Month: February 2021

Inventory Market, Bitcoin, Tesla: Reside Enterprise Information Updates

Post author By
Post date February 9, 2021

A Bitcoin A.T.M. in New York. Bitcoin continued to rise, fueled by Tesla’s announcement that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of the digital currency.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Bitcoin continued its rally, the latest leg of which was set off by Tesla’s announcement on Monday that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of the digital currency and would start accepting Bitcoin payments. Bitcoin rose above $48,000 per coin early on Tuesday, a record, before coming off that high later, according to CoinDesk, a trading platform for digital currencies.

It is up more than 45 percent in 2021, and other cryptocurrencies are rising, too — including Dogecoin, which rose about 1,000 percent over the past week.

The momentum has been building as more trading apps allow users to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies, reported Nathaniel Popper for The New York Times: “The rally is a moment of euphoria for the thousands of different versions of digital money, which years ago were dismissed as little more than online Beanie Babies caught in a speculative bubble,” he wrote.

Stock markets

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 was slightly lower in early trading Tuesday, after the index had climbed to another record on Monday. Through Monday, the S&P 500 had climbed for six consecutive trading days.
European market were modestly changed, with the FTSE in Britain up slightly while the Stoxx Europe 600 was slightly lower.
The Nikkei in Japan gained 0.4 percent, while the Kospi in South Korea fell 0.2 percent.

Stimulus checks

Democrats in the House on Monday proposed legislation to send stimulus checks of $1,400 to Americans earning up to $75,000 and households with incomes up to $150,000. The direct payments are a critical part of President Biden’s stimulus plan, although the proposal may run into opposition from Republicans and some Democrats who want to focus the payments on lower-income Americans.
House committees on Tuesday are expected to begin considering the overall $1.9 trillion package, aimed at supporting the economy through the pandemic.

Benefits of lockdown

Ocado, the online supermarket based in Britain, reported a 35 percent rise in sales over the past year. As the company invests in new warehouses, “The landscape for food retailing is changing, for good,” said the chief executive, Tim Steiner.
Still, the company reported a net loss of 44 million pounds (about $60 million), down from 215 million pounds the previous year, and its shares fell.

Credit…Leah Millis/Reuters

Neera Tanden, President Biden’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, will tell a Senate committee this morning that she would “work in good faith with all members of Congress” if confirmed, in a bid to head off Republican complaints about her past criticisms of conservatives.

Ms. Tanden is the president of the liberal Center for American Progress think tank, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations and a former top aide to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She is set to testify on Tuesday morning before the Senate Homeland Security committee, with a second hearing scheduled for Wednesday before the budget committee.

Republicans in the Senate have criticized Ms. Tanden for past statements, including Twitter posts, in which she criticized Republicans in Congress and elsewhere. Ms. Tanden will nod to those criticisms in the opening statement she has prepared for delivery.

“The role of O.M.B. director is different from some of my past positions,” she plans to say. “Over the last few years, it’s been part of my role to be an impassioned advocate. I understand, though, that the role of O.M.B. director calls for bipartisan action, as well as a nonpartisan adherence to facts and evidence.”

Ms. Tanden will also stress her qualifications for the job, including her experience being raised by an immigrant single mother who was forced to draw on the government safety net at times.

“We relied on food stamps to eat, and Section 8 vouchers to pay the rent,” Ms. Tanden will say. “At school, I remember being the only kid in the cafeteria line who used 10-cent vouchers from the Free Lunch Program. I remember using food stamps at the grocery store.”

“If I am privileged to serve as director,” she will say, “I would ensure that O.M.B. uses every tool at its disposal to efficiently and effectively deliver for working Americans, small businesses, and struggling communities.”

Credit…Fox

The chief executive of Fox News, Suzanne Scott, will remain in her role for several years to come after signing a new contract with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation, the network said on Tuesday.

The new multiyear deal will keep Ms. Scott as the leader of Fox News Media, which also includes the cable channel Fox Business and the streaming service Fox Nation.

“Suzanne’s track record of success, innovative sprit and dedication to excellence make her the ideal person to continue to lead and grow Fox News,” Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman of the Fox Corporation and Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son, said in a statement on Tuesday.

The network did not disclose the exact length or financial terms of the deal.

Fox News is facing a major defamation lawsuit and working to regain the ratings crown it recently lost to CNN for the first time in decades. Some viewers left the network for alternative channels like Newsmax after Fox’s news division called the presidential election for Joseph R. Biden Jr., over the protestations of then-President Trump.

Until Election Day, though, Fox News had been enjoying another record year under Ms. Scott’s tenure. Its weeknight lineup ended the year as the third-most-watched in all of prime-time television, ahead of the ABC broadcast network.

“I am grateful to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch for the opportunity to continue leading Fox News Media and positioning all of our platforms for future success,” Ms. Scott said in a statement.

Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

House Democrats on Monday rolled out a key plank of President Biden’s stimulus plan, proposing legislation to send direct payments of $1,400 to Americans earning up to $75,000 and households with incomes up to $150,000.

The plan, drafted the day before key committees are scheduled to being meeting to consider it, is at odds with proposals from some Republicans and moderate Democrats who want to curtail eligibility for direct payments, targeting it to lower income people. Mr. Biden has said he is open to such modifications.

