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📝 Good afternoon and welcome to Notes on the News. It's Sunday, Oct. 17. Here's what we're watching this week: Democrats' attempts to whittle down their marquee policy package, how the energy rally affects company earnings, and a new way to invest in bitcoin. Let us know what you think by replying to this email. Thanks for reading. |
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| President Biden visited Hartford, Conn., to promote his agenda for families with children. PHOTO: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES |
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1. Democrats face deadline on finding consensus. Party lawmakers still tussling over how to scale back their ambitions to expand the country’s safety net and overhaul its climate-change policy have dwindling time to reach an agreement as both the House and Senate return to Washington this week. |
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2. Wall Street watches earnings for signs of energy-price strain. Updates due this week from airlines including United and American will shed light on whether the recent rally in U.S. crude has dented quarterly profits. Others companies scheduled to report in the coming days include Tesla, Netflix and Procter & Gamble. |
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3. Investors await rollout of first bitcoin ETF. The exchange-traded fund from ProShares is expected to start trading Tuesday, making the most widely traded cryptocurrency available to most investors with a brokerage account. Here's a look at what it means. |
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4. Economists see slowdown in China. Battered by power shortfalls and a cooling property market, the country’s economy is expected to have grown 5.1% during the third quarter from a year ago, after posting growth of 7.9% in the second quarter. Figures are due tonight. |
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5. Steve Bannon's defiance tests power of congressional subpoena. The former Trump aide has refused to testify before the House committee probing the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, sparking a move by the panel to hold him in criminal contempt. Members are scheduled to vote on the matter on Tuesday, an initial step toward prosecution. |
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6. The NBA tips off. A new season begins on Tuesday when title favorites the Nets take on the defending champion Bucks in Milwaukee. Brooklyn faces competing without star player Kyrie Irving, who is banned from the court until he gets vaccinated against Covid-19. |
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95% — The percentage of Afghans who aren't getting enough to eat, according to the United Nations' World Food Program. Almost all of the country's population of 40 million could fall below the poverty line in coming months, the U.N. says. Some people are selling their children to survive. $740 billion — The shortfall state retirement systems face, according to a fiscal 2021 estimate from Pew Charitable Trusts. Pension managers are turning to risky investments on private equity, private loans and real estate to dig out of funding deficits. 1.08 million — The number of workers at franchised car dealerships in the U.S., according to the National Automobile Dealers Association. Employment has remained around this level for the past year as the global chip shortage has slashed vehicle inventories and left dealers with few cars to sell. |
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| What Everyone Wants to Know |
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| PHOTO: MERIDITH KOHUT/FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL |
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Teen girls are developing tics. Doctors say TikTok could be a factor. Teenage girls across the globe have been showing up at doctors’ offices with tics—physical jerking movements and verbal outbursts—since the start of the pandemic. Movement-disorder doctors were stumped at first. Girls with tics are rare, and these teens had an unusually high number of them, which had developed suddenly. After months of studying the patients and consulting with one another, experts at top pediatric hospitals discovered that most of the girls had something in common: They had been watching videos of TikTok influencers who said they had Tourette syndrome, a nervous-system disorder that causes people to make repetitive, involuntary movements or sounds. |
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Democrats see taxes on the rich and big businesses as a political asset. Although Democrats’ slim majorities have forced them to abandon some of their most sweeping tax proposals, President Biden and congressional Democrats are still seeking to raise about $2 trillion over a decade from businesses and high-income households. While Democrats have been on the defensive over tax increases in the past, the push is now being viewed broadly within the party as a political asset, not a liability. They point to opinion polls to argue that voters support their plans to reverse some of former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and impose other new increases. While Biden and his advisers believe that raising taxes on the wealthy and American corporations is a popular solution that fits the times, Republicans argue that his agenda is an overreach that will lead to inflation and recession. |
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Covid-19 precautions are prompting a backlash on college campuses. When the pandemic forced colleges and universities to send millions of students home last year, it hampered their ability to teach and cost them billions of dollars in revenue from room and board and athletic events. This year, in an effort to stay open and safe, about 1,000 schools have mandated vaccines, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Outbreaks are far lower than last year and hospitalizations among students are rare. But some students are objecting to mitigation measures that were put in place, such as increased surveillance and restrictions on their travel on and off campus. At the core of their concerns is a fear that universities are constructing a bureaucracy designed to control a generation just coming of age. |
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Go watch: "The Velvet Underground," the new documentary about the iconic band, in theaters and streaming on Apple TV+. The Journal's critic calls it "a beautifully poetic meditation on the emotional and cultural power of rock and the allure of making a life in art." |
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