Month: February 2021

Categories
Health

Dr. Scott Gottlieb on Pfizer’s efforts on a 3rd Covid vaccine shot

Dr. Scott Gottlieb on Pfizer's efforts on a third Covid vaccine shot

Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Thursday that the company is researching two different methods to provide vaccination protection against new coronavirus variants.

In an interview on Squawk Box, Gottlieb said the first approach focused on whether a booster shot using the current formulation of the two-dose vaccine would provide additional defense. Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced a test that was not examined until early Thursday.

“There is reason to believe that just boosting the existing vaccine against these new variants will give you extra protection,” said Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner in the Trump administration.

The second endeavor is to modify the existing vaccine so that stronger immunity to virus mutations can be achieved, explained Gottlieb. The companies announced in a press release on Thursday that they are discussing the launch of this research study with regulators.

While new coronavirus variants affect public health officials, particularly the contagious strain first found in South Africa, Gottlieb said any change to the vaccine formulation would offer broad protection.

“What you want to do is not necessarily develop a vaccine that is specifically against [B.1.351], the change we’ve seen in South Africa, “said Gottlieb, who headed the FDA from 2017-2019.” You want to develop a protein sequence that is sort of a consensus sequence and that incorporates enough of the changes we’ve seen around the world that you have a vaccine that protects no matter what the virus does against itself. “

It is widely believed that the virus variant discovered in South Africa poses a greater challenge to existing vaccines than other new strains, such as the one originally discovered in the UK

For example, Johnson & Johnson reported that their vaccine was 72% effective in preventing symptomatic Covid in the US and 57% in South Africa, where the B.1.351 strain dominates. However, the vaccine provided 85% protection against severe Covid throughout the trial. Part of this has also been carried out in regions of Latin America where different variants exist.

The U.S. FDA is expected to use J & J’s vaccine soon after the agency’s emergency vaccine board meeting scheduled for Friday.

Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which already have an emergency approval in the US, were tested in large phase three studies before the new variants were discovered. However, Pfizer and BioNTech conducted a study examining the variant found in South Africa. This indicated some reduction in antibody production, even though the vaccine was still neutralizing the virus.

In addition, Moderna has said that its two-dose vaccine appears to produce a weaker immune response against the South African variant, while adding that the antibody response remains at levels believed to provide protection.

Moderna announced Wednesday that it has shipped an optimized version of its vaccine to the National Institutes of Health to start various studies on variant protection. Similar to Pfizer, the company will also be testing a lower-dose booster shot of its current two-dose formulation.

Limited available doses have been a barrier to covid shots being given to more people once government approval has been granted. In the U.S. in particular, that situation has improved as companies ramp up production, and Gottlieb noted that J & J’s possible approval of the single-dose vaccine will also help expand access.

Should a booster shot be needed to ensure better protection against variants, Gottlieb was confident that the dosage might be available. “I don’t think we have to ration supplies if we want to give people a third booster in the fall,” he said.

“The challenge will be to think about the new vaccine variant and whether and when you would switch to this vaccine and how much you would produce,” said Gottlieb. “That will be a decision you need to make before these new variants of vaccines are likely to get approved. You may not want to switch all of your manufacturing, but you want to switch some of it.” He added, “You will likely have to make that decision sometime this summer.”

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC employee and a member of the boards of directors of Pfizer, genetic testing startup Tempus, healthcare technology company Aetion, and biotech company Illumina. He is also co-chair of the Healthy Sail Panel of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean.

Categories
Business

Finest Purchase (BBY) earnings This fall 2021 beat projections, however gross sales features sluggish

Best Buy (BBY) earnings Q4 2021 beat projections, but sales gains slow

Customers wait outside a Best Buy store in downtown Toronto, Ontario on November 23, 2020 to collect their online orders.

Geoff Robbins | AFP | Getty Images

Best Buy’s fourth quarter earnings surpassed Wall Street’s expectations on Thursday, but lagged behind sales as sales growth slowed compared to previous months of the pandemic.

The retailer said its sales are likely to slow even further. CFO Matt Bilunas said sales in the same store are projected to drop from 2% to 1% this year. The forecast assumes customers will resume or accelerate their spending in areas like travel and dining in the second half of the year, he said.

Shares fell more than 7% on the news early Thursday.

The company reported for the fiscal quarter ended January 30, versus Wall Street’s expectations, based on an analyst survey by Refinitiv:

  • Earnings per share: $ 3.48 adjusted versus $ 3.45 expected
  • Revenue: $ 16.94 billion versus $ 17.23 billion expected

Best Buy’s net income rose from $ 745 million, or $ 2.84 per share last year, to $ 816 million, or $ 3.10 per share.

Excluding items, the company earned $ 3.48 per share, above what Refinitiv polled analysts expected to earn $ 3.45 per share.

Net sales rose to $ 16.94 billion from $ 15.2 billion a year ago, but fell short of estimates of $ 17.23 billion.

Sales on the Internet and in stores that have been open for at least 14 months rose 12.6%, below the 14.7% growth forecast by analysts, according to StreetAccount. This is a sharp drop from the 23% growth rate in the third quarter.

Although still strong, the pace of online sales growth also slowed in the US. It grew 89.3% from 174% in the third quarter and 242% in the second quarter.

The retailer benefited from the stay-at-home restrictions that spurred purchases of equipment such as computer monitors for the home office, headphones and laptops for remote children to attend school, and kitchen appliances to make it easier to cook meals.

However, the rapid adoption of technology has rocked the way people shop. Instead of walking around the store, more customers have browsed the website, sent purchases home, or retrieved them in the company’s parking lot.

Best Buy estimates that online sales will account for around 40% of total domestic sales in the coming year.