For now, the measure would allow individuals earning up to $100,000 and households earning up to $200,000 to be eligible for some payment, though the size of the checks would phase out gradually for those with incomes above $75,000, or $150,000 for a family.

The bill, unveiled by Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, was one of a series that Democrats presented on Monday ahead of a week of legislative work to solidify the details of Mr. Biden’s stimulus proposal.

The decision to keep the income cap at the same level as the last round of stimulus payments comes after days of debate among the House Democratic caucus over the size of the checks, as some moderates pushed to restrict the full amount to those who make $50,000 or less and households earning up to $100,000.

The legislation also includes a series of significant changes to the tax code and an increase in an extension of weekly federal unemployment benefits. It would raise the $300-a-week payment to $400 a week and continue the program — currently slated to begin lapsing in March — through the end of August.

The $1.9 trillion plan would also provide for billions of dollars for schools and colleges, small businesses and a provision that would increase the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025, a progressive priority.

Credit…Mike Blake/Reuters

Cryptocurrency prices are soaring after Tesla said that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin with company funds. The electric carmaker wasn’t the first company to shift corporate cash into cryptocurrencies, but it was one of the biggest. It could make finance chiefs elsewhere consider whether they should follow suit, the DealBook newsletter reports.

Tesla’s move is an “exclamation point” for institutional acceptance of Bitcoin, said Matthew Graham, the chief executive of the Beijing-based blockchain investment firm Sino Global Capital. “It’s clear that Bitcoin is ready for Main Street.”

Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, is known for bucking convention, so his company’s purchase is not as surprising as it would be at, say, Ford or General Motors.

Tesla had more than $19 billion in cash at the end of 2020, a big enough cushion to make the Bitcoin purchase a relatively small share of its resources. But much of that cash was raised in recent stock sales, and the company only recently reported its second year of positive free cash flow. Because of Bitcoin’s unique characteristics, Tesla will have to record declines in the value of its Bitcoin against its earnings, but cannot book gains.

The software company MicroStrategy now holds Bitcoin worth about a third of its market capitalization, according to a site that tracks corporate holdings. MicroStrategy’s chief, Michael Saylor, held a conference last week that promoted Bitcoin for corporations.

Naresh Aggarwal of the Association of Corporate Treasurers in London is skeptical that many companies will follow Tesla and MicroStrategy and buy Bitcoin at scale. “Gold is probably a more traditional form of alternative investment,” he said, yet few firms outside the financial sector hold it. “If they’re not tempted by gold, then I can’t see them being tempted by Bitcoin,” he added, likening it to “putting money on a horse race.”

Keeping money in liquid, safe investments is particularly important during the pandemic, and many corporate finance chiefs remember being burned in 2008 by higher-yielding alternatives.

Credit…Maggie Shannon for The New York Times

The race to distribute vaccines and the emergence of more contagious variants of the coronavirus have put a renewed spotlight on the plight of grocery workers in the United States.

The industry has boomed in the past year as Americans have stayed home and avoided restaurants. But in most cases, that has not translated into extra pay for its workers, Sapna Maheshwari and Michael Corkery report for The New York Times. After Long Beach, Calif., mandated hazard pay for grocery workers, the grocery giant Kroger responded last week by saying it would close two locations.

And now, even as experts warn people to minimize time spent in grocery stores because of new coronavirus variants, The Times found only 13 states that had started specifically vaccinating those workers.

“Kroger is sending a message, more than anything else,” said Andrea Zinder, president of Local 324 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents about 160 employees at the two stores. “They are trying to intimidate workers and communities: If you pass these types of ordinances, there will be consequences.”

Kroger, which operates about 2,750 stores, has attracted particular attention because it pursued stock buybacks last year and because its chief executive, Rodney McMullen, earned more than $20 million in 2019. The median compensation of a Kroger employee that year was $26,790, or a ratio of 789 to 1, according to company filings.

Credit…General Motors, via Agence-France Press — Getty Images

“I’ve been writing about the auto industry for 19 years, and I’ve really never seen anything like this,” Neal E. Boudette, who covers the auto industry for The New York Times, told Shira Ovide in this week’s On Tech newsletter.

“When I saw the G.M. news, I sat back in my chair and reflected on how revolutionary this was,” Mr. Boudette said. “G.M., for more than a century, has been producing internal combustion engine vehicles, and soon it won’t be.

“We’re on the cusp of one of those big industrial transformations in which we shift from an old way of doing things to a completely new one, and everything will be turned upside down.”

They discussed the future of cars and whether traditional automakers or tech-focused companies, like Tesla and Apple, would rule the next generation of the roads.

“It’s not either-or,” Mr. Boudette said. “The companies that succeed will need to think like the other side. Auto companies need to adapt the mind-set and expertise of tech firms, and vice versa.”

Credit…Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For weeks, policy veterans have been fretting among themselves over the scale of President Biden’s proposal for more pandemic aid, in private emails and text chains, Neil Irwin reports for The New York Times.

Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary, made those concerns public with an op-ed article in The Washington Post last week. The article received some support on Twitter from another economist from the Obama administration and from a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

The core question is whether the administration’s $1.9 trillion plan is too big. Is action on that scale needed to contain the economic damage from the pandemic? Or is it far too big relative to the hole the economy’s in, thus setting the stage for a burst of inflation followed by a potential recession?

Mr. Summers argues that the plan’s total size reaches a scale that risks major future problems. That implies that much of that spending will just slosh around the economy, causing prices to rise.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other top officials argue that their proposal is prudent and appropriately scaled and that the United States is in a do-whatever-it-takes moment. They do not dismiss the possibility that there will be higher inflation down the road — but say it is a manageable risk.
The economy is in uncharted territory. There is a lot of money poised to be spent, and some things may reduce the supply of goods and services. Lots of money chasing finite supply is an Economics 101 recipe for surging prices.
But for the medium term, the more important question is whether any inflation surge would be a temporary not-so-harmful phenomenon or the start of something more lasting.

Tags bitcoin, business, Live, market, News, Stock, Tesla, Updates

Health

With Mission to China, W.H.O. Tries to Rehabilitate Its Picture

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Post date February 9, 2021

With Mission to China, W.H.O. Tries to Rehabilitate Its Image

A team of World Health Organization scientists said Tuesday in China that the coronavirus is likely to spread to humans first via an intermediate animal host and that the outcome of a laboratory accident is “extremely unlikely”.

The results, presented by the team in Wuhan, China, after 12 days of fieldwork, were the first step in a most likely painstaking process to trace the origins of the global pandemic. This question is crucial to prevent recurrence.

“All of the work that has been done on the virus trying to identify its origin continues to suggest a natural reservoir,” said Dr. Peter K. Ben Embarek, a food safety scientist at WHO who leads the team of experts, at a press conference in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus was first discovered in late 2019.

Dr. Embarek rejected the idea that the virus could have originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, a theory that has gained traction among some officials and experts in the US and elsewhere. “It was very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place,” he said, citing security protocols.

The WHO experts largely focused their comments on the scientific aspects of their mission. However, the investigation has been overshadowed by politics in many ways.

The Chinese government has further warned that the virus may have come from overseas, an idea many scientists are rejecting. Chinese officials used Tuesday’s press conference to further advance this theory, arguing that the search for the virus’ origin should focus on locations outside of China.

The investigation will “not be limited to one location,” said Liang Wannian, who led the team of Chinese scientists who assisted the WHO mission.

The WHO experts at the three-hour press conference did not question the statements made by Chinese officials. They promised to look into reports of early cases of the virus outside of China. They also called for more research on the animals being sold in a sprawling market in Wuhan, where some of the first cases of the virus were discovered.

The visit was an opportunity for WHO to dispel criticism that it is too respectful of China.

For months, experts and politicians have condemned the WHO for allowing the Chinese government to control the investigation into the cause of the pandemic. Chinese officials, careful not to point out missteps during the outbreak, repeatedly delayed visits by WHO experts and tried to narrow the scope of their mission. The Chinese government gave in to mounting global pressure and finally let the 14-person team go to Wuhan last month.

Updated

Apr. 9, 2021, 9:36 p.m. ET

The WHO used the research to project an image of transparency and independence. During their stay in Wuhan, the team of scientists used social media to record their visits to laboratories, disease control centers and live animal markets. WHO officials have vowed to ask tough questions and press for access to data and research, but it remains unclear how soon the Chinese government will be.

“If the team can’t come up with a substance, there’s a risk that people will say this is all just a show,” said Daniel R. Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University.

The investigation takes place in a charged political environment. Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, recently suggested that the United States allow WHO to send investigators there as part of its investigation.

Officials in the United States and other Western countries have at times expressed doubts about the independence of the WHO investigation, fearing that China may try to influence the results.

Now it will be up to the team of scientists to conduct a difficult study that many say could take months or even years.

While China ultimately cooperated with the visit, the government still has a firm grip on research related to the virus in China and could try to prevent any embarrassing information from being published.

“One visit is not enough for a thorough investigation,” said Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow on global health with the Council on Foreign Relations. “They do all the work within the parameters set by the Chinese government.”

The WHO team commended the Chinese scientists involved in the mission and said the government had worked in good faith to provide access to key locations such as the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where some of the earliest cases were discovered . Scientists were also allowed to visit the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is home to a state-of-the-art laboratory that has been at the center of several unfounded theories about the virus.

Albee Zhang contributed to the research.

Tags China, image, Mission, Rehabilitate

Politics

Democrats need to ship as much as $3,600 per baby to households

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Post date February 9, 2021

Democrats want to send up to $3,600 per child to households

House Democrats unveiled their plan on Monday to send up to $ 3,600 per child to families. A huge but temporary increase in household aid forecast by experts could lift millions out of poverty.

The proposal would further elaborate on President Joe Biden’s request for a $ 1.9 trillion increase in child tax credit under his Covid-19 relief legislation. An aide said the plan could change before it was officially released.

The proposal is $ 3,600 for children under 6 and $ 3,000 for children under 18 over a year.
The money would be distributed in monthly installments by the IRS starting in July.
Payments would expire for individuals earning more than $ 75,000 and for couples earning more than $ 150,000.

