Month: January 2021

Categories
Business

San Francisco’s Prime Artwork Faculty Says Future Hinges on a Diego Rivera Mural

San Francisco’s Top Art School Says Future Hinges on a Diego Rivera Mural

The San Francisco Art Institute was on the verge of losing its campus and art collection to a public sale last fall when the University of California’s Board of Regents bought its $ 19.7 million debt from a private bank, to save the 150-year old institution from collapse.

The deal provides a lifeline, but the future of a beloved work of art – a $ 50 million mural by Diego Rivera that official figures could help balance the budget – is still in the air, and faculty and alumni are outraged.

The work from 1931 entitled “Making a Fresco Showing the Building of a City” is a fresco within a fresco. The tableau shows the creation of a city and a mural – with architects, engineers, craftsmen, sculptors and painters who work hard. Rivera himself can be seen from behind, holding a palette and a paintbrush with his assistants. It is one of three frescoes by the Mexican muralist in San Francisco that had a tremendous impact on other artists in the city.

Years of costly expansions and declining enrollments at the institute put it at risk, a situation that worsened during the pandemic.

The school has stressed that no final decision has been made to sell the mural. Behind the scenes, however, the institute’s administrators and directors are strongly pushing for it as it would pay off the debt and allow them to make ends meet on an annual operating budget of around $ 19 million.

In a December 23 email to employees in the New York Times, Jennifer Rissler, vice president and dean of academic affairs, admitted that a number of people had raised concerns about the possible sale of the mural. She added that “As part of its fiduciary duty, the board has voted to review all options to save the SFAI and continue to explore avenues and offers to furnish or sell the mural.”

At a board meeting on December 17, SFAI chair Pam Rorke Levy stated that filmmaker George Lucas was interested in buying the mural for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Details of this discussion were provided by a participant who asked for anonymity as the participant was not authorized to discuss internal matters.

Speaking to faculty members on Dec. 17, Ms. Levy outlined another plan that would see the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art take possession of the mural but leave it on campus as an adjoining room, said Dewey Crumpler, associate professor at the school .

A spokeswoman for the institute, Sara Fitzmaurice, the founder of the PR firm Fitz & Co., declined to discuss ongoing negotiations about the possible sale. “A number of discussions were held with several institutions about the possibility of renting or purchasing the mural in order to secure the future of the school,” she said in a statement.

In an interview last March, Ms. Levy said she would be receptive to selling the painting. “When you have an asset that is this valuable, there is always a discussion,” she said. “As a small college in an expensive city, we feel the pain.”

Faculty and staff have repeatedly raised objections. The final counter-argument came in a December 30 letter to the school community from a union representing their additional teachers, nearly 70 of whom were fired during the pandemic but who previously made up the majority of the faculty.

“The Diego Rivera mural is not a commodity whose identity and value is solely based on market valuation,” the letter said, “while selling it would resolve immediate financial bottlenecks,” it would represent a limited lifeline and would not appeal to samples Misconduct and mismanagement by the board and senior executives of the SFAI. “

In a statement, the institute described the allegations of bad leadership as “gross misrepresentation” and said that almost all board members joined the school after the debt arose.

The Rivera mural is intertwined with the legacy of the SFAI, which claims to be the oldest art school west of the Mississippi and has former students such as Annie Leibovitz, Catherine Opie and Kehinde Wiley. Selling the mural, having become such an important part of the institute’s identity over the past 90 years, may alienate the students, alumni, and faculties who value it.

“It’s insulting and heartbreaking,” said Kate Laster, an alumna of the institute who produced student exhibits in a gallery featuring the mural before graduating in 2019. “Selling the mural is an impractical option given the school’s duty to protect its own historical heritage.”

Aaron Peskin, an elected official in the district where the institute is located, also opposes the sale. “The idea of ​​anyone, let alone the University of California, selling this is heresy,” he recently told Mission Local’s news site, which first covered the deal with the regents on December 30th. “It would be a crime against the arts and the city’s heritage. Educational institutions should teach art, not sell it.”

The money for the institute comes from a 2016 loan that was used to finance the construction of the new campus in Fort Mason. Collateral for the loan included the school’s older campus on Chestnut Street and 19 works of art. Last year, the financial burden led school principals to consider permanent closure. It remained open in limited capacity after receiving $ 4 million in donations.

But it wasn’t enough. In July, Boston Private Bank & Trust Co. notified the institution that it had violated the loan terms by failing to repay a $ 3 million annual credit line required to extend the loan. The bank issued a public sale notice in October listing the collateral, including the Rivera mural and frescoes, including those by Victor Arnautoff, whose paintings are threatened with destruction elsewhere in San Francisco.

The Board of Regents blocked the sale by buying the institute’s debt earlier that month. With the new agreement, the public university system acquired the institute’s charter and became its landlord. The SFAI administrators have six years to buy back the property. Otherwise, the University of California would take possession of the campus.

And if the institute lost its home, school administrators would have to make more difficult decisions about the future of the mural. “If the SFAI gets out of the Chestnut Street campus for good, we may have to move the Diego Rivera mural,” said Ms. Fitzmaurice. “We were informed that such a potential move could be a multi-year process, so we started to investigate what is possible in this case.”

Categories
Entertainment

Evaluate: This ‘Nutcracker’ Is a Fantasy You Can Enter

Review: This ‘Nutcracker’ Is a Fantasy You Can Enter

You may have seen the “Nutcracker” countless times. It might be a holiday tradition to see it every year. But have you ever been inside

This weekend, I was standing in front of a house I had never been to before, but familiar music made it seem like a place I’d known for a long time. Then the door opened and I went straight to the ballet.

