Month: December 2020

Categories
Politics

We’ve Reached ‘Secure Harbor’ – The New York Occasions

We’ve Reached ‘Safe Harbor’ - The New York Times

  • With a flick of the wrist the Supreme Court reduce a Republican attempt to reverse the loss of President Trump in Pennsylvania. In a one-sentence ruling yesterday, the court declined to hear a challenge to the use of postal ballot papers in Pennsylvania without public opposition from the judges.

  • It was a clear rejection of Trump’s attempts to contest the election by a court that includes three judges he appointed and which he had hoped for after the election.

  • The country yesterday hit what electoral officials call the “safe harbor,” which is widely viewed as the date by which all state-level electoral challenges, such as recounts and audits, must be completed. State courts will likely commence a new lawsuit against the election after this period. Whether he openly admits it or not, Trump’s attempt to overturn the election seems nearing the inevitable end.

  • The White House submerged again Stimulus negotiations with Congressional Democrats yesterday with a $ 916 billion proposal that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin shared with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The deal would include one-time cash payments to Americans and aid to state, local, and tribal governments.

  • The proposal also includes a provision that gives employers who have employed workers during the pandemic full immunity. This is an important Republican request, but Democratic leaders have said they are unwilling to cross that line.

  • McConnell announced early yesterday that if the Democrats gave up seeking billions of dollars for state and local governments, he would be dropping his demand for full liability coverage. But democratic leaders were quick to reject the idea.

  • Now that it’s in a lame duck sessionCongress seems unusually busy. The House yesterday passed a military spending bill that includes the removal of Confederate names from American military bases, which President Trump has vetoed.

  • This creates the potential for the first veto suspension of Trump’s presidency. The law was passed with a veto-proof bipartisan majority of 335 to 78 and is now going to the Senate, where overwhelming support is expected.

  • Congress has passed a successful law on military spending for the past 60 years. But the president remains against it. “I hope the Republicans of the House will vote against the very weak National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that I will VETO,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

  • Joe Biden will elect Marcia Fudge to represent herThe Ohio Democrat is slated to serve as secretary for housing and urban development, bringing Tom Vilsack back to his old job as secretary of agriculture, according to people familiar with the president’s transition process.

  • Meanwhile, retired General Lloyd Austin, whom Biden wants to appoint as Secretary of Defense, encounters bipartisan opposition over concerns about choosing another former commander to run the Pentagon. The recent trend has defied the longstanding tradition of civilian control over the military.

  • Austin, who would become the country’s first black Secretary of Defense, would face a waiver from Congress because he left the service less than seven years ago. Congress granted Jim Mattis a waiver four years ago to serve as Trump’s first secretary of defense.

  • Adding to concerns about Austin, however, are its ties to Raytheon, a defense company that makes billions of dollars selling weapons and military equipment to the US and other countries, creates what critics have termed a conflict of interest.

  • Biden officially introduced the core team of health officials This will guide his response to the Wilmington, Delaware pandemic to announce an ambitious plan to “get at least 100 million Covid vaccine shots into the arms of the American people” in his first 100 days as president.

  • The promise poses at least some risk to Biden, as fulfilling the promise does not require any problems in making or distributing the vaccine and the willingness of Americans to be vaccinated.

  • As he spoke, Biden was flanked by members of his team, some of whom joined by video. These included Dr. Anthony Fauci, who will serve as Biden’s premier medical advisor while continuing to serve as the country’s foremost infectious disease expert, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who will be director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  • Both made speeches, as did Xavier Becerra, Biden’s candidate for the Ministry of Health and Human Services, and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith from Yale University Medical School, who will lead a new Covid-19 Equity Task Force. The virus’s impact has been disproportionately focused on color communities, and Nunez-Smith spoke of “centering equity in our response to this pandemic rather than a secondary concern, not a checkbox, but a shared value.”

  • Britain became the first yesterday Land to begin administering the Pfizer BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to civilians, the start of a mass vaccination campaign unlike anything seen in recent times. (And trust the UK was very British indeed: the second person to receive the vaccine was none other than William Shakespeare, 81), a Warwickshire man who had been hospitalized for several weeks after having had a stroke was.)

  • The FDA is expected to approve the vaccine this week, and Trump celebrated the milestone at a “vaccine summit” near the White House. He spoke to a fully occupied, mostly masked crowd of industry representatives and members of his administration and declared the development of the vaccine a “monumental national achievement”.

  • When asked why he hadn’t invited Biden’s transition team to the summit, Trump reiterated his baseless claims that the election had been stolen and said he was still expecting another term.

    • Categories
    World News

    Iran Claims Arrests in Killing of High Nuclear Scientist

    Iran Claims Arrests in Killing of Top Nuclear Scientist

    Iranian authorities have arrested a number of people allegedly involved in the murder of the country’s top nuclear scientist last month near Tehran, a parliamentary adviser told an Iranian state broadcaster on Wednesday.

    The adviser, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, did not say how many people had been arrested in connection with the death of scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and did not reveal their identity, according to Al Alam News Agency.

    “Those involved in this attack, some of whom have been identified and even arrested by security services, cannot escape the judiciary,” said Abdollahian, a former deputy foreign minister who is now an adviser to the President of Parliament. after a transcript of the interview. He added that the authorities would “react firmly to them and make them regret their actions”.

