From Chinese banks courting crypto firms in Hong Kong to panda nannies – Here's your March 29 news briefing

To start off, we're looking into:

Chinese banks jump on crypto

The backstory: China banned crypto-related activities in 2021. But, traders are still going strong in the mainland, and China remains the world's fourth-largest crypto market. In fact, in the year leading up to July 2022, the country saw over US$220 billion in crypto transactions, according to blockchain research group Chainalysis. On the other hand, Hong Kong has shown a desire to become a crypto hub, opening its doors to the sector.

The development: Now, Chinese state-owned banks are getting cozy with crypto firms in Hong Kong, according to insiders speaking with Bloomberg. The Bank of China, Bank of Communications and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank have reportedly all started offering banking services to local crypto companies or at least expressing interest in the industry. In fact, reps from one of the banks even visited a crypto company's office to pitch their services. Considering how hard it can be for crypto firms to get traditional banking services, this is a pretty big deal. And it seems to signal a green light from Beijing on Hong Kong's aims to become a hub for the industry.

Qatar investigation

The backstory: The 2022 World Cup in Qatar was riddled with controversies, particularly regarding the treatment of migrant workers who make up a huge portion of the country's population. According to a report by The Guardian, over 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since 2010, with many of them working on World Cup projects.

More recently: A tragic incident happened at a 2022 soccer World Cup training site in Qatar. A Filipino migrant worker named Alexander lost his life when he slipped off a ramp while walking next to a forklift truck. Reportedly, he wasn't wearing a safety harness or being assisted by a third worker, which is typical. This happened on a private road within the Sealine Beach resort, which was hosting the Saudi Arabia national team during the World Cup.

In December, the Qatari government launched an investigation and threatened legal action and hefty fines against Alexander's employer, Salam Petroleum, if safety protocols were not followed.

The development: Now, Salam Petroleum, the employer of the Filipino migrant worker who passed away, is facing criminal proceedings initiated by Qatar's public prosecution. There's no timeline for an outcome yet, as the court will consider the case.

Disney’s metaverse cut

The backstory: There have been many announcements about tech and banking layoffs late last year into early this year. But media companies are also seeing a lot of restructuring, resulting in layoffs. They've started toning down spending since Netflix announced a loss of subscribers in 2022. That's when Wall Street began to prioritize profit over subscriber growth.

More recently: Disney began making shifts, replacing CEO Bob Chapek with Bob Iger and getting rid of its Disney Media and Entertainment Division. In February, the company announced that it would have a round of layoffs, cutting 7,000 jobs. This move was part of its effort to save US$5.5 billion in costs and make Disney+ profitable.

The development: This week, those layoffs began, and some of the first jobs to go were to its metaverse team with about 50 people. The team was responsible for working with Disney's NFTs, crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) and generally using tech as a new "storytelling frontier." Disney company veteran Mike White, who led the team, will stay on at Disney, but everyone else will be let go. This action is part of the first of three rounds of layoffs to reach that 7,000 number. The next two waves will take place in April and then before the start of the summer.

To end, we'll look into:

Carbonara controversy

Pasta alla carbonara is a widely beloved and enjoyed dish all over. Usually paired with spaghetti, carbonara is a rich sauce that’s made from hard cheese (usually parmesan), eggs, guanciale or other cured pork and black pepper. It’s a relatively simple recipe that can be slightly personalized in a few different ways (adding garlic or cream, usually). But this comfort food staple is rooted in mystery.

Recently, an Italian academic made waves by making some claims about carbonara that have rocked the culinary world. Alberto Grandi, a professor of food history at the University of Parma, has said that carbonara is more of an American dish.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Grandi said, “Maybe once a year we ate amatriciana [a tomato-based recipe with bacon], when we could afford to kill a pig. But I’d never heard of carbonara before the war.”

What are this dish’s actual origins, though?