This dreamy experience – and how it’s sustained – is the great performance of The Nutcracker at Wethersfield, which BalletCollective is running through December 23rd at the Wethersfield Estate in Amenia, NY. (The production is also streamed for free on his website December 23-26.)

Wethersfield is a find. A red brick Georgian house with antique drawing rooms surrounded by formal gardens and complemented with a big top. It’s a near-perfect “nutcracker” set. Or more than a set: the place you always imagined, a fantasy that you can enter.

This particular achievement is linked to a more fundamental one. Most, if not all, of the living “Nutcrackers” in the area have been canceled, including the one most important to the cast of this production. Its artistic director and choreographer Troy Schumacher and almost all of his 23 dancers are members of the New York City Ballet, whose benchmark Balanchine production they will not perform this year. (A 2019 recording will be broadcast on Marquee TV through January 3rd.)

However, during the pandemic, a haunted “nutcracker” is possible on a remote property. During this carefully designed operation, masked guests group themselves in seven to eight socially distant pods, self-selected groups of two to six people. I say “guests” because you can’t exactly buy tickets. Pandemic restrictions don’t allow that. Instead, underwriters who contribute at least $ 5,000 are invited to bring a group. Forty percent of the slots are offered for free to local nonprofits and key workers – and some critics like me, so we can tell the story.

A more intimate “nutcracker,” this is a pared-down one in some ways. For the opening party scene, it’s just the core family – mom and dad, Fritz and Marie (played by adults) – plus an avuncular Drosselmeyer with a gift for magic and three pods from audience members huddling in the corners. However, it is remarkable how much is preserved: the cozy atmosphere, two dance toys, four giant mice.

The Tchaikovsky music is played, but some guests experience an interlude in an ornate room in which violinist Lauren Cauley plays a piece by the composer “Sleeping Beauty” (in a new electroacoustic arrangement by Darian Donovan Thomas). It’s a nice addition to the party and also part of the not-entirely-flawless pace and spacing – it occupies the first few guests while later arrivals see a repeat of the opening section. In places where the process comes to a standstill, you can observe and admire the still impressive mechanism.

If you peer through the windows from the outside, you will witness bedtime and the arrival of the mice. Each target group sees a different point of view. In my case, all of the actors – Drosselmeyer, the father, a mouse – couldn’t resist playing around with a chess board as if they had all seen “The Queen’s Gambit”.

Most of the fresh specialties are like this: small, sweet. The human-sized nutcracker crosses swords with the mouse king in a courtyard and scares him instead of killing him and without the help of Marie. But then we follow the nutcracker in amazement.

At the edge of an oval pool, in the distance we watch a wonderfully framed “waltz of snowflakes”, whose dancers give their best on a grassy slope. We follow topiary paths strewn with fairy lights into the tent, where a table is set for each capsule, on which are fake and untouchable delicacies.

In the middle there is a stage, which means that you can dance properly. most of the usual diversions from Act II – minus “coffee” and “tea” and their ethnically stereotypical pitfalls. Mr. Schumacher’s choreography is appropriate and skilfully meets the challenge of an in-the-round staging with occasional bliss, but without any real magic.

The dancing was good too, up to the standards of the city ballet but not the heights of the city ballet. As can happen in the Balanchine production, the Sugarplum Fairy (Ashley Laracey, who takes turns with Sara Mearns) was outshone by Dewa, Mira Nadon, who shone with amplitude and ballerina authority amid eight waltz flowers.

But while part of the goal of this production is to get members of a great company dancing again, it’s not really about great choreography or great dancing. It’s also not really about the whole Nutcracker story, some of which is left behind in favor of the trip. After we leave the house, we never see Marie and her family again. It’s like we’ve become them.

This transformation is the real magic of this solution to a pandemic problem. What I found most moving was the pantomime with which the dancers and some ushers led us through the ballet. This was danced with kind permission, a warm welcome and, like the setting, it took me right into the heart of a ballet that luckily I hadn’t missed.

The Nutcracker in Wethersfield

Until December 23 at Wethersfield Estate, Amenia, NY; and streaming 23.-26. December, nutcrackeratwethersfield.com.

Categories
Business

New York Gov. Cuomo briefs the press on Covid pandemic

New York Gov. Cuomo briefs the press on Covid pandemic

[The stream is slated to start at 11:30 a.m. ET. Please refresh the page if you do not see a player above at that time.]

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo holds a press conference Tuesday on the coronavirus after it was announced that the state has identified its first Covid-19 case caused by a new, more contagious variant of the virus.

On Monday, Cuomo told reporters on a conference call that New York had confirmed its first Covid-19 case with the new strain B.1.1.7, originally discovered in the United Kingdom. The man, who is now recovering, lives in New York state with no travel history, the governor said.

The strain, which has also been found in California, Florida, and Colorado, is believed to be communicable but doesn’t appear to make people sicker or increase the risk of death from Covid-19, experts have said.

“If other states could test as much as we tested and tested on the British strain as much as we tested, they would find them,” Cuomo said.

During a press conference earlier Monday, the Democratic governor urged state hospitals to speed up their allocations of coronavirus vaccines and threatened fines of up to $ 10,000 if they fail to use the doses by the end of this week.

Read CNBC’s live updates for the latest news on the Covid-19 outbreak.

Categories
Health

A New Software in Treating Psychological Sickness: Constructing Design

A New Tool in Treating Mental Illness: Building Design

Residents of the Pigeon Pavilion in Mountain View, California wake up in private rooms with views of the forested Santa Cruz Mountains, have breakfast in airy communal spaces, and relax in landscaped courtyards throughout the day.