The proposal would increase the child tax credit, which under applicable law provides for $ 2,000 for children under the age of 17 and is distributed annually.

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement that the pandemic is “driving families deeper and deeper into poverty and is devastating”.

Boston, MA. – FEBRUARY 8: Richard Neal, Chairman of the US House Ways and Means Committee, speaks at a news conference at the State House on February 8, 2021 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Matt Stone | Boston Herald | Getty Images

“We’re making the child tax credit more generous, accessible, and paying out monthly,” said Neal. “This money will make the difference between a roof over your head or food on the table. This is how the tax code is supposed to work for those who need it most, and as long as I chair the Ways and Means Committee, you can do that from us expect. “

The proposal is expected to be included in Biden’s full $ 1.9 trillion relief plan, though it must meet certain technical criteria as Democrats push for a Congressional process that will allow them to spot a potential GOP -Filibuster to bypass the Senate.

According to Biden, a push for a minimum wage of $ 15 could not be considered under parliamentary rules known as reconciliation.

While Republicans have criticized the $ 1.9 trillion plan for being too big, it’s possible the child tax credit increase could get at least some bipartisan support. Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, announced his own plan on Thursday to provide households with even greater child support and permanent. Romney funded his plan in part by cutting other spending programs.

A Romney spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Democrats’ plan. The White House also did not respond to a request for comment. White House spokeswoman Rosemary Boeglin said last week that the Biden administration wants to work with lawmakers to come up with an ongoing plan to increase support for families with children.

An increase in the amount of aid that the US distributes to families with children would bring the country closer to that of other industrialized nations, which also generally have lower child poverty. The Covid pandemic has put the burden on families, left millions of people unemployed and closed schools across the country.

Biden’s agenda for economic aid – including increasing child tax credits and other measures – would cut the US child poverty rate in half, according to the Columbia University Center for Poverty and Social Policy.

Critics left and right

While plans to increase aid to households with children are largely backed by Democrats, Neal’s proposal has been technically criticized by progressives. After the Washington Post first reported the plan on Sunday, Matt Bruenig, an analyst on the left, wrote that “the administrative design here is a mess”.

Bruenig wrote that the plan made a mistake by using last year’s tax information to determine the amount of a family’s monthly payment, even though their eligibility for the program is based on the current year.

“This will lead to * both * underpayments and overpayments. And the overpayments will trigger recovery claims through surprising tax bills,” wrote Bruenig in a post on Twitter.

The plan is also likely to be criticized by Republicans who have insisted on downsizing and tightening the aid package.

A counterproposal by 10 Republican senators last month, including Romney and Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, cut the increase in the child tax credit.

Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah, who supported efforts to increase child tax credits, also spoke out against Romney’s plan and suggested that GOP support might be limited. The two senators said they do not endorse support for families where parents are unemployed.

“We have long said that the child tax credit needs to be increased further to help working families. In the current pandemic relief bill, we would support increasing the tax credit for children to $ 3,500 and for infants to $ 4,500,” they said two senators.

“However, we do not support converting the child tax credit into what is known as ‘child benefit’, which is paid out to all parents as a universal basic income. This is not a tax break for working parents, but welfare,” she added.

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Tags Child, Democrats, households, send

Business

Telesat constructing $5 billion Lightspeed international satellite tv for pc web

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Post date February 9, 2021

A representation of the broadband constellation in Telesat’s near-earth orbit

Telesat

Canadian telecommunications satellite operator Telesat announced Tuesday that Franco-Italian space hardware maker Thales Alenia Space will build its next-generation broadband satellite network called Lightspeed.

Lightspeed will focus on delivering high-speed fiber-like Internet to Telesat’s customers around the world. The network, known in the industry as the Constellation, will consist of 298 next-generation satellites orbiting the Earth at an altitude of approximately 1,000 kilometers, or just over twice the altitude of the International Space Station.

“We’re not a start-up. This is not a new business for us. It’s the same old customers and the same old markets, but with an architecture that is better and more disruptive,” said Dan Goldberg, CEO of Telesat, to CNBC.

The company is primarily focused on business-to-business customers and expects the Lightspeed constellation to cost $ 5 billion, including the cost of the satellites, the purchase of rocket launches, the construction of the ground infrastructure and development of software platforms for the operation of the network. The cost of the satellites makes up most of that figure, as Goldberg said the contract with Thales Alenia Space is worth about $ 3 billion.

In particular, Goldberg made it clear that Telesat’s Lightspeed constellation is not designed to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink or Amazon’s Kuiper direct-to-consumer networks.

“This is not a broadband game for consumers,” Goldberg said. “We’re one of the largest satellite operators in the world today, and we’ve been for 50 years. But we’ve always been a service provider to businesses … we know this customer base, we know this customer base. We worked with these customers when we imagined this opportunity and designed this constellation. “

The headquarters of the company.

Telesat

Goldberg stated that Telesat Lightspeed’s customers include cruise lines, airlines and rural communities. The network’s anchor customer, according to Goldberg, will be the Canadian government, which has committed to using Lightspeed to “create a capacity pool that is being sold at very attractive prices to local authorities and truly rural broadband providers.”

“It’s orders of magnitude better than what exists today and even what a lot of people are planning,” said Goldberg. “This is about delivering a low cost per bit to the market.”