This had an impact on Best Buy’s workforce. Corie Barry, CEO of Best Buy, said the company started with 123,000 employees last fiscal year and ended the year with around 102,000 – a decrease of around 21,000, or 17%. She said most of the reduced headcount came from attrition. Earlier this month, she said the company laid off about 5,000 employees, most of whom were full-time employees.

She said the company is determined to retrain and retrain employees as it makes organizational changes geared towards e-commerce. For example, some stores are testing a design that reduces the size of the retail space and takes up more space to fulfill online orders.

“Like many retailers, we believe that much of what we’ve seen over the past year will be permanent,” she said. “Our people and branches will always be at the heart of our strategy. We are just looking at how we can best use our team and physical assets to meet customer expectations and needs.”

Best Buy plans to spend $ 750 million to $ 850 million on investments and buy back at least $ 2 billion in shares. The board of directors approved an increase in the quarterly dividend by 27% to 70 cents per share.

At the close of trading on Wednesday, Best Buy shares were up nearly 33% last year. The company’s market value is $ 29.38 billion.

Read the Best Buy press release here.

Categories
Entertainment

‘Un Movie Dramatique’ Overview: College students Report the Paris Suburbs

‘Un Film Dramatique’ Review: Students Record the Paris Suburbs

In the documentary “Un Film Dramatique”, the artist Éric Baudelaire fulfills the task of creating a special work of art for Dora Maar, a newly built secondary school in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. For the project, Baudelaire filmed 21 students over four years and encouraged them to take the camera themselves. The finished film shows the liveliness and generosity that can emerge from bourgeois art.

The film passes in informal episodes. The filmmakers organized games and debates, and encouraged their classmates to discuss what they think the film will be about. Students consider what it means to be the subject and creator of a documentary and, in turn, calculate how their school fits into the world around them.

These youths are workers, often the children of immigrants, and they mock the bad reputation Saint-Denis has in Paris. With cameras in hand, they make their own record of what life is like in the suburbs. They dance, they sing, they offer house tours. Every child is confident, curious and cooperative.

The film has a patchwork quality that results from getting in and out from the perspective of different people. Some scenes are exciting when the Franco-Romanian student Gabriel-David debates through his Franco-Ivorian classmate Guy-Yanis what it means to have a country of origin if you have never lived there. But just as many sequences are banal – children film themselves watching TV as if they were streaming live on Instagram.

It is the cumulative effect of seeing the world through the eyes of these children that makes this film so profoundly joyful. This is an encouraging project, a philosophical excavation of a school marked by playful optimism.

A dramatic film
Not rated. In French with subtitles. Running time: Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. Watch virtual cinemas.

Categories
Health

Vaccine Hesitancy in Most cancers Sufferers

Vaccine Hesitancy in Cancer Patients

Ideally, cancer patients who want the shot could get it in their cancer centers rather than a mass distribution location. But a bumpy rollout and age restrictions have frustrated many people with cancer. If the shot is offered, Dr. Brawley still has his patients in active therapy and those in follow-up care. Certainly, they may not react as strongly as someone with an intact immune system. They do receive some protection, however, and are not harmed, as Moderna and Pfizer’s current vaccines are not made from live viruses (like measles, rubella, mumps, and smallpox were). Live virus vaccines must be avoided by severely immunocompromised individuals.

Updated

Apr. 25, 2021, 9:04 p.m. ET

Moderna and Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccines, explains Dr. Brawley, are made from messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) using a new technology. Its genetic material causes the vaccinated person to produce the same proteins that are found in the spikes of the novel coronavirus.

“The vaccinated person’s immune system then recognizes these proteins as foreign and produces antibodies against them,” said Dr. Brawley. “Another immune cell, a dendritic cell, also records the proteins as foreign.”

Dr. William Nelson, director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, agreed that “the worst that can happen to cancer patients vaccinated with the coronavirus vaccine” is “a bad reaction.” The worst reactions are likely to occur in people dealing with B-cell lymphoma and multiple myeloma, he explained, since these therapies often use drugs that target antibody-producing cells in the body. “For people undergoing a bone marrow transplant,” advised Dr. Nelson, vaccinations should likely be scheduled three to six months after the transplant to ensure immune regeneration has occurred.

As important as the vaccines are, Dr. Nelson urged people with cancer as well as their families and friends to “remain vigilant when it comes to wearing masks, social distancing, hand washing, etc.” Because cancer patients often have low white blood cell counts, their symptoms – fever, muscle pain, headache, dry cough – cannot be distinguished from those of Covid-19. “Now these patients must also be quickly tested for the coronavirus and isolated in a suitable facility so that their intravenous antibiotics can be infused.”

When the health authorities in my state of Indiana announced that they would be vaccinating people over 70, I had no problem signing up for an appointment online. When I took my first shot in a small medical facility, it was full of people buoyed by high hopes for widespread, so-called herd immunity. My own optimism has been overshadowed by regular news this winter of maskless receptions, rallies, protests, parties, and raves, as well as personal conversations with people who fear vaccinations in general.

As Eula Biss explained in her brilliant prepandemic book On Immunity, fear of the government, the medical establishment, and public interference with the private establishment can stifle the collective trust that attaining immunity requires. Because cancer patients are often affected by anxiety, they may be particularly prone to these types of anxieties.

Categories
Business

Jobless Claims Fall as Labor Market Continues Gradual Restoration: Reside Updates

Coronavirus caseloads have been dropping amid vaccination efforts, but until employers and consumers feel that the pandemic is under control, economists say, the labor market won’t fully recover.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…James Estrin/The New York Times

New claims for unemployment fell last week, the government reported on Thursday, the latest sign that the labor market’s recovery, however slow and unsteady, is continuing.