    According to American and Israeli officials, Fakhrizadeh was seen as the driving force behind Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program, and the brazen assassination left Tehran in shock and embarrassment. The scientist was ambushed on a country road, although conflicting reports about the conduct of the assassination exposed tensions between rival factions in the Iranian government as each tried to shift the blame.

    Shortly after the murder, at least three officials said Israel was behind the attack, and since then Israeli officials have all but publicly acknowledged the responsibility.

    It remained unclear how much the United States might have known about the operation in advance, but the two allies have long exchanged information about Iran, particularly its nuclear program.

    Mr Abdollahian said that the Iranian authorities believed the Israelis had help coordinating the assassination of Mr Fakhrizadeh, adding “there is no doubt” that there was also American involvement.

    Categories
    Business

    Consultants Debate How To Put together For the Subsequent Pandemic

    Experts Debate How To Prepare For the Next Pandemic

    The Food and Drug Administration will hold a hearing this week to determine whether to grant emergency authorization to a coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. The vaccine, which the companies claim is 95 percent effective, is one of two that could be ready for injections in the United States before the end of this year. The other, by Moderna, will be considered by the regulator for emergency approval next week. In early trials, the vaccine appeared to prevent the development of Covid-19 in around 94 percent of recipients.

    The news is a welcome development in the otherwise grim saga of the fight against the coronavirus. The United States averages around 200,000 new cases each day, and more than 2,000 deaths.

    An effective and widely available vaccine has long been promoted as the lifeline that will curb infections, save lives and pull a battered economy back from the brink. Yet the impending arrival of one or more vaccines raises questions about equity, education and how battered American institutions should prepare for the next pandemic, while repairing the damage wrought by this one.

    As part of the DealBook D.C. Policy Project, The New York Times gathered a virtual panel of experts in early December to discuss the policy environment in a post-Covid world — or, at least, a post-Covid vaccine world.

    The participants:

    • Ruth Faden, professor of bioethics at Johns Hopkins University

    • James E.K. Hildreth, professor of internal medicine, president and chief executive of Meharry Medical College

    • Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

    • Thomas M. Moriarty, chief policy and external affairs officer and general counsel at CVS Health

    • Gregory A. Poland, professor of medicine and infectious diseases and director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic

    • Monica Schoch-Spana, medical anthropologist and senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

    • Moderated by Carl Zimmer, The Times’s “Matter” columnist

    An effective vaccine will be a huge breakthrough for society and the economy. But will it as effective in practice as in studies?

    Gregory Poland of the Mayo Clinic, who is also editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, explained the extent to which early results of the various vaccine trials have defied even optimistic expectations. He described it as “as nothing short of dizzying,” and added:

    “We were all prepared to see something like 50 to 70 percent efficacy, something like that. And to be in excess of 90 percent, 95 percent, puts it on par with the best vaccines that have ever been developed — and with apparent acceptable short-term safety. I think this is really going to have a profound effect on the field of vaccinology. I hate to overuse the word ‘paradigm-breaking,’ but it is, in many ways, to see something come to fruition within eight months like this.”

    But Mr. Poland also warned of “surprises” when measuring the impact of the first generation vaccines:

    “The efficacy measures we have were at times of relatively low transmission of disease compared to now. It was with masks on with people distanced, none of which will be true in time. So we may see some differences.”

    Who should be first in line for the vaccinations? What’s fair when allocating a limited number of shots?

    Even if vaccine injections are approved for use before the end of the year, the vast majority of people in the United States won’t notice any appreciable difference in their lives for at least three months, said Marc Lipsitch. Cases will continue to rise as winter temperatures force more people indoors, and there won’t yet be enough doses to cover the population.

    That raises some thorny questions.

    Earlier this month, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to vaccinate health care workers and nursing home residents first. It proposed placing essential workers like bus drivers and grocery workers in the next tier of recipients.

    Mr. Lipsitch is among those who supports the alternative recommendation of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to dole out the vaccine based on people’s health conditions rather than their working ones:

    “The only certain way, given what we know about the vaccine now, to get society back to being able to function is to have this be a less-severe disease. And the way you do that is to make the people in whom it’s severe no longer vulnerable.”

    But Mr. Lipsitch also acknowledged that the vaccine might never fully rid the world of Covid-19. “I can’t conceive of its disappearing,” he said. “Viral infections this widespread don’t disappear on their own that I’m aware of, unless they’re out-competed by some new strain.”

    He suggested, however, that Covid-19 might become less severe in the long term. “If everybody essentially in the world who’s not a newborn has either had the virus or had the vaccine,” he said, “there would be some immunity to severity, and some immunity to transmission, and so if I had to make a guess I would say it would become a seasonal disease like the flu.”

    Your neighborhood pharmacy will soon become a major player in vaccine distribution.

    Getting a Covid-19 vaccine to millions of people in every corner of the country is, of course, a huge logistical undertaking. Rather than relying on public health networks, the Trump administration has placed the nation’s two largest for-profit pharmacy chains, CVS and Walgreens, at the center of the nation’s vaccination effort.

    That also puts those chains at the forefront of an effort to educate the public about a new vaccine, and to convince the many skeptics that the rapidly developed shot is safe. Thomas Moriarty of CVS Health shared a little of what that task looks like, noting that about three-quarters of all Americans live within three miles of a CVS, “and we have the ability to extend beyond that through vaccination clinics.”

