WATCHING TODAY:
1. Why the Catholic Church is losing Latin America: WSJ reports Conservative Pentecostals make huge inroads in Latin America during the reign of the region’s first pope. The religion is projected to become a minority in Brazil, which has more Catholics than any other country, as soon as this year.
2. The Web3 you've heard of does not exist: Jessica Karl writes so far it’s mainly a big marketing scheme setting people up for disappointment.
3. Macron has pole position — but that’s no guarantee of French election success: The Times reports history has taught the Élysée incumbent to take nothing for granted when the country votes for a new “emperor.”
4. Top universities are accused of conspiring to limit financial aid: NYT reports a lawsuit accused 16 schools, including Duke, Georgetown, and Yale, of violating antitrust laws by colluding to fix prices. The lawsuit challenges an antitrust exemption granted to these universities for financial assistance decisions.
5. How Mo Salah became the new king of football: GQ reports Mohamed Salah is the best player in the world right now. The world just hasn’t admitted it yet.
GLOBALIZATION:
The World Economic Forum released its annual Global Risks Report 2022: The topline: “Cyberthreats and the growing space race are emerging risks to the global economy, adding to existing challenges posed by climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.”
WEF Report
Why the Catholic Church is losing Latin America: Conservative Pentecostals make huge inroads in Latin America during the reign of the region’s first pope. The religion is projected to become a minority in Brazil, which has more Catholics than any other country, as soon as this year.
WSJ
+ Latin America and the Caribbean is home to 41% of the world’s Catholics, according to the Vatican. Estimates of how many Latin Americans remain Catholic vary, but all sides agree the percentages are falling.
+ According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 69% of Latin Americans were Catholic in 2014, though 84% had been raised in the church. Nineteen percent of Latin Americans identified themselves as Protestants. Of those, 65% identified with Pentecostalism.
China applies brakes to Africa lending: Beijing has signaled a more cautious approach amid warnings that several African countries could struggle to repay debts
FT
+ From almost nothing, Chinese banks now make up about one-fifth of all lending to Africa
+ “China is moving away from this high-volume, high-risk paradigm into one where deals are struck on their own merit, at a smaller and more manageable scale than before”
US rebuilt NATO to face down Russia. Putin scrambled those plans. Kremlin tests the alliance by undermining former Soviet republics, sowing disinformation, and exploiting divisions.
WSJ
+ Rather than confront NATO head-on, Putin is exerting pressure in other countries including Ukraine, Syria, and Libya. He is testing alliance unity with natural-gas deals while probing its democratic defenses with cyberattacks and disinformation
COVID is here to stay: Countries must decide how to adapt: The Omicron variant has laid bare the need to live with a disease that throws up an ever-changing set of challenges.
Nature - Editorial
+ Countries must decide how they will live with COVID-19 — and living with COVID-19 does not mean ignoring it
+ Each region must work out how to balance the deaths, disability and disruption caused by the virus with the financial and societal costs of measures used to try to control the virus
+ What is clear is that the hope that vaccines and prior infection could generate herd immunity to COVID-19 — an unlikely possibility from the start — has all but disappeared
+ It is widely thought that SARS-CoV-2 will become endemic rather than extinct, with vaccines providing protection from severe disease and death, but not eradicating the virus
+ A hefty dose of realism: the virus will continue to circulate and change, and governments must continue to rely on the guidance and advice of scientists
DISRUPTION
When mind melds with machine, who’s in control? Brain-computer interfaces are getting better all the time—and they’re about to land us in a philosophical quagmire.
Wired
+ "We’re being promised new avenues of human control, when it is precisely control we’d be ceding in what could be the largest deprivatization of thought since the invention of language."
Ready to eat some lab-grown meat? The FDA will soon decide: The science experiment could soon reach your supermarket.
Bloomberg
+ It’s already possible to purchase some types of man-made meat. In December 2020, Singapore became the first nation to approve the sale of cultivated meat. Israel’s Aleph Farms says it will be ready with some vat-grown thin-cut steaks by yearend.
Is the ‘future of food’ the future we want? At the Food on Demand conference in Las Vegas, the foodservice industry laid out its vision for a future in which customers never have to wait. Just don’t think too hard about how that’d work.
Eater
+ We are emerging in a world in which more people are choosing to order dinner than go grocery shopping, more people have downloaded delivery apps, and more people are willing to try restaurants that only exist online
POLITICS:
BYOB: A number of senior Tories distanced themselves from Boris Johnson following the latest revelations about a ‘bring your own booze’ party in the Downing Street garden during the lockdown in May 2020.
Downing Street lockdown parties leave headache for Boris Johnson: WSJ reports allegations of social-distancing violations at the prime minister’s residence are hitting UK Conservatives as economic woes also take a toll on the party’s poll numbers.
Say sorry over lockdown parties or doom us all, ministers tell Boris Johnson
The Times
Johnson faces Tory mutiny as mood turns ‘sulphurous’: Some MPs say Downing Street drinks party furor could be terminal for his premiership.
FT
It’s another big oh no for BoJo
Benjamin Hart
+ The "bring your own booze" email is a total deesasster
+ @afneil: Politically, Boris Johnson’s grimmest night since he became prime minister
+ Sue Gray 2024
+ Boris Johnson has a 60% chance of losing his job at some point in 2022 – according to the best betting sites – and punters are piling in on the beleaguered PM
Hillary Clinton’s 2024 election comeback
Douglas E. Schoen + Andrew Stein
+ “Several circumstances—President Biden’s low approval rating, doubts over his capacity to run for re-election at 82, Vice President Kamala Harris’s unpopularity, and the absence of another strong Democrat to lead the ticket in 2024—have created a leadership vacuum in the party, which Mrs. Clinton viably could fill.”
Is SEC’s Gary Gensler the skunk at the fintech party or the adult in the room? The regulator who shook up crypto now has his eye on how algorithms might influence investors.
Bloomberg
NOTABLES:
How Mo Salah became the new king of football: Mohamed Salah is the best player in the world right now. The world just hasn’t admitted it yet.
GQ
+ So Mohamed Salah and I basically dress the same but basically don't play soccer the same way. What a dude.
Mikaela Shiffrin won the final women’s World Cup slalom before the Beijing Olympics while her Slovakian rival Petra Vlhova locked up the season title in the discipline. Shiffrin leads Vlhova by 55 points in the race for the overall title.
Podcasting hasn’t produced a new hit in years
Bloomberg
+ None of the 10 most popular podcasts in the US last year debuted in the last couple years, according to Edison Research. They are an average of more than 7 years old, and three of the top five are more than a decade old
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc
Curation and commentary by Marc A. Ross | Founder @ Caracal
More @ caracal.global
