Primary schools to shutter
Luxembourg primary school will switch to remote learning starting on Monday. Homeschooling will run until the end of the Carnival break on 21 February. The move was taken to stem a recent (still small but quite noticeable) spike in virus transmissions at schools, Claude Meisch, the education minister (DP), said on Thursday. Afterschool childcare and activities will also close, while creches will remain open for the moment. Sources: Delano, Paperjam, 100,7 and education ministry.
J&J jab application
Johnson & Johnson filed for emergency authorisation in the US for its covid-19 vaccine, after preliminary studies showed it was 66% effective. If approved, it would be the first single-shot vaccine available. Sources: CNBC, Financial Times, NPR and Seeking Alpha.
Latest Luxembourg covid-19 figures
The reproduction rate on Wednesday was 1.05, above the target threshold of 1.00 (the same rate recorded on the previous Wednesday). There were 58 patients in hospital (compared to 63 the previous Wednesday), including 12 in intensive care (compared to 14). A cumulative 15,407 vaccine doses have been administered. One person died due to covid-19, bringing the national count to 588. Sources: Delano and health ministry.
Value of property loans up 10%
Household mortgage lending in Luxembourg rose by 9.9% last year. Sources: Delano, Paperjam and Luxembourg Central Bank.
BCEE signs FX technology deal
Luxembourg’s state savings bank, BCEE, tapped the American fintech outfit Integral to automate its foreign exchange system. Sources: Finance Magnates, The Industry Spread and Paperjam.
Kuaishou shares double
Shares in the Tiktok rival Kuaishou nearly tripled in its first day of trading in Hong Kong. The IPO raised $5.4bn. Sources: BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC and Financial Times.
Gamestop drop
Shares in Gamestop, a video game retailer, were down by 42% on Thursday, bringing the weekly fall to more than 80%. Social media chatter had driven up Gamestop stock by more than 400% in January. Sources: Bloomberg, CNBC, New York Times and Marketwatch.
Denmark to build ‘energy island’
The Danish government approved a plan to construct a €28bn artificial island, with more than 200 massive wind turbines, in the North Sea. The clean energy hub will produce electricity for 3m European households. Sources: BBC, DW, The Guardian and Reuters.
Iranian diplomat sentenced to 20 years in bombing plot
A Belgian court gave Assadollah Assadi 20 years for conspiring to bomb an Iranian opposition congress in Paris. Three accomplices (including 2 who handed over explosive material to Assadi in Luxembourg City) were given between 15 years and 18 years. Tehran called the case a ‘false flag’ operation and claimed diplomatic immunity for Assadi, who worked at the Iranian embassy in Austria. Sources: AFP, BBC, DW and The Guardian.
Biden reverses Germany troop cuts
Joe Biden froze a plan to withdraw 12,000 American troops from Germany, which was ordered by Donald Trump. Sources: AP, Euronews and New York Times.
Trump rejects senate testimony request
Donald Trump’s lawyers said he would not testify under oath at his upcoming senate impeachment trial. Sources: CNBC, Financial Times, NPR and Reuters.
Republican congresswoman rebuked
The US House of Representatives voted to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from two committee assignments for promoting conspiracy theories and making racist statements. Sources: AP, BBC, The Guardian and NPR.
Smartmatic sues Fox News
Smartmatic, which makes electronic voting machines, filed suit against Fox News and Donald Trump lawyers including Rudy Giuliani for defamation. They had claimed the company aided voter fraud. Fox News said it “will vigorously defend this meritless lawsuit in court” and Giuliani said “look forward to litigating with them”. Sources: Bloomberg, Financial Times, NPR and Reuters.
CGTN loses UK license
Britain’s media regulator stripped China’s state-run news channel of its broadcast license, saying CGTN was in reality run by the Chinese Communist Party and ran afoul of impartiality rules. Sources: Financial Times, The Guardian and NPR.
Ford faces chip shortage losses
The US automaker Ford will cut vehicle production by up to 20% during the first quarter of the year, which could lower earnings by $1bn-$2.5bn, due to the global semiconductor shortage. Sources: CNBC, Financial Times, Reuters and Wall Street Journal.
Amazon CEOs in the spotlight
With the announcement earlier this week that Jeff Bezos would be stepping down as Amazon CEO, focus has naturally turned to Andy Jassy, currently Amazon’s cloud computing chief, who will step into Bezos’s shoes later this year. The New York Times and The Verge chart Jassy’s rise within Amazon, CNBC outlines Jassy’s five big challenges ahead, the BBC has “five things we know” about Jassy, and Business Insider examines Jassy’s management style, including his “Chop” meetings. Meanwhile, Reuters looks at Bezos’s infamous single question mark emails and Stratechery has an essay on Bezos’s tech legacy.
Pornhub adding biometric ID system
The adult entertainment site Pornhub, whose parent company is based in Luxembourg and faces allegations of hosting criminal content, announced further measures to clean up its platform. These include introducing biometric technology to verify user identities and further training for its content moderators. Pornhub wants to reverse a ban by the Visa and Mastercard payment networks. Sources: Ars Technica and Vice.
Here are 5 science & technology stories you may have missed
Fauna: Naked mole rat colonies each have their own dialects, selected by their queen, per Science magazine. Health: Vitamin C does not help fight off colds, per Popular Science (from April 2017). Pharmaceuticals: A preliminary tracking study showed a single dose of the Astrazeneca/Oxford vaccine protected against covid-19 for 3 months and cut transmission by two-thirds, per The Guardian. Physics: A former chief technology officer at Microsoft has built the “highest resolution snowflake camera in the world,” per Smithsonian magazine. Virology: Researchers identified a protein mutation that allow 2 coronaviruses, that cause the common cold, to reinfect people year after year, per Nature.
Doubling masking it
Experts recommended to Slate that we wear double masks (a cloth mask over a surgical mask), mainly due to the new virus variants (also see Cnet and CNN). While most disposable masks are pretty much the same, GQ has a list of “the best cloth face masks for wearing two masks” (not all available for shipment to Luxembourg).
A glitch in Metz
GQ spoke with the documentary film director Rodney Ascher about A Glitch in the Matrix, which premieres today. The film explores simulation theory, which essentially posits that we are all living in a Matrix-like simulation. The theory was supercharged by a 1977 speech delivered in Metz, France, by the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, whose works inspired Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report. (One could say that the theory takes on new meaning in the current age of endless video calls and online chats.)
Tessy tells about treatment at funeral
Ex-Princess Tessy said she was sat “all the way in the back with a huge concrete column in front of me so that I could not see anything” at the funeral of Grand Duke Jean in April 2019. Nevertheless, “I knew he knew I was there for him,” the former princess wrote in an Instagram post. Tessy said she’s taking it in stride: “Just the blessing of being there for him and for my children to know that mama is there if needed was all that mattered.”
Today’s breakfast briefing was written by Aaron Grunwald