A total of 710,000 workers filed first-time claims for state benefits during the week that ended Feb. 20, a decrease of 132,000, the Labor Department said. In addition, 451,000 new claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program covering freelancers, part-timers and others who do not routinely qualify for state benefits, a decline of 61,000.

Neither figure is seasonally adjusted. On a seasonally adjusted basis, new state claims totaled 730,000, a decline of 111,000.

Although initial jobless claims are nowhere near the eye-popping levels seen last spring, they are still extraordinarily high by historical standards. There are roughly 10 million fewer jobs than there were last year at this time.

Coronavirus caseloads have been dropping amid efforts to get vaccines to people who are most vulnerable. But until employers and consumers feel that the pandemic is under control, economists say, the labor market won’t fully recover.

“Until people feel this is sustained and that there’s not another huge wave coming, I can’t imagine we’re going to see big changes in jobless claims for a while,” said Allison Schrager, an economist at the Manhattan Institute.

Leaders at the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have said that the damage to the labor market is much deeper than has been reflected in published government figures. They estimate that the true unemployment rate is closer to 10 percent than to the 6.3 percent recorded in the Labor Department’s most commonly cited measure.

Testifying before Congress this week, Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said: “The economic recovery remains uneven and far from complete, and the path ahead is highly uncertain.”

Those hardest hit are in the service industry, particularly in restaurants, hospitality, leisure and travel. At the career site Indeed, job postings over all are 5 percent higher than they were a year ago, with demand greatest for warehouse and construction workers and drivers, said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at the company.

“We need job postings to stay elevated above prepandemic baseline to pull people back into the labor market,” she said.

An AMC theater near Times Square. Shares in AMC, a company that has struggled through the pandemic, have been hyped on Reddit’s Wallstreetbets forum.Credit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Shares in GameStop were up 45 percent in premarket trading on Thursday, following another surge in the share price of the video game retailer that was at the center of a retail trading frenzy last month. On Wednesday, GameStop’s shares doubled to $91.71 and the volume of trading was more than 10 times the level of the previous day.

Some of the popular posts on Reddit’s Wallstreetbets forum, where users have been hyping up certain stocks in memes, read “ROUND 2!” and “THE COMEBACK!!!!!” Other meme stocks also rose: AMC shares gained 17 percent in premarket trading, and BlackBerry, Nokia and Koss were also among the gainers.

Earlier this week, GameStop announced its chief financial officer would leave the company next month. The company is under pressure from a large shareholder to shift from a brick-and-mortar business to a digital and e-commerce firm.

  • Futures of U.S. stock indexes were little changed before the latest weekly report on state unemployment benefit claims. Economists expect a fall in the number, but the levels are still high by historical standards.

  • Bond yields continued to jump. The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes rose 5 basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 1.43 percent. This month, the yield has climbed 37 basis points.

  • Analysts at Bank of America raised their forecast for bond yields, expecting the 10-year yield to be at 1.75 percent at the end of the year because of stronger economic growth. Last month, they forecast 1.5 percent for year-end.

  • Federal Reserve policymakers have been playing down concerns about inflation. In a second day of testimony to lawmakers on Wednesday, the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, reiterated his message that a short-term jump in inflation, which is expected this year, is different from sustained higher inflation. And so the central bank could keep its easy money policies for awhile. Separately, the vice chair, Richard Clarida, said monetary policy was “entirely appropriate not only now, but — given my outlook for the economy — for the rest of the year.”

  • Most European stock indexes were higher. The Stoxx Europe 600 index rose 0.3 percent.

  • Shares in Mondi, a British company which sells packaging and paper products, dropped 1.2 percent after Bloomberg reported it was looking into a takeover of its rival DS Smith. Shares of Smith were up 6.6 percent.

Senator Bernie Sanders said Walmart’s profits continued to be supported by taxpayers, who are paying for the health care and food expenses of the company’s lowest-paid workers.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

With the debate over raising the federal minimum wage heating up, Senator Bernie Sanders is putting the spotlight on some of the nation’s largest employers and their pay practices in a hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

Walmart and McDonald’s, which have not yet raised their starting wages to $15 an hour, will be the primary focus of Mr. Sanders’s scrutiny.

Mr. Sanders, a Vermont independent, plans to highlight research by the Government Accountability Office showing that Walmart and McDonald’s are among the companies with the highest number of employees qualifying for Medicaid and food stamps in many states.

“One of the scandals in the current economy is that there are millions of workers working for starvation wages,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview this week.

The chief executives of Walmart and McDonald’s were invited to attend Thursday’s hearing of the Senate Budget Committee but declined. W. Craig Jelinek, the chief executive of Costco, which pays some of the highest wages in the retail industry, is the only top executive who agreed to testify.

“A small percentage of our work force may come to us on public assistance and we welcome them,” Walmart said in an email to Mr. Sanders’s office last week. “We hire them, train them and give them the chance to earn a paycheck. And we are immensely proud of their work and their continued efforts to successfully support themselves and their families.”

McDonald’s responded in a similar vein in a letter to Mr. Sanders’s office on Tuesday: “We appreciate the findings of the G.A.O. report that identify a small percentage of our work force that may utilize public assistance, and we work to prepare them for career opportunities both inside and outside of the McDonald’s system.”

In its letter, McDonald’s added that its average wage was nearly $12 an hour, but the company did not provide its starting wage nor respond to a follow-up request from The New York Times for the number.

Last week, Walmart said that it was raising the wages of 425,000 workers and that about half of its work force in the United States would earn at least $15 an hour. But the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon, stopped short of saying whether the company would eventually extend a $15 minimum to all employees.

Mr. Sanders said Walmart’s profits continued to be supported by taxpayers, who are paying for the health care and food expenses of the company’s lowest-paid workers and further enriching the retailer’s founding family and large shareholders, the Waltons.