    The Road to a Coronavirus Vaccine

    Words to Know About Vaccines

    Confused by the all technical terms used to describe how vaccines work and are investigated? Let us help:

      • Adverse event: A health problem that crops up in volunteers in a clinical trial of a vaccine or a drug. An adverse event isn’t always caused by the treatment tested in the trial.
      • Antibody: A protein produced by the immune system that can attach to a pathogen such as the coronavirus and stop it from infecting cells.
      • Approval, licensure and emergency use authorization: Drugs, vaccines and medical devices cannot be sold in the United States without gaining approval from the Food and Drug Administration, also known as licensure. After a company submits the results of  clinical trials to the F.D.A. for consideration, the agency decides whether the product is safe and effective, a process that generally takes many months. If the country is facing an emergency — like a pandemic — a company may apply instead for an emergency use authorization, which can be granted considerably faster.
      • Background rate: How often a health problem, known as an adverse event, arises in the general population. To determine if a vaccine or a drug is safe, researchers compare the rate of adverse events in a trial to the background rate.
      • Efficacy: The benefit that a vaccine provides compared to a placebo, as measured in a clinical trial. To test a coronavirus vaccine, for instance, researchers compare how many people in the vaccinated and placebo groups get Covid-19. Effectiveness, by contrast, is the benefit that a vaccine or a drug provides out in the real world. A vaccine’s effectiveness may turn out to be lower or higher than its efficacy.
      • Phase 1, 2, and 3 trials: Clinical trials typically take place in three stages. Phase 1 trials usually involve a few dozen people and are designed to observe whether a vaccine or drug is safe. Phase 2 trials, involving hundreds of people, allow researchers to try out different doses and gather more measurements about the vaccine’s effects on the immune system. Phase 3 trials, involving thousands or tens of thousands of volunteers, determine the safety and efficacy of the vaccine or drug by waiting to see how many people are protected from the disease it’s designed to fight.
      • Placebo: A substance that has no therapeutic effect, often used in a clinical trial. To see if a vaccine can prevent Covid-19, for example, researchers may inject the vaccine into half of their volunteers, while the other half get a placebo of salt water. They can then compare how many people in each group get infected.
      • Post-market surveillance: The monitoring that takes place after a vaccine or drug has been approved and is regularly prescribed by doctors. This surveillance typically confirms that the treatment is safe. On rare occasions, it detects side effects in certain groups of people that were missed during clinical trials.
      • Preclinical research: Studies that take place before the start of a clinical trial, typically involving experiments where a treatment is tested on cells or in animals.
      • Viral vector vaccines: A type of vaccine that uses a harmless virus to chauffeur immune-system-stimulating ingredients into the human body. Viral vectors are used in several experimental Covid-19 vaccines, including those developed by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. Both of these companies are using a common cold virus called an adenovirus as their vector. The adenovirus carries coronavirus genes.
      • Trial protocol: A series of procedures to be carried out during a clinical trial.

    One of Mr. Moriarity’s biggest concerns is whether people will be willing to take the vaccine. His team surveys up to 7,000 people two to three times a week about what he called the “hesitancy rate,” he explained:

    “What we have seen in the data since getting past the election, and with the efficacy results of these vaccines becoming public, is that the hesitancy rate is starting to drop. There’s still going to be a core element of hesitancy — no question about it — but getting past the politics and seeing the results of the science is helping alleviate some of that hesitancy.”

    The country needs to re-establish trust in institutions, because pandemics are here to stay.

    Much of the conversation about the coronavirus pandemic has focused, understandably, on “getting back to normal.” Yet the inescapable truth is that, in many ways, there is no going back to the world as it was before the coronavirus. In a global economy in which pathogens can spread more quickly than ever before, the question is not if there will be another global pandemic, but when.

    Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist who studies the ways communities respond to disaster, talked about what needed to be done to repair institutions that struggled during this crisis to clearly and effectively communicate with the public:

    “This is about trust, and trust building, and processes of reconciliation. And that takes time. And during that time, we can improve our messaging and involve trusted messengers. But what we’re talking about is re-establishing trust in institutions. We have to build processes for that, and strengthen the ones that are already there.”

    She said that efforts to persuade the public to accept the vaccine will have to include different messages targeted at different communities:

    “There will be certain messages that resonate really well in Baltimore City among local Black communities that may not resonate well with rural frontier Hispanics in southeastern Idaho. So we have to have those very hyperlocal perspectives.”

    When it comes to public health education, the messenger is at least as important as the message.

    Black, Latino and Asian communities have disproportionately borne the brunt of coronavirus cases in the United States. And yet, thanks to a legacy of racism in the American medical system, many in those communities are particularly wary of receiving the vaccine. Black adults, in particular, have expressed higher rates of vaccine hesitancy than others in the United States, a wariness fueled by the historical example of forced injections, forced sterilizations, unethical experimentation and other acts administered in the name of public health.

    Opposition to the vaccine within these communities is of particular concern to James Hildreth, an immunologist who spent decades on H.I.V. and AIDS research as a professor at Johns Hopkins before taking over in 2015 as president of Meharry Medical College, a historically Black medical school in Nashville. He discussed his experience with what works in public health education — and what does not. “We discovered that the messages were fine, but if the messenger is not trusted you’re wasting your time,” he said:

    “So we identified trusted messengers in those communities. We empowered them with the information they needed. They needed to believe it first — and accept it first — and they were the ones that delivered the messages that turned out to be quite effective. So that’s the model we’ve adopted to try to engage and reach minority communities with the vaccine.”