It may sound like a resort, but the Pigeon Pavilion is a $ 98 million mental health facility that opened in June as part of El Camino Hospital. The 56,000-square-foot building was designed by WRNS Studio and is part of a new wave of facilities that dwarfs outdated institutional models.

Mental hospitals have been a grim environment for decades, with patients being pushed into common rooms during the day and dormitories at night. However, new research into the health effects of our surroundings is driving the development of facilities that feel more homely, with inviting entrances, smaller units in larger buildings, and a variety of meeting rooms. Nature plays a major role: windows offer a view of the greenery, landscapes adorn walls and outdoor areas offer patients and staff access to fresh air and sunlight.

The new approach promoted as healing and therapeutic has resulted in environments that are more calming and supportive. And it feels especially timely, given the rise in mental health problems caused by the pandemic.

“We’ve been talking about it for a long time,” said Mardelle McCuskey Shepley, chair of the design and environmental analysis department at Cornell’s College of Human Ecology. “Only now is it gaining momentum.”

Even before the pandemic, the number of Americans affected by mental illness was at a new high. One in five adults had depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress, or another illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. The rates were significantly higher in adolescents (approx. 50 percent) and young adults (approx. 30 percent).

Almost a year after the pandemic started, more people are suffering. Young adults and blacks and Latinos of all ages report increased levels of anxiety, depression and substance abuse, according to a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A recent Gallup poll found Americans felt their mental health was “worse than it has ever been in the past two decades.”

The demand for treatments has increased, and the construction of mental health facilities has surpassed the construction of other specialty hospitals. Last year, 40 percent of specialty hospitals under construction were psychiatric hospitals and behavioral health centers, according to the American Society for Health Care Engineering.

Architecture and interior design firms with expertise in healthcare buildings have reported an increase in activity. Architecture + design firm in Troy, NY typically has a major mental health facility or two in the pipeline. The total construction cost for these projects is approximately $ 250 million per year, said Francis Murdock Pitts, principal and founding partner. Over the past year, the company worked on 16 major mental health projects totaling approximately $ 1.9 billion.

His company and others who like it have medical planners on staff to help translate research into “evidence-based” designs. “This is not all about being warm and hazy,” said Pitts.

For example, exposure to nature has been shown to lower cortisol levels, a measure of stress. Adding medicinal gardens and other greenery can help calm agitated patients and give staff a place to decompress.

Research specifically related to mental health care also comes into play. Studies have shown that reducing the crowd by providing private rooms and multiple common areas can reduce stress and aggression from patients and staff. Noise reduction – for example, the unnecessary beeping of medical equipment – can also help. When patients are less stressed, they can make faster, more sustained progress during treatment, experts say.

Economy & Economy

Updated

Jan. 5, 2021, 11:06 p.m. ET

However, because mental health issues vary widely, there is no one-size-fits-all design solution. And safety – for both patients and staff – continues to come first.

Codes and guidelines refined over many years have sought to remove spatial features that patients have used to harm themselves and others. Window glazing is made from polycarbonate compounds to reduce breakage. The doors are hung on quick release hinges so that staff can enter a room if a patient is barricaded. Plumbing and other fixtures are designed to prevent the possibility of hanging or strangling.

Such security measures are vital, but “You don’t want them to get to where they look like a prison,” said Shary Adams, principal at HGA, a national design firm. While the built environment must be designed to ensure safety, there is also a measure to give patients some control over their surroundings. With manual thermostats, for example, patients can set the temperature in their rooms, and with dimmer switches they can modulate the light.

The location of the psychiatric facilities is also changing. Psychiatric facilities used to be hidden, now they are likely part of hospital grounds or otherwise conveniently located. They often combine inpatient rooms for those in need of 24/7 surveillance and areas for outpatient services so patients can move to less intensive care in the same building.

A state-of-the-art center for young people in Monterey, California illustrates the new approach. Montage Health, a non-profit provider, laid the foundation stone for the 55,600 square meter building in November.

Called Ohana, a Hawaiian word for an expanded family concept, the facility will provide young patients with psychiatric treatment, sometimes involving their parents and siblings. Early care is crucial with half of all lifelong mental illnesses showing up by age 15 and 75 percent by age 24, said Dr. Susan Swick, Ohana Senior Medical Officer.

She asked NBBJ architects to come up with a design that contained the wonder of a children’s museum or public library – “a place you walk makes you feel like you have the opportunity”.

The building will wrap itself around beautiful old oak trees on the hillside overlooking a green valley. It will house inpatient rooms, an outpatient treatment wing, several classrooms and a large number of rooms for group and individual therapies.

The grounds offer areas for yoga and informal gatherings. The paths are lined with cedar and pine, rosemary and lavender – plants whose scents activate “natural killer cells” that can boost immunity, said Richard Dallam, managing partner at NBBJ and head of health practice for the company.

“It’s not just pretty; it’s functional, ”he added.

With its swoops and turns, Ohana looks like a complicated building to construct, but it is constructed from cross-laminated timber in modules that can be assembled off-site, reducing costs and speeding up construction. Its price tag: $ 50 million, which is covered by a $ 106 million donation that also provides funding for clinical services.

Still, not every hospital system has an angel investor, and buildings with these new designs are more expensive to build – private rooms alone add to the cost.

Proponents say, however, that upfront spending can lead to savings later and improve employee retention, for example because employees are less prone to burnout and need to be replaced with new employees who need training.

“We try to use evidence-based design to help clients connect to other things on their balance sheet,” said Angela Mazzi, director at GBBN and president of the American College of Healthcare Architects, a certification organization. “If you invest in some of these things that aren’t directly part of the clinical field, you get different results and a different kind of payback.”

