From the US to Europe, there is growing awareness that an over-reliance on China for rare earths presents economic and national security risks. One high-stakes arena that could shape the trajectory of the global climate economy is the rare earth permanent magnet industry.

What are rare earth magnets?

Permanent magnets are so called because they maintain their magnetic properties even when exposed to a magnetic field. Put another way, the magnets have permanent magnetic fields.

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Israel is closer to a ground operation in Gaza. Five days into the latest conflict, more tanks and troops arrived at the border, with heavy shelling and air strikes continuing against Palestinian rocket attacks.

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Every week, shoppers online scramble to get their hands on some new sneaker release, and every week, most invariably fail. But the hunt isn’t over. Those willing to pay a premium for their desired shoes will always find them on resale marketplace StockX.

StockX’s trade in sneakers helped it snag a $3.8 billion valuation in April, and the company is growing fast as sneakers become status symbols. But its ambitions have always been bigger than footwear and StockX is already seeing success elsewhere, like in electronics: Many shoppers unable to get their hands on a PlayStation 5 at retailers have been finding them at a premium on StockX.

Since November in the US, the company says it has sold around 83,000 PS5 standard consoles at an average sale price of $573, and 55,000 PS5 digital versions at an average price of $531. (The PS5 retails at about $499 and $399, respectively.) In the past year, the game console was the top-selling product on the site by both number and value of sales, according to Jesse Einhorn, StockX’s senior economist.

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India’s Covid-19 pandemic is about to get much more complicated.

A crushing second wave of Covid-19, when the country is persistently seeing around 350,000 new infections a day, has led to a massive increase in cases that require strong medication. Now, the long-term effects of such drugs are leading to cases of a rare fungal infection, which can even prove fatal in some instances.

Mucormycosis, colloquially known as black fungus, is an infection from the mucormycetes group of fungi. It is abundantly found in natural environments, especially in soil. Though rare, this infection has been around for decades, but only impacts those with health conditions and significantly weakened immune systems because of the use of steroids.

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South Africa is set to expand its nationwide rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations as the country braces for a potential third wave of the coronavirus pandemic that officials fear could materialize in the coming weeks.

Beginning Monday, South Africans aged 60 and older will be able to receive the vaccine as part of the second phase of a rollout that began in February. To date, roughly 431,000 healthcare workers in the country have received the Covid-19 shot created by the pharma giant Johnson & Johnson, which the country was the world’s first to administer. A broadening of the program for vaccinating healthcare workers sent hundreds of such workers and others to vaccine sites this week in search of shots.

The jabs slated to start Monday will be administered with a dose of urgency. Cases of Covid-19 have increased in South Africa recently after remaining relatively flat since a second wave of the pandemic ended in February. Over the past seven days, the country has recorded a 46% uptick in cases nationwide, though the rise comes off a low base. South Africa now has roughly 23 cases of infection for every 100,000 people, compared with 90 cases per 100,000 in the U.S. and about 200 cases per 100,000 in India.

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If overburdened crematoriums weren’t enough, India now has unidentified bodies washing up the banks of river Ganga, adding to the worry that the country is vastly undercounting its Covid-19 deaths.

Nearly six weeks since the Covid-19 situation in the country became alarming, the number of deaths because of the disease reported from various districts has been inconsistent with data from crematoriums and graveyards. Indian newspapers in regional languages like Gujarati have been doggedly calling out the state government for glaring gaps in death reporting.

Even in large metropolises like Delhi, the deaths officially counted by the government are far fewer than those counted by the civic authorities overseeing crematoriums.

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Low-wage workers in the US are seeing their pay increase en masse, and McDonald’s is the latest employer to boost wages.

As it looks to hire 10,000 new US employees over the next few months, the fast-food chain announced today it is raising the hourly wages for more than 36,500 employees at its company-owned restaurants by an average of 10%. Entry-level workers will earn between $11 to $17 an hour, and shift managers will earn between $15 to $20 an hour, depending on location.

The company says it expects average hourly wages to reach $15 an hour by 2024. McDonald’s owns just about 5% of its 13,900 US restaurants; the rest are operated by franchises who set their own pay and benefits at their stores.

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People who browse the web on personal computers and Apple devices are about to gain a bit of privacy online. That’s because major tech companies are making it harder for advertisers to use two key technologies that allow them to track individuals across the web: third-party browser cookies and Apple’s ID for Advertisers (IDFA).  As a result, advertisers will have much less power to gather mountains of granular data on what individual web users read, view, and buy online.

Tech giants—mainly Apple, Google, and the non-profit Mozilla Corporation that runs the Firefox browser—are making these changes in response to widespread public backlash against tech companies snooping on internet users, as well as a wave of new national privacy regulations inspired by Europe’s landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The new laws don’t explicitly require the tech firms to stop using tools like cookies or IDFA to track people but the companies are voluntarily improving privacy protections in an effort to appease angry consumers and crusading regulators. The industry hopes these attempts at self-regulation will deter lawmakers from imposing even more onerous legal restrictions in the future.

The new restrictions on the tools advertisers use to track people are intended to empower individuals to take control of their own privacy, and make more informed decisions about which companies can access their personal data. But they won’t come to all web users at the same time. It all depends on which device you use to access the internet—and which tech giant controls its operating system.

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Adapted from Better, Simpler Strategy: A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance.

Table of contents

A simple approach to strategyCreating a “value map” for your companyThe ethics of value creation vs. value capture

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Sometimes it seems like bitcoin is worth whatever Tesla founder Elon Musk and star stock picker Cathie Wood say it is. But what happens if they disagree?

A host of crypto assets took a hit yesterday when Musk said the electric car company would stop accepting bitcoin as payment until it is produced using more sustainable sources of energy. “We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining and transactions, and especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk said on Twitter. The mercurial entrepreneur said Tesla, which makes a large chunk of its profit from selling carbon tax credits, wouldn’t sell its bitcoin holdings and would investigate other crypto assets that use less energy.

Bitcoin fell about 8% in early morning trading to $52,147, its lowest price on a closing basis since April 26, according to Coindesk data.

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