    We have to take care of the virus. Then we have to take care of everything else.

    The vaccine is not the end of the pandemic recovery period, but the beginning. Once the virus is under control, the nation faces disarray: millions of people unemployed, communities shattered by the loss of businesses, a generation with a disrupted education and deepened systemic inequalities.

    “The pandemic did more than just make us physically sick,” said Ruth Faden, a bioethicist. But she explained how this pain could become a catalyst for a better society:

    “I think it’s possible to envision a way in which for some of these horrible gaps in access, and the consequences that are lifelong for people’s prospects for a decent life, there will be an effort to fix them, perhaps with some urgency. I have to hope that something like that will happen as a consequence of what we’ve all gone through — and if not, it will be profoundly depressing.”

    Categories
    Health

    Kids’s hospitals are pitching in to assist with the flood of grownup Covid-19 sufferers.

    Children’s hospitals are pitching in to help with the flood of adult Covid-19 patients.

    With Covid-19 patients on the rise threatening to overwhelm hospitals, U.S. public health officials are reaching for a safety valve the Northeast used in the spring: borrowing beds in children’s hospitals to care for adults.

    U.S. hospital stays hit a record high of 104,600, according to the Covid Tracking Project, and the nation set a record for the most deaths in a seven-day period last week.

    “When the fall came in and the second spike hit, we’re seeing a lot more of it now,” said Amy Knight, president of the Children’s Hospital Association, a national group that represents more than 200 US facilities.

    According to Dr. Peter Jay Hotez, Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology and Microbiology, it is rare in American children’s hospitals to admit adult patients or to relax their admission criteria. The fact that this is happening now speaks to the severity of the crisis at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

    “I don’t even know if this happened during the first half of 2009, so I can’t think of too many modern precedents,” he said.

    Since coronavirus infections appear to largely spare younger children compared to teenagers and adults, children’s hospitals and the children’s wards of general hospitals tended not to be flooded at the beginning of the pandemic.

    “It was more like a trickle of children being hospitalized,” Ms. Knight said.

    Since then, however, the number of children who become infected and need hospital care has risen sharply, and children’s hospitals may have less space and resources available if the need for pediatric beds due to influenza increases anyway.

    “We are much less able to treat pediatric critical diseases across the country,” said Dr. Brian Cummings, who works in the intensive care unit at MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston. “Obviously we are overwhelming the capacity of the adult intensive care unit, and using an even scarcer resource affects all of us who care about children.”

    Even so, children’s hospitals are helping with the rise in the coronavirus in a number of ways. The Association of Children’s Hospitals published guidelines in April for several possible approaches, including admitting pediatric patients from general hospitals to free up space in these facilities and increasing their maximum admission age.

    St. Louis Children’s Hospital, part of BJC HealthCare, opened its doors to adult patients in November, and another St. Louis children’s hospital, Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital, has accepted transfers for adults without Covid-19. Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo said it will temporarily raise the admission limit to admit patients up to 25 years of age.

    During the first major surge in the northeast from April to June, the MassGeneral Hospital for Children admitted adult patients to its 14-bed intensive care unit. “When we saw how hospitals were overwhelmed, everyone wanted to do their part,” said Dr. Cummings.

    The unit returned to normal in the summer, but with Massachusetts cases picking up again, he said, “We’re definitely worried we’ll have patients again in the next week or two.”

    Categories
    Politics

    Biden defends nomination of not too long ago retired Gen. Austin for Protection secretary

    Biden defends nomination of recently retired Gen. Austin for Defense secretary

    WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday defended his decision to appoint retired four-star Army General Lloyd Austin as his Secretary of Defense, a personnel election that could become one of the future president’s most controversial.

    Under the National Security Act of 1947, Congress prohibited anyone from serving as secretary of defense for seven years after active service. But Austin only left the army four years ago, and he would require a special waiver from Congress to circumvent the seven-year rule.

    Biden wrote in The Atlantic, tacitly admitting that Austin’s nomination was against civilian requirements, but argued that the strength of Austin’s qualifications outweighed the potential damage caused by blurring the civil-military divide.

    “I respect and believe in the importance of civilian control of our military and the importance of a strong civil-military working relationship at DoD – as does Austin,” Biden wrote.

    “Austin also knows that the Secretary of Defense has different responsibilities from an officer-general and that the civil-military dynamic has been under great pressure over the past four years,” Biden wrote.

    If this were confirmed by the Senate, the 1975 graduate of West Point would be the first black Pentagon leader to break through one of the more permanent glass ceilings of the US government.

    U.S. Central Command Commander General Lloyd Austin III holds a press conference on Operation Inherent Resolve, the international military effort against the Islamic State Group (IS), on October 17, 2014 at the Pentagon in Washingon, DC.

    Paul J. Richards | AFP | Getty Images

    Austin also has a personal relationship with Biden after gaining the President-elect’s trust and confidence in leading the global coalition against ISIS, which began in 2014, while Biden was Vice President and Austin led US Central Command.

    Biden also emphasized in his Atlantic essay that despite Austin’s recent active service, he understands “that our military is only an instrument of our national security”.

    “To keep America strong and secure, we must use all of our tools,” wrote Biden. “He and I share an obligation to empower our diplomats and development experts to guide our foreign policy, using violence only as a last resort.”