Telesat plans to begin launching the first speed of light in 2023. The first satellites will be launched by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin on his New Glenn rocket. Goldberg said he has been “following” the development of New Glenn as the rocket is scheduled to launch next year, but is confident that “it will be ready” when Telesat launches in two years. Telesat will also “announce other launch providers in the coming months”.

Telesat has selected our powerful New Glenn rocket to launch Telesat’s innovative LEO satellite constellation into space.

Telesat

One of the key technologies that Goldberg says Lightspeed satellites will use is intersatellite links, which allow satellites to establish data links with one another rather than individually connecting to points on the ground.

“We are basically running a large space-based mesh IP network, which means that all of our satellites are always online and generating revenue and can be connected to a user,” said Goldberg.

Inter-satellite links are key to reducing the number of points on the ground that the satellite constellation must connect to, as well as increasing the overall speed of the global network. Goldberg said Telesat plans to deploy around 30 ground stations around the world “because we don’t need that many” and it will help “minimize capital investments and on-site expenses”.

Telesat also worked to reduce the reflectivity of its Lightspeed satellites after SpaceX’s Starlink was hit by a public outcry from astronomers that hundreds of satellites were appearing as bright streaks on images captured by telescopes. Goldberg noted that the Lightspeed satellites will be about twice the height of the Starlink satellites, while also being a fraction of the number in the overall constellation. Telesat’s Lightspeed satellites are also designed to last 10 to 12 years each, so the company doesn’t have to replace them too often.

“We have been using space for 50 years – we are a responsible industrial user of space. We were very careful to ensure that it did not have such negative externalities,” said Goldberg.

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Tags Billion, building, global, Internet, Lightspeed, satellite, Telesat

Health

WHO outlines Wuhan findings on origins of Covid pandemic

Post author By
Post date February 9, 2021

Peter Ben Embarek and Marion Koopmans (R) come to a press conference on February 9, 2021 to conclude a visit by an international team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the city of Wuhan in the Chinese province of Hefei.

HECTOR RETAMAL | AFP | Getty Images

An international team of scientists led by the World Health Organization said Tuesday that the search for the introduction of the coronavirus was still in progress. Further research is needed to investigate how and whether the disease circulated in animals prior to human infection.

Scientists have been working in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the disease was first identified, for four weeks, looking for clues to the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The research team has visited hospitals, laboratories, and markets including the Huanan Seafood Market, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the laboratory of the Wuhan Center for Disease Control.

During the secret visit, researchers were also supposed to speak to early responders and some of the early patients. The team completed two weeks of quarantine before starting visiting local locations.

Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, WHO food safety and animal diseases specialist and chairman of the investigation team, told a press conference that the “most likely” path for Covid is to transition from an intermediate species in humans. That hypothesis will “require more study and more specific (and) targeted research,” he said.

The first results of the investigation found no evidence of major Covid outbreaks in Wuhan or anywhere else before December 2019. However, researchers found evidence of wider Covid spread outside the Huanan seafood market in the same month, Ben Embarek said.

He added that it was not yet possible to determine the intermediate animal host for the coronavirus and described the results as “in the works” after nearly a month of meetings and site visits.

“To understand what happened in the early days of December 2019, we dramatically changed the image we had before? I don’t think so,” said Ben Embarek.

“Have we improved our understanding? Have we added details to this story? Absolutely,” he said.

WHO has tried to meet expectations for a definitive conclusion on the origins of the Covid pandemic. To put the mission in a broader context, it took more than a decade to find the origins of SARS, while the origins of Ebola – first identified in the 1970s – are not yet known.

It is hoped that information on the earliest known cases of the coronavirus, first discovered in Wuhan in late 2019, can help pinpoint the start of the outbreak and prevent similar pandemics in the future.

After concerns about access and delays in issuing visas, the team led by the World Health Organization arrived in Wuhan on January 14 to work with Chinese scientists to investigate the origin of the coronavirus.

Laboratory leak “extremely unlikely”

A theory that the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been discredited by the research team. The hypothesis had been upheld by former President Donald Trump’s administration without any burden of proof and was strictly denied by Chinese officials.

“The hypothesis of a laboratory incident is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus into the human population,” said Ben Embarek. “Hence, it is not in the hypotheses that we will propose for future studies.”

Liang Wannian, head of the Covid expert panel at the Chinese National Health Commission, said on Tuesday, alongside Ben Embarek of the WHO from the Hilton Optics Valley Hotel in Wuhan, he agreed with this assessment.

The team had concluded that a laboratory leak should be considered extremely unlikely “on the basis of serious discussion and very careful research,” he added.

Mink are seen on a farm in Gjol, Northern Denmark on October 9, 2020.

HENNING BAGGER | Ritzau Scanpix | AFP via Getty Images

Liang said ongoing research into the origins of the virus needs to focus on how the virus circulated in animals before humans were infected.

Animal hosts have yet to be identified, but bats and pangolins are both potential candidates for transmission, Liang said, but samples from these species have not been found “sufficiently similar” to the Covid virus.

The high susceptibility of minks and cats to the Covid virus suggests that there may be other animals that act as reservoirs, Liang continued, but research is currently insufficient.