Categories
Politics

What We Know About Voting in Georgia So Far

What We Know About Voting in Georgia So Far

[Follow our Live Georgia Senate Election updates.]

The runoff elections in Georgia on Tuesday are high-level competitions that will determine which party controls the Senate and set the agenda for the new administration in Washington.

Two Republican incumbents, Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, are fighting for their seats. If their Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock both win, the Democrats will recapture the Senate majority.

Control of the Senate will effectively set the parameters of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first two years in office. A Republican-led Senate would make it difficult for him to fill his cabinet, pass laws, and advance his political priorities.

Here’s what we know about the two runoff elections ahead of Election Day.

According to the University of Florida US election project, three million people have already voted in the runoff, almost 40 percent of all registered voters in the state. This total exceeds the 2.1 million ballot papers that were cast in the last runoff elections to the Senate in 2008.

The early voting dates suggest the races are very competitive. There is some evidence that the Democrats had a greater percentage of early voters than they did in the general election, raising hopes for a party that has traditionally been the underdog in runoff elections. The Atlanta area, home to the Democrats’ political base, had some of the highest voter turnout rates in the state’s early polls.

The outcome now depends on whether Republicans can overcome early Democratic gains when they vote on Tuesday. Vote rates were lowest in the conservative northwest corner of the state, worrying some Republicans. Others, however, argue that their supporters tend to vote in greater numbers on election day and hope that President Trump’s rally on Monday in Dalton, a northwestern city, will bring more Republicans to the polls.

The Democrats’ early electoral advantage helped them beat Mr Trump in the November election when Mr Biden won nearly 400,000 more postal votes in the state.

For those planning to vote in person on Tuesday, polling day, polling stations open at 7 a.m. east coast time and close at 7 p.m. Anyone waiting in line at 7pm can stay in line to vote.

Postal ballot papers must be received by 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, by post or in a Dropbox to be counted. (The Democrats warned voters Monday not to post ballot papers at this point, but to put them in drop boxes.) Military and foreign ballot papers must be postmarked by Tuesday.

Strategists from both parties are unsure of what to expect after a close race. Demographic change has changed politics in Georgia and turned the traditionally conservative southern state into a hotly contested battlefield.

In November, Mr Perdue received 49.7 percent of the vote, just below the majority he would have needed to avoid a runoff, while his challenger, Mr Ossoff, had 47.9 percent – a difference of about 88,000 votes. The field was overcrowded in the other Senate competition: Mr. Warnock finished with 32.9 percent of the vote and Ms. Loeffler with 25.9 percent.

Modeling the electorate for these rematches is not easy: a runoff election in Georgia never determined the balance of power in the Senate – or was caught in the middle of a pandemic.

Both parties expect a significantly higher turnout than in the 2008 Senate runoff, although few analysts expect numbers close to the five million Georgia voters who will vote in the November general election.

At this point in the race, voter turnout is 23 percent lower than it was in the November election, according to Ryan Anderson, a data analyst in Atlanta. About 1.2 million people who voted at the beginning of the general election have not yet voted in the runoff elections.

The Georgia State Election Board extended some emergency provisions from the November election, such as the retention of dropboxes for postal ballot papers. Some of the rules have been adjusted to encourage faster counting, allowing winners to sit earlier. The new congress was sworn in on Sunday.

Districts were required to start scanning and processing ballots at least a week before the election, but cannot start counting or tabulating until the polls are completed on Tuesday. These new rules can lead to faster results, although in a close race, most Georgians (and everyone else) might go to sleep before the news outlets have enough results to declare a winner.

In November, it was a week and a half after Election Day before it became clear that Mr Biden had won the state.

Republicans are expected to take the lead early on election night, both because the more conservative areas of the state tend to report results faster, and because in-person votes that favored Republicans during the pandemic tend to be released earlier will. Highly democratic counties, including the Atlanta suburbs that helped Mr Biden win, historically take longer to count votes.

And yes, there could be another counting round. Under Georgian law, the losing candidate can request a recount, in which the election officials would scan the ballot papers again if the gap between the candidates is within half a percentage point.

After several votes last year, state officials are preparing for any eventuality. Deputy Foreign Minister Jordan Fuchs has stated that the requirement of a full recount – as in November – does not apply to runoff elections.

Runoff elections have traditionally been relatively sleepy competitions with a lower turnout that favored Republicans due to a decline in Democrats, especially black voters, after the general election. (The runoff election itself was developed by white Georgians in the 1960s to dilute the power of black voters.)

Not this year. A staggering influx of political spending flooded the state as campaign activists, party officials and outside groups came to the races. According to Ad Impact, an ad tracking company, nearly $ 500 million was spent on advertising to saturate the radio waves at unprecedented levels.

Democrats have worked to keep voter turnout high, step up their public relations work, target color voters with targeted advertising campaigns, and deploy a flotilla of high-performing political stars for the state. As Mr Trump was preparing for his rally on Monday evening, Mr Biden stood up for the Democrats in Atlanta that afternoon.

The drive to reach new voters, led by Stacey Abrams, has led an estimated 800,000 residents to vote for this election cycle – a wave that voter mobilization groups have been trying to build on since November. Some Democrats and voting groups have raised concerns about polling station access and possible repression.

The democratic effort could work: Early voting data shows that nearly 31 percent of voters who cast ballots are black, an increase of about three percentage points over their share in the general election.

Republicans believe that some voters who supported Mr Biden will want a review of democratic power in Washington. However, their efforts were hampered by Mr. Trump’s refusal to end the previous competition.

The release of an audio recording of a phone call in which Trump pressured Georgian Foreign Minister Brad Raffensperger to scrap the election results has rattled the runoff election in recent days.

