Month: February 2021

Categories
Politics

‘The Strain Is On’: Will Schumer Fulfill the Left?

‘The Pressure Is On’: Will Schumer Satisfy the Left?

On a Sunday evening, about a dozen liberal housing activists from New York gathered for a virtual meeting with Senator Chuck Schumer. Although the newly anointed majority leader had served in Congress for four decades, some attendees had barely interacted with him before, and some viewed him as an insecure ally.

But Herr Schumer tried to calm things down. At some point he Several participants remembered a former tenant organizer who was now able to solve housing issues on a large scale.

“He had done a lot of homework and knew all we were going to ask about and made a number of commitments with us to make it happen,” said Cea Weaver, strategist for New York’s Housing Justice for All coalition. “He said: I’ll talk to Ilhan Omar, I’ll talk to Bernie Sanders, I’ll talk to AOC.”

The January meeting was one of several steps Mr Schumer took to win over the leaders of the left in New York and Washington ahead of his 2022 election campaign. Armed with a full set of political pledges, he touts the next generation of activists, organizers and elected officials in New York who would likely form the backbone of efforts to dethrone him if anyone should ever show up.

He is facing an extraordinary balancing act in the coming days as he simultaneously tries to falsify a massive aid law to counter the coronavirus pandemic while administering the impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump. Both tasks are seen as urgent, practical, and moral necessities by the Democratic Party’s electoral base.

The 70-year-old Schumer has tried to channel his party’s impatient goal: in recent days, he has publicly urged President Biden to be “big and bold” with his economic policies and executive measures in order to defy pressure from Republicans and a few centrist democrats to cut campaign promises.

Last week, Mr Schumer supported a new push to decriminalize cannabis. signed Senator Cory Booker’s Baby Bonds proposal, a plan to close the racial welfare gap; and appeared with Senator Elizabeth Warren and other progressives to ask Mr. Biden to cancel the student debts.

Also in impeachment, Mr Schumer has committed a breach by calling for Mr Trump’s impeachment the morning after the January 6 attack on the Capitol and seeing the upcoming trial as a crucial ritual of accountability, even if it does It is highly unlikely that two-thirds of the Senate will vote for a conviction.

Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said Mr Schumer had insisted in private conversations that he intended to “get really big things done” despite the Senate’s daunting math. Mr Mitchell said he had spoken to Mr Schumer frequently but had not yet discussed the 2022 campaign with him.

“He will have to use whatever tools are available to hold his caucus together. He’s getting this, we all understand, it’s no surprise, ”said Mr. Mitchell. “I think he is also really clear that the alternative is unacceptable – that he has to deliver.”

The new Senate Chairman seems to be realizing that his political playbook needs updating. A compulsive retail politician and great fundraiser, Mr. Schumer rose to power less as a lawmaker and great idea writer than as a campaign tactician with a financial base on Wall Street and a keen eye for finding the political hub between liberals New York City and its historically conservative Suburbs.

David Carlucci, a former Rockland County senator who lost a House area code to a more progressive candidate, Representative Mondaire Jones, in 2018, said a diverse new generation had changed state policy. Mr Schumer seems relatively safe, he said, but no Democrat should feel immune.

“Any politician who is part of the old guard must be very concerned about a possible elementary school,” said Carlucci.

This is a lesson progressives taught incumbent Democrats over the last two election cycles, when the losses of Joseph P. Crowley and Eliot L. Engel, two senior members of the House of Representatives, marked a breakthrough for leftist politics in New York state.

Unlike Mr. Crowley and Mr. Engel, the New York Senate Chairman is still ubiquitous. But his ability to match the passions of his own party is another question.

Mr Schumer regularly complained from the left during the Trump years for being generally cautious about messaging and campaigning strategies, including in major Senate races last year where Mr Schumer selected moderate recruits who ended up in states like Maine and North Carolina lost. There is limited patience among Democrats right now for the kind of incremental maneuvering and horse trading traditionally required to pass laws in the Senate.

In a statement, Mr Schumer said he was trying to “do the best work for my constituents and for my country” and acknowledged a shift in the scope of his government goals.

“The world has changed and the needs of families have changed,” he said. “Income and racial inequality have worsened, the climate crisis has become more urgent, Trump has attacked our democracy – all of these things require big, bold measures and that.” is what I’m fighting for in the Senate. “

At the moment, Mr Schumer’s most serious potential challengers – including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – have taken no steps towards campaigning. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, the 31-year-old Queens lawmaker, has told her staff that she has not made a decision to run, but that she believes the opportunity for a challenge is a constructive form of pressure on Mr. Schumer with her spoken said.