    Still, news of Austin’s likely nomination this week on Capitol Hill was met with skepticism, and several key Senators said they were not sure they would vote to give Austin the waiver necessary to take the position of Secretary of Defense .

    “That’s the exception, not the rule,” Majority Whip John Thune, RS.D., told reporters Tuesday. “I’m not including or excluding it. But I think it’s something we need to consider when the time comes.”

    Montana Democratic Senator Jon Tester also said he was unwilling to give Austin a waiver, even though the retired commanding officer would be “a great secretary”.

    “I think this guy is going to be a great secretary,” Tester told reporters. “I just think we should look at the rules.”

    Congress put aside its concerns about a military officer’s leadership of the Pentagon in 2016 when President Donald Trump addressed retired four-star general of the U.S. Marine Corps, Jim Mattis, who at the time had only been out of uniform for three years .

    Categories
    World News

    Girls are very important to attaining world ‘monetary inclusion’

    Women are vital to achieving global 'financial inclusion'

    Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, during the discussion “Innovation Potential in Africa, in Berlin, Germany.

    Image Alliance | Getty Images

    Women are vital to making sure finance – and financial education – gets to other parts of society, said billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates.

    Governments and corporations serious about giving all members of society access to financial services should focus their resources on women, the Microsoft co-founder said at the Singapore FinTech Festival on Tuesday.

    “It’s absolutely critical,” notes Gates, noting that women are usually responsible for family support finances.

    “The benefits of getting the money under their control mean that it is more likely to be used for nutrition and education and for things that lift this family out of poverty,” he said at this year’s virtual conference.

    Global improvement in inclusivity

    Financial inclusivity, which refers to giving more people access to financial services, remains a key challenge for communities around the world.

    Only 35% of people in low-income countries have access to a bank account. According to the World Economic Forum, this is 58% to 73% in higher to lower middle income countries and 94% in high income countries. These values ​​are lower in women.

    It is important to remember how far we are from universal financial inclusion.

    Bill Gates

    Founder, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    The pandemic has only made this shortage apparent as governments struggled to provide financial aid to those most in need while in lockdown across the country.

    “You know, it’s important to remember how far we are from universal financial inclusion,” said Gates.

    Invest in digital solutions

    Through his nonprofit, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates has worked with governments and central banks for several years to improve financial inclusion in developing countries.

    In particular, this included the introduction of digital solutions, which Gates says can help such countries catch up with or possibly overtake advanced countries with existing legacy systems.

    “We spend a lot of our time with central bankers making sure they see what the pioneers did,” said Gates.

    There is almost an easy way they can connect their citizens.

    Bill Gates

    Founder, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    To that end, the foundation is funding digital identity solutions such as MOSIP in India, an openly accessible software that allows governments to create digital identities for their citizens to help distribute resources. According to Gates, the acceptance of such technologies has so far been high in countries from Nigeria and Ethiopia to Indonesia.

    “We believe that most central banks will say in the next five years that they can do this because most of the building blocks are accessible and it is almost easy to connect their citizens,” he said.

    Gates said his foundation aims to fund two-thirds of the world’s population within a decade.

    Categories
    Entertainment

    Finest Performances of 2020 – The New York Instances

    Best Performances of 2020 - The New York Times

    “Ozark” is the end of a Shakespearean tragedy with the previous acts: Do not be tied to anyone; You probably won’t last. The show is about a nice married duo who climb the ranks of a drug cartel. Dukes is the pregnant feeding investigating her finances. Burke is her couples therapist. Both are divine. Dukes opts for an ingenious skepticism, as if she’d been deposed by Fargo PD. Everyone lies to her and the thrill of her performance comes from the demeanor she maintains amid the obvious insults to her intelligence. She must have a dozen options: “How stupid do you think I am?” Meanwhile, Burke is a bag of Sour Patch Kids – glamorously dirty, full of wisdom and corruption. You make these candies with acid and sugar. They are addicting and when they run out it’s horrible. (Streaming on Netflix.)

    Seyfried’s version of the 1930s movie star and lover Marion Davies in David Fincher’s film about writing Citizen Kane shows what Seyfried does best to reinterpret the best of Davies. The result is a kind of world-weary effervescence. An actress who always had a keen instinct for her graduates, finally from soda to champagne. (Streaming on Netflix from December 4th)

    For a few weeks, the athleticism at this professional wrestling start-up is more exciting than anything that happens in Vince McMahon’s empire. And nobody in WWE has that kid’s combination of diction (Juilliard over Long Island), intensity, or cheesiness. Even when Friedman lost his cool (his nom de ring is MJF), he still has amazing control. The character is part heel, part tool (hair gel, slipper, Burberry bling – sticky, sticky, sticky) and part Goodfella wannabe; His mouth runs more than he does. For reasons only the producers of this show can explain, a long period culminated in October between MJF and veteran Chris Jericho in a version of “Me and My Shadow” with women dancing and live singing. It was less than spectacular, but nothing Friedman did. He wasn’t embarrassed at all. It was slick in a way that should worry Ric Flair. This kid makes you say, “Woo!”

