Italy fell into a technical recession in 2018, with quarter-over-quarter growth declining in both the third and fourth quarters of the year, national statistics bureau ISTAT reported on Thursday.
Of note: The country's GDP fell 0.2% in the fourth quarter, following a 0.1% decline in the third. However, Italian GDP rose 0.1% on an annual basis in Q4 and 0.7% in Q3. (The definition of recession is quite nuanced and hotly debated.)
Vice Media is laying off 10% of its workforce, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Roughly 250 jobs will be cut across all department and job levels.
The backdrop: The writing was on the wall for Vice. Reporting and comments from CEO Nancy Dubac last year suggested the layoffs were coming. Vice has experienced investor and culture drama over the past year, impacting its goal to go public.
The U.S.-China trade talks this week were constructive, though as expected there were no big breakthroughs, sources tell me.
What's next: Soon after the Lunar Year holiday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will lead a delegation to China to continue the discussions. President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are likely to meet later this month when Trump is expected to travel to Asia for the second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Venture capital is about to get its own bucket challenge, in the form of unicorn IPOs.
For years now, growth equity valuations have been decoupled from the public markets. Not just on a longer lag, but totally untethered. Even that listed SaaS slump from a few years back didn't really make a dent on relevant valuations for Series C-Series Z rounds.
The economy added 304,000 jobs in January — significantly more than the 170,000 economists were expecting —while the unemployment rate ticked higher to 4.0% from 3.9%, reflecting the impact of the government shutdown, the Labor Department said on Friday.
PG&E employees say they are worried about what's at stake for pensions, the health of their 401(k)s and other unpaid obligations from the company as it enters the bankruptcy process.
Details: Though PG&E said it will continue to pay employees' wages, health care and other benefits, many employees expressed major concerns that the company will renegotiate worker contracts in an effort to cut costs. The bankruptcy process is expected to be lengthy and complicated.
Today at the Upfront Summit I'll be interviewing actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Not because he recently played Edward Snowden in a film — or Robin, for that matter — but because he's CEO of a startup called HitRecord that today will announce $6.4 million in Series A funding.
Driving the news: The company has actually been around since 2010, but this is its first round of outside funding.
A new study shows the consistent loss of local newspapers and journalists has contributed to political polarization, AP reports .
The big picture: Fewer local newspapers means people have to turn to national news sources like cable news to understand national politics, according to the research published in the Journal of Communication. People are applying those issues to their own city councils or state legislatures, leaving more local topics to the wayside.
Hulu is rolling out "pause" ads, or ads that appear on your screen when you hit the pause button while watching a show.
Why it matters: It's part of a broader effort by Hulu to make advertising for TV content less intrusive and more relevant. The majority of Hulu's subscribers pay for the ad-supported tier, for which Hulu just recently lowered the price.
Jerome Powell finally got the markets on his side. The S&P 500 fell after each of his first seven FOMC meetings as chairman (by far the longest on record), but the market jolted higher on Wednesday.
One big quote: "The big pivot in FOMC communication was not just the introduction of the word ‘patient,’ but also the removal of forward guidance explicitly signaling that the next change [will be a rate increase]," said Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rates strategy at BMO Capital Markets.
The number of people who get sick while they're in the hospital is falling pretty significantly, saving lives and also billions of dollars, according to the latest figures from HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) from 2014 to 2017.
By the numbers: Hospital-acquired conditions fell by about 13% over that three-year period. AHRQ estimates that roughly 86 out of every 1,000 hospitalizations involves a hospital acquired condition, down from 99 out of every 1,000. That reduction helped prevent more than 20,000 deaths and saved roughly $7.7 billion.
Fox News announced Wednesday it signed former Republican congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina as a contributor, adding to the slew of recently retired politicians making their TV debut in 2019.
Why it matters: TV news is giving its viewers some fresh faces ahead of 2020, and as Axios' Mike Allen noted Tuesday, some of the loudest political voices are becoming those who lost in the 2018 midterms.