Other potential opponents appear to be more focused on putting together an offer to oust Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Nevertheless, Mr. Schumer seems to want to scare off even a quixotic opponent who could become an annoying distraction or worse. He has used Twitter and cable news interviews to demand that Mr Biden take bold executive action on issues such as student debt and climate change.

And since he takes over the extended powers of the Senate majority, Mr. Schumer relies on old and new alliances to help him govern.

Starting last spring, Mr. Schumer called several conference calls to work out plans for pandemic relief with some of the Democratic Party’s big political figures. This included more centrist voices such as former Treasury official Antonio Weiss; progressive business thinkers such as Felicia Wong of the Roosevelt Institute and Stephanie Kelton of Stony Brook University; and liberal think tank leaders Heather Boushey and Michael Linden, now in the Biden administration.

Mr. Schumer’s regular meetings with national liberal interest groups have intensified over the past few weeks, and he has spent time with a cohort of New York progressives elected last year. In December, he met 33-year-old Democratic Socialist Jabari Brisport, who was elected last fall, in a bar in Bedford-Stuyvesant and emphasized his support for combating climate change.

“We joked that I was a socialist in Brooklyn,” Brisport said, recalling that Mr. Schumer had noticed he works well with Mr. Sanders, who is also a Brooklyn socialist.

Representative Ritchie Torres, a 32-year-old progressive who captured an open house in the Bronx last fall, said Mr Schumer was the first official to contact him after Mr Torres won a controversial elementary school have. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Schumer visited his district for a meeting about expanding the federal tax credit for children.

Mr Torres said he intended to support Mr Schumer in any controversial elementary school. “Without a doubt, he deserves re-election,” said Torres.

Should Mr Schumer struggle to translate his zippy advocates of bold action into law, or should he be seen as an obstacle in certain clashes with Republicans, a serious challenge could arise. Mr. Schumer faces a dense ideological minefield in questions of Recovering Legislation to Eliminate Filibusters and Gain Statehood for Washington, DC

“The pressure is on now that he is one of the most powerful politicians in the country,” said MP Ron Kim, a progressive lawmaker. “If he can’t deliver, it’s not just him – it’s the party that’s going to suffer in two or four years.”

State Senator Jessica Ramos, a Queens Democrat who defeated a Conservative incumbent in an elementary school in 2018, said she believes Mr Schumer reacted to liberals but she is waiting for tough results before endorsing him. She said she was “disappointed” that Mr. Schumer had not taken a tougher line in his power-sharing negotiations with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.

“We have to stand up against these people who do not want to submit humane laws that take care of the people in this country.” Mrs. Ramos said.

People who have spoken to Mr Schumer about a possible primary challenge say he is confident about his chances against Ms. Ocasio Cortez or anyone else; He cites his support in the suburbs and among black voters in New York City, arguing that it would be difficult for an opponent from the left to overcome these advantages. As the first Jewish Senate majority leader, he would likely have considerable strength among an important population of left-wing whites.

But Mr. Schumer certainly also knows that coalitions can be volatile and flexible. He is said to have closely watched Senator Edward Markey’s main campaign in Massachusetts last year against Joseph P. Kennedy III. Mr. Markey, a Septuagenarian, defeated his younger and better known rival by standing up as an advocate for environmental justice and by linking up closely with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and groups like Sunrise.

A few days after Mr. Markey won his elementary school, Rep. Yuh-Line Niou, a Manhattan Liberal Democrat, spoke briefly to Mr. Schumer at a September 11 memorial service in her district. Ms. Niou was frustrated with Mr. Cuomo’s opposition to increasing taxes on the rich and appealed to Mr. Schumer for help in raising much-needed income. He supported, she said, but at the time the Republicans controlled the Senate.

Ms. Niou said she supported Mr. Schumer and felt it was “really important that New York has the majority leader as a member”. But she said she intended to get Mr. Schumer to do the best of the job.

“Every single thing I’ve asked about I’ll ask five thousand times harder,” she said.

John Washington, a Buffalo-based housing organizer who attended the January meeting with Mr. Schumer, said he had seen a significant shift in the senator. In the past, Mr. Schumer sought support for his own priorities and offered “radio silence” for activist goals.

“I think everyone knows that there is some kind of new era in politics,” he said.

