Your April 19 news briefing
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Investors in China
Some high profile global investors are pulling some money out of China. The main fear is that the risks don’t outweigh the rewards of being there. For example, many investors aren’t loving the optics of investing in China while it won’t turn away from Russia. The zero-COVID policy, which is leading to some pretty harsh lockdowns in places like Shanghai, is also making business as usual pretty tough. This is all amid President Xi’s campaign to regulate industries, which has led to crackdowns across the economy. Overall outflows from China’s investments, be it stocks, mutual funds or bonds, all accelerated after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Twitter founder speaks out
Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, has made some public comments about the whole Musk and Twitter saga. Dorsey got fired from the company in 2008 and, during that time, “ended up with very little of the company.” He then came back to lead the tech platform in 2015 and is the second-largest internal stakeholder now (behind Musk), with 2.25% of shares. Today, he also sits on the board but is apparently going to leave once his term ends in late May this year.
This is a big criticism from Musk, who says that the Twitter board collectively owns no shares without Dorsey on the board. Dorsey then said on Sunday that the Twitter board has “consistently been the dysfunction of the company.”
Yellen vs. food shortages
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and her deputy are going to be meeting with a bunch of high-level officials, say the G7, the G20 (including Russia) and the IMF, around the world this week to look at how to solve an impending food crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine is a major exporter of wheat and fertilizer, and without this year’s exports, there are likely to be food shortages in some parts of the world.
Ronaldo and Rodríguez announce death of baby boy
The Portugal international soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo and his partner Georgina Rodríguez were expecting twins. But today, the couple announced the death of their baby boy, saying that it’s the “greatest pain that any parents can feel." Their baby girl survived, and they said that her birth “gives us the strength to live this moment with some hope and happiness."
In other news …
🇨🇳Shanghai has reported three deaths of people from COVID for the first time since it went into lockdown in late March. China saw 23,460 cases yesterday.
🇭🇰Hong Kong saw around 613 new cases on Monday.
🏦The World Bank has cut our global growth outlook because of the Ukraine-Russia war, COVID and increasing poverty.
💰Meta recently unveiled its monetization plans, saying that creators will be charged up to an eyebrow-raising 47.5% fee on sales of digital goodies and experiences sold on its virtual reality platform Horizon Worlds. We can only imagine what this will do to Zuck’s popularity status.
Written and put together by Jake Shropshire, Christine Dulion and Krystal Lai
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