Month: February 2021

Categories
Business

FDA says photographs for brand spanking new variants will not want giant medical trials

FDA says shots for new variants won't need large clinical trials

Erick Vazquez receives the Pfizer vaccine during an event to vaccinate approximately 500 healthcare workers and adults over 65 years of age against COVID-19 organized by Labor Community Services, the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, and the St. Johns Well Child and Family Center shaped work of love, in Pico Union, February 13, 2021 in Los Angeles, CA.

Dania Maxwell | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration announced Monday that modified Covid-19 vaccines against new, emerging variants can be approved without the need for lengthy clinical trials.

The new guidelines, published in a 24-page document on the FDA’s website, would release the new vaccines as an amendment to a company’s originally approved emergency application, according to the FDA. The company would have to submit new data showing the modified vaccine produces a similar immune response and is safe, similar to annual flu vaccines.

“Preliminary reports from clinical trials evaluating COVID-19 vaccine candidates in several countries, including South Africa, have contributed to concerns that the vaccine may be less effective against variant B.1.351 than against the original virus,” the wrote Agency found in the document with reference to the strain in South Africa. “Therefore, there is an urgent need to initiate the development and evaluation of vaccines against these SARSCoV-2 variants.”

The updated guidelines come because U.S. health officials, including White House Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anthony Fauci, fear the virus could potentially mutate enough to evade the protection of current vaccines and reverse advances in the pandemic.

For the past few weeks, officials have urged Americans to get vaccinated as soon as possible before potentially new and even more dangerous variants of the virus emerge.

As of Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had identified 1,661 cases of variant B.1.1.7, which were first identified in the UK. The agency has identified 22 cases of the B.1.351 strain from South Africa and five cases of P.1, a variant first identified in Brazil.

The FDA approved Pfizer and Moderna’s emergency vaccines in December, and the two drug makers have since announced plans to change their vaccines to target new variants. The guidelines could speed up the regulatory review process for the vaccines.

Public health officials and infectious disease experts said there was a high chance that Covid-19 would become an endemic disease, meaning it will never go away completely, although it will likely spread at lower levels than it is now. Health officials must constantly look for new variants of the virus so scientists can make vaccines against them, medical experts say.

Richard Webby, director of a World Health Organization flu center at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, said the clearance process for modified Covid-19 vaccines may be very similar to the procedure for annual flu shots.

The U.S. and other nations need to step up their surveillance of new tribes and then make regular recommendations as to which variants to target, he said in a recent interview. “It’s not there for Covid at the moment.”

Categories
Business

Inventory Market Drops as Bond Yields Rise on Inflation Expectations: Dwell Updates

Downtown Nashville last week. Changes to the Paycheck Protection Program would attempt to steer more pandemic loans to the smallest businesses.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Brett Carlsen/Getty Images

Aiming to steer more federal aid to the smallest and most vulnerable businesses, the Biden administration is altering the Paycheck Protection Program’s rules, increasing the amount sole proprietors are eligible to receive and imposing a 14-day freeze on loans to companies with 20 or more employees.

The freeze will take effect on Wednesday, the Small Business Administration planned to announce on Monday. Also, President Biden is expected to speak shortly after noon on Monday to make an announcement about small businesses.

In December’s economic relief package, Congress allocated $284 billion to restart the aid program. Banks and other financiers, which make the government-backed loans, have disbursed $134 billion to 1.8 million businesses since lending resumed last month. The money is intended to be forgiven if recipients comply with the program’s rules.

Companies with up to 500 workers are generally eligible for the loans, although second-draw loans — available to those whose sales dropped 25 percent or more in at least one quarter since the coronavirus pandemic began — are limited to companies with 300 or fewer employees. The 14-day moratorium is intended to focus lenders’ attention on the tiniest businesses, according to administration officials, who spoke to reporters at a news briefing on Sunday on the condition that they not be named.

Most small businesses are solo ventures, employing just the owner. For such companies, including sole proprietorships and independent contractors, one major impediment to getting relief money was a program rule that based their loan size on the annual profit they reported on their taxes. That made unprofitable businesses ineligible for aid, and left thousands of applicants with tiny loans — some as small as $1.

The new formula, which Small Business Administration officials said would be released soon, will focus instead on gross income. That calculation, which is done before many expenses are deducted, will let unprofitable businesses qualify for loans.

The agency is also changing several other program rules to expand eligibility. Those with recent felony convictions not tied to fraud will now be able to apply, as will those who are delinquent or in default on federal student loan debt. The agency also updated its guidance to clarify that business owners who are not United States citizens but lawful residents are eligible for loans.

