| | | | | | | Presented By Meta | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen · Feb 27, 2023 | | Good Monday morning. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,436 words ... 5½ mins. Edited by Noah Bressner. | | | | | | 1 big thing: We're still spending |  Data: Bureau of Economic Analysis via FRED. Chart: Axios Visuals Business leaders see a bouquet of promising new economic signs — although no one knows how long they'll last. - Why it matters: Pervasive recession fears are now leavened by hopes of a stealthy boom. At the very least, the outlook has brightened — a massive relief to West Wing officials planning President Biden's 2024 campaign.
Three reports this morning reflect a sunnier mood among employers: - Economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics still expect a U.S. recession — but now think it'll begin later in the year than they forecast in December.
- Outside tech companies, layoffs "in the economy as a whole remain remarkably, even historically, rare," as employers make greater efforts to keep workers, the N.Y. Times reports (subscription).
- Major U.S. employers, including fast-food chains, are finding it easier to hire and are seeing improvements in employee retention, the Financial Times reports (subscription).
The chart above shows that Americans' spending accelerated in January after a few months of trending down, Axios business editor Kate Marino writes. - Personal consumption expenditures showed the biggest monthly increase (1.1%) since March 2021 — during peak reopening fervor.
 Data: Census Bureau. Chart: Axios Visuals New home sales rose more than expected in January, climbing 7.2% from the month before, Axios' Emily Peck writes. - In the much bigger existing home market, sales fell for the 12th straight month in January, decreasing 0.7% to 4 million from the month before, according to the National Association of Realtors.
🧠 What's happening: High rates are crushing housing sales. But deals for new homes are doing a bit better, thanks to price cuts and the raft of incentives on offer by homebuilders, writes Sam Hall, a property economist at Capital Economics. 🥊 Reality check: Overall, sales are still way below their frothy peaks. |     | | | | | | 2. New evidence of CIA role in Mandela's arrest |  | | | Richard Stengel and Nelson Mandela at Cape Town, South Africa, airport in 1992. Photo courtesy Richard Stengel | | | | New evidence being revealed today by Richard Stengel on TIME.com strengthens claims that the CIA helped South Africa's racist regime capture anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela in 1962, Axios' Russell Contreras writes. - Why it matters: The report adds to evidence that President John F. Kennedy's administration played a role in Mandela's arrest, at a time when U.S. officials were coming to grips with an increasingly intense civil rights movement in America.
Mandela wound up spending 27 years in prison for leading the African National Congress (ANC), which opposed apartheid policies that kept South Africa's Black residents segregated. - He was released in 1990 as apartheid crumbled, and was elected South Africa's first Black president in 1994. He died in 2013 at age 95.
Stengel — the collaborator on Mandela's autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom," and former editor of TIME — discloses a previously unpublished interview he taped with Mandela in 1993. The interview surfaced as Stengel sifted his decades-old interview tapes while preparing a podcast series out now from Audible, "Mandela: The Lost Tapes." - Stengel reveals that Mandela told him that he had heard an American consul with CIA connections had tipped off South African authorities about Mandela's travel habits.
In 2017, the CIA declassified documents — described by Stengel for the first time — that identified Mandela as a "probable communist," and showed the agency was tracking the ANC leader as he traveled outside South Africa. - Stengel says these details add significantly to evidence that the CIA was tracking Mandela — and helped South African authorities arrest him as he traveled from Durban to Johannesburg in 1962.
The CIA declined to comment. | | | | | | | | 3. Another agency backs lab-leak theory |  | | | Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios | | | | Energy Department scientists concluded in a "low confidence" assessment that COVID most likely arose from a lab leak in China, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times report. - Why it matters: The department was previously undecided on a cause. The new report underscores how American intelligence agencies have split over the question, which is key to preventing future pandemics.
State of play: The Energy Department joins the FBI in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese lab. Four agencies and the National Intelligence Council say it was likely the result of natural transmission, and two agencies are undecided, The Journal reports. - Intelligence agencies say they don't see any evidence the virus was created deliberately as a biological weapon, The Times notes.
🐘 The Energy Department news added to Republican anger over the handling of the COVID origins debate — even as many scientists remain convinced the virus most likely emerged naturally, Axios' Tina Reed, Caitlin Owens and Adriel Bettelheim report. - Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who raised the lab leak theory in 2020, tweeted: "Being proven right doesn't matter. What matters is holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable so this doesn't happen again."
- House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tweeted: "So the government caught up to what Real America knew all along."
🔮 What's next: Tomorrow, the House Oversight Committee holds a hearing to examine COVID policy decisions. | | | | | | | | A message from Meta | | The metaverse will give doctors new tools to make decisions faster | | |  | | | | In the ER, every second counts. Doctors will use the metaverse to visualize scans and make decisions faster — to help patients get the specialty care they need in a timely manner. The metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real. Explore more possibilities with the metaverse. | | | | | | 4. 📷 1,000 words: L.A.'s snow day | | Photo: David McNew/Getty Images) This is the Mojave Desert yesterday — Golden Queen Mine on Soledad Mountain in Mojave (Kern County), Calif., after a powerful storm brought snow to unusually low elevations in Southern California. Photo: Mike Blake/Reuters Photographers line up yesterday at Kenneth Hahn Park in L.A.'s Baldwin Hills to capture the snow in the San Gabriel Mountains behind the city. | | | | | | | | 5. It's not you: Headlights are brighter |  | | | Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios | | | | New federal rules are supposed to prevent ever-brighter car headlights from blinding oncoming drivers. But they'll take years or even decades to kick in. - Why it matters: Today's headlights are undeniably brighter than the warm, yellow glow of the halogen bulbs popular during the late 1980s and '90s, Axios' Joann Muller and Nathan Bomey write.
What's happening: Halogens are going away, replaced by LEDs, which last longer but are much whiter and brighter. - For oncoming motorists — or even people looking in their rear-view mirrors — they can be intensely uncomfortable.
🔮 What's next: Smarter, beam-shifting headlights — which can shine more light onto the road without the glare for oncoming cars — are on the way. - These advanced headlights have been in use abroad for years, but became legal in the U.S. just last year.
Share this story. | | | | | | | | 6. 🐦 Keeper tweet |  | | | Via Twitter | | | | From Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, which released ChatGPT. | | | | | | | | 7. 🗞️ Alabama papers say —30— | Images tweeted by Kelly Ann Scott, the Alabama Media Group's editor-in-chief and V.P. of content These Sunday front pages, lined up like tombstones, are the final print editions of three of Alabama's biggest newspapers. All printed for the last time yesterday, in a sad symphony that captures news-industry reality. - The work of their 102 journalists will live on at the AL.com website.
Why it matters: Print editions have been shrinking for years (both in heft and page size), printing plants have closed, and many papers now print only a few days a week. But few metro dailies that survived have gone to zero print. Papers in Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, owned by Gannett, continue to offer print delivery. | | | | | | | | 8. 🎧 New today: VandeHei on "How I Built This" |  | | | Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios | | | | Jim VandeHei tells the Axios origin story — and narrates his own climb from Little Caesars night manager in Oshkosh, Wis., to CEO of two pioneering media companies — to NPR's Guy Raz on the podcast "How I Built This." - Why it matters: Jim and his co-founders created two of the few authentic successes in digital media — first Politico, now Axios.
Raz, described by the N.Y. Times as "one of the most popular podcasters in history," tapes a marathon interview with a company founder, then shares their secret sauce at length — a mini-MBA for would-be entrepreneurs. - Jim — reflecting on the biggest differences between Politico and Axios, which he founded 10 years apart — tells Raz: "We were going to have to create a culture and a company that could rely on something other than the maniacal energy of a few people."
🧱 Jim describes coming to D.C. out of college and hauling bricks while he hunted for a job. He wrote a letter to C-SPAN with a few ideas for spicing up their programming. He got a job interview — but they passed on his vision. The bottom line: Jim, in the style of his weekly life-and-leadership columns in Axios Finish Line, shows every dreamer — at any stage of life — how to do the impossible. | | | | | | | | A message from Meta | | Augmented reality will help firefighters with search and rescue | | |  | | | | One day, firefighters will use the metaverse to navigate burning buildings more quickly. The result: Crucial seconds can be saved when lives are on the line. The metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real. Explore more possibilities with the metaverse. | | | | 📬 Thanks for starting your week with us. Please invite your friends to join. |  | | Are you a fan of this email format? Your essential communications — to staff, clients and other stakeholders — can have the same style. Axios HQ, a powerful platform, will help you do it. | | | |
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