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📝 Good afternoon and welcome to Notes on the News. Here’s what you should know today, Nov. 11: Some schools are changing Covid-19 policies as kids get vaccinated, supply strains are hitting China’s big shopping event and Europe is weighing a tougher stance toward migration. Let us know what you think by replying to this email. Thanks for reading. |
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| A high-school classroom in Miami-Dade County, Fla., where parents are now being allowed to opt out of having their children wear masks. PHOTO: EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK |
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1. Schools are changing mask policies as children get Covid-19 vaccines. Moves to ease mask and quarantine requirements reflect how eager some officials and parents are to get back to normal. Still, the CDC continues to recommend universal indoor masking at school and, when possible, a physical distance between children of at least 3 feet. |
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2. Global supply strains are squeezing China’s “Singles Day” shopping event. The annual festival pioneered by e-commerce giant Alibaba has grown over the years into weeks of promotions that rake in more revenue than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. But power outages, the chip shortage and logistics disruptions have delayed goods and caused headaches for merchants. |
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3. The European Union is considering border fences to keep out migrants. The bloc that long held itself up as a magnet for people leaving poorer or war-torn countries is now considering tougher tactics as the military of Belarus—a dictatorship and Russia’s closest ally—escorts migrants toward the border of Poland, an EU member state, fomenting tensions in the region. |
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4. Avis, the latest meme stock frenzy, is driving the Dow transports index. Shares of the car-rental company have increased nearly sevenfold this year, helped by a bounceback in travel and popularity with the online day-trading crowd. Its stock is muddling signals from the Dow Jones Transportation Average, which investors track as a gauge of the broader economy. |
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$5 billion — Roughly the amount of Tesla stock that CEO Elon Musk sold this week as he exercised stock options in his compensation package, according to regulatory filings. $383 — The yearly cost of at-home electric-vehicle charging for a typical commuter in Spokane, Wash., compared with $1,282 for gasoline, according to a WSJ analysis. In New York City, which has pricey power, an electric-vehicle driver spends $724 on charging a year. 10 — The dosage in micrograms in a shot of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11. Those 12 and older get 30 micrograms in each dose of the two-shot inoculation. Some parents of 11-year-olds wonder whether their kids should wait to get the bigger dose when they turn 12, but the answer from most pediatric and infectious-disease experts is no. |
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| What Everyone Wants To Know |
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| Kusile Power Station, under construction in South Africa, is slated to be one of the biggest coal-fired plants in the world when it is finished. PHOTO: Daylin Paul for The Wall Street Journal |
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South Africa can’t afford to quit coal. Will rich countries pay for the transition? At the climate summit in Glasgow, the U.K. called on negotiators from nearly every country to “consign coal power to history” as part of a broader ambition to cut global greenhouse-gas emissions to net zero by 2050. The pressure to end coal-powered electricity generation has fired tensions between developed nations, which industrialized thanks to the inexpensive and reliable energy source, and developing ones, which have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into new coal infrastructure. At the nexus of this standoff are countries like South Africa, which gets more than 80% of its electricity and nearly one-fifth of its liquid fuel from coal and says it lacks the money to overhaul its power system while repairing its pandemic-ravaged economy. It is also suffering some of the most extreme effects of climate change. South Africa’s government says it is willing to help achieve climate targets—provided that wealthy countries, along with international development banks, come up with more than $26.6 billion to transform its power system. |
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Homes are selling faster, forcing buyers to take risks. Home sales between July 2020 and June 2021 sat on the market for a median period of only one week before going under contract, according to a survey by the National Association of Realtors. That’s down from three weeks a year earlier and marks a record low in data going back to 1989. The pandemic caused a surge in home-buying demand as many households sought more space to work remotely and took advantage of low mortgage-interest rates. In such a fast-moving market, buyers have little time to commit to one of the biggest purchases of their lives and sometimes forgo traditional safeguards. Many buyers have waived their rights to terminate a contract because of a low appraisal or unfavorable inspection to make their offers more competitive in bidding wars. |
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How Binance became the world’s biggest crypto exchange. The world’s fastest-growing major financial exchange has no head office or formal address, lacks licenses in countries where it operates and has a chief executive who until recently wouldn’t answer questions about his location. Binance processes more trades for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether each day—some $76 billion worth—than its four largest competitors put together, according to data provider CryptoCompare. But the years of largely unfettered, unregulated growth for Binance in particular and the crypto industry broadly are coming to an end. Financial regulators increasingly worry that digital assets have grown so quickly they now are systemically important. Binance is drawing the most regulatory attention. Authorities in a dozen countries have cautioned users that the exchange is unregistered or not authorized to provide various services. Former executives say U.S. authorities are looking into how Binance conducts business in the country and whether it has abetted money laundering. CEO Changpeng Zhao said Binance is taking steps to fall in line with regulators and added, “We run a very legit business.” |
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| Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell in 'The Shrink Next Door.' APPLE TV+ |
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Go watch: “The Shrink Next Door,” Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd’s new series about a psychiatrist who manipulated one of his patients for decades, gaining access to his money, property and ultimately isolating him from his family. The show debuts Friday on Apple TV+. |
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Today's newsletter was curated by Allison Chopin in New York, in collaboration with publishing editor Rich Bellis in New York. We hope you’re enjoying Notes on the News. If you would prefer to receive a different newsletter, please check out all your options to keep up with the latest on markets, economics, politics and more. For members, we recommend The 10-Point. |
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