Some Republican strategists fear that Mr Trump’s attacks on the presidential election results will hamper their efforts to win back some of the suburban moderate voters who fled their party in November.

A fringe Conservative group is also encouraging Republicans to boycott the elections in support of Mr Trump’s baseless claims of fraudulent vote counting that could undermine the margins of the two incumbents.

Categories
World News

NYSE says it would now not delist three Chinese language telecom giants

NYSE says it will no longer delist three Chinese telecom giants

The New York Stock Exchange said it no longer plans to delist three Chinese telecommunications giants and overturned a decision announced four days earlier.

The NYSE said late Monday it dropped the plans after “further consultations with relevant regulators related to the Bureau of Foreign Wealth Control”.

Hong Kong-listed stocks of China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom rebounded on news of the reversal.

On Thursday, the NYSE announced that it would delist American custody shares of the companies under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump. The November regulation was designed to prevent American companies and individuals from investing in companies that the Trump administration claimed to have helped the Chinese military.

Big stock index giants like MSCI, S&P Dow Jones Indices and FTSE Russell, as well as popular trading app Robinhood, have also taken steps to fulfill the executive order.

The Chinese Securities Commission said Monday that the executive order was based on “political purposes” and “completely ignored the real situations of relevant companies and the legitimate rights of global investors, and severely damaged market rules and regulations”.

Trump’s investment ban will go into effect next Monday, just over a week before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Biden is unlikely to make any immediate changes to US-China relations, but has repeatedly stated that he would prefer to work with US allies to enforce “traffic rules” for world trade.

Still, this approach would be at odds with that of the Trump administration, which often took aggressive, unilateral measures to challenge China on economic and national security issues.

– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.

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Categories
Health

The UK is delaying second Pfizer/BioNTech shot: Here is what we all know

The UK is delaying second Pfizer/BioNTech shot: Here's what we know

The medical staff will receive the Pfizer-Biontech Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine in the Favoriten Clinic in Vienna on December 27, 2020 on the occasion of the launch of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine.

Georg Hochmuth | AFP | Getty Images

The UK’s decision to delay the administration of the second dose of a coronavirus vaccine is controversial as experts, advisors and vaccine manufacturers weigh the strategy.

The UK was one of the first countries in the world to launch a mass vaccination campaign against the coronavirus after approving the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech in early December. Oxford University and AstraZeneca began rolling out the vaccine on Monday of this week after it was approved for use just before the New Year.

As both vaccines require two doses per person, the UK government initially said that a second dose would be given either three or four weeks after the first dose, depending on which vaccine was given and in line with the dosage regimens tested in clinical trials.

However, a break of up to 12 weeks is now recommended to give more people an initial dose – and initial protection against Covid-19.

Concerns from the vaccine manufacturer

BioNTech and Pfizer have responded to the decision, saying there is no evidence that their vaccine will continue to protect against Covid-19 if the second shot is given more than 21 days after the starting dose.

“Pfizer and BioNTech’s Phase 3 study of the COVID-19 vaccine was designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the vaccine on a 2-dose regimen separated by 21 days. The safety and efficacy The majority of study participants received the second dose within the window specified in the study design, “the companies said in a statement to CNBC on Tuesday.

“Although data from the Phase 3 study showed partial protection from the vaccine as early as 12 days after the first dose, there is no data to show that protection is maintained after 21 days after the first dose.”

The companies said it was now “critical to conduct surveillance efforts” with alternative dosing schedules in place.

The final analysis of data from the Pfizer / BioNTech clinical trials found the vaccine to be 95% effective given seven days after the second dose in preventing Covid-19.

For the Oxford University / AstraZeneca candidate, the interim analysis of the late-stage study results was somewhat more nuanced, as the vaccine doses to the study participants showed an anomaly. When the vaccine was given in two full doses, it was found to be 62.1% effective, but when some study participants received half a dose followed by a full dose of 90%. In both dosing regimens, the two shots were given one month apart. AstraZeneca was not immediately available for comment on the UK’s decision to postpone the second dose.

Reasons for the decision

The decision to extend the dosage window is made as UK hospitals struggle with increasing admissions. The coronavirus is running amok in the UK, with a new, transmissible strain of the virus spreading exponentially in London and the South East, and now appearing in other parts of the country.

To date, the country has recorded over 2.6 million cases of coronavirus and more than 75,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The UK recorded 58,784 new cases on Monday and has now reported more than 50,000 new coronavirus cases for seven days in a row. On Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a third nationwide lockdown for England.

Against this dire backdrop, the UK Medicines Agency, Joint Vaccination and Immunization Committee and the UK’s four chief medical officers agreed to move the gap between the first and second vaccine dose to “protect the greatest number of people in India” the shortest Time. “

There are signs that other Britain may follow suit. The German Ministry of Health is now asking an independent vaccination commission for advice on whether the British strategy on dose delay should be adhered to. Denmark has reportedly already approved a delay of up to six weeks between the first and second vaccinations.

‘Finely balanced’

So far, more than a million people in the UK have been vaccinated with the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, according to government figures, and some, like the first recipient of this vaccine outside of a clinical trial, have received their second dose.

But now, thousands of others in the top priority category are being told to wait up to 12 weeks for their second dose.

The British Medical Association described the move as “grossly unfair” to thousands of high-risk patients in England, but the UK’s Independent Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) said in a statement released on Sunday that it was a “very difficult and finely balanced” move be decision. “

In response to the BMA’s concerns, SAGE said, “Under normal circumstances, we would advocate continuing our previous plans to give two doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine 21 days apart. However, these are not normal circumstances, and so it is are other important public health considerations. “

The UK is prioritizing vaccination of elderly care home residents, their carers, people over 80, and frontline health and social workers.

