🌏 India pulls ahead

Plus: Tesla’s big investor day
A man walks between the buildings at a commercial center in New Delhi.
A man walks between the buildings at a commercial center in New Delhi.
Photo: Altaf Hussain (Reuters)

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Here’s what you need to know

India’s GDP growth outpaced China last quarter. Asia’s largest economy grew slower than India’s for the first time since 2016.

One of the world’s longest-running mask mandates lifts today. Hong Kongers can go maskless in public from March 1 after a 945-day requirement.

Nigeria’s ruling party took a firm lead in the country’s presidential election. Bola Tinubu is on top, but faces calls for a redo from three opposition parties.

Oil giant TotalEnergies got a win. A French court dismissed a lawsuit claiming that projects in Uganda and Tanzania would irrevocably harm the people and environment.

A third ex-FTX employee pleaded guilty in a cooperation deal. Nishad Singh agreed to work with authorities as they investigate what’s been dubbed the biggest fraud in history.

Volkswagen defended its Xinjiang plant. The German carmaker’s China chief visited the site recently and claimed there were no signs of forced labor.

China called the US’s TikTok ban on federal devices an overreaction. US officials can’t have the app on their government phones as Canada and the EU have followed suit.


What to watch for

Elon Musk is opening Tesla’s Texas gigafactory to investors today. The timing couldn’t be better for Musk, who’s once again the world’s richest person thanks to a recent rally in Tesla shares. The carmaker has recovered some from its stock tumble last year, when it lost more than half of its market value.

But as much as Musk would like the event to be about himself, it’s been billed as the company’s first investor day, and is expected to give the CEO a chance to address rumors around:

🔋 Personal energy storage

🚗 Cheaper Tesla models

🏭 New factories

🛻 Cybertrucks

And those are just a few of the notches in what Tesla’s calling its “third master plan.”


UK workers want Amazon to pay up

Image for article titled 🌏 India pulls ahead
Photo: Henry Nicholls (Reuters)

Workers staged the second-ever strike at Amazon UK yesterday (Feb. 28) in a fight for higher wages.

Employees are asking for at least £15 ($18.09) an hour as the UK weathers a cost-of-living crisis that has fueled historic levels of industrial action. While unionization in the US has faced some recent setbacks, organizing across the pond could add a decisive push in the fight for Amazon workers’ rights.

👀 Here’s a reading list to catch up on the latest in Bezos-land:


Chaos incoming for lithium markets

India may have just become one of the top five global lithium players, but its closest rival, China, has more to worry about than an overnight competitor chomping at the bit.

Chinese authorities are clamping down on illegal mining at a key production hub in Jiangxi province, where villagers are reportedly digging deep trenches. Characterized as pure “lithium chaos,” China’s investigatory crackdown could hit the red hot global market—hard.

Pop quiz: What share of the world’s lithium supply could be disrupted in the crackdowns?

A. 13%
B. 35%
C. 6%
D. 22%

Answer: A., 13%, and that’s if the hub shuts down for only a month.

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