    The show is a bloody zoo with half-finished ideas. But right there, in the middle of the chaos, there was about 30 minutes of continuous construction around Ellis, as a housewife named Hippolyta. Up until that point, she was a little gamer in the midst of all the monsters, magic, and racist history. Suddenly, shit! She screamed through a wormhole into another dimension and then into another – she dances with Josephine Baker, commands a troop of Amazons and does interplanetary fieldwork in costumes that would drive Sun Ra crazy. Ellis has been around for a long time and for those of us who have waited for a part that will turn fear into joy and joy into anger and rage into amazement, the wait was more than worth the wait. More please. (Streaming on HBO Max.)

    Officially, it’s about a chess master (see below), but a few episodes are also about her dreary adoptive mother, who Heller finally plays in a state of subdued surprise. The benefits of the chess chaperone lifestyle are beyond the character’s wildest dreams. But instead of milking that juicy matron part for campiness, Heller relies on the unexpected warmth of motherhood in the 11th hour. (Streaming on Netflix.)

    I don’t know which Kentucky orphanage was so integrated in the 1950s, but I almost didn’t care because Ingram is so good. In fact, it’s so good that I’ve even resigned myself to its triple stereotypical part (pickaninny; black best friend; Morgan Freeman at the end of “The Shawshank Redemption”). Her galactic charisma and physical lightbulb turned a stock roll into a three-course meal.

    It’s proof for Taylor-Joy that Ingram only appears in about two and a half of the seven episodes of this series and I didn’t miss her as much as I imagined. That’s how overwhelming Taylor-Joy is, despite the fact that from some angles she looks like Emma Stone, reinvented by Tim Burton – long face and big eyes, like an insect trapped in the body of a drunk pill popper. I can imagine that this was no easy feat: cunning, stupor and stratagem – how do you deal with all of this? I take it like you just landed here from space with no intention of going home.

    Buttigieg had suspended his presidential campaign less than two weeks ago, and in the first few minutes his decision to stand up for Kimmel came to me as the nadir of ambition before it most. But Buttigieg’s joke delivery came almost from an awkward comedy school (who me? Funny?). Its timing was its own clockwork. He was excellently humble in a sketch in which he was handing out pretzel samples on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And his interview with Patrick Stewart was calm and only slightly scratchy. Here is someone who ran for almost a year for president and yet was the most human (and amusing) about not doing retail politics, just plain retailing.

    Pure magic. Magic that didn’t have to be so magical for a Google Hangout. It took place in the middle of an all-star party (almost all) that was being held for one of the country’s great magicians. The song comes from Sondheim’s underrated “Pacific Overtures” and is in its Top 10. It’s too artful to explain, but Sondheim puts it in the present and the past. The video opens with Harada and Sesma in their respective boxes. Then it goes to Sesma alone and then to Ku – as Sesma’s younger self – looking down like from a tree, and Sesma turns his head to Ku. Then Loh suddenly arrives in a fourth box. He’s on his back first but has shot so his head still matches the face-to-space ratio of the other three. I give you geometry. These four impressed me. Part of the magic is how they’re connected. On stage, it’s time to collapse. Here it is also distance. Technically, I don’t know how she and the technicians did it. But the boy did it to me – as appropriately ambitious and funny recognition of Sondheim’s boldness and as a metaphor for the teamwork that is necessary to achieve something meaningful and permanently decent this year.

    If the great Michaela Coel is the wounded psyche of this HBO series, then Opia is its reality check. She plays Coel’s best friend Terry and is here both verbally and physically. (Her body language alone could fill a dictionary.) But it is the patience in her actions that annoyed me, the compassionate watching of Coel and the looking out for Coel. Opia is Ethel for Lucy, Pam for Gina: another dictionary definition – for “support”. (Streaming on HBO Max.)

    Everyone in this cruelly canceled Hulu remake of the film was fantastic, including Zoë Kravitz. But Lacy is worth singling out, as few actors perform more complex work with sporty secondary bananas. He’s built like a baseball player, but comes with reserves of friendliness that compliment Jenny Slate’s stupidity, Lena Dunham’s self-absorption, or Kravitz’s reluctance. There is no award for this, just my incessant admiration. (Streaming on Hulu.)

    There is no person in this Showtime series who does not exist in the shadow of Ethan Hawke’s tornadic rendition of John Brown. But these two, who play enslaved men involved in Brown’s passionate warfare, create something special: Neither of them will. Johnson is the young eyes and voice of the show and what a smart comedian he is. His face can express a hundred kinds of surprise and fear, doubt and relief all the same. Where did Point-Du Jour come from? His line readings are clear and funny. These two made me laugh the most. Her raised eyebrows always seemed to match mine. (Streaming on Showtime.)

    Apparently, Warwick came to Twitter eight years ago, but this was the year her account became one thing – dry, wise, as elegantly spectral as grumpy, generous. Warwick tweets the way she sings, gentle and martini-dry. A tweet that drew thousands of glances warns Spotifiers that artists can see our playlists. She used the “I see you” eye emoji, where a period would lead. Another specifically asked that no one tell her what “hot girls’ summer” was even though it was “was” at the time. The attraction is that the tweets sound like they are – that smoky timbre, the showbiz diction. They are a snack. I read some of their posts and actually tried to wipe the salt off my hands.

    Categories
    Business

    Uber sells its flying taxi enterprise to Joby Aviation

    Uber sells its flying taxi business to Joby Aviation

    Joby Lufttaxi eVTOL demonstrator. After more than six years of secret development, Joby Aviation is lifting the lid on its innovative eVTOL air taxi program.