The country has pre-ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, enough for 20 million people, and signed a contract with AstraZeneca for 100 million doses, enough for 50 million people. There are around 66 million people in Great Britain.

Categories
Business

Stay Enterprise Updates – The New York Instances

Here’s what you need to know:

For the past two months, Wall Street’s investors have found comfort in the idea that the government was heading for gridlock, with Democrats controlling the White House and Republicans in the majority at the Senate.

It’s a view that highlights Wall Street’s preference for the low-tax, low-regulation policies championed by the Republican Party. President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is expected to push for more spending on infrastructure and more support for the economy, but without the Senate’s backing, he wouldn’t be able to reverse the Trump tax cuts have been a boon to corporate profits or enact major laws that increase regulation.

That consensus helped bolster stocks late last year, adding to the rally that lifted the S&P 500 to a record.

Bear

market

amid the

pandemic

Bear

market

amid the

pandemic

But there’s one more threshold to cross before investors can be sure of that outcome.

On Tuesday, two Democratic Senate candidates — Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock — are challenging two Republican incumbent senators — David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — in a runoff. If both Democrats win, the party will take control of the upper chamber of Congress. (Democrats already have control of the House of Representatives.)

In recent days, analysts and traders have fixated on polling data and prediction markets that show a growing chance that the race could be closer than expected.

That Democrats could in fact win was one factor behind Monday’s 1.5 percent drop in the S&P 500, the index’s steepest daily decline since the days before the election.

At the same time, the economic crisis caused by the pandemic has scrambled the usual political calculus for investors.

On Wall Street, it’s generally agreed upon that Democratic control of the Senate could lead to a large amount of deficit spending in the early days of the Biden administration, a potential boon to the still-struggling American economy.

“A unified Democratic government will have broad leeway on fiscal policy, and in the current economic environment, unified Democratic government will mean more stimulus,” economists with Mizuho Securities wrote in a note to clients on Monday.

And there are parts of the economy that definitely stand to gain from the Biden agenda, such as alternative energy, infrastructure and some parts of the health care industry. On the other hand, businesses such as military contractors and larger pharmaceutical companies are expected to fare better if Republican keep control of the Senate.

How else might Wall Street find an upside in a Democratic victory? One answer comes from the rationalizations that investors offered before the November election, when polls (incorrectly as it turns out) indicated that Democrats would clobber Republicans up and down the ballot in a so-called Blue Wave.

Back then, analysts offered the view that even if Mr. Biden had the backing of both houses of Congress, tax increases wouldn’t be his first priority anyway.

So even if Tuesday’s election gives investors a reason to worry, they might also get over it quickly.

A China Telecom office in Shanghai in November.Credit…Alex Plavevski/EPA, via Shutterstock

The New York Stock Exchange said late on Monday that it had reversed a decision to delist China’s three major state-run telecommunications companies.

The Big Board said it took the step after consulting with the U.S. Treasury Department.

Last week, the exchange said it would stop the trading of shares in China Unicom, China Telecom and China Mobile by Jan. 11 in response to a Trump administration executive order that blocked Americans from investing in companies tied to the Chinese military.

The statement did not give a reason for the decision, though it appeared that the executive order may not require the exchange to delist the companies. The exchange said that its regulatory department would continue to evaluate the applicability of the order to the telecommunications companies.

The delisting would have had little practical impact on the companies, which also have shares listed in Hong Kong and are state-owned. Still, the disappearance from the American exchange had hefty symbolic value for worsening economic ties between China and the United States.

A quiet Westminster Bridge in London on Wednesday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday announced England’s third national lockdown. Credit…Neil Hall/EPA, via Shutterstock

  • European stocks dipped lower on Tuesday morning, unwinding some of their recent gains a day after the S&P 500 index suffered its steepest drop in more than two months.

  • Futures indicated stocks on Wall Street would open lower when trading begins. Two Senate runoff elections in Georgia underway on Tuesday will determine which political party controls the Senate — and how successful President-elect Joseph R Biden Jr. will be getting his agenda through Congress.

  • The Stoxx Europe 600 index was down 0.4 percent after gaining 0.7 percent on Monday. The CAC 40 in France declined 0.7 percent and the DAX in Germany fell 0.7 percent. The FTSE 100 in Britain slipped 0.1 percent, despite gains by energy companies like Royal Dutch Shell, which rose 2.1 percent.

  • Oil prices gained after an OPEC Plus meeting was suspended on Monday evening without an agreement on whether the oil-producing nations should continue curbs on production; the group will resume later on Tuesday. The growing number of restrictions on businesses and social life around the world in recent days have weakened the outlook for energy demand.

  • Shares in the FTSE 250, a British index with more domestic stocks, rose 0.5 percent on Tuesday even as the country was put under strict stay-at-home orders, most schools were closed and nonessential businesses were shuttered. For England, it is the third national lockdown.

  • For traders, the lockdown was widely expected given the sharp rise in coronavirus infections, said Susannah Streeter, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

  • “Many companies had glimpsed light at the end of the tunnel but now that tunnel appears much longer,” she said, adding that the entire first half of 2021 will be challenging as the expectations of a double-dip recession in Britain have grown.

  • The British government said an additional 4.6 billion pounds ($6.3 billion) in grants would be made available to businesses that have been forced to close.

  • “While fresh movement restrictions could delay the anticipated economic rebound, developed economies continue to receive ample fiscal and monetary support, which should help them bounce back swiftly once vaccines become widely available,” analysts at UBS wrote in a note. “We continue to like German and U.K. stocks for their catch-up potential.”

