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Here’s what you need to know
The US “is on the move again.” In his first formal address to Congress, president Joe Biden talked about economic recovery and pitched his “once in a generation” social spending plan.
The Big Tech earnings blowout continued. Facebook’s quarterly revenue increased nearly 50% to $26.2 billion, while 5G phone demand doubled Apple’s profit to $26.3 billion, with record $89.6 billion revenue.
Meanwhile, Facebook changed its mind about censoring Indians. The company said it mistakenly blocked posts criticizing India’s prime minister with the #ResignModi hashtag, before restoring them.
Indians are voting in a major election. Despite the Covid crisis, millions of people are at polling stations in West Bengal, India’s fourth largest state.
Thousands of Colombians are protesting against tax reforms. At the encouragement of trade unions, they took to the streets, but met resistance from police.
Japan OKed the world’s largest trade deal. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership includes 15 Asia-Pacific nations and covers 30% of the world’s GDP.
What to watch for
China launched the first piece of a new space station into orbit today. The Chinese Space Station will eventually be about a quarter of the size of the International Space Station and will have space to house three astronauts and a slew of low-gravity experiments. Beijing hopes to squeeze 10 more launches into the next 20 months and finish the project by the end of 2022.
Chinese officials say the station will reserve space onboard for experiments from researchers all over the world—but geopolitical tensions will complicate. The US heavily restricts cooperation between NASA scientists and China, while the European Space Agency has reportedly pressured its researchers not to work with their Chinese counterparts.
Charting the power of microtransactions
Sony’s PlayStation had a record year. And it wasn’t from console sales, thanks to an ongoing global semiconductor shortage. The Japanese conglomerate generated a record ¥2,656 billion ($25 billion) in video-game revenue in the fiscal year ending March 31. On that total, it profited ¥342 billion—another record for its PlayStation business, Adam Epstein reports. That was more than double its video-game profit from the prior fiscal year.
The biggest PlayStation segment by revenue was, by far, “add-on” content—downloads and microtransactions gamers pay for within the games themselves. Not only did the pandemic create new gamers, but existing casual gamers became hardcore ones. And they’re all spending more on in-game content than they used to.
US sanctions are starting to catch up to Huawei
Huawei sales fell for the second quarter in a row as the Chinese telecom giant’s mobile phone business is buffeted by geopolitical tensions between China and the West.
The US government has targeted Huawei as part of its broader trade dispute with China, imposing sanctions on the company that have made it nearly impossible for US and non-US suppliers to sell Huawei the parts it needs to manufacture high-end smartphones. New Huawei phones also lost access to Google’s operating system and apps because of the sanctions.
Annabelle Timsit looks at the numbers to spot the toll of sanctions, and how Huawei may be able to sidestep them as it becomes a supplier of smart technology and IT, from self-driving cars to smart cities.
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Surprising discoveries
Microsoft Office is ditching Calibri. Five new custom fonts—Tenorite, Bierstadt, Skeena, Seaford, and Grandview—are in the running to be the new default.
Bacteria could be the key to removing microplastics from waterways. Researchers found a way to trap the polluting particles using bacterial biofilm.
Italy is evicting a hermit from his island paradise. Mauro Morandi spent 32 years on the Isle of Budelli, which is now part of a national park.
Danish student musicians are performing concerts for cows. No word on whether the animals prefer Moo-zart or Beefoven.
The “pumpkin toadlet” is deceptively cute. The newly discovered amphibian is highly poisonous.
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