Categories
World News

Glacier Bursts in India, Leaving Extra Than 100 Lacking in Floods

Glacier Bursts in India, Leaving More Than 100 Missing in Floods

NEW DELHI – A Himalayan glacier broke, causing sudden, massive flooding in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand on Sunday, destroying two dam projects and forcing authorities to try to evacuate villages and save more than 100 lives.

Trivendra Singh Rawat, the prime minister of Uttarakhand, said seven bodies had been recovered and that about 125 people, including many workers on the two largely swept away hydropower projects, were not reported.

“An avalanche came and completely broke the Rishiganga power plant project and almost all of the workers there are missing,” said Ashok Kumar, the Uttarakhand police chief. “When the water came downriver, we alerted the people.”

The scenes were reminiscent of floods in Uttarakhand in 2013, when heavy rain for several days led to landslides in which thousands of people were killed and entire villages were washed away.

But the latest disaster has also aroused fears about what is to come. Scientists who said a glacier breaking in the middle of winter was a result of climate change have warned that rising temperatures are melting Himalayan glaciers at an alarming rate. The glaciers that provide water to tens of millions of people may have largely disappeared by the end of the century, according to a recent study.

The Chamoli district in Uttarakhand appeared to be hardest hit by the flowing Dhauliganga River. Amit Shah, India’s interior minister, said the country’s disaster relief teams had been flown in. Hundreds of soldiers and members of the Indian-Tibetan border police were also there, other officials said.

Videos on social media showed violent water fluctuations down the mountain canyons, washing away bridges, and what hydroelectric power stations looked like one of the dams.

Officials said 35 people were working on the Rishiganga power plant project, which was closer to the swept glacier, and 176 others were working on a second project about three miles downstream.

Ratan Singh Rana, 55, from Raini village near the Rishiganga Project, said the water flowed down the mountain around 10:30 a.m.

“I was sitting on the floor of my house,” he said. “I saw black liquid flowing from the Nanda Devi mountainside – with a lot of noise downwards – as if a volcano had erupted.”

“It was only 20-25 meters from us,” he added. “We ran uphill about 250 meters and kept crying and shouting, ‘Bhago, bhago! Bachao, bachao! “He said, using the Hindi words for” run “and” save us! ” “

Mr. Rana said the muddy water swept large boulders and ice downstream. His daughter and granddaughter were trapped in the house, and mud debris locked the main entrance. You managed to save her from the back of the house.

“We thought the whole world would drown in it,” he said. “I thought that today is the end, that we would leave this world today.”

Late on Sunday afternoon, the worst damage from the flooding appeared to be over.

Prime Minister Mr Rawat visited Chamoli and posted a video on Twitter indicating that water flow had slowed. He expressed hope that some of the missing could be saved. Local media reports say 16 people trapped in a tunnel have so far been rescued.

“Our particular focus is on rescuing the workers trapped in the tunnels,” he said.

The disaster led critics to point fingers at the government for building a dam near the glaciers at a time when the area is so vulnerable to climate change.

Uma Bharti, a former minister of water resources and river development in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, said she had warned against placing a hydropower project on the river near the Himalayas.

“This incident, which occurred near Rishiganga in the Himalayas, is both worrying and cautionary,” Ms. Bharti said on Twitter. She said she warned that the Himalayas “is a very sensitive area and therefore these projects on the Ganges and its tributaries should not be built.”

Anil Joshi, an environmentalist who studies the Himalayan region, said the swept-away dam was built on India’s second highest mountain just a few kilometers from the Nanda Devi Glacier.

“At this point, a glacier avalanche is indicative of climate change,” Joshi said, referring to how the episode happened during the winter cold. “Changes in temperature caused glaciers to detach and damaged the dam in Rishiganga.”

Mr Joshi said he had difficulty understanding why the government built the dam so close to the glacier. “Now this water is flowing at cyclone speed.” he said.

Categories
Business

The Week in Enterprise: The Meme Inventory Bubble Bursts

The Week in Business: The Meme Stock Bubble Bursts

Happy Super Bowl Sunday. Here are the key business stories for the week ahead. – Charlotte Cowles

27 years after founding Amazon, Jeff Bezos is handing over his job as managing director to one of his protégés, Andy Jassy, ​​who heads the company’s lucrative cloud computing department. Mr Bezos becomes the CEO of Amazon and participates in high-level decision-making, but it is still the end of an era for the largest e-commerce retailer in the country. He walks away on pretty good marks: Amazon’s most recent quarterly revenue topped $ 100 billion for the first time, and the company’s worth ($ 1.7 trillion) has Mr. Bezos one of the richest people in the world made. However, we face challenges as the company is increasingly scrutinized by lawmakers and antitrust authorities to determine whether it is exercising its influence illegally.