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. boarded his plane at the New Castle County Airport in Wilmington, Del., on Monday. Republicans plan to attempt to disrupt certification of Mr. Biden’s electoral votes on Wednesday.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Chief executives and other leaders from many of America’s largest businesses on Monday urged Congress to certify the electoral vote on Wednesday to confirm Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential victory.

“Attempts to thwart or delay this process run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy,” they said in a statement. Included in the list of 170 signers were Laurence D. Fink of BlackRock, Logan Green and John Zimmer of Lyft, Brad Smith of Microsoft, Albert Bourla of Pfizer, and James Zelter of Apollo Global Management.

Over the weekend, President Trump called Georgia’s Republican secretary of state in an effort to subvert the election results. On the call, which was recorded, the president pressured the official to “find” enough votes to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory. The president’s demand raised questions about whether he violated election fraud statutes, lawyers said, though a charge is unlikely. President-elect Biden won the Electoral College, 306 to 232, and the popular vote was 81.2 million for Mr. Biden to Mr. Trump’s 74.2 million.

Members of the president’s party are divided over whether to accept that he lost the election: While top Republicans, such as Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, have pushed back on a futile attempt in Congress to reject the results, about a dozen senators and senators-elect have lined up behind President Trump’s bid to hold on to power.

The urging from business leaders came on a volatile day for financial markets and just a day before runoff elections in Georgia, which will determine whether Republicans or Democrats control the Senate. Coronavirus cases are surging, and vaccinations are taking more time than hoped.

Business leaders took issue with Washington’s new divide at a moment of grave uncertainty.

“Our duly elected leaders deserve the respect and bipartisan support of all Americans at a moment when we are dealing with the worst health and economic crises in modern history,” the business leaders wrote. “There should be no further delay in the orderly transfer of power.”

The statement, which was organized by Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy organization, came on the same day that Thomas J. Donohue, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, issued a statement urging certification of the vote.

“Efforts by some members of Congress to disregard certified election results in an effort to change the election outcome or to try a make a long-term political point undermines our democracy and the rule of law and will only result in further division across our nation,” Mr. Donohue wrote.

“The United States of America faces enormous challenges that not only require an orderly transition of administrations, but the focus of the incoming Biden administration and the new Congress, and cooperation across party lines,” he continued. “We urge Congress to fulfill its responsibility in counting the electoral votes, the Trump administration to facilitate an orderly transition for the incoming Biden administration, and all of our elected officials to devote their energies to combating the pandemic and supporting our economic recovery.”

Quibi, founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, struggled as soon as it became available in April.Credit…Etienne Laurent/EPA, via Shutterstock

  • Quibi, the much-hyped short-form video platform, is in talks to sell its content to Roku, the streaming device maker with a streaming app of its own. The deal is close to completion, said one person with knowledge of the discussions, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Quibi and Roku declined to comment. Quibi was a quixotic attempt to capitalize on the streaming boom. Its shows, chopped into installments no longer than 10 minutes, were meant to be watched on smartphones. But it announced it would close just six months after it launched.

  • Haven, the joint venture of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase that was formed three years ago to explore new ways to deliver health care to the companies’ employees, is disbanding, according to a statement posted on its website. It will cease its operations at the end of February. Haven aimed to improve how people gain access to health care by pulling together the know-how and scale of three of the largest employers in America. Its formation sent shock waves through the markets. But two people familiar with the collaboration said logistical hurdles had made it harder than expected to come up with new ideas that made sense for all three companies.

  • Chief executives and other leaders from many of America’s largest businesses on Monday urged Congress to certify the electoral vote on Wednesday to confirm Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential victory. “Attempts to thwart or delay this process run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy,” the 170 leaders said in a statement. The statement, which was organized by Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy organization, came on the same day that Thomas J. Donohue, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, issued a statement urging certification of the vote.

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In the West, few issues carry the political charge of water. Access to it can make or break both cities and rural communities. It can decide the fate of every part of the economy, from almond orchards to ski resorts to semiconductor factories. And with the worst drought in 1,500 years parching the region, water anxiety is increasing.

In the last few years, a new force has emerged: From the Western Slope of the Rockies to Southern California, a proliferation of private investors have descended on isolated communities, scouring the driest terrain in the United States to buy coveted water rights.

Rechanneling water from rural areas to thirsty growth spots like the suburbs of Phoenix has long been handled by municipal water managers and utilities, but investors adept at sniffing out undervalued assets sense an opportunity, Ben Ryder Howe reports in The New York Times.

To proponents of open markets, water is underpriced and consequently overused. In theory, a market-based approach discourages wasteful low-value water uses, especially in agriculture, which consumes more than 70 percent of the water in the Southwest, and creates incentives for private enterprise to become involved. Investors and the environment may benefit, but water will almost certainly be more expensive.

“They’re making water a commodity,” said Regina Cobb, an Arizona assemblywoman. “That’s not what water is meant to be.”

As investor interest mounts, leaders of Southwestern states are gathering this month to decide the future of the Colorado River. The negotiations have the potential to redefine rules that for the last century have governed one of the most valuable economic resources in the United States.

Categories
Health

The Greatest Winter Podcasts – The New York Instances

The Best Winter Podcasts - The New York Times

As the holiday season draws back and the long length of the winter months approaches, you can fight the mood or embrace it. Here is a playlist of cold weather podcasts, some fiction, some nonfiction, all of which are well told and produced, and all lying in the snow.