China’s national health commission spokesman said there could have been an unreported spread of the coronavirus before it was first discovered in Wuhan. However, Liang said there was no evidence of significant spread of Covid in Wuhan prior to the outbreak in late 2019.

International concern

The WHO previously cited genetic sequencing that showed the coronavirus had started in bats and likely jumped to another animal before infecting the human.

Many of the people who contracted the new virus in Wuhan, a city of around 11 million people, are said to have had connections to the Huanan fish market.

Scientists initially suspected the virus came from wildlife sold in the fish market, which prompted China to swiftly restrict public access to the market early last year.

China’s CDC has since said samples from the fish market suggest that the virus has spread from where the outbreak first occurred.

Additionally, China’s Liang said Tuesday that the Huanan Fish Market was one of the places where the coronavirus first appeared. However, he added that with current evidence it is impossible to determine how the virus was first introduced to the fish market.

Security guards stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus visit the institute in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, on February 3, 2021.

HECTOR RETAMAL | AFP | Getty Images

The origins of the coronavirus remain important as the virus is constantly evolving, as demonstrated by highly infectious mutant strains in the UK and South Africa.

To date, more than 106 million people worldwide have contracted the coronavirus and it has caused at least 2.32 million deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The US has by far reported the highest number of confirmed Covid cases and deaths, with more than 27 million reported infections and 465,072 deaths.

China has released little information about its research into the origins of the coronavirus, and there has been widespread international concern about what researchers in Wuhan are allowed to see and do as part of their research.

– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.

Tags Covid, findings, origins, Outlines, Pandemic, Wuhan

Business

Clubhouse Cracked China’s Firewall. A Folks Shined By way of.

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Post date February 9, 2021

Clubhouse Cracked China's Firewall. A People Shined Through.

In the clubhouse, up to 5,000 users can join audio chat rooms that disappear when the conversation ends. Some users said their format made them feel more willing to share personal stories and hear different opinions. A user said in a chat room about censorship that anyone could see that all of the people who have been classified as dissidents in the mainland, like Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters, are real people. They no longer heard their voices filtered through official media.

Since Saturday, I’ve spent almost all of my waking hours wandering from one clubhouse chat room to another. In one room, a documentary filmmaker shared his thoughts on making a film about a subculture of young migrant workers called Smart who try to stand out in a conformist culture through wild hair and piercings. In another case, a graduate student in sociology shared his experience as a food delivery company. A group of feminists read works by feminist writers. More than 3,000 people joined a chat room parodying Hu Xijin, possibly the Communist Party’s most notorious propagandist. (A favorite line: “As long as we have enemies everywhere, we have no enemies.”)

A chat room with more than 100 people from northwest China that I am from focused on their interactions with ethical minorities. A woman from Gansu Province talked about how Muslims were portrayed as troublemakers in her hometown and how she learned to understand why it was offensive to hang the Chinese national flag in a mosque.

I learned of the de-Islamization of my home, the Ningxia Muslim Autonomous Region, after several people shared testimony. Jin Xu, an art history assistant at Vassar College who grew up there, talked about how his drawing of the Nanguan Mosque, a landmark in Ningxia, won a national award as a sixth grader and how the mosque had been brutally reconstructed into what he said in an interview me that it was an ugly concrete building that got rid of its external elements of Islamic art and architecture.

In a chat room, participants were asked to criticize the governments in which they live, be it China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan or the United States. Inviting each speaker, the moderator asked, “So which government would you like to criticize?” In China, where open criticism is treated as treason, it felt like performance art.

Several chat rooms were devoted to the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square in 1989, a heavily censored topic on the Chinese Internet. Cai Chongguo, a student leader during the protests, spoke for about four hours, sharing his stories, and answering questions from thousands of people. He said he didn’t expect so many people to be interested.

Tags Chinas, Clubhouse, Cracked, Firewall, people, Shined

Entertainment

Comedians Think about Malcolm and Marie’s Neighbors’ Reactions

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Post date February 9, 2021

Comedians Imagine Malcolm and Marie's Neighbors' Reactions

Just a few days later Malcolm & MarieBy the time it was released on Netflix, the movie’s argumentation scenes are already famous – for better or for worse. Zendaya and John David Washington’s performances received hard-earned applause, but there is also room for a bit of humor as the viewers imagine what life on the edge of this couple’s personal life would be like. For example, two comedians went the extra mile to imagine what Malcolm and Marie’s neighbors would think of their toxic differences of opinion.

“He’s still yelling about Barry Jenkins,” joked Ryan Ken on Twitter, mimicking the film’s typical black and white style. “All night! He did it all night!” His video hit nearly 1 million viewers in less than a day, including a response from Danielle Pinnock who you might recognize by her funny appearance Bridgerton Recap videos. Together, the cast are a fun force to be reckoned with and a refreshing comedic balance to the drama of Malcolm and Marie’s relationship. Have fun with the clips below.

Tags Comedians, Imagine, Malcolm, Maries, Neighbors, reactions

World News

Our bodies once more pile up in Bolivia as Latin America endures an extended, lethal coronavirus wave.

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Post date February 9, 2021

Bodies again pile up in Bolivia as Latin America endures a long, deadly coronavirus wave.