“On the basis of imaginative reconstructions, the most deeply rooted national culinary traditions are disputed,” said Coldiretti, Italy’s biggest farmers’ association. “In essence, [Grandi claims] the Americans have invented carbonara, and panettone and tiramisu are recent commercial products. Above all, [the interview] goes so far as to hypothesize about parmesan and the one produced in Wisconsin in the US – the homeland of fake ‘made in Italy’ cheeses.”

According to Italy Magazine, carbonara is usually associated with the Rome region of Italy, but its exact historical origins are a little hazy. But, apparently, there weren’t any written recipes for the dish before around 1940. It’s clear, though, that there were definitely carbonara relatives in the books before then. Egg and pasta combinations date back to the 18th century. By then, pasta made with cheese was already popular in most of Italy. One recipe dating back to 1881 describes maccheroni made with cheese and eggs. But adding guanciale to pasta is definitely a later invention, probably because it was expensive and kind of hard to come by.

We don’t really know where carbonara comes from, but we do know that it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

In other news ...

📈Stocks: MSCI’s global gauge of stocks is up 0.09% at 2704.76 at the time of writing.

• Dow Jones fell 0.12% to 32,394.25.
• Nasdaq Composite lost 0.45% to 11,716.08.
• S&P 500 shed 0.16% to 3,971.27.
• Hang Seng Index climbed 1.1% to 19,784.65.

🧠Some quick factors to bear in mind:

• On Tuesday, Wall Street's three major indexes closed lower, making investors worried the Fed would keep interest rates higher for longer as fears of failure in the banking sector eased.
• The 2-year US Treasury note rate went above 4%, which put more pressure on stocks.
• Bank stocks slipped after a hearing at the Senate Banking Committee where three top regulators indicated that they want more rules for banks with over US$100 billion in assets.
• A survey released on Tuesday showed better-than-expected US consumer confidence in March.
• Hong Kong stocks ended on a high note on Tuesday, following the rebound in global markets as fears of a crisis in the banking sector eased. But China stocks didn't fare as well and closed lower.
• The billionaire co-founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, reportedly returned to China after being away for about a year. This led to a surge in Alibaba shares in the US, rising by over 14%.
• Chinese tech giant Tencent jumped over 4% with reports that the company is launching a ChatGPT-like bot, which made it the best-performing blue-chip.

👄Some comments and chatter:

• Technology stocks are among the laggards, which is often the case as interest rates rise. For the time being, investors seem to be looking beyond the challenges in the financial sector and recognizing that U.S. economic growth continues to be resilient," said Brian Levitt, global market strategist for Invesco.
• "Everybody's waiting for a recession, but the economic news continues to be pretty good. It's hard for the market to bounce when everybody's looking for bad news even if the bad news isn't there," said Brad McMillan, CIO at Commonwealth Financial Network.

🛢Oil: Oil prices went up again on Tuesday, continuing an upswing after worries about potential supply issues from pipeline halts in the Iraqi Kurdistan region and optimism that the banking crisis has eased. With this, US crude rose 0.5% to US$73.20, and Brent gained 0.7% to US$78.65 per barrel.

👛Bitcoin: At the time of writing, Bitcoin is up 0.23% at US$27,205.40.

🏔Deadly landslide in Ecuador: On Monday, a landslide swept through a community in the Andes, burying dozens of homes in mud. Rescuers are still searching for survivors, but at least 16 people are dead. There are 16 more injured, and seven were still missing as of Monday night.

👮‍♂️Girls' education activist arrested: Since it took over Afghanistan, the Taliban has restricted women's rights. Matiullah Wesa is the founder and president of Pen Path, a local NGO that travels with a mobile school and library across the country, and he's known for campaigning for girls' education rights. According to the UN, Taliban security forces arrested Wesa after he got back to Kabul from a trip to Europe on Monday.

💬China responds to Putin's nuclear plans:  A few days ago, Putin announced plans for Russia to move tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. On Monday, China again called for a de-escalation between Ukraine and Russia. The country also doubled down on its anti-nuclear war stance.