“I think the American people really should not have to subsidize through their taxes the wealthiest family in the world,” Mr. Sanders said. “We are going to make that point over and over and over again.”

A $52 million campaign promoting Covid-19 vaccinations began on Thursday morning.Credit…Ad Council

A broad promotional effort to combat Covid-19 vaccine skepticism began rolling out on Thursday, backed by the nonprofit advertising group Ad Council and a coalition of experts known as the Covid Collaborative.

The campaign, “It’s Up to You,” encourages Americans to seek out facts about the available vaccines. The Ad Council commissioned research that concluded that 40 percent of the public had yet to decide whether to be vaccinated as soon as possible. In Black and Hispanic communities, which have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, 60 percent of people do not feel fully informed, according to the study.

Public service announcements will appear in English and Spanish on television, social media and other platforms. More than 300 companies, community groups and public figures — including Facebook, iHeartMedia, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN — contributed to the $52 million push, as did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Several spots point viewers toward a landing page, GetVaccineAnswers.org, using messages such as “Getting back to the moments we missed starts with getting informed” and this one: “You’ve got questions. That’s normal.” A punchy video from Google shows animated arms with colorful post-vaccination bandages coalescing into the shape of the United States, while an offering from Verizon juxtaposes scenes of human connection with images of weddings and graduations conducted over video chat.

The Ad Council endeavor is one of several concurrent campaigns aimed at raising awareness and acceptance of the vaccines, including efforts from vaccine producers such as Pfizer and Moderna.

NBCUniversal built a vaccination push around the informational site PlanYourVaccine.com, while the #ThisIsOurShot campaign features health care workers who have been vaccinated. In Britain, an ad debunking myths about the vaccine was broadcast simultaneously across several television channels this month, focusing on ethnic minority communities.

If confirmed as U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai will need to fill in the details of the Biden administration’s “worker-focused” trade approach.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times

The Biden administration is hoping that its nominee for U. S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, who is scheduled to appear for her confirmation hearing on Thursday morning before the Senate Finance Committee, can serve as a consensus builder and help bridge the Democratic Party’s varying views on trade, Ana Swanson reports for The New York Times.

Ms. Tai, the chief trade counsel to the House’s powerful Ways and Means Committee, has strong connections in Congress, and supporters expect her nomination to proceed smoothly. But if confirmed, she will face bigger challenges, including filling in the details of what the Biden administration has called its “worker-focused” trade approach.

As trade representative, Ms. Tai will be a key player in restoring alliances strained under former President Donald J. Trump, as well as formulating the administration’s China policy, where she is expected to draw on prior experience bringing cases against China at the World Trade Organization during her time working in the office of the United States Trade Representative, from 2007 to 2014.

She will also take charge on matters that divide the Democratic Party, like whether to keep or scrap the tariffs Mr. Trump imposed on foreign products, and whether new foreign trade deals will help the United States compete globally or end up selling American workers short.

Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of Coinbase, which revealed in a regulatory filing that it earned $322.3 million last year.Credit…Steven Ferdman/Getty Images

Coinbase, the most valuable cryptocurrency company in the United States, filed to go public on Thursday amid a surge in prices in digital money.

It is the latest milestone for Coinbase, which was founded in 2012 as a site for buying and selling cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and has now become a giant in the industry, with 43 million retail traders and 7,000 institutions as customers. Its fortunes have soared along with the price of Bitcoin, which was trading at more than $51,000 apiece as of Thursday.

Coinbase pulled back the curtains on its finances in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing that it earned $322.3 million last year, on top of $1.3 billion in revenue. That compares with a $30.4 million loss atop $533.7 million in revenue for 2019.

The company makes money from fees charged for customer trades. In a letter to prospective investors, its co-founder and chief executive, Brian Armstrong, warned that the company’s financials may be volatile, because they are tied to the sometimes whipsawing prices of cryptocurrencies.

The company drew controversy last fall when Mr. Armstrong told employees to leave their social activism out of the workplace. Current and former employees have also complained about the company’s management of Black workers.

The company is planning a direct listing, where it simply puts its privately traded shares onto a public stock market — the Nasdaq, in this case — as opposed to a traditional initial public offering.

Such deals have gained popularity among technology companies in recent years for being a simpler way to going public, especially if they do not need to raise money. Last month, Coinbase said it was pursuing a direct listing.

Categories
World News

Why digital artwork and sports activities collectibles are abruptly so fashionable

Why digital art and sports collectibles are suddenly so popular

Russell Westbrook # 0 of the Houston Rockets plays the ball against the Los Angeles Lakers during the first game of the Western Conference SemiFinals of the NBA Playoffs on September 4, 2020 at AdventHealth Arena in Orlando, Florida.

Jesse D. Garrabrant | National Basketball Association | Getty Images

The world of cryptocurrency is full of conversations about digital collectibles, unique virtual tokens that can represent anything from art to sports memorabilia.

People paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for these NFTs or non-fungible tokens. An investor, Sheldon Corey of Montreal, Canada, told CNBC that he paid $ 20,000 for one of thousands of computer-generated avatars called CryptoPunks.

CryptoPunks is not a new phenomenon – it was released in 2017 by developers Larva Labs. However, recently it has been gaining popularity. According to the website NonFungible, the company had sales of $ 45.2 million in the last seven days alone and inspired a broader “crypto-art” movement.

CryptoKitties, one of the original NFTs, had sales of $ 433,454 for the past week, according to NonFungible. The digital cats, developed by a start-up called Dapper Labs, were once so popular that they clogged the digital currency ether network.

NBA Top Shot, a platform developed by Dapper Labs in partnership with the basketball league, had sales of $ 147.8 million in the past seven days, according to NFT data tracker CryptoSlam. This service allows users to buy and sell short clips that show game highlights from top basketball players.