In Bolivia, bodies are piling up at home and on the streets, reflecting the terrifying images of last summer when a deadly spike in coronavirus infections overwhelmed the country’s fragile medical system. Bolivian police say they recovered 170 bodies of people believed to have died from Covid-19 in January and health officials say the intensive care units are full.

“If 10 or 20 patients die, their beds will be full again in a matter of hours,” said Carlos Hurtado, a public health epidemiologist in Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s largest city.

The virus resurgence in Bolivia is part of a larger second wave across Latin America where some of the toughest quarantine in the world is giving way to pandemic fatigue and economic worries.

The International Monetary Fund announced on Monday that it was revising its 2021 growth forecast for Latin America and the Caribbean from 3.6 percent to 4.1 percent. The fund warned that in some cases the surge could jeopardize an economic recovery that is likely to take longer than other parts of the world, and forecast regional production will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2023.

As the number of new cases falls, deaths remain at record highs in many parts of the region, just as some governments are starting vaccination efforts.

In Brazil and Mexico, an average of more than 1,000 people have died from Covid-19 every day for weeks. Its total pandemic death toll is second only to that of the United States. Deaths in Brazil have reached their summer peak, while in Mexico they are far higher than any previous high, although they have started to fall in the past few days.

In Bolivia last summer, the New York Times revised mortality figures suggested the country’s actual death toll was nearly five times the official figure, suggesting that Bolivia had suffered one of the worst epidemics in the world. According to a Times analysis, about 20,000 more people died from June to August than in previous years – a large number in a country of about 11 million people.

Bolivia currently reports an average of 60 coronavirus deaths per day, approaching last summer’s numbers. Experts believe the higher mortality rate is caused by the contagious virus variants that originate from neighboring Brazil and elsewhere, but they lack the tools to analyze the viruses’ genetic code.

Despite the rising death rate, the Bolivian authorities failed to implement quarantine measures to contain the first wave of the virus a year ago. Officials in Bolivia and other Latin American countries are hailing their emerging vaccination programs as a reason to avoid lockdowns, although few countries in the region outside of Brazil have sourced significant numbers of doses.

Only 20,000 doses of vaccine have arrived in Bolivia, although the government plans to vaccinate eight million people by September.

Tags America, Bodies, Bolivia, coronavirus, deadly, endures, Latin, Long, Pile, wave

Business

How Jeep landed Bruce Springsteen for its 2021 Tremendous Bowl advert

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Post date February 9, 2021

How Jeep landed Bruce Springsteen for its 2021 Super Bowl ad

Bruce Springsteen starred in and narrated a two-minute Super Bowl ad for Jeep that featured far more Americana and scenery than any other vehicle.

Rob DeMartin for Jeep

Jeep’s Super Bowl commercial starring Bruce Springsteen was a decade in the making, according to Olivier Francois, an automotive marketing manager best known for convincing A-list celebrities to appear in such ads.

Every year since 2011, Francois said he had come up with an idea for a Super Bowl commercial by Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau. It became something of a tradition, although Francois believed there was little chance that this would happen.

Why Springsteen, who had never appeared in a commercial before? It goes back to the automaker’s former CEO Sergio Marchionne, who passed away unexpectedly in 2018. The Italian-Canadian businessman was a fan of the singer and regularly used his music at presentations and events to connect Springsteen’s personality with that of the company.

“What you are really seeing today is 10 years of history,” Francois told CNBC. “We started discussing Bruce – about Bruce, not him, about – with my old boss Sergio. … He loved Bruce Springsteen’s music.”

Francois, head of marketing at Jeep’s parent company Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler), convinced Detroit rapper Eminem and musician Bob Dylan to star in the company’s ads. He even landed Oprah Winfrey for a voice over once. Last year, Francois convinced elusive actor Bill Murray to repeat his role from the 1993 film “Groundhog Day” for a Super Bowl commercial.

He said his “greatest regret” was unable to do the Springsteen commercial while Marchionne was alive. “My biggest regret today is that they never made it to meet. I always promised him that I would make a difference and I delivered a little too late,” said Francois.

Why now?

Francois first featured on Springsteen in a 2012 Super Bowl commercial titled “It’s Halftime in America,” which starred actor Clint Eastwood, another celebrity not known for appearing in ads or to commit to a product or company. The ad featured Eastwood as the national coach and urged the US to learn from the resurgence of the Detroit auto industry.

Francois referred to this year’s ad as the “successor” to this commercial as well as others such as a 2013 Super Bowl commercial called “Farmer”. Both were cinematic, country-specific ads with few actual vehicles.

In this year’s “The Middle” advertisement, Springsteen drives around in an old jeep and talks about a chapel in the center of the country called US Center Chapel in Lebanon, Kansas. He used the extremely small chapel as a base to talk about the country that must “meet here in the middle” before the ad ended with “To the ReUnited States of America”. A website and logos for Jeep followed, which will celebrate its 80th anniversary in 2021.

Bruce Springsteen (left) with Olivier Francois, Stellantis Chief Marketing Officer, while filming the company’s Super Bowl LV ad for Jeep.

Rob DeMartin for Jeep

In a press release, Landau said as soon as they saw the pitch they decided it was something they had to do.