For music theater nerds:

Audio dramas – podcasting parlance for fictional podcasts – can sometimes get into trouble if a show is done too well. If a fiction presented in true crime style is too perfect in its imitation, the audience can feel betrayed (see: the angry reviewers of “Heads of the Sierra Blanca”). While “In Strange Woods” begins with your standard reporter ‘s tale of a teenager disappearing in the snowy woods of Minnesota, any matter of verité is completely resolved in minutes when the characters break into a song. If you don’t love musical theater then you can skip it. But the vocal performances are beautiful; The songs add drama in a way that manages don’t be annoying; and the protagonist of the series, a little sister mourning her brother, makes for an exciting story that is still unfolding – so far, three “chapters” of the limited series with five episodes have been published.

For storytellers:

The magic of live storytelling podcasts like “The Moth” and “Snap Judgment” lies in the way they break down the space between your headphones and the speaker on stage. Dark Winter Nights began in 2014 with the aim of making Alaskan stories accessible to anyone who wants to listen. These live event recordings are intended to transport you into “the stories we tell here in Alaska on dark winter nights,” according to presenter and creator Robert Prince, professor of documentary film at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Stories range from great to worldly, like a blind Alaskan woman who finally “sees” a whale on a trip with her family, or someone else who runs away from unusually alert bears.

For sports fans:

When it comes to cold weather athletics and a beautiful sounding story, most podheads probably think of Rose Eveleth’s “On the Ice” episode for the ESPN podcast series “30 for 30”. In this classic piece of sports journalism, Eveleth tells the story of the women who led the first all-female trek to the North Pole in 1997 (“no expedition experience required”, read the classified ad she drew). While the challenge at the center of the story seems to be the cruel conditions of the Arctic, the beauty in it comes not only from the women’s journey to the top of the world, but also from the life they left behind. If you miss the Winter Olympics and the stories of women athletes triumphing against impossible odds, try Bonnie Ford’s episode “Out of the Woods” about the 1984 kidnapping of Olympic biathlete Kari Swenson.

For true criminal freaks:

Wondery went on to become a great podcast player by producing lively and bingeable series, and one thing is clear: true crime. And as all good true crime fans know, there’s nothing more tempting than breaking a cold case. With Wondery as a partner, Salt Lake TV station KSL did just that in the case of Susan Powell, a mother of two from Utah, who disappeared on a stormy evening in December 2009. After her husband, Josh, the main suspect, killed himself and their sons in a fire two years later, local police declared the case closed. But with the help of Wondery, KSL reporter Dave Cawley searches the evidence, conducts new interviews, and discovers the dark legacy of psychological and emotional abuse within the Powell family in this well-told and bingeworthy 18-episode series.

For children:

Children (and their adults) who love the X-Men and other stories of adolescents with innate powers will be lost in this fictional saga. “Six Minutes” tells the story of Holiday, an 11-year-old with total amnesia who is found floating in the icy waters of Alaska by the Anders family. They immediately adopt her and tell Holiday that she is their own. But her veiled past is slowly being revealed, along with some superhuman abilities. The story is told in six minute increments and results in an epic 200 epic adventure.

Join the New York Times Podcast Club on Facebook for more suggestions and discussions on anything related to audio.

Categories
Politics

Enterprise leaders inform Congress to certify Biden received election, Trump misplaced

Business leaders tell Congress to certify Biden won election, Trump lost

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris on the Covid-19 Advisory Board of the Transition Team on November 9, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Key US business leaders on Monday urged Congress this week to confirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over the electoral college over President Donald Trump, who refused to recognize his loss in the 2020 election.

Business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the Partnership for New York City separately issued statements calling for an end to efforts to undermine Biden’s victory.

“This presidential election has been decided and it is time for the country to move forward. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris have won the electoral college and the courts have rejected challenges to the electoral process,” the New York City partnership said in its Explanation.

“Congress should confirm the election vote on Wednesday January 6th. Attempts to thwart or delay this process run counter to the fundamental tenets of our democracy,” said the group.

Thomas Donohue, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, said in his statement: “The efforts of some members of Congress to ignore certified elections result in the election result being changed or an attempt to make a long-term political point that undermines our democracy and the rule of law.” and will only lead to another division in our nation. “

And the President and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, Jay Timmons, quoted in his statement the fact that manufacturing workers have “heroically ascended” to sell food, vaccines, medicines and other products to fight the raging Covid-19 Epidemic last year.

“Our industry has struggled to protect our country, and now we ask Congress to join us in healing our nation rather than promoting more division and vitriol,” Timmons said.

Congress will meet on Wednesday to approve the results of the electoral college.

A number of Republican senators and members of the House of Representatives have announced that they will be challenging the certification of voters from several battlefield states that have given Biden his head start.

These efforts are expected to fail as both the House of Representatives and the Senate would have to reject the electoral college record in Biden’s favor to invalidate the results. Democrats have a majority of seats in the House of Representatives to ensure that such a move would fail there, and enough Republican senators have declared they won’t decertify Biden’s victory to defeat efforts in their Congress Chamber.

Trump has claimed without evidence that he was cheated of both an election victory and an electoral college win through widespread electoral fraud.

But more than four dozen lawsuits filed by Trump’s election campaign and allies questioning Biden’s victory in various states have either failed completely or have been withdrawn.

The Group Business Roundtable noted this legal track record in its statement released Monday evening.

“With allegations of electoral fraud being fully scrutinized and rejected by federal and state courts and government officials, there is no doubt about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election,” said the group, made up of CEOs from leading US companies.

“There is no power for Congress to reject or revoke votes that have been legitimately confirmed by states and approved by the electoral college. The peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of our democracy and should go unchecked. Therefore, the Business Roundtable rejects efforts to delay or reject the matter Overturn the election result. “