🚫Ukraine shuts town: To the surprise of many, Ukraine has been holding its own in Bakhmut, and Russia's winter offensive looks like it's weakening a bit. Now, Russia is shifting focus from Bakhmut, and Ukraine is planning its own counter-attacks. On Monday, Ukraine shut down the town of Avdiivka to civilians, only allowing military personnel inside and describing it as a "post-apocalyptic" wasteland.

🔍Russian father flees jail term: The daughter of a Russian man named Alexei Moskalev was reported for drawing an anti-war picture, and Moskalev was given a two-year jail term for discrediting the army. But when he was convicted and sentenced, he was missing from the courtroom. He escaped his house arrest, and no one knows where he is. His daughter was removed from his care and put in a children's home.

👩‍⚖️Prince Harry in court: Last year, Prince Harry joined a group of high-profile people (including Sir Elton John) to sue British media giant Associated Newspapers Limited for unlawful information gathering. This is the company that produces Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online. He arrived in London for the court hearing Monday, which involved accusations of criminal methods used to get info on public figures over the years.

📄Bankman-Fried charged: The US government has already charged Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX infamy for crimes including securities fraud, money laundering and campaign finance violations. On Tuesday, prosecutors added a foreign bribery charge to the list. They allege that in 2021, Bankman-Fried told staff to pay a bribe of US$40 million to one or more Chinese officials to unfreeze certain trading accounts.

🥤Wings worth billions: We recently reported how billionaires got hit hard during the pandemic, with many losing a fortune – and even their billionaire status. But, the Thai family behind the popular energy drink Red Bull added US$7.8 billion to their pockets since last January, thanks to a big boost in sales post-COVID. This is the biggest gain of any Asian dynasty.

✂Alibaba splits: Alibaba Group said it plans to split its US$220 billion empire into six business units – a historic reshuffling that will likely produce a bunch of exciting IPOs. The company's US-listed shares jumped about 13% in early Wall Street trading Tuesday.  

💻Google partners with Replit: Alphabet's Google has joined up with AI startup Replit to create something that helps computer programmers write code. This is a rival move to compete with similar products from Microsoft's GitHub and OpenAI.

🍏Apple launches new pay later service: Buy-Now-Pay-Later services have been popping up everywhere. On Tuesday, Apple announced Apple Pay Later, allowing US users to split their purchases into four payments spread over six weeks. These payments can be taken care of via Apple Wallet and will include loans between US$50 and US$1,000.

🛰Global internet coverage: Founded in 2012, OneWeb aims to spread high-speed internet globally from a series of low-orbit satellites. On Sunday, it launched 36 more satellites, the final round it needs to get its service off the ground.

🎓Zelenskiy cosplay: Kyoto University in Japan has a fun tradition of students dressing up in different costumes and outfits for graduation day rather than the classic formal dress. One student, who goes by Amiki on Twitter, dressed up as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, olive-colored T-shirt, khakis, beard and all, to express support for Ukraine. He said it took him three months to grow his beard for the look.

🎤BTS goes CK: K-pop group BTS' heartthrob Jeon Jungkook is fashion label Calvin Klein's newest global ambassador. And the internet is going pretty crazy about it. The collab's social media teaser got over 20 million views in the first 24 hours.

🧆Mammoth meatball: An Australian cultured meat company, Vow, has taken mammoth DNA, spliced it with African elephant DNA to complete the sequence, inserted that into some sheep cells and created a giant meatball made of mammoth flesh. Why, you rightfully ask? Vow is trying to get people talking about cultured meat as a sustainable alternative to regular meat. It's not actually for consumption right now, and it apparently has the "aroma of crocodile meat."

🐼Now hiring panda nannies: A giant panda reserve in China has said that, despite receiving hundreds of applications for panda keeper jobs (of course!), they haven't been able to find anyone qualified for the position. But there's more to panda keeping than snacks and cuddles, "such as weighing their faeces, observing the pandas' moods and distributing bamboo by scattering it around and leaving it in a vertical position," said the reserve's manager.

Written and put together by Joey Fung, Vanessa Wolosz, Shebby Farooq and Christine Dulion