Tax Reform
Tax reform in 2013? Forget about it. In a perfectly divided Washington, a mix of politics, policy and personality has made a comprehensive rewrite of the nation’s tax system — a top Republican priority — increasingly elusive in 2013, aides and lawmakers say. (Politico)
Cybersecurity & Privacy
India's cybersecurity brochure proposal criticized by hardware firms. Government proposal for all hardware to include brochure to raise awareness against cyberthreats draws concerns over supply chain logistics. (ZDNet)
Obama signs Netflix-backed amendment to video privacy law. Legislation allows video rental companies to obtain customer consent to share information about their viewing preferences online. (CNET)
California Suggests Mobile App Privacy Guidelines. California's attorney general is urging mobile app developers and their advertising partners to be transparent in how they collect and use personal data from cellphone users. (NYT)
Java allows 'open hunting season' for hackers, experts find. Is Java a serious enough concern for you to disable it altogether? (ZDNet)
Global Trade
Study Shows TPP Would Boost U.S. Income, Divert Trade From China. An analysis issued late last month projects that a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement among current TPP participants would yield $24 billion in income gains for the United States by 2025, and would overall yield $74 billion in gains for the 11 current TPP members. The study also predicts that TPP would cause $21 billion in income losses for China because TPP would give other Asian exporters an advantage over China in accessing the U.S. market. (Inside US Trade)
EU Submits Draft HLWG Report To U.S., Final Release Could Come Soon. Late last month, the European Commission wrote and submitted a draft of the final U.S.-European Union High Level Working Group (HLWG) report to the Obama administration for review, a commission spokeswoman this week confirmed. This EU draft is almost certain to call for the launch of new bilateral trade talks, observers said, placing the onus on the United States to agree to endorse that step in the final version of the forthcoming report. (Inside US Trade)
Workforce
US Chamber pushes for immigration reform to include boost in high-skilled visas. The chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the powerful business lobby wants Congress to make more high-skilled visas available to immigrants as part of its push for comprehensive immigration reform. (The Hill)
Regulation
Brussels takes tough stance on Google. Google will be forced to change the way it presents search results in Europe or face antitrust charges for “diverting traffic” to its own services, the EU’s competition chief has said, laying out a sharply different approach from his US counterparts. (FT)
Tech Business
Infosys raises full-year revenue outlook. Shares in Infosys rose 13.1 per cent on Friday after the Indian IT developer reported a quarterly revenue jump and increased its full-year outlook. (FT)
Android most popular platform for entertainment in India. A recent study points out that every third smartphone user in India is using an Android-based handset to access live entertainment content online. The second-most popular platform is Symbian, followed by Blackberry. (ZDNet)
Alibaba Divides Into 25 Units Amid China Internet Competition. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, China’s largest e-commerce company, said it’s reorganizing into smaller divisions to improve flexibility and to better focus on different markets. (Bloomberg)
Holiday PC sales dip for first time in five years. Holiday-season sales of personal computers fell for the first time in more than five years, according to tech industry tracker IDC, as Microsoft Corp's new Windows 8 operating system failed to excite buyers and many instead opted for tablet devices and smartphones. (Reuters)
GM to open third U.S. tech center, hire 1,000 people. General Motors Co will open a third U.S. information technology center as part of its plan to bring that work in-house and improve the automaker's efficiency and productivity. (Reuters)
Amazon offers free copies of CDs. Free digital copies of 50,000 CDs are being offered to Amazon customers in the US via a service that stores the music in the cloud. (BBC)
Energy & Environment
What VCs are looking for in energy innovation. VantagePoint's Lee Burrows discusses business opportunities for smart grid applications -- and gives advice for startups and entrepreneurs. (Greenbiz.com)
China's carbon intensity falls over 3.5 percent in 2012. China's carbon intensity, or its emissions relative to economic output, fell more than 3.5 percent in 2012, outperforming its average annual target, China's chief climate change official said on Thursday. (Reuters)
New US rare earth centre to be built. The US Department of Energy is giving $120m (£75m) to set up a new research centre charged with developing new methods of rare earths production. (BBC)