The increasing momentum for these tokens is due to the fact that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have grown significantly in recent months and at a time when people are spending more time indoors due to coronavirus restrictions.

What are NFTs?

NFTs are non-fungible tokens – that is, you can’t swap an NFT for another – that run on a blockchain network, a digital ledger that records all transactions in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

However, it differs from Bitcoin and other tokens in that each NFT is unique and cannot be replicated. Everyone collects value independently. Crypto investors say NFTs derive their value from how rare they are. They are kept in digital wallets as collectibles. In addition to arts and sports, people have found uses for NFTs in virtual real estate and games.

Nadya Ivanova, chief operating officer at BNP Paribas-affiliated research company L’Atelier, says digital collectibles can be considered a better version of an MP3 file. Musicians are struggling to benefit from their work in the digital age, and Ivanova says some are turning to NFTs to prove ownership of their work and find an additional source of income.

“It allows content creators to actually own the ownership of what they create, which allows them to benefit in different ways from what they cannot do with physical art,” she told CNBC, adding that crypto art the fastest growing subsection is the digital collectibles market.

According to a study by NonFungible and L’Atelier, the total value of NFT deals tripled to $ 250 million last year. The number of digital wallets they were traded on nearly doubled to over 222,179 while some traders were able to make profits in excess of $ 100,000.

“We are seeing a new generation of traders in the NFT market. People who are digitally native and looking for digitally native asset classes outside of the established asset markets,” said Ivanova. “These are people who have amassed reputation and wealth and want to invest it in purely virtual assets like NFTs.”

According to Ivanova, the NFT market has matured. Famed auction house Christie’s auctioned an NFT-based artwork from Beeple, a well-known digital artist who created videos and graphics for celebrities like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber.

Crypto mania

An NBA top shot video highlight starring LeBron James recently sold for a record $ 208,000. Sales can be volatile, however – NBA Top Shot and CryptoPunk trades have declined in the past 24 hours, according to NFT data tracker CryptoSlam.

The rise in the price of these virtual items has led to fears of a repeat of speculative crypto mania. It reminds some investors of the first coin offering (ICO) in 2017 when several startups issued new digital tokens to raise funds. Hardly any of the ICO projects exist today, and some have even scammed investors out of millions of dollars.

There are some parallels to the ICO frenzy – for example, celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Mark Cuban recently sold NFTs.

“We had a very similar moment in 2017,” Billy Rennekamp, ​​grant manager of the blockchain research firm Interchain Foundation, told CNBC. “Every gallery thought about an NFT. Every blue chip artist thought about it. But there was just too much risk when the market fell and it was embarrassing to be involved in NFTs when prices fell.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we went through another whole bull and bear market,” added Rennekamp.

Still, the companies behind these tokens don’t believe it’s a fad.

“NFTs are here to stay,” Caty Tedman, director of partnerships at Dapper Labs, who led the NBA Top Shot project, told CNBC. “Flow will be the blockchain that enables mass consumer adoption. The future is now.”

NBA Top Shot now has over 100,000 active collectors and has had sales of $ 215 million to date, Tedman said. It is working on a digital collectible game based on the UFC Mixed Martial Arts League and has also been sponsored by Warner Music to develop NFTs for music fans.

“The billions spent on Fortnite skins show how important our online lives and personas are and how valuable they are to people,” Matt Hall, co-founder of Larva Labs, told CNBC.

“What NFTs offer is a formalization of digital ownership and a way for that ownership to last beyond the life of a business, game or platform.”

Hall said Larva Labs does not take any fees from users of its marketplace – although it does pay blockchain processing fees. “We are CryptoPunk owners like everyone else,” he added. “As the overall market grows, those we own become more valuable.”

The cheapest “punk” available on CryptoPunks is currently worth $ 36,000, Hall said. Larva is working on a successor to CryptoPunk, Hall added, without going into the company’s plans.

Categories
Politics

Dominion and Smartmatic defamation circumstances are credible, specialists say

Dominion and Smartmatic defamation cases are credible, experts say

A voter is seen at a voting machine at the Metropolitan Library polling station on Election Day in Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday, November 3, 2020.

Tom Williams | CQ Appeal, Inc. | Getty Images

Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic USA have a good chance of winning their multi-billion dollar defamation suits against a variety of conservative personalities and, in the case of Smartmatic, Fox News, but they have a lot to prove in court, experts say.

Each of the two electoral technology companies have sued several former President Donald Trump’s boosters, saying they worked to spread conspiracy theories about each company’s products to cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s election victory.

Dominion launched its first volley last month, suing Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, a conspiracy theorist and former Trump campaign advocate, in separate $ 1.3 billion lawsuits in federal court in Washington, DC. The company hit MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Monday with his latest lawsuit, demanding $ 1.3 billion in damages. Dominion CEO John Poulos warned on CNBC the next day that the Lindell suit “definitely won’t be the last”.

Smartmatic has so far filed a case in New York State Court. The company sued Fox News and its hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, Giuliani and Powell. Smartmatic has demanded a minimum of $ 2.7 billion from the defendants in this case.

Dominion’s suits are in front of District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump agent. Smartmatic’s lawsuit is before Judge David Cohen, a Democrat who was elected in November.

While the sums fluctuate, attorneys who have worked on defamation cases in the past say the companies have performed pretty well so far.

“I think these are the cases where traditional libel claims, libel claims and the application of a fairly regulated law are being made in this country,” said David Schulz, a defamation scholar at Yale Law School. But Schulz added, “It’s not that these will be slam-dunk cases at all.”

Too early to tell

Experts said it was too early to tell how much money companies can actually make. Businesses can ask for any amount of money they want, but those numbers often change as judges and juries weigh the facts.

Robert Rabin, a professor at Stanford Law School, noted that the numbers requested were “awfully large” but added that at this point it is “really difficult to be very specific”.

To win a defamation case, a plaintiff usually has to prove that the defendant made a false statement of fact that caused harm to the defendant. If the plaintiff is a public figure, he must also demonstrate that the defendant acted with “actual malice” – which essentially means that the spokesman knew or should have known that what he was saying was not true .

Dominion and Smartmatic would have to lower the bar if they were considered private individuals. But Fox has claimed Smartmatic is a public figure, and legal experts said judges would likely agree.

Some of the false statements suing Dominion and Smartmatic include allegations by Giuliani and Powell on Fox News shows and elsewhere that Dominion is owned by Smartmatic and was created on the instructions of the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez to lock elections, including the 2020 competition between Trump and Biden. Lindell also falsely claimed that Dominion machines were used to steal millions of votes for Biden.

Schulz said the lawsuits were “one of the few options we currently have to contain misinformation.”

“If we can send people to jail for misrepresenting a company’s financial situation, but there is no way to spread lies in a presidential campaign to try to influence people’s voices, then we have a big problem “, he said.

Real malice

According to John Goldberg, professor of defamation at Harvard Law School, the lawsuits against Giuliani and Powell are likely simpler than those against Fox News and its hosts.

“I think there is pretty good evidence on Giuliani and Powell that would allow a jury to find the real malice of these defendants,” Goldberg said. “For example, Dominion noted in his complaint that Giuliani routinely talked about fraud in his public out-of-court statements, but every time he was on trial and under oath, so to speak, he said, ‘No, we’re not claiming fraud, yours To honor. “

“You have a shot against Fox News and the Fox personalities, but it’s a little harder,” Goldberg said.

In its lawsuit, Smartmatic alleges that Fox News and its hosts knew that Powell and Giuliani’s allegations about Smartmatic’s systems for casting votes on Biden were false. The company argues that comments from other Fox News journalists, such as Eric Shawn and Tucker Carlson, made it clear that Fox had no evidence to back up Powell and Giuliani’s claims.

For example, Carlson said in November that Powell “never sent us evidence, despite many polite requests. When we pressed further, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her.”

Smartmatic wrote that if Fox News or its hosts had evidence to back Powell’s claims, Carlson shouldn’t have said what he did.

While the defendants in the Dominion lawsuits have not yet provided their formal responses, Fox News and its hosts have already asked the judge in the Smartmatic case to drop the lawsuit. Paul Clement, Fox’s attorney and former attorney general under President George W. Bush, wrote in a motion that the news company was just doing its job, covering the claims of the then president and his supporters that were “objectively newsworthy”.

Clement wrote that the lawsuit is “at the heart of the news media’s First Amendment mission to educate on matters of public concern”.

While this argument may be influential among some jurors, Rabin noted that there is no such thing as an “absolute defense of newsworthiness”.

There is also no “defense of republication”.

“In other words, anyone who has published a defamatory statement without qualification is also subject to a defamation suit,” said Rabin.

Uphill struggle for billions

If Dominion and Smartmatic win their cases, it could still be an uphill battle for them to get the billions they believe are owed.

If the companies can prove that the defendant’s statements were defamatory, they are entitled to the amount of money that they can prove that they lost because of the claims – for example because of lost election contracts. You may also be entitled to punitive damages or money to prevent the accused from spreading lies in the future.

Every business has sought punitive damages in addition to damages or money to repay them for the damage suffered. In Dominion’s case, it has split that damage in half, claiming that approximately $ 651.7 million is owed for each type of damage. Smartmatic has not disclosed the amount of punitive damage it is seeking, but says it is owed $ 2.7 billion in damages.

While Dominion and Smartmatic can substantiate their claims for damages by showing that they lost their business because of the false information they complain about, punitive damages claims are far more discretionary and can affect factors such as a defendant’s wealth.

Schulz, the professor at Yale, said that it could be difficult for voting machine manufacturers to obtain punitive damages because of the need to show not only actual malice but also intent to harm the company. It is plausible that the statements were more aimed at offending Biden or the Democratic Party, Schulz said.

Some states also limit the amount of punishment or damages that can be awarded in a civil lawsuit, although neither New York nor the District of Columbia in which the previous cases were filed have such limits. The Supreme Court has ruled that punitive damages are usually less than ten times the amount of damages and that smaller ratios can be scrutinized.

Dominion boss Poulos admitted on Tuesday on CNBC that the $ 1.3 billion demanded by his company could change.

“It’s difficult to set a hard number, but the damage to our reputation alone has hit us devastating,” said Poulos.

Poulos also said his company followed the first change.

Initial adjustment rights

“There is no secret endgame that restricts a person’s right to freedom of expression. We believe in it and honestly we want to rely on freedom of expression to find out the truth,” Poulos told CNBC. “Our intention is to bring the facts to the table so that American voters can understand exactly what happened during their election and how false those allegations were and how utterly nonsense they were.”

Giuliani has said that asking for more than $ 1 billion is a scare tactic.

“The amount asked for is obviously intended to shock people with weak hearts,” Giuliani said in a statement. “It is yet another act of intimidation by the hateful left wing, the exercise of freedom of speech, and the ability of lawyers to vigorously defend, eradicate and censor their clients.”

Giuliani, Powell, and Lindell have all signaled that they’re glad the suits were brought against them.

“My message to Dominion is that you finally did it because it will now be back in the limelight,” Lindell told CNBC after he was sued.

Lindell also denied Dominion’s claims that he benefited financially from the statements he made about her.

Powell’s attorney, Conservative Provocateur L. Lin Wood, said, “Get ready to rumble, Dominion.”

“You made a mistake suing Sidney. You’re going to pay a heavy price,” Wood said, according to Forbes.

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that only Smartmatic, not Dominion, has sued Fox News.

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Categories
Business

Disney inventory has ‘excellent stay-at-home story,’ portfolio supervisor says

Disney stock has ‘perfect stay-at-home story,’ portfolio manager says

One Dow stock rebounded at a record high this week.

Disney stock hit an all-time high for three days in a row. This is the most recent surge due to the company’s streaming success. Disney launched its international streaming service Star in Europe, Canada and Australia this week.

The total number of paid subscribers for the Disney + streaming platform rose to nearly 95 million in the last quarter, counteracting significantly lower revenue in the pandemic-hit parks segment.

“The streaming business is the perfect home stay story and provides stability for the company during the shutdown,” Federated Hermes portfolio manager Steve Chiavarone told CNBC’s Trading Nation on Wednesday.

Chiavarone said investors are also pricing in high expectations for a post-pandemic recovery.

“They are in this reopening phase where theme parks, cruises – all of these are activities we expect for the next year or so – are returning. This diversified business model is paying off,” said Chiavarone.

Netflix’s subscriber base dwarfs that of Disney +, but New Street Advisors founder Delano Saporu points to the new content and strong growth to explain the stock’s high value.

“You saw how you beat your four year old subscriber [projection] in 14 months, “he said in the same interview.” They’ve also released new content, the new Star Wars series is out in May and they have some Marvel series in June as well. So investors are looking for this original content. They appreciate that. “

The combination of a strong streaming offering and a future reopening is the recipe for success, said Chiavarone.

“It’s a perfect example of a company using the pandemic to invest in technology and become more productive and stronger in the future,” he said.

Disclosure: New Street Advisors holds DIS.

Disclaimer of liability

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Health

Covid variants might ‘undermine all of our efforts’

CDC director warns strains could reverse drop in cases, hospitalizations

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

New, highly transmissible variants of Covid-19 “may” “reverse” the nation’s control of the pandemic and could undermine “all of our efforts” against the disease if the virus proliferates in different parts of the world, Chief of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.

Senior U.S. health officials have warned in recent weeks that the emergence of highly contagious variants, particularly of strain B.1.1.7 from the UK, could reverse the current downward trend in infections in the U.S. and delay the nation’s recovery from the pandemic.

The problem is not limited to the United States. As the coronavirus spreads, it makes large numbers of copies of itself, and each version is a little different from the previous one, experts say. The more people become infected, the more likely it is that problematic mutations will occur.

“Even if you weren’t necessarily inclined to be part of the global health effort, we have to, as any effort we are making here in this nation could potentially be undermined immediately from these variants,” said CDC Director Dr . Rochelle Walensky on Wednesday told the National Academy of Medicine and the American Public Health Association.

Scientists are not surprised by the emergence of the variants, and have repeated that the vaccines currently available should continue to work against them, although they may not be as effective as against the original “wild” strain.

Moderna announced Wednesday that it was shipping cans of a booster shot specifically targeting the variant common in South Africa known as the B.1.351 strain to the National Institutes of Health.

“We know this virus knows no geographic boundaries and that with the rapid spread of Covid-19 variants that can reverse advances in fighting this pandemic, it is more urgent than ever to address this reality,” said Walensky .

The US reports a weekly average of around 71,562 new Covid-19 cases per day, a 12% decrease from the previous week, and a significant decrease from the average of new cases in the US in early January of nearly 250,000 cases per day, according to a CNBC Analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Although not every country reports similar declines, global Covid-19 cases in the United States have declined for six consecutive weeks, according to the latest World Health Organization situation report released on Tuesday.

The decline is welcome news as countries battle to get their starting doses of Covid-19 vaccines. While some nations have been administering vaccines since December, some are just getting their first shots.

The first shipment of vaccines delivered under the World Health Organization’s COVAX program arrived in Ghana on Wednesday. Some experts have previously said that an equitable distribution of vaccines may be too late as wealthier nations have made their own deals with vaccine manufacturers and claimed their initial dose supply.

“The Covid-19 pandemic is a clear reminder of how closely we are connected as a global community,” said Walensky.

– CNBC’s Berkeley Lovelace Jr. and Natasha Turak contributed to this report.

Categories
Business

Gucci Extends Lease in Trump Tower

Gucci Extends Lease in Trump Tower

On the day President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were inaugurated in Washington, DC, Melania and Donald Trump stepped off Air Force One in South Florida to reach the borders of the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach .

He wore a typically boxy suit of undetermined origin. She wore an orange-and-blue boldly patterned Gucci caftan worth $ 3,700, which was as symbolic as the famous “I really don’t care, do you” jacket she wore on a trip to children in 2018 in a border prison to visit in Texas.

With its laid-back lines and orange hexagons reminiscent of a David Hicks rug, the new dress telegraphed the idea of ​​Mrs. Trump taking on a new role as a recreational person, seemingly carefree. It was also a global advertisement for a brand that is heavily linked to the Trump business, unwittingly or not.

For the past 14 years, Gucci has leased 48,667 feet at the base of Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, making it the building’s largest commercial tenant.

Other companies that rented space with the Trumps have reduced their space or not extended their leases. One of them is Nike, which in 2018 closed its Niketown location at 6 East 57th Street – a building around the corner from Trump Tower for which the Trump Organization has signed a 100-year long lease – and opened a new flagship, the so-called House of Innovation, five blocks south. (A Nike spokeswoman then declined to reach out to Forbes about whether the move was political.)

In 2019, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China reduced its presence in Trump Tower. Tiffany, who temporarily took over the Niketown space in 2018 while her flagship was being renovated, is not extending its lease next year, Bloomberg reported recently.

But in 2020 Gucci renegotiated and renewed its lease, according to two people knowledgeable about the deal who both asked not to use their names because they are not authorized to speak about it.

The luxury company received a rent reduction in return for agreeing to extend its lease beyond 2026. Trump Tower had to keep an extremely desirable tenant: a brand that has been booming since designer Alessandro Michele took over creative direction in 2015, whose presence in the building helps counter the idea that its namesake is nothing more than the idea of ​​a “poor person from a rich person, ”as Fran Lebowitz said.

However, the players involved do not speak about it publicly.

Four days after receiving a detailed list of questions about the deal, a Gucci representative called and said a statement was on the way within an hour. A little over an hour later the agent called back and said the explanation would not come.

The Trump Organization did not respond to two requests for comment.

One possible reason: According to the person who saw the new lease, Gucci asked Trump organization staff to sign confidentiality agreements regarding their terms.

Even so, the deal paid off for the Trumps for reasons beyond symbolism.

Numerous luxury brands occupying prime Manhattan retail space have renegotiated leases during the coronavirus pandemic as pedestrian traffic has decreased. Others simply sublet their space. That’s what Ralph Lauren did at its Fifth Avenue location last November, leasing 28,300 square feet to fast fashion retailer Mango for $ 5 million – that’s $ 22 million less than Ralph Lauren paid for it.

In recent years, the revenue from “The Apprentice,” Mr. Trump’s former reality show on NBC, has dried up. Debt payments across the Trump business are falling due. This has made the retail space in and around Trump Tower a lifeline. Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner wrote in the New York Times in January of last year that this is probably the most reliable and “largest long-term money producer” in his empire.

A 2012 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with Trump Organization finances described Gucci as a 20-year lease in 2006. Gucci paid $ 384.40 per square foot of rent per month. This equates to an annual base rate of $ 18.7 million and accounts for about two-thirds of the total of $ 29.53 million that the Trump Organization makes annually from its commercial tenants there, according to the filing.

Regardless of Gucci’s discretion, it is far from clear that news of the renegotiation could affect sales. The fashion industry tends to be politically liberal, but sometimes business is just business and aesthetics outweigh politics.

Oscar de la Renta jumped between first ladies with diametrically opposed worldviews. James Galanos pledged allegiance to Nancy Reagan despite the catastrophic neglect of AIDS by her husband’s government. In 2019, Bernard Arnault, whose company LVMH owns Tiffany, was accompanied by Mr. Trump at a Louis Vuitton factory in Texas and posed for photos with him.

But Mr Trump’s divisive behavior, especially since the beginning of the pandemic and elections, has strengthened activists’ determination to denounce him. Brands are more sensitive than ever to the threat of boycotts. Companies like Nike and Twitter have joined the Black Lives Matter movement.

Gucci’s latest incarnation was more racially inclusive than most high-end fashion brands.

Shortly after Mr. Michele became its lead designer and began shedding a high-profile and self-conscious snobby aesthetic for an ironic, referential style that could perhaps be described as Etsy Luxe, the company ran an advertising campaign with all black models.

But it also failed.

In 2017, the release of a jacket was announced that looked remarkably like one designed decades ago by Dapper Dan, aka Daniel Day, a black couturier based in Harlem. In response, the brand reached out to him, placed him in an ad for his men’s tailoring and worked with him in a luxury boutique.

Soon after, she announced an initiative called Gucci Equilibrium, which in part aimed to improve diversity and inclusion in the company.

But in 2019, Gucci pulled out a $ 890 sweater that was criticized for taking Blackface off the market. And its executive team, along with that of its parent company Kering, continues to be dominated by white men (Kering has a black board member).

Though Gucci’s decision to extend the 725 Fifth Avenue lease was made back in January before protesters carrying Confederate flags stormed the Capitol, Trump’s 2020 connection with white supremacists was little-known, Kailee Scales said. Ms. Scales is the former executive director of Black Lives Matter Global Network and a principal at ThinkFree Global Strategies, a boutique company that supports brands like Amazon and Sprite with marketing strategies on social justice issues.

“This is a time,” she said, “when brands, organizations and individuals around the world are counting on racial justice and are working to address and dismantle the systems that led us to one of the most terrifying moments in history – murder at.” George Floyd. “

As a result, it is “an odd choice” for Gucci to continue to bond closely with a man who “has openly refused to reject white supremacy” and “has built political justice by promoting racist conspiracy theories”.

Ms. Scales’ opinion was shared by Shannon Coulter, who launched the Grab Your Wallet campaign, which boycotted SoulCycle and New Balance after people with interests in these companies donated significant sums of money to Mr. Trump’s campaigns.

In an interview, Ms. Coulter said that she deliberately removed Gucci and Nike from the boycott list. “We were pretty generous knowing they had signed leases before his campaign,” she said.

Gucci’s decision to extend 2020 was something completely different.

“It’s disgusting,” she said. “You are essentially doing business with a white supremacist. That’s what this decision means. “

Still, few people directly related to the fashion world seem anxious to address the potential controversy. Editors like Samira Nasr from Harper’s Bazaar, Nina Garcia from Elle and Anna Wintour from Vogue have positioned themselves as administrators of racial justice. But they also rely on Gucci for advertising. Representatives for All declined to comment. Mr. Day did not respond to a request for comment.

Jeremy O. Harris, the author of “Slave Play”, has had a contractual relationship with the house since November 2020. In general, such arrangements involve wearing a branded clothing in public appearances and then keeping it safe. “I’m very proud of my relationship with them after meeting people and seeing them really listening and trying to change,” he said in an interview last Friday. And “while there are few real estate moguls who have risen to the level of semi-fascist leaders like Trump, as far as I know they are pretty much all deeply compromised people.”

Still, Mr. Harris admitted, “this is complicated.”

Fortunately, he added, “I really only go to the Wooster Street store.”

Ben Protess and Vanessa Friedman contributed to the coverage.