“Olivier Francois and I have been talking about ideas for the past 10 years. When he showed us the design for ‘The Middle’, our immediate reaction was ‘Let’s do it’,” he said. “Our goal was to do something surprising, relevant, immediate and artful. I think that’s exactly what Bruce did with ‘The Middle’.”

Francois believes the message of the ad is in line with Springsteen’s beliefs and has struck the “right balance” between the company’s goal and that of the singer, who narrated a commercial for Joe Biden last year.

According to Francois, Springsteen was closely involved in creating the Jeep ad and worked closely with director Thom Zimny. He wrote and produced the original score for the commercial with another of his frequent collaborators, Ron Aniello.

The ad almost didn’t happen

According to Francois, the commercial with Springsteen almost never happened. After being turned down by the singer’s manager for 10 years, he had decided not to give Landau an idea for Springsteen.

“I think it’s the first year I haven’t asked an agency to crack an idea from Bruce Springsteen,” he said. “I think it took me 10 years to understand that it never happened. Of course I was wrong, but I thought so. And it was also an abuse of John Landau and Bruce’s time.”

Bruce Springsteen starred in and narrated a two-minute Super Bowl ad for Jeep that featured far more Americana and scenery than any other vehicle.

Rob DeMartin for Jeep

Until the Southfield, Michigan-based advertising agency Doner came up with the idea of ”The Middle”. After Francois contacted Landau in early January to say a happy new year, he decided to send him the advertising agency’s pitch. Francois said that after receiving the parking space, Landau believed it was “the right message”.

“Yes, he takes a position, but he takes a position for the middle,” said Francois. “It’s not liberal. It’s not republican. It’s just something that tries to stand up for the apolitical. The community.”

The news seems to have resonated with viewers. Since it was posted on YouTube early Sunday morning, the ad has been viewed approximately 24 million times. That’s roughly four times the combined viewership of other Super Bowl ads from General Motors, Toyota Motor, and online car salesman Vroom.

Tags Bowl, Bruce, Jeep, landed, Springsteen, Super

Health

Fb says it plans to take away posts with false vaccine claims.

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Post date February 9, 2021

Facebook says it plans to remove posts with false vaccine claims.

Facebook said Monday that it plans to remove posts with false claims about vaccines from its platform, including repealing claims that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract the coronavirus than vaccinations receive.

The social network has increasingly changed its content policies over the past year as the coronavirus has risen sharply. In October, the social network banned people and companies from buying advertisements containing false or misleading information about vaccines. In December, Facebook announced it would remove posts with claims exposed by the World Health Organization or government agencies.

Monday’s move goes even further by targeting unpaid posts to the website and, in particular, to Facebook pages and groups. Rather than just aiming at misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, the update includes incorrect information about all vaccines. Facebook said it had consulted with the World Health Organization and other leading health institutes to come up with a list of false or misleading claims regarding Covid-19 and vaccines in general.

In the past, Facebook had announced that it would only “rank down” or push down on people’s news feeds, leading to misleading or false claims about vaccines, making it harder to find such groups or posts. Now posts, pages and groups that contain such untruths will be completely removed from the platform.

“Building trust in these vaccines is critical, so we’re launching the world’s largest campaign to help public health organizations share accurate information about Covid-19 vaccines and encourage people to get vaccinated as soon as possible they have vaccines available, “said Kang-Xing Jin, director of health at Facebook, in a company blog post.

The company said the changes were in response to a recent decision by the Facebook Oversight Board, an independent body that reviews decisions made by the company’s policy team and determines whether they are fair. In a decision, the board said Facebook needed to create a new standard for health-related misinformation because its current rules were “inappropriately vague”.

Updated

Apr 8, 2021, 7:52 p.m. ET

Facebook also announced that it would provide US $ 120 million in advertising loans to ministries of health, non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies to help spread reliable Covid-19 vaccines and preventative health information. As vaccination centers became more prevalent, Facebook would help point people to places to get the vaccine.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, has been proactive against false information related to the coronavirus. He has Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, often hosted on Facebook for live video updates on America’s response to coronavirus. In his private philanthropy, Mr. Zuckerberg has also vowed to “eradicate all diseases” and pledge billions to fight viruses and other diseases.

However, Mr Zuckerberg was also a staunch advocate of free speech on Facebook and previously hesitated to contain most falsehoods, even if they were potentially dangerous. The exception was Facebook’s policy of not tolerating statements that could lead to “immediate, direct physical harm” to people on or outside the platform.

Facebook has been criticized for this stance, including for allowing President Donald J. Trump to stay on the platform until after the January 6 uprising in the U.S. Capitol.

Public health advocates and outside critics have questioned Facebook’s refusal to remove false or misleading claims about vaccines for years. This has resulted in an increase in false vaccine information, often by people or groups spreading other harmful misinformation on the website. Even when Facebook tried to update its guidelines, it often left loopholes that were exploited by misinformation spreaders.

Facebook announced on Monday that it was also changing its search tools to post relevant, authoritative results on coronavirus and vaccine information while making it harder to find accounts that are preventing people from getting vaccinated.

Tags Claims, Facebook, False, plans, posts, remove, Vaccine