Stocks on Wall Street dropped on Monday, following European and Asian indexes lower. U.S. government bond yields continued to climb as investors anticipated faster economic growth and inflation.

Yields on 10-year Treasury notes rose as high as 1.36 percent, the highest in a year, before pulling back. The yield has risen each of the past three weeks, about 30 basis points so far this month.

The sharp rise in yields and inflation expectations in markets has led to a debate about whether the Federal Reserve will respond by pulling back some monetary stimulus, reducing the easy-money policies that have helped keep stock markets buoyant for much of the pandemic.

“Investors are increasingly confident of a ‘V’ shape global recovery, so much so that the emerging concern is not growth, but inflation,” analysts at ING Bank wrote. “Increasingly, parallels are being drawn to similar events in 2013,” they wrote, when traders panicked in a “taper tantrum” about the easing of asset purchases by the central bank, sending yields surging higher.

Fed policymakers have indicated they will look past a short-term rise in inflation and keep monetary policy loose. But not everyone is buying this message, especially as the Biden administration is pushing a $1.9 trillion economic relief package.

“The bond market continues to telegraph an increasingly confident message on the global economy and skepticism of Fed guidance,” analysts at JPMorgan Chase wrote in a note over the weekend.

  • The S&P 500 index fell 0.5 percent in early trading.

  • Boeing’s shares recovered from early losses to climb slightly. The plane maker said 128 of its 777 jetliners should be grounded worldwide until they can be inspected following an engine failure on a United Airlines flight over Colorado. Boeing has only recently emerged from an 18-month ban of the 737 MAX.

  • European stock indexes also slipped, with the Stoxx Europe 600 down 0.4 percent.

  • Oil prices rose on Monday. Futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, climbed more than 2 percent to over $60 a barrel after last week’s volatility when a winter storm disrupted oil production in Texas.

  • Natural gas futures for March delivery dropped 3.8 percent. The price of natural gas jumped a week ago when the storm hit as demand for surged. Natural gas is the largest source of electricity in Texas.

The price of Bitcoin set another record over the weekend, briefly rising above $58,000. And Elon Musk tweeted about it, cementing his status as one of crypto’s most prominent backers.

Tesla is set to make more profit from buying Bitcoin than selling electric cars, according to a research note by Daniel Ives at Wedbush Securities. A few weeks ago, the company said it had bought $1.5 billion in Bitcoin to diversify its balance sheet. The rapid rise in Bitcoin since then implies a gain, on paper at least, of roughly $1 billion; that’s more than Tesla earned from selling cars last year, the first time it turned a full-year profit. (Tesla also made more from another tangential business, selling renewable energy credits to other automakers.)

Will more companies now follow Tesla’s lead? Gaudy numbers like this might make finance chiefs think twice about the cash and low-yielding bonds on their balance sheets.

“It’s clearly been a good initial investment and a trend we expect could have a ripple impact for other public companies over the next 12 to 18 months,” Mr. Ives wrote. He expects less than 5 percent of public companies will shift corporate cash into cryptocurrency, which would still be a big jump.

Skepticism of the Bitcoin rally abounds, including from the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Citadel’s chief executive, Kenneth C. Griffin. And even as he tweeted approvingly of cryptocurrencies, Mr. Musk noted that prices “do seem high.” Last May, he said the same of Tesla’s shares (“too high”) — they have since risen more than 400 percent.

The U.S. economy remains mired in a pandemic winter of shuttered storefronts, high unemployment and sluggish job growth. But on Wall Street and in Washington, attention is shifting to an intriguing if indistinct prospect: a post-Covid boom.

In recent weeks, economists have begun to talk of a supercharged rebound that brings down unemployment, drives up wages and may foster years of stronger growth, Ben Casselman reports for The Times.

There are hints that the economy has turned a corner: Retail sales jumped last month. New unemployment claims have declined from early January, though they remain high. Measures of business investment have picked up.

Economists surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia this month predicted that U.S. output will increase 4.5 percent this year, which would make it the best year since 1999. Economists at Goldman Sachs forecast that the economy will grow 6.8 percent this year and that the unemployment rate will drop to 4.1 percent by December, a level that took eight years to achieve after the last recession.

The growing optimism stems from several factors. Coronavirus cases are falling. The vaccine rollout is gaining steam. And largely because of trillions of dollars in federal help, the economy appears to have made it through last year with less structural damage — in the form of business failures, home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies — than many people feared last spring.

Lastly, consumers are sitting on a trillion-dollar mountain of cash, a result of months of lockdown-induced saving and successive rounds of stimulus payments.

