Kim Jong Un, Coffee Cancer Warning, Backcountry, General Hospital, Dave Asprey, SoulCycle
Marc Ross Daily
March 30, 2018
Curation and commentary from Marc A. Ross
Reporting from Alexandria, Virginia
Marc Ross Daily = Global Business News at the Intersection of Politics + Policy + Profits
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TOP FIVE
✔️ Xi gave Kim Jong Un the Trump treatment
✔️ What really went on at Russia’s Seattle consulate?
✔️ Starbucks coffee in California needs cancer warning
✔️ Backcountry launches its own gear line
✔️ General Hospital is celebrating its 55th anniversary
GEOECONOMICS
538: How to win a trade war. Trump says it’s easy. Try it for yourself.
https://goo.gl/KW54HB
Trade conflict fears to keep markets on edge for weeks: Reuters reports, a full-scale global trade war has not broken out yet - but that hasn't stopped the market from fretting about one or analysts from warning about the potential cost.
How China’s Xi gave Kim Jong Un the Trump treatment: Bloomberg reports, it may have been billed as an unofficial trip, but China's President Xi Jinping pulled out all the stops during a four-day visit to Beijing by North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, his wife and a train load of dignitaries. Trump's visit was billed as a “state-visit plus” and included a precedent-breaking tour of the Forbidden City. But when you consider the honors heaped on Kim — and the clandestine nature of his visit — should Trump's nose be out of joint? https://goo.gl/YxDBWD
Trump and Kim Jong Un have a lot in common. Is that a good thing?
WP - David Ignatius
Nikkei: Is China's Belt and Road working? A progress report from eight countries https://goo.gl/EQKL4w
Russian ambassador pleads for help in securing Washington meetings: Politico reports, Anatoly Antonov has been rebuffed by U.S. government officials who are reluctant to be seen as friendly toward the Kremlin.
What really went on at Russia’s Seattle consulate? Politico reports, the closure of the facility could limit military and tech-industry espionage—and leaves Russia with no diplomatic presence on the West Coast.
"Russia will now lack a diplomatic facility west of Houston, or any diplomatic presence on the West Coast for the first time since 1971. Russian intelligence officers—at least those under diplomatic cover—will no longer operate in easy proximity to America’s two great tech capitals."
200 billion: Estimates of Vladimir Putin’s personal wealth range from $50 billion to $200 billion.
Starbucks stop showcases MBS’s charm offensive: FT reports, US visit by Saudi crown prince aims to reshape how world views oil-rich kingdom.
Leftist looms large as Mexico presidential race opens: AFP reports, the campaign for Mexico's July 1 presidential election officially opens Friday, with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a veteran leftist promising a sharp break with the past, positioned as the man to beat.
Bitcoin hit a low of $6,915.55 late Thursday afternoon, its lowest since Feb. 6.
UK immigration: The Home Office has lost track of more than 600,000 foreigners who should have left the UK, according to a report that lays bare Britain's "shambolic" border checks.
"I don't like to worry you but Theresa May is going on a walking holiday in Wales this Easter. The prime minister has confirmed that she will retrace the steps she took a year ago when she had the bright idea to call an election. It is a gamble the notoriously risk-averse PM will not look to repeat." -- Matt Chorley
AMERICAN POLITICS
Reuters: Mueller probing Russia contacts at Republican convention: sources
@TheOnion: Mark Zuckerberg prepares for Congressional testimony by poring over lawmakers’ personal data https://trib.al/IpsGM44
WSJ: California judge rules coffee must carry cancer warning
Gov. Jerry Brown appoints ‘deputy first dog’: Cali the Bordoodle: KTLA reports, Gov. Jerry Brown has added a new member to his staff: “Deputy First Dog” Cali Brown. The poodle, border collie mix, or bordoodle, joined the Brown family this month from a ranch in Herald, California. Cali is a “Doggocrat.”
ENTERPRISE
WSJ: Walmart in early talks to buy Humana
Can Amazon disrupt the $16-billion housekeeping industry?LAT reports, Three years ago, Amazon.com Inc. launched a marketplace to connect its customers with handymen, landscapers and housekeepers in their neighborhoods, a direct challenge to the likes of Angie's List and Yelp. The offering embraced the independent contractor model, using Amazon's web store to create a new service from scratch without hiring a single person or buying any lawnmowers, hammers or mops. Now Amazon is quietly hiring house cleaners in Seattle as direct employees.
SCMP: 2.3 million – the number of jobs that could be lost to artificial intelligence in China’s financial sectors by 2027
Snapchat is cutting another 100 employees, with layoffs focused on its advertising side.
Inside Yiwu, China, the Easter trinket capital of the world: LAT reports, Yang Wei, 30, maintains a child's bedroom-sized world of Easter wonders. She sits amid shelves overflowing with stuffed rabbits, plastic eggs with glued-on bunny ears, and countless fuzzy chicks, like nonedible marshmallow Peeps. Most of it is bound for the US, delivered by the crate-load. "We have toy designers who go to the US or Europe to do research," said Yang, manager of the Jiangsu Taizhou City Wenhao Handicraft Product Factory. "Then they come back and come up with toys that will suit the market."
DC woes aside, Huawei is determined to lead on 5G: WSJ reports, far from Washington, where the government has called Huawei a national-security threat, the world’s largest maker of cellular-tower equipment is trying to dominate discussions on the design of 5G, the next generation of mobile networks.
Breach of Under Armour app affects 150 million users: WSJ reports, emails, usernames and passwords on the MyFitnessPal app were exposed in February.
Starbucks coffee in California needs cancer warning: judge: Reuters reports, Starbucks and other coffee sellers must put a cancer warning on coffee sold in California, a Los Angeles judge has ruled, possibly exposing the companies to millions of dollars in fines.
The New York Stock Exchange is in talks to buy the tiny Chicago Stock Exchange, after the recent collapse of a two-year acquisition effort by a Chinese-led investor group.
How SoulCycle scales community: On the #BoFVOICES stage, chief executive Melanie Whelan told CNN’s Derek Blasberg that people are the key to maintaining the cult-like indoor cycling company’s special culture as it grows. https://goo.gl/5yqmhq
Dave Asprey wants to make the gym bulletproof: Outside reports, the entrepreneur believes that biohacking can rocket your body and mind to peak performance. His Bulletproof diet zoomed into the mainstream, his Bulletproof coffee has everyone quaffing butter, and his Bulletproof books fly off the shelves. Now Bulletproof Labs is out to hack, well, everything. https://goo.gl/6jA9ER
Backcountry launches its own gear line.
TRENDS
40 years into the war on clutter, and we’re still overwhelmed by stuff. What’s going on? It’s hard to put a start date on America’s War on Clutter, but you could trace it to 1978, when the first Container Store opened in a 1,600-square-foot space in Dallas, or to 1985, when a few professional organizers from California saw gold in people’s junk and started a trade association that today counts about 3,400 members. But despite an industry that’s grown so massive it’s become its own form of clutter — with books, and experts, and storage containers, and apps, and YouTube videos — we’ve made so little progress that even the professional organizers aren’t pretending the problem has been solved — or even that it’s solvable. https://goo.gl/32jgJE
These salad vending machines have become one of Chicago’s hot lunch spots: Founded in 2013, Farmer’s Fridge’s fresh salad machines, with salads starting at $7, are now in place across Milwaukee and Chicago–and the company is looking to expand. https://goo.gl/im2MB5
Hollywood's first blockchain movie: an end to piracy? AFP reports, Hollywood is turning to the technology behind cryptocurrency bitcoin to distribute movies in a development hailed as the beginning of the end for piracy."No Postage Necessary," a romantic indie comedy about a luckless hacker that is being distributed via peer-to-peer video network app Vevue, running on Qtum, the most advanced blockchain in the world.
CULTURE
General Hospital is celebrating its 55th anniversary.
When the road's your office, this is the gear you need https://goo.gl/M13YVq
SOTD
The Tragically Hip - Fifty-Mission Cap https://goo.gl/Fofd4R
SPORT
The origins of all 30 MLB team names https://goo.gl/jrJaAm
