Bloomberg Businessweek February 21, 2022

● Global coronavirus cases have passed 417 million, deaths have topped 5.8m and more than 10.5 billion vaccine doses have been given. Disney is dropping a mask mandate for fully vaccinated guests at its U.S. theme parks, part of a global move by companies and governments to return to normal life. ● Ericsson may have made payments to the Islamic State terror organization to gain access to certain transport routes in Iraq. The admission from the Stockholm-based company comes after accusations by the U.S. Department of Justice in October of breaching a $1 billion agreement it made with prosecutors in 2019 to end a long-running corruption probe. ● “These nine families have shared a single goal from the very beginning: to do whatever they could to help prevent the next Sandy Hook.” Josh Koskoff,…

U.S. immigration policies should be guided by two basic principles. The first is that immigrants are indispensable to American innovation and long-term economic growth. The second is that laws to secure the country’s borders must be rigorously enforced. A system built on these common-sense ideas would promote economic dynamism, boost tax revenue, prevent population decline, and protect national security. It would also command support among a majority of Americans. Unfortunately, the current administration’s approach to immigration—both legal and otherwise—has so far been hopelessly muddled. Fixing it should be a top priority. Start with the legal immigration system, which is heavily weighted toward immigrants with family ties, who make up almost 70% of those who receive permanent residence. An additional 4% come in through the “diversity lottery,” which awards visas to residents…

▶ On Feb. 21, Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to scrap the last of the U.K.’s pandemic restrictions, including self-isolation, that have dominated daily life for the past two years. ▶ HSBC’s ongoing restructuring is likely to dominate its earnings report on Feb. 22. Europe’s largest lender continues to pivot toward Asia and wealth management. ▶ Media tycoon Jimmy Lai and six former executives of the shuttered Apple Daily tabloid appear in court on Feb. 24 on charges of violating Hong Kong’s national security law. ▶ Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey visits Parliament’s Treasury Committee on Feb. 23 to discuss future rate increases to contain the worst inflation in decades. ▶ The EU Foreign Affairs Council, made up of the foreign ministers of member states, meets in Brussels on Feb. 21, with tensions…

It was remarkably civil, as conscious uncouplings go: Peter Thiel, in announcing his departure from the board of the company formerly known as Facebook, praised his longtime friend and mentee Mark Zuckerberg as “one of the great entrepreneurs of our time.” Zuckerberg in turn called Thiel, the first outside investor in Meta Platforms Inc. and a board member since 2005, “truly an original thinker.” That last bit is indisputable. Although Thiel and Zuckerberg are close, Thiel had hardly made a secret of his disdain for Zuckerberg’s social network. The company’s first outside investor sold the majority of his holdings almost as soon as he was able to. As I reported in my book, The Contrarian, Thiel also amplified some of the company’s loudest critics. “My generation was promised colonies on the…

On the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio, where the remains of a 200-year-old canal built to connect Cleveland with Cincinnati snake around new warehouse parks, a modern tributary of the global economy widens a little more with each planeload of goods that roars down its runways. Rickenbacker International Airport was a bustling hub for air freight well before the pandemic—a day’s truck drive to half of the U.S. population, so the slogan goes. In the past two years, another role emerged: economic relief valve for auto parts, consumer products, and pharmaceuticals to flow around the more prominent but clogged arteries of U.S. trade. The former wartime airbase handled a record 1,655 international cargo arrivals in 2021, a 73% jump from 2019, and overall tonnage rose 18%. Freighters and reconfigured passenger jets fly in…

For several years, faux meat has come to U.S. grocery stores mainly in the form of burgers and sausage links, often in the coveted refrigerated case right next to the real thing. The arrival of patties from Beyond Meat Inc., Impossible Foods Inc., and a long list of competitors large and small at first translated into unceasing media attention and massive growth. But the continued hunger for fresh faux meat is proving to be unsustainable. After surging 53% to $473 million in 2020, sales of plant-based meats in the meat departments of grocery stores increased only 1% in 2021, according to consumer products analytics firm IRI Worldwide. Whether that was a result of people returning to eating at restaurants or the fading novelty of meat substitutes, the result is that makers…