“There will be this big boom as pent-up demand comes through and the economy is opening,” said Ellen Zentner, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley. “There is an awful lot of buying power that we’ve transferred to households to fuel that pent-up demand.”

It’s the first day of the DealBook DC Policy Project, in which top policymakers and business leaders gather to debate the priorities for moving the country — and the world — forward. Today, speakers consider the shape of the economic recovery, how to hold power to account, the future of travel and where to focus stimulus funds. Register here to attend, free of charge from anywhere in the world.

Today’s lineup (all times Eastern):

9 a.m. – 9:25 a.m.

On top of the $1.9 trillion economic aid plan that is working its way through Congress, the White House is raising the prospect of another big spending package focused on infrastructure. Although the economy is recovering faster than expected, it remains fragile and uneven. Navigating this path is Janet Yellen, the former Federal Reserve chair who took over as Treasury secretary last month.

2:30 P.m. – 3 P.m.

Letitia James has more prominent cases and investigations on her plate today than most lawyers will manage in a lifetime. The way she uses her power — from suing Amazon over worker safety to uncovering the underreporting of nursing home deaths, investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s business dealings and many other actions — also highlights how states can shape national policy.

3:30 P.m. – 4 P.m.

Last year was “the toughest year in Delta’s history,” according to Ed Bastian, the airline’s chief executive. The carrier reported a loss of more than $12 billion as travel ground to a halt during the pandemic. In addition to feeling the pandemic’s economic effects, the airline industry is at the center of health policy debates, like whether to make masks mandatory and require coronavirus tests before travel.

4 P.m. – 4:30 P.m.

Since stepping down as Microsoft’s chief executive in 2014, Steve Ballmer has kept busy as an National Basketball Association team owner and founder of USAFacts, a nonprofit group dedicated to presenting data about the United States in easy-to-read formats. The group aims, in his words, to “figure out what the government really does” with taxpayers’ money, and highlight the areas where spending may have the greatest effect.

  • The House is expected to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill at the end of the week, probably in a party-line vote. The Senate may take it up shortly after.

  • The Federal Reserve chair, Jay Powell, testifies before Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, and is likely to emphasize the need for more economic stimulus.

  • On Tuesday, HSBC reports earnings, and the bank may also announce steps to move top executives from London to Hong Kong, The Financial Times reports.

  • Other earnings highlights include Home Depot on Tuesday, Nvidia on Wednesday, Airbnb and Salesforce on Thursday, and Berkshire Hathaway on Saturday, when Warren Buffett’s widely followed annual letter on the state of business, markets and politics is also expected.

Olivier Véran, the French health minister, second from right, in Nice on Saturday. He said the consulting giant McKinsey & Company had helped with the vaccine rollout but played no role in policy decisions.Credit…Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

McKinsey & Company has become a magnet for controversy in France after the public learned of millions of euros worth of contracts to help plan vaccine distribution that has been derided for being far too slow, Liz Alderman reports for The New York Times.

The contracts — totaling 11 million euros ($13.3 million), of which €4 million went to McKinsey — were confirmed by a parliamentary committee last week. The government of President Emmanuel Macron, which has been under fire for months for stumbling in its handling of the pandemic, was forced to admit it had turned to outside consulting firms for help managing the response.

called for McKinsey to help define distribution routes for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which must be kept as cold as minus 80 degrees Celsius during transport and storage. The company would benchmark France’s performance against other European countries. McKinsey experts would also help coordinate a vaccination task force comprising officials from numerous agencies, with some decision chains involving up to 50 authorities.

In early January, France had vaccinated only “several thousand people,” according to the health minister, compared with 230,000 in Germany and more than 110,000 in Italy.

Other contracts provided for Accenture, the global information technology consultancy, to roll out the campaign’s monitoring systems, and for two French consultancies, Citwell and ILL, to help with “logistical support and vaccine distribution.”

The government’s strategy focused on delivering the vaccines to 1,000 distribution points in France, from which the doses would be sent in supercooled trucks to nursing homes, clinics and local mayors’ offices. In Germany, the program was simpler: Authorities decided to administer the vaccine in 400 regional centers.

By the first week of January, France had one million vaccine doses in hand, but the delay in getting them into peoples’ arms was becoming public knowledge. The pace has recently picked up. But with 4.7 doses administered per 100 people, according to a New York Times database, France still trails neighbors like Germany and Italy.

Categories
Health

CDC research reveals academics might play ‘central position’ in Covid unfold at colleges

CDC study shows teachers could play 'central role' in Covid spread at schools

A student is seen walking down the steps of PS 139 closed public school in the Ditmas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, United States on October 8, 2020.