Well, here’s something unsurprising: shares of GameStop – the company that sparked an online stock buying frenzy that upset the markets – fell back to earth, falling to a tiny fraction of what they were a few days earlier had held. The same army of retail investors that fueled GameStop’s boom-and-bust cycle had also snapped up stocks of underdogs like AMC Entertainment and BlackBerry, whose prices also crashed last week. The rapid devaluation of so-called meme stocks, named for their popularity on social media, has led investors to wonder who to blame for their losses. However, when the market stabilized it had its biggest rally in months.

Will the GameStop saga change the regulation of stock trading? Maybe. Recently confirmed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen held a meeting with senior regulators on Thursday to discuss the increasing prevalence of retail investing – stock trading made easy (and free) with apps like Robinhood and E-Trade. The advantage of these platforms is that they make investing more accessible to ordinary (read: not Wall Street) people. If the past few weeks have taught us anything, the whims of these individual stock traders can also create volatility that harms investors of all kinds.

The Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress are calling for their sweeping coronavirus relief bill of $ 1.9 trillion and will work out the final details this week. In order to avoid possible deadlocks, the Senate Democrats have passed a budget framework that allows the aid package to be passed with a simple majority and without Republican support. President Biden said he was still hoping to compromise with Republicans who had opposed the scope and price of the bill. But he’s unwilling to waste time soliciting their votes or focusing on cornerstones like school aid or direct payments of $ 1,400 to skilled Americans. And with the grim report on Jobs in January, there’s no moment to lose.

Voting technology company Smartmatic has filed a $ 2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, three of its anchors, and attorneys Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell. The company accuses the defendants of harming their business and reputation by spreading false theories about its services as part of their discredited allegations of widespread fraud in the 2020 elections. In its complaint, Smartmatic argues that Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell, who represented former President Donald J. Trump, “made a story about Smartmatic” and that “Fox joined the conspiracy to provide Smartmatic and its voting technology and software defame and belittle. ”

The cost of Super Bowl ads remained similar to the previous year – about $ 5.6 million for a 30-second commercial. It’s the first time the rate hasn’t increased significantly in over a decade, and it took CBS much longer than usual to sell all of the slots. It’s an odd time for marketing, after all, and advertisers face a dilemma: are you playing on the pandemic and reminding viewers of a nightmare they were hoping for a precious few hours? Or do you ignore it and risk looking numb? The ads are dominated by pandemic-popular companies such as the delivery service app DoorDash, the Mexican take-out chain Chipotle and the recently troubled investment platform Robinhood.

Categories
Health

Abraham Twerski, Who Merged 12 Steps and the Torah, Dies at 90

Abraham Twerski, Who Merged 12 Steps and the Torah, Dies at 90

What set Rabbi Twerski apart from many other Orthodox therapists was his willingness to look outside of his community. In one of his works, “The Shame Worn in Silence: Spouse Abuse in the Jewish Community” (1996), he highlighted a problem that many Hasidic leaders argued should be treated discreetly within the island community, without inform the police or outside authorities.

Abraham Joshua Heschel Twerski was born on October 6, 1930 in Milwaukee, where his parents immigrated in 1927 after leaving Russia. His father Jacob, the sixth generation descendant of the Grand Rabbi of Chernobyl, was the rabbi of the Beth Jehudah Synagogue in Milwaukee. His mother, Devorah Leah (Halberstam) Twerski, was the daughter of a chief rabbi of Bobov, one of the largest Hasidic sects.

Abraham was the third of five brothers, each of whom became rabbis but also received advanced secular training and college and university degrees, something very few Hasidim aspire to do. He attended Milwaukee public schools and played in a Christmas game in second grade. When his mother went to school, the headmaster thought she was there to complain. Instead, she told the headmaster that if her son’s Jewish upbringing wasn’t strong enough to survive a second grade game, it was his family who had abandoned him.

He received his rabbinical ordination in 1951 at the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago (now in Skokie, Illinois). While serving as an assistant rabbi with his father’s synagogue, he enjoyed counseling others, but recognized that ward members always turned to his father for advice on their most intimate personal problems. In a 1988 interview with the National Council of Jewish Women, he stated that studying psychiatry could help develop his own talent.

“So I went to medical school to become a psychiatrist and do what I wanted to do as a rabbi,” he said.

He received his medical degree from Marquette University in Milwaukee, a Jesