Good morning IDB readers!
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of interviewing Jon Kaplowitz, head of Penn National Gaming's Penn Interactive division.
Click here to watch myself and Landon Campbell talk to Jon about the future of digital gaming, the intersection of media and the gambling sector, the intrinsic value of digital brands, and much more. Enjoy!
Your faithful IDB author, Dan Smith | |  Daniel |  |
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 U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces calls to resign after admitting he broke lockdown rules when he hosted a garden party in the early days of the pandemic. Opinion polls show that more than 50% of Britons believe he should resign, and some senior members of Johnson's Conservative Party have suggested that he step down. More: - Scottish Conservative Party leader Douglass Ross said that Johnson's position as Prime Minister is "no longer tenable."
- Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg came to Johnson's defense, calling Ross a "lightweight" and saying that Johnson had the support of more important politicians in the Conservative Party.
- Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak both tweeted in support of Johnson yesterday, and Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab said he expects Johnson to continue as Prime Minister "for many years to come."
- At the time of the May 20, 2020, party, strict lockdown rules barred Britons from meeting more than one person from outside their household at a time.
- Britons are taking to social media to share photographs of what they were doing that day. One person tweeted a photo of police officers breaking up gatherings of people in a park.
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 House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said he would not cooperate with the Congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the chairman of the committee, asked McCarthy to provide information about his communications with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and with former President Trump "before, during and after" the riot. More: - McCarthy issued a statement questioning the legitimacy of the committee and accusing the panel of abusing its power.
- In a letter published by the select committee, Thompson cited evidence that McCarthy had told Trump and Meadows that "objections to the certification of the electoral votes on January 6th [were] 'doomed to fail.'"
- The letter also noted that McCarthy had acknowledged speaking with Trump while the Jan. 6 insurrection was ongoing, citing a statement that McCarthy had made about having a "very heated conversation" with Trump that afternoon.
- To obtain information from McCarthy, the committee could take the unprecedented step of subpoenaing a member of Congress.
- McCarthy is the third acting lawmaker that the select committee has asked to testify voluntarily.
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 With only a few weeks before the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese government is trying to control a surge in COVID-19 cases in half-a-dozen cities. While ~85% of the Chinese population is vaccinated, the Omicron variant's ability to infect vaccinated individuals is undermining efforts to contain the current wave before the Games start on Feb. 4. More: - More than 20 million people in China are locked down, with many unable to leave their homes.
- The city of Tianjin is on high alert. Multiple residential communities and universities have been closed, flights and train services have been canceled, and highways have been sealed off.
- To leave the city, people need to show negative COVID-19 tests and receive special permission.
- In Xi'an, a city of 14 million, the government is conducting mass testing of the entire population.
- Residents are not allowed to leave their homes until they receive a negative test result.
- Athletes, journalists, staff, and Olympics officials are set to operate under strict rules limiting their contact with the outside world during the Games.
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 GOOD NEWS: Researchers who analyzed three years of grocery shopping data found that Seattle's "sugar tax" led to a ~20% drop in total sugar sales in the city. Declining soda purchases powered the steep drop in sugar sales and consumption, validating the rationale behind the soda tax. More: - The data used in the study represented 45% of all food stores sales in Seattle for 2017, 2018, and 2019.
- Similar data from the nearby city of Portland, which did not implement a soda tax, was used to establish a control group.
- Researchers found that the total amount of sugar sold through taxed drinks dropped by 23% in Seattle, compared to Portland, after the tax was implemented in January 2018.
- There was a slight uptick in sugar sales via non-taxed sugary drinks in 2018, but this increase disappeared in 2019. Sales of sugary sweets also increased, but the growth in these two categories did not outweigh the drop in sugar sales via taxed soda drinks.
- "These results suggest that sugar-sweetened beverage taxes may effectively yield permanent reductions in added sugars sold from sugar-sweetened beverages in food stores," the study says.
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 A message from XMATTERS xMatters, an Everbridge Company is excited to announce our Digital Operations Platform. Register now for our launch event where you will hear from tech leaders on how your business can streamline operations, learn from customers who have leveraged the Everbridge solution to speed up their digital transformation, and attend live demos showcasing the power of the new Digital Operations Platform.
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 A corroded oil pipeline near New Orleans burst, spilling more than 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel into the local environment. The spill, which was discovered on Dec. 27, has killed thousands of birds, fish, and other animals, and contaminated soil in the area. More: - More than a year earlier, an inspection found that the 42-year-old Meraux Pipeline was corroded near where the spill took place — the duct had apparently lost 75% of its metal in some parts.
- This would have required immediate repair, but the work was delayed and a second inspection concluded that immediate repairs wouldn't be required under federal law.
- The pipeline's owner said that 315,000 gallons of the fuel, mixed with water, have been recovered by the ongoing cleanup.
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The Nigerian government lifted its ban on Twitter seven months after suspending usage of the social media app. The ban started after Twitter deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari that implicitly threatened regional secessionists with violence. In the tweet, Buhari referenced the 1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War and said that regional secessionists who are "misbehaving" would be dealt with "in the language they will understand." More: - The Nigerian government is reversing the ban after Twitter agreed to its conditions, which include:
- Opening an office in Nigeria, appointing a designated representative for the country, and complying with Nigerian tax obligations, among others.
- Twitter said it was "pleased" to return to the country and "deeply committed to Nigeria."
- Many Nigerian Twitter users continued to tweet using VPNs that allowed them to circumvent the ban.
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- Poland's foreign minister told other members of the 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that the escalating conflict on the Russia-Ukraine border had brought Europe closer to war than at any point in the last 30 years.
- An Australian coastal town reported temperatures of 50.7C (123.26F), the highest temperature ever recorded in the country — matching a record previously established in 1962.
- Real estate firms Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel found that the average rent for a Manhattan apartment was $4,400 in December 2021. The net median rent was $3,392 — the highest recorded level for December.
- A German court has sentenced a former colonel in the Syrian army to life in prison for committing crimes against humanity while overseeing a jail in Damascus more than a decade ago.
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 Cats Paradise by Remedios Varo. 1955
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UPCOMING EVENTS - January 13 - Education within the Metaverse with Steve Grubbs (VictoryXR) (Register Here)
- January 18 - Venturing in VC - Episode #3 with Wiz Abdulla (Space Cadet) (Register Here)
- January 19 - Music in the Metaverse with Jonathan Gray (Clap for Encore) (Register Here)
- January 25 - Need To Know NoCoder - Leon Young (Cogniss) (Register Here)
- January 25 - Venturing in VC - Episode #4 (Register Here)
- January 27 - Understanding the Metaverse (Register Here)
- February 03 - Blockchain Gaming & Play-to-Earn Economies (Register Here)
- February 10 - The Business of Wellness (Register Here)
- February 17 - Customer Acquisition in a post iOS 14 world (Register Here)
- February 23 - Need to Know NoCoder: Derya Sousa (Kianda Technologies) (Register Here)
- February 24 - Alternative Investments (Register Here)
- March 03 - The $12B Appetite for Amazon Aggregators (Register Here)
- March 10 - NoCode's impact on the Gig Economy (Register Here)
- March 23 - Need to Know NoCoder: Nichole Bestman (Bubble) (Register Here)
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 |  | Daniel Smith is an Inside Analyst who currently resides in Miami, Florida. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Daniel spent the last four years as a PhD candidate in Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. He is fascinated by tech, business, politics, venture capital, and everything in between. When he’s not writing for Inside he can be found kicking a ball on the nearest rugby pitch. Follow him on Twitter @DanSmithInside. | | | | Editor | Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is writing an illustrated book about climate change that will be published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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