Michael Nagle | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

School teachers and staff could play a “central role” in the transmission of Covid-19 in schools that fail to follow social precautions and precautions against facial covering. Vaccination for the disease could help get students back to class safely, according to a new state study released Monday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the spread of the coronavirus in eight Georgia public elementary schools in the same school district between December 1 and January 22, including 24 days of face-to-face study. During that period, the average number of cases per 100,000 residents of the county increases by nearly 300%, the study said.

The Federal Health Office, together with the state and local health authorities, found nine Covid-19 “clusters” in which 13 educators and 32 pupils at six of the eight primary schools were involved.

The median cluster size – defined as three or more linked Covid-19 cases – was six people, and one educator was the “index patient” or the first case identified in four of these clusters, the CDC found. One student was the first patient in a cluster while the other four clusters had an unidentifiable index patient.

All but one of the clusters included “at least one educator and a likely educator-to-student transfer,” according to the study.

“These results suggest that educators can play an important role in transmission in school and that transmission in school can occur when physical distance and mask compliance are not optimal,” the CDC researchers wrote in the study.

In the study, CDC researchers said they conducted interviews with parents, educators, and school principals and examined seating plans, classroom layouts, physical distancing, and adherence to recommended mask use in face-to-face learning to identify case links.

They found that social distancing recommendations were “less than ideal” followed across all nine clusters. Students sat less than three feet apart, and in many cases the virus was able to spread among students, and students could have spread in small group sessions, according to the study.

The results come just over a week since the CDC released new guidance on how to safely reopen schools to face-to-face learning despite the spread of the virus. Among the numerous recommendations, the CDC advises districts to introduce their reopening plans according to the severity of the outbreak in their areas.

It also states that schools should adopt “essential elements” for resumption of personal learning, including wearing masks, physical distancing, and monitoring the level of spread in the surrounding community.

While the CDC advised states to give priority to vaccinating teachers and staff “as soon as supplies permit,” the guidelines did not recommend it for reopening. However, the study, published Monday, suggested that vaccinating educators could be important in protecting the most vulnerable while reducing disruptions to personal learning and potentially preventing the virus from spreading in schools.

“While COVID-19 vaccination is not required for schools to reopen, it should be viewed as an additional mitigation measure that should be added as it becomes available,” the researchers wrote.

– CNBC’s Will Feuer contributed to this report.

Categories
Entertainment

Meghan and Harry Help Girls’s Shelter Broken Texas Storm

LONDON, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 15: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attend the WellChild Awards at the Royal Lancaster Hotel on October 15, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Mark Cuthbert / UK Press via Getty Images)

It was announced just last week that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are officially stepping down from their royal duties for good, but that doesn’t mean they are stepping back from the causes that mean most to them. On February 21, Harry and Meghan surprised Genesis Women’s Shelter & Support in Dallas, TX, assisting them with repairs caused by the winter storm that devastated the state.

“Today news of our damage reached Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex!” Genesis Women’s Shelter & Support – an organization dedicated to providing protection, safety, and advice to women and children who have experienced domestic violence – wrote on their Twitter page. “Through your non-profit organization [Archewell Foundation]They support us by replacing the roof of our temporary shelter and helping us meet our immediate needs. ”

Although Meghan and Harry are forced to give up various royal patrons and honorary appointments by stepping down as high-ranking working members of the royal family, they can retain their private patronages, including charities and projects like Smart Works, Mayhew, The Invictus Games, and of course their Archewell Foundation . This under-the-radar couple’s recent help shows that the Duke and Duchess will always be people of action, regardless of royal patronage.

Genesis has set up an Amazon wish list to help with donations.

Today the news of our damage reached Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex! Through their non-profit organization, they support us by replacing the roof of our transitional shelter and helping us meet our immediate needs. THANK YOU, ARCHEWELL FOUNDATION! pic.twitter.com/rFtxzvtFRo

– Genesis Women’s Shelter & Support (@GenesisShelter) February 22, 2021

Categories
World News

Dow falls greater than 100 factors amid price fears, Apple and Tesla shares decline

Dow falls more than 100 points amid rate fears, Apple and Tesla shares decline

US stocks fell on Monday as a steady rise in bond yields hurt appetite for risk-weighted assets, particularly growth technology stocks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 120 points. The S&P 500 lost 0.7%, led by technology and consumer discretionary. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.1%.

Some equity investors have been increasingly concerned over the past few weeks about rapidly rising government bond yields as they could hurt especially high-growth companies that rely on easy borrowing while reducing the relative attractiveness of stocks.

Tesla stock lost 3% after falling 4% last week. Big tech stocks came under pressure as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix and Alphabet traded at least 1% less.

The yield on 10-year government bonds rose last week by 14 basis points to 1.34%, the highest level since February 2020. The reference yield rose on Monday by a further 3 basis points to 1.37%. So far this month the reference rate has risen by 28 basis points. One basis point is 0.01%.

“This movement in returns should be watched closely by investors,” said Matt Maley, chief marketing strategist at Miller Tabak, in a note. “Just because long-term interest rates are extremely low on a historical basis, we don’t think they need to rise as much as most experts believe … before they affect the stock market.”

All eyes will be on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell as he gives his semi-annual testimony on the economy to the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday. His comments on rates and inflation could set the market direction for the week.

Meanwhile, many on Wall Street believe the rise in bond yields is a sign of growing confidence in the economic recovery and stocks should be able to absorb higher interest rates on strong gains.

“We don’t see the recent surge in returns as a threat to the bull market,” said Keith Lerner, chief market strategist at Truist, in a note. “Given that we are in the early stages of an economic recovery, monetary and fiscal policies remain supportive, and the strong recovery in earnings and cheap relative valuations maintain our overweight position on equities.”

The move on Monday came after the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite posted a two-week winning streak last week, losing 0.7% and 1.6% respectively. The blue-chip Dow was up 0.1% over the same period, supported by Caterpillar and JPMorgan.

The market goes into the last week of February with solid gains. The Dow and S&P 500 are up more than 5% this month, while the Nasdaq is up 6.2%. The small-cap Russell 2000 outperformed this month, up 9.3%.

On the pandemic, the White House said it expects to ship millions of delayed coronavirus vaccine doses this week after a widespread winter storm disrupted logistics. Governor Andrew Cuomo said Sunday that a New York resident tested positive for the variant of Covid-19, which was first identified in South Africa.

The airline’s shares rebounded after Deutsche Bank upgraded several stocks. American Airlines rose more than 7%.

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Categories
Business

Belief in pictures must be earned after mistreatment of Blacks and Latinos

Trust in shots needs to be earned after mistreatment of Blacks and Latinos

Dr. Torian Easterling is the First Assistant Commissioner and Chief Equity Officer for the New York Department of Health

There is one essential element to the success of a vaccination program: people’s trust in the vaccine and the institutions that give it. Trust in the Covid-19 vaccine is just as valuable as our vaccine supply. But after decades of racist divestment and medical abuse, the black and Latin American communities have every reason to be skeptical.

A recent CDC vaccine reluctance survey yielded disappointing – if not surprising – results. In September, 56% of black Americans said they would get vaccinated, and by December – after the FDA approved Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for emergency use – that percentage had dropped to 46%. By comparison, 70% of white Americans responded that they intend to receive the vaccine in December. Another Kaiser Foundation survey found a similar trend among Hispanic Americans that only 42% would like to receive the vaccine.

But more revealing in these polls is exactly why blacks and Latinos aren’t ready to get the shot. The main reasons were side effects concerns, the vaccine being developed too quickly, and many said they don’t trust the government.

It is clear that much remains to be done. To win the trust of New York Black and Latino people we need to be inclusive, reach communities, hear voices, values ​​and opinions. The responsibility cannot lie with the individual. It must be up to institutions and public health officials to treat people with respect so that they have a reason to trust and make informed decisions. Imagine we put our arms around communities and let them know we have them.

In the past few months, I have participated in dozens of listening sessions with ward groups, faith leaders, and local health care providers in black and Latin American churches. We talked about misconceptions and fears about the Covid-19 vaccine and how decades of racism and poor treatment by the medical community have created suspicion.

When comparing the medical experiences of Black, Latino, and White, the contrast is unsettling and begins literally from the moment we are born. As we know, there are persistent and intolerable differences in maternal health outcomes.

Unfortunately, the unequal treatment continues into adulthood. People of color are less likely to receive the same treatment for everything from palliative care to treating chronic diseases. In many large cities, there is also unequal access to quality healthcare and, often, hospital segregation.

In my own conversations with New Yorkers, trust in government and medicine has been an ongoing issue. And while they are painful, they give us the opportunity to move into a place of healing.

Last summer we heard the call for change when hospital stays and deaths in Covid-19 exposed the health impact of racism and the murder of George Floyd exposed structural racism in our country. The movement prompted the health department to declare racism a public health problem and the city to set up the task force on racial inclusion.

Now we are maintaining that commitment as we introduce vaccines to the city. To build confidence in the vaccine, New York City unveiled a share plan rooted in 33 neighborhoods with high Covid-19 case and death rates, and historical inequalities such as disease burden and crowded living conditions.

Our central topic is community-oriented public relations work at the neighborhood level. Townhalls and webinars provide information about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. However, empowering people to make their own decisions needs to be done in small groups with trustworthy voices. That’s why we partner with hundreds of community-based organizations to be trusted ambassadors. We need to meet people where they are – on the phone, at home, online, or door to door – in the languages ​​New Yorkers speak. Communication must – and was – be open, honest and clear.

We also use data to inform our work. We sent a letter to health care providers across the city asking them to collect the race and ethnicity of the Covid-19 vaccine recipient and report it to the citywide vaccination registry. We’re releasing race and ethnicity data on Covid-19 tests and positivity, and we’ve just added postcode-level data.

We want to know who is receiving the vaccine and where there are gaps so we can get the vaccine to the right places. As the vaccine supply grows, we are working with community partners to identify the best locations for people to be vaccinated and to ensure connection with resources and services. The majority of our city vaccination sites are already in the 33 priority neighborhoods, but we are growing and prioritizing communities with longstanding inequalities that need the vaccine the most.

As we move forward with our vaccine rollout, racial justice will remain our most enduring core value. We know that we have to identify racism, take responsibility and do the necessary work to instill trust in everyday people for our vaccination strategy to be successful.

Categories
Politics

Dominion sues MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell over pro-Trump election conspiracies

Dominion sues MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell over pro-Trump election conspiracies

Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, waits outside the west wing of the White House before entering Washington, DC on January 15, 2021.

Drew Angerer | Getty Images

Dominion Voting Systems sued Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, Monday, accusing former President Donald Trump’s staunch ally of making false conspiracies about the 2020 election “because the lie is selling pillows”.

The $ 1.3 billion defamation lawsuit states that Lindell knew his repeated claims that the election had been “stolen” were not backed by evidence, but were held to help Trump’s supporters of the MyPillow purchase -To stimulate products.

The 115-page complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, DC, cites numerous statements Lindell made in television interviews and social media posts, as well as in a two-hour documentary that aired on conservative media in February.

“MyPillow’s defamatory marketing campaign – featuring promo codes like” FightforTrump “,” 45 “,” Proof “and” QAnon “- has increased MyPillow sales by 30-40% and has continued to mislead people to lie their choices in pillow purchases divert, “says Dominion’s lawsuit.

In a phone interview with CNBC, Lindell said, “I’m very happy that you finally filed the lawsuit.”

“My message to Dominion is that you finally did it because it’s going to be in the spotlight again,” said Lindell.

Lindell also denied Dominion’s claims that his company benefited from his efforts.

“They also say that I benefited from it, or that I used this for MyPillow to advertise and that’s not true. I lost 22 retailers,” Lindell said. “The culture for MyPillow has been canceled.”

The lawsuit against Lindell is just the latest effort by Dominion to seek redress for the “enormous damage” caused by the “viral disinformation campaign” against the electoral society whose systems were deployed in some areas of the US during the presidential election.

Last month, Dominion sued Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, accusing him of spreading similar conspiracies about the company to “get rich financially”.

Giuliani had called the lawsuit, which also claimed more than $ 1.3 billion in punitive and compensatory damages, as “intimidating the hateful left wing to obliterate and censor the exercise of freedom of speech and the ability of lawyers.” To vigorously defend customers. “

Smartmatic, another optional equipment company targeted after President Joe Biden’s victory in a series of conspiracies, filed its own billions of dollars in defamation lawsuit against the owner of Fox News in early February.

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Categories
Health

She Beat Most cancers at 10. Now She’ll Be a part of SpaceX’s First Personal Journey to Orbit.

She Beat Cancer at 10. Now She'll Join SpaceX's First Private Trip to Orbit.

Hayley Arceneaux, 29, had hoped this would be the year she would achieve her goal of visiting all seven continents before she turned 30.

However, she won’t have time for it.

She goes into space.

Ms. Arceneaux, a medical assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, will be one of four people on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket taking off from Florida. It’s slated to launch later this year and be the first crewed mission to orbit Earth where no one on board is a professional astronaut.

“I asked, ‘Will I get a passport stamp to go into space?'” Ms. Arceneaux said. “But I don’t think I’ll do it. So I’ll just draw a star and the moon in one of my passports. “

This adventure is led by Jared Isaacman, a 38-year-old billionaire who announced in January that he had bought the rocket launch from SpaceX, the space company founded by Elon Musk. Mr. Isaacman said at the time that he wanted the mission to be more than an outing for the super rich and that he had given St. Jude two of the four available spots.

One of them will go to a random winner of a sweepstakes competition to raise money for the hospital, which treats children for free and develops cures for childhood cancer and other diseases.

The other seat, Isaacman said, is occupied by a front line health worker in St. Jude, someone who symbolizes hope.

On Monday, St. Jude and Mr. Isaacman officials announced that Ms. Arceneaux was the person they had selected.

Ms. Arceneaux could be the youngest American to ever travel to orbit. She will also be the first person to go into space with a prosthetic body. She was a patient in St. Jude nearly 20 years ago, and metal bars replaced parts of the bones in her left leg as part of her treatment for bone cancer.

In the past, this would have kept her firmly on the ground and would not have been able to meet NASA’s strict medical standards for astronauts. But the advent of privately funded space travel has opened the final frontier to some people who were previously excluded.

Dr. Michael D. Neel, the orthopedic surgeon who installed Ms. Arceneaux’s prosthesis, says that while artificial leg bones mean she can’t practice contact sports on Earth, they shouldn’t limit her on this SpaceX trek.

“It shows us that the sky is not the limit,” said Dr. Neel. “It’s Heaven and Beyond. I think that’s the real point of it all, that it has very few restrictions on what you can do. Unless you’re playing soccer up there. “

Ms. Arceneaux said she hoped to inspire patients at St. Jude.

“You will be able to see a cancer survivor in space, especially one who went through the same thing as you,” she said. “It will help you visualize your future.”

Richard C. Shadyac Jr., president of ALSAC, the St. Jude fundraising organization, said of Ms. Arceneaux, “If anyone was a symbol of hope, it was Hayley.”

Mrs. Arceneaux herself did not find out until early January that she would take a seat on the rocket. Hospital officials had vaguely told her there was an opportunity they wanted to talk to her about. She said she thought “maybe it would be a commercial or maybe give a speech somewhere.”

Instead, it was an opportunity to become an astronaut.

“I even kind of laughed,” said Ms. Arceneaux. “I thought: what? Yes. Yes, please, that would be great. “She added,” Let me talk to my mom. “

Her mother had no objection.

Ms. Arceneaux first stepped on St. Jude in 2002. She was 10 years old. She had earned her black belt in taekwondo shortly before, but complained of pain in her leg. Her mother saw a lump sticking out over her left knee. The pediatrician in the small town of St. Francisville, La., Where they lived not far from Baton Rouge, told them it was a cancerous tumor.

“We have all fallen apart,” said Mrs. Arceneaux. “I remember being so scared because by the age of 10 everyone I knew with cancer had died.”

In St. Jude, doctors gave the good news that the cancer had not spread to other parts of the body. Ms. Arceneaux had chemotherapy, prosthetic leg surgery, and long sessions of physical therapy.

Already at this young age, bald from chemotherapy, Ms. Arceneaux was helping with fundraising for St. Jude. The next year she was recognized by Louisiana Public Broadcasting with one of its Young Heroes Awards.

“When I grow up, I want to be a nurse in St. Jude,” she said in a video shown at the 2003 ceremony. “I want to be a mentor to patients. When they walk in I’ll say, “I had this when I was little and I’m fine.”

Last year Ms. Arceneaux was hired by St. Jude. She works with children with leukemia and lymphoma, such as a teenager she recently spoke to.

“I informed him that I had also lost my hair,” said Ms. Arceneaux. I said to him, ‘You can ask me anything. I am a former patient. I will tell you the truth, everything you want to know. ‘And he said,’ Are you really going to tell me the truth? ‘ And I said yes. “

His burning question: “Are you the one who goes into space?”

Mrs. Arceneaux had to evade. “I said, ‘Well, we’ll see who gets announced.'” She said. “But I think he knew because then he and his father said,” Yes! “and fifty.”

Ms. Arceneaux and Mr. Isaacman visited SpaceX’s California headquarters three times to meet with engineers and plan the trip. Unlike the missions SpaceX flies for NASA, it won’t go to the International Space Station, but will orbit the earth for three or four days before splashing off the coast of Florida.

“She has an adventurous spirit,” said Isaacman of Ms. Arceneaux. “And now she’s allowed to travel to the stars, which is pretty cool.”

It will be a few more weeks before they know who their companions will be.

The St. Jude Sweepstakes, featured in a television commercial that aired during the Super Bowl two weeks ago, will run until the end of the month. Around $ 9.5 million has been raised to date. That appears to be way below the $ 100 million Isaacman himself pledged for St. Jude, or the overall goal of $ 200 million. But Mr. Isaacman and Mr. Shadyac said the fundraiser was going beyond the sweepstakes and that they were happy with the progress.

“This is going to be a campaign that will last until launch,” said Shadyac.

The competition is structured in such a way that the amount of donations is effectively limited. Entry is free. A minimum donation of $ 10 buys 100 entries, and each additional dollar donated buys 10 additional entries, up to $ 1,000 for 10,000 entries.

There were some more expensive options that are now sold out. For example, Mr. Isaacman will give a donor who has donated $ 100,000 a ride on the Russian-built MiG-29 jet fighter he owns. The donor will also be given a trip to watch the launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But that donor still only has 10,000 entries in the contest, just like someone who donated $ 1,000.

Mr. Isaacman said this was a deliberate choice to prevent a wealthy person from trying to win the grand prize of a trip to space by buying millions of items.

“Will it represent everyone on earth and not just rich whites?” Mr. Isaacman said.

The fourth SpaceX seat goes to the winner of a competition sponsored by Shift4, Isaacman’s company, that sells terminals and point of sale systems for credit card processing to restaurants and other businesses. The “Shark Tank” -like competition calls on entrepreneurs to design an online shop with the Shift4 software and then publish a video on Twitter describing their business.

As of last week, fewer than 100 people had submitted full entries. “It means that once you’ve created and entered a Shift4 store, your chances are pretty amazing,” said Isaacman.

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Business

France Employed McKinsey to Assist in the Pandemic. Then Got here the Questions.

France Hired McKinsey to Help in the Pandemic. Then Came the Questions.

In recent years, France has increased the use of consultants and created special budgets that the agencies can use to bring in external consultants if necessary. In 2018 McKinsey was selected as one of several consultants who can be hired by French agencies under a EUR 100 million pool contract. This meant that each of the agencies could choose one of the companies without having to get quotes for work.

The December contracts and another contract in mid-January totaling EUR 4 million originated from this combined agreement. McKinsey was asked to help define the distribution channels for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which must be kept at temperatures as low as minus 80 degrees Celsius during transport and storage. The company would compare France’s performance with other European countries. McKinsey experts would also help coordinate a task force on vaccination of officials from numerous agencies, with some decision-making chains involving up to 50 agencies.

Additional contracts saw Accenture, the global information technology consultant, implement the campaign’s surveillance systems, while Citwell, a French consultant, and the French arm of JLL, a UK-based company, were hired to provide “logistical support and assistance” for vaccine distribution . “

The government’s strategy focused on delivering the vaccines to 1,000 distribution points in France, from where the cans would be shipped in supercooled trucks to nursing homes, clinics and local mayor’s offices. Local distribution was seen as a way to overcome the caution of up to 40 percent of the population about vaccination.

In Germany, the program was simpler: the authorities decided to give the vaccine in 400 regional centers.

France had a million doses of vaccine in hand by the first week of January, but the delay in getting them into people’s arms became public knowledge. The campaign continued to lag as Pfizer and Moderna temporarily slowed additional supplies.

The pace has increased recently. More than three million of France’s 67 million people have now received at least one dose of vaccine and over 923,000 have been fully vaccinated. According to a New York Times database, France still lags behind neighbors like Germany and Italy with 4.7 doses per 100 people.

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Business

Porsche CEO warns of ‘very severe’ international chip scarcity

Porsche CEO warns of 'very serious' global chip shortage

The CEO of Porsche warned on Monday that the daily operations of the German luxury car maker could be affected by a “very serious” global semiconductor shortage in the coming months.

“The semiconductor issue is very serious, as the entire industry is affected by the great demand for consumer electronics and the faster return of the automotive sector,” said Oliver Blume, CEO of Porsche, on Monday to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe”.

“We could be affected every day, so we will be watching very closely over the next few days and months what we can do. We have to relax in the short term and look for long-term measures.”

His comments come after a sudden surge in global auto sales late last year that coincided with a lack of essential chip components. The delivery bottlenecks brought the assembly lines of the chip-dependent automotive industry to a standstill and stopped the production of hundreds of thousands of vehicles worldwide.

Demand for these chips or semiconductors has increased during the coronavirus pandemic as consumers bought game consoles, laptops and televisions in an era of limited mobility.

Many of these products – including certain Chromebook laptops and next-generation consoles like the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 – are either sold out or have long lead times.

Supply chains

According to analysts, the chip shortage has hit the automotive industry particularly hard because of the industry’s “just-in-time” supply chain that the automotive industry has relied on for decades to save capital.

When asked whether Porsche could be forced to rethink this supply chain model, Blume replied: “Yes. This is very important for the future in order to think about the supply chain.”

“We have to think about which storage we really need for all these stocks. We have to be more flexible and plan the immediate capacities more precisely.”

The Porsche shares listed in the German Xetra Dax index have risen by 15% since the beginning of the year. The share price has barely changed in the past 12 months.

– CNBC’s Sam Shead contributed to this report.