiguring,” management and consulting firm McKinsey, said in a new report. And that means that some supply chains could “shorten and become more regional” in the years ahead to better protect against disruptions and be more responsive to fluctuating demand. (Fortune)
Technology
As Meta and Twitter Lay Off Thousands in Bay Area, TikTok Plans to Double Staff. TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, aims to nearly double its staff in Mountain View, Calif., to about 2,000, according to two people familiar with its hiring targets. Some of the hiring is out of necessity: TikTok pledged to hire more U.S.-based engineers after the app came under scrutiny from U.S. government officials in recent years. (The Information)
Amazon is looking to trim headcount through a voluntary buyout program. Employees have until Nov. 29 to agree to resign, and their last day of employment will be Dec. 23. (CNBC)
Elon Musk gave Twitter employees a deadline of 5 p.m. ET today to decide if they wanted to work for him, and he asked those who did not share his vision to leave their jobs, in his latest shock treatment of the social media company. Mr. Musk made the announcement in an early-morning email to employees on Wednesday; The New York Times obtained the message, which had the subject line “A Fork in the Road.” In the note, Mr. Musk, 51, reiterated that Twitter faced a difficult road ahead and offered employees three months of severance if they did not want to continue working there “to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0.” (New York Times)
Upside’s cell-cultured chicken is first to receive FDA blessing for its production method. In a major first, the FDA just offered its safety blessing to a cultivated meat product startup. It completed its first pre-market consultation with Upside Foods to examine human food made from the cultured cells of animals, and it concluded that it had “no further questions” related to the way Upside is producing its chicken. (TechCrunch)
Graphics chip maker Nvidia issued a muted outlook and reported a sharp decline in quarterly sales, driven by waning consumer demand for its videogaming chips after a pandemic-fueled boom and the onset of the cryptowinter. America’s largest chip company by value said revenue fell 17% to $5.93 billion after gaming-segment sales more than halved in its fiscal third quarter. Net profit was $680 million. (Wall Street Journal)
Another round of media consolidation — and layoffs:
CVC Capital Partners and Group Black are pursuing a joint bid to buy Vox Media. The bid comes as the media sector is grappling with a tough economic climate and as CVC, the European private equity giant, is eyeing a consolidation move into more media assets across the U.S. (Axios)
Forbes Media is now in exclusive talks to sell to a consortium of investors that includes India-based SUN Group and GSV Ventures in a deal that could fetch around $800 million. (Axios)
Amid an advertising downturn and lower linear viewership, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, and other networks are asking staff to trim costs, find savings, and more. (Hollywood Reporter)
Vice Media CEO Nancy Dubuc tells staff the company's goal is to “reduce our cost structure by up to 15%” as management finalizes the 2023 budget. (Ben Mullin)
Outside Media, which publishes magazines including Outside, Backpacker, Climbing, and Ski, lays off 12% of its staff, after a 15% cut in May 2022. (Adweek)
Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself: The fallen crypto CEO on what went wrong, why he did what he did, and what lies he told along the way. Sam Bankman-Fried DMed me on Twitter. That was surprising. I’d spoken to Bankman-Fried via Zoom earlier in the summer when I was working on a profile of him, so I reached out to him via DM on November 13, after news broke that his cryptocurrency exchange had collapsed, with billions in customer deposits apparently gone. I didn’t expect him to respond — typically, people under investigation by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice don’t return requests for comment. Bankman-Fried, though, apparently wanted to talk. (Vox)
Smart Links
Apple plans to launch its Major League Soccer Season Pass on February 1 for $15/month or $99/season and $13/month or $79/season for Apple TV+ subscribers. (Deadline)
Frontier debuts all-you-can-fly pass for $599 — with caveats. (Washington Post)
Airbnb makes renewed push to boost supply as rental rates soar. (Financial Times)
Tennessee AG investigating Ticketmaster after Taylor Swift presale outages. (Axios)
What Old Age Might Be Like for Today’s 30-Year-Olds. (Wall Street Journal)
South Korean households' quarterly income falls for first time since Q2 2021. (Reuters)
Do You Really Want to Read What Your Doctor Writes About You? (The Atlantic)
Inside the billion-dollar meeting for the mega-rich who want to live forever. (MIT Technology Review)
They Fled Wall Street for Crypto. They Have Few Regrets. (Bloomberg)
Disney World Announces Another Round of Price Increases. (Wall Street Journal)
Shakespeare portrait said to be only one made in his lifetime on sale for £10m. (The Guardian)
Good News
He was reporting on drought in Kenya. A young elephant stole the show. (Washington Post)
How A Dallas Restaurant Became A National Youth Development System. (Forbes)
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