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Sweden got one step closer to joining NATO. The Turkish parliament approved the Nordic country’s bid to join the military alliance, and now it awaits president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s signature.
China is buying a greater share of its intermediate goods—those used to make products—from Taiwan. That change has come at the expense of imports from South Korea and Japan.
TikTok laid off workers. The cuts by the social media video app follow widespread layoffs in the tech sector—including the one-time darling of Silicon Valley, Brex, which just laid off 20% of its workforce.
Alphabet cut ties with an Australian AI company that helped train its Bard chat bot. The decision will affect at least 2,000 subcontracted Alphabet workers.
The European Commission is investigating Lufthansa’s planned takeover of ITA Airways. Regulators are worried about less competition if the German airline were to absorb the struggling Italian carrier.
Quotable: Boeing’s problems are United’s
“With the Max grounding, this is the kind of straw that broke the camel’s back with believing that the Max 10 will deliver on the schedule we had hoped for.” —United Airlines CFO Michael Leskinen said in a call with investors yesterday.
United CEO Scott Kirby clarified that the company isn’t canceling its Max 10 orders, which total 277 across the next decade. Instead, it’s taking those aircraft “out of [its] internal plan” and preparing to operate without them.
China wants homegrown semiconductors—fast
Two trade numbers indicate that Beijing wants to quickly make its own semiconductors: China’s imports of chipmaking machines hit a near-record last year, while its chip imports saw their steepest decline on record.
Helping drive that growth is imports of specialty chip-making machines from the Netherlands, home of lithography giant ASML. In November, imports of Dutch lithography systems to China surged over 1,000% as Chinese players scrambled to procure the advanced technology critical to making cutting-edge chips.
Meanwhile, China’s imports of chips fell at their sharpest pace on record last year, slumping to $350 billion and marking two consecutive years of decline. It’s a game of progress and urgency, and China is trying to balance both.
Netflix’s WWE bet shows there’s no chill for sports streams
Though fans had to pay $5.99 for the privilege, the NFL’s AFC Wild Card game’s debut on Peacock this year was the most-streamed event ever—and it’s probably just the start of a new era of live sports streaming.
Netflix is the latest to enter the arena with its $5 billion deal to become the home of WWE’s Monday Night Raw. It wants a slice of the huge (and dedicated) live sport streaming viewership, which its competitors have already started gobbling up.
🏈 Amazon paid $1 billion to be the home of the NFL’s Thursday Night Football
🏀 Warner Bros. Discovery started moving more NBA games to its Max service
🏎️ Apple was rumored to be mulling a $2 billion-a-year deal to stream Formula 1 races
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Surprising discoveries
More than 2,200 companies have directors aged 123 and over. Seeing as the oldest human ever to live was 122, something’s up.
Russia is home to nearly half of the land in the Arctic. Data about how climate change is affecting that area has been inaccessible since the country invaded Ukraine.
More than 55,000 offices are expected to be converted into apartments in the US this year. The trend is most notable in Washington DC.
If awards season isn’t your thing, try the Razzies. This year’s nominations for worst actors go to some of Hollywood’s GOATs.
A world map of all the places that the Red Hot Chili Peppers have mentioned in their songs is impressively full. But let us not forget the celestial—“space” was named 67 times.
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