| Seeking a fix | U.S. President Joe Biden's top economic adviser is pressing Taipei to help resolve a global chip shortage that's idling American car manufacturing plants. Taiwan is home to the largest semiconductor manufacturing industry in the world. National Economic Council director Brian Deese has written to Taiwan's minister of economic affairs to relay the concerns of U.S. auto companies. - Click here for an explainer on why the world is short of computer chips.
Immigration push | Biden's immigration overhaul will be introduced in Congress today, kicking off what will likely be one of his most difficult legislative challenges. After two decades of failed attempts to reform the system, the proposed changes include a path to citizenship for most of the 11 million immigrants living illegally in the U.S., bolstering refugee and asylum processes and the greater use of technology to secure the southern border. - The House Financial Services Committee will grill Wall Street leaders today on the potential risk to capital markets posed by retail trading after shares in companies like GameStop skyrocketed last month before plunging again.
Extreme move | Texas is restricting the flow of natural gas across state lines in a move some are calling a violation of the U.S. constitution's commerce clause. Governor Greg Abbott said he was forced to act as millions of Texans remain without power amid frigid temperatures, with no clear timeline for restoring service. The crumbling of state gas supplies amid the Arctic weather is a factor behind the cascade of outages. - Read how Texans are relying on their wits, and their dogs, for warmth.
 Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon stands on his kitchen counter to warm his feet over his gas stove in Austin. Photographer: Ashley Landis/AP Stricter enforcement | Indonesia is requiring those eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine to take the shots as the government seeks to curb Southeast Asia's largest outbreak. A revised presidential rule could see those who refuse the inoculation cut off from social assistance programs and administrative services or hit with a fine. - Infections in England have fallen "significantly" in recent weeks, a boost to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he weighs how fast to re-open the economy.
- Read more about the first "human challenge study" for Covid-19, which will see healthy young adult volunteers deliberately infected.
Going slow | Tensions between India and China are starting to hurt Taiwan's tech companies, including suppliers to Apple, and hindering New Delhi's incentive program for electronics manufacturing. As Shruti Srivastava and Sudhi Ranjan Sen exclusively report, India has been slow to issue visas to Chinese engineers, who are needed to help Taiwanese companies set up factories in the South Asian nation, and is nudging companies to opt for more difficult-to-obtain employment permits. What to Watch -
The foreign ministers of the U.S., India, Japan and Australia hold a virtual meeting today for the first time since Biden took office. -
EU governments banking on hundreds of billions of euros in pandemic recovery funds can start putting forward their plans from today as the bloc's Recovery and Resilience Facility becomes operational. -
Andres Arauz, the socialist who won the first round of Ecuador's presidential election, had lunch with investors in New York this week to try to persuade them not to panic if he wins the April 11 runoff. And finally ... Some businessmen say Saudi Arabia is a sleeping giant waking up, with a big consumer market, planned mega-projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars and a young, rapidly changing society that's almost unrecognizable from the ultra-conservative place it was five years ago. But the Kingdom's ultimatum for global companies to move their regional hubs to Riyadh by 2024 or lose business is the kind of decision making that has made some wary of investing there, Zainab Fattah and Lin Noueihed report.  Skyscrapers in the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh. Photographer: Maya Anwar/Bloomberg
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