    Source: Joby Aviation

    The air taxi business is at least a few years away from launch, but there is already consolidation among startups. Joby Aviation, California, which develops all-electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, is acquiring Uber Elevate, Uber’s aviation division.

    The move will allow Joby to use Uber’s app to offer air taxi rides when the company’s plane finally enters service, which could be as early as 2023. Although the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Uber has agreed to invest $ 75 million in Joby Aviation. Earlier this year, Uber invested $ 50 million in Joby as part of the Series C funding round.

    “We were proud to partner with Uber Elevate last year and we are even more proud to have you on the Joby team today,” said JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby Aviation, in a press release announcing the deal has been.

    For Uber, the deal comes a day after the autonomous driving division known as the Advanced Technologies Group was sold to Aurora, a self-driving autostart company.

    “Aurora will know exactly what to build, what routes there are, what skills the driver needs to learn to cater to the largest segment of the market and essentially the easiest way to build this technology,” said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box”.

    By separating from Advanced Technologies Group and Uber Elevate, the hail giant can save hundreds of millions of dollars that would have been required to develop autonomous hail and urban air taxi services over the next several years.

    For Joby Aviation, the integration of Uber Elevate could help the company achieve its goal of offering short trips in urban areas with vertical takeoff and landing planes. Joby’s aircraft, operated in conjunction with Uber’s Ride-Hail app, could provide customers with a seamless way to use ride-hail services and air taxis in a single trip.

    “These tools and new team members will be invaluable to us as we accelerate our commercial launch plans,” Bevirt said in a company release.

    Of course, Joby Aviation is still a long way from the start. The company has built and is testing an all-electric aircraft that can carry four passengers and a pilot up to 150 miles at a top speed of 200 mph. Joby conducts test flights on a regular basis, but the aircraft has yet to be certified by the FAA. Regardless, Joby hasn’t set prices for an air taxi ride, which will be an indication of whether air taxis are really taking off with the crowds.

    – CNBC’s Meghan Reeder contributed to this article.

    Categories
    Health

    The doubtless crushing toll of rationing well being care

    The potentially crushing toll of rationing health care

    Presbyterian Healthcare Services’ chief medical officer, Dr. Jason Mitchell told CNBC that doctors “do everything we can” to prevent rationing care when the governor of his state signed an executive order that brought New Mexico one step closer to rationed care – the place where the patient is sake Coronavirus to be treated.

    “It’s really important to realize that the goal of introducing a nursing crisis standard is to expand services so we don’t have to ration,” said Mitchell. “Also, we’re going to use places that we don’t normally use, whether it’s tents or clinics, to put up hospital beds. We’re really going to do everything. That’s what we’re going to focus on and try to make everything so that you don’t . ” Come to this point. “

    The Albuquerque doctor added that hospitals will bring in doctors and nurses who normally practice in clinics, as well as rotating doctors who normally do not work in intensive care units. The intensive care units in New Mexico reached 103% capacity, the highest in the country. 935 people are being hospitalized with Covid in New Mexico, with hospital admissions more than doubling in the last month, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

    Mitchell said a group of doctors, nurses, ethicists, and academics are working on an equitable route to potential ration supplies to ensure that health care providers can provide as many resources as possible to as many people as possible.

    “The other important thing is that we all do this together. So every health organization uses the same criteria, the same mechanisms to ensure that equity, to ensure that patients are distributed across the state and that we are providing as much care and savings as that many lives as possible, “Mitchell said in an interview on Tuesday night about” The News with Shepard Smith “.

    The United States has exceeded more than 15 million confirmed coronavirus cases. In context, that means roughly one in 22 Americans has tested positive since the pandemic began. This is evident from a CNBC analysis of the Johns Hopkins data. Mitchell told Shepard Smith that while health care professionals are already exhausted, the toll that “not having what you need for every patient” may be oppressive.

    Dr. Bruce Becker, associate professor of behavioral medicine and social sciences in the School of Public Health at Brown University, echoed Mitchell’s concerns about the policy of rationing care.

    “The individual frontline health worker must execute the policy on a personal level and look a patient or family member in the eye and tell them that they do not meet certain policy criteria,” Becker said. “This shatters a person’s soul, it shatters their heart, piece by piece, and day by day, as they take on the brunt of the pain and suffering of the patient or family that has been condemned by politics not to do so . ” Receive everything that exists. ”

    Categories
    Politics

    Biden’s Alternative for Pentagon Faces Questions on Ties to Contractors

    Biden’s Choice for Pentagon Faces Questions on Ties to Contractors

    WASHINGTON – Three weeks ago a naval ship launched a military contractor’s experimental missile off Hawaii to intercept and destroy a decoy pretending to be an incoming nuclear weapon for the first time in space.

    The same company, Raytheon Technologies, that accomplished the feat was selected for another contract this year in a program that could cost up to $ 20 billion to build a new generation of nuclear-armed cruise missiles for the United States .

    And Raytheon, whose 195,000 employees make warplanes, weapons, high-tech sensors, and dozens of other military products, has sold billions of dollars in weapons and radar systems to allies in the Middle East in recent years, some of which have been used to help To wage war in Yemen.

    Now, Raytheon could soon have another differentiator: one board member, retired Army General Lloyd J. Austin III, has been named the next Secretary of Defense by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

    Raytheon isn’t General Austin’s only connection with military contractors. He was also a partner in an investment firm that bought small defense firms. And his move from the arms business to a leadership role in the Pentagon continues a pattern that President Trump has begun in recent years.

    Mr Trump elected James N. Mattis, also a retired four-star general, who then served on the board of General Dynamics, another major military entrepreneur, as its first secretary of defense. Mark T. Esper, a former Raytheon chief lobbyist, succeeded Mr. Mattis.

    This is a departure from the norm. Defense ministers who had served prior to Mr Trump’s tenure – at least three decades until President George Bush’s tenure – did not come directly from boards or executive suites of contractors, although some, like Ashton Carter, President Barack Obama’s last Secretary of Defense, did served as an industry advisor.

    Mr. Biden’s decision to appoint General Austin has raised a new wave of questions about the corporate relationships of people Mr. Biden selects to serve in his administration.

    These links are especially relevant when it comes to the Pentagon, which spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year on weapons and other supplies. During Mr. Trump’s tenure, the military budget increased by about 15 percent, reaching $ 705 billion in the last fiscal year. This is one of the highest values ​​in constant US dollars since World War II.

    “It is important for the defense minister to bring independence of thought into this role, and it is deeply worrying when a candidate comes straight from one of the major military contractors,” said Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the arms control association, who pointed out urges reducing nuclear weapons and military spending.

    He added, “I would note that Raytheon has a tremendous financial stake in upcoming decisions by the Biden administration, Congress and the Secretary of Defense.”

    At Raytheon, officials are said to be excited about the prospect of a board member becoming secretary of defense, according to a person who works with the company. However, that person and another person working with Raytheon warned that the appointment could result in an undesirable audit of the company.

    Even members of Mr. Biden’s own party had urged Mr. Biden to refrain from nominating anyone for the job of Secretary of Defense who came directly from the military business world.

    “US national security should not be defined by the bottom line of Boeing, General Dynamics and Raytheon,” Democrat Representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin said in a statement last month.

    As Secretary of Defense, General Austin would have to sell any stock he holds in Raytheon or other defense companies, or companies that do business in the industry, and would most likely be prohibited from directing contract decisions or other “special matter” directly affecting companies with whom he has had financial relationships for the past two years if Mr. Biden follows the ethical guidelines first adopted by Mr. Obama.

    General Austin joined Raytheon Technologies in April as part of a merger between Raytheon Company, known as a manufacturer of Patriot and Tomahawk missiles, and United Technologies, a manufacturer of commercial and military jet engines and avionics. General Austin joined the board in June In 2016 after leaving the military.

    According to Raytheon records, General Austin owned more than $ 500,000 in Raytheon stock as of October. As a member of the United Technologies board of directors, General Austin received a total of $ 1.4 million in stock and other compensation over a four year period.

    Raytheon is now one of the largest military contractors in the world. Raytheon boasts in an earnings report to Wall Street that it has a record federal government order book totaling $ 73 billion.

    His aggressive drive over the past five years to sell billions of dollars in precision-guided bombs and bomb parts to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which weaponized civilians in a catastrophic war in Yemen, sparked an outcry from human rights groups and some members of Congress who repeatedly tried to block sales.

    But Raytheon, who pays an army of well-connected lobbyists, overcame the opposition and sold the weapons – thanks in part to his close relationship with the Trump administration.

    General Austin was also a partner in an investment firm called Pine Island Capital, which he joined on the board of directors in July. The company was recently on a buying spree from small military contractors including Precinmac Precision Machining, which sells specialty parts for missile launch systems and machine guns.

    By the time General Austin joined Pine Island, Pine Island said he was “already fully committed, working with us on new investments and bringing his experience and judgment to our portfolio companies,” including InVeris Training Solutions, the virtual gun firing training service offers.

    General Austin, Anthony J. Blinken, the election of Mr. Biden as Secretary of State, and Michèle A. Flournoy, who had been Mr. Biden’s other nominee for Secretary of Defense, were made clear because of their connections with the Pine Island team competed in the past few months prior to the sale of $ 218 million worth of stock in preparation for buying other defense industry targets.

    Pine Island has a partnership with WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm founded in part by Mr. Blinken and Ms. Flournoy. Another Raytheon board member, former Pentagon official Robert O. Work, was also involved with WestExec and advised Mr Biden’s transition to national security planning.

    While WestExec advised at least one defense contractor, a WestExec spokeswoman did not respond to questions about whether Raytheon was a customer, stating that the company has nondisclosure agreements with many customers and “does not comment on potential customers.”

    When asked about General Austin’s relationships with defense companies, Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s transition, said, “Every cabinet member will comply with all disclosure requirements and strict ethical rules, including withdrawals as appropriate.”

    He added that General Austin and Mr. Blinken, if confirmed, would sell all of Pine Island’s shares.

    It’s not clear how much equity they have in Pine Island.

    Mandy Smithberger, a director of the Project on Government Oversight, which tracks federal contract decisions, said the problem with hiring former industry executives as senior Pentagon officials is broader because they often bring with them an industry-friendly mindset.

    As a result, Mr Biden’s administration may find it more difficult to make the tough decisions that will be necessary as the United States faces large budget deficits and growing demands for public health programs to increase to better prepare for the next global world to be pandemic.

    “The defense industry is already way too close to the Pentagon, and if the Biden administration is to reform the department the way we know, that must change,” Ms. Smithberger said. “What is in the best interests of our national security may not be the same as what is in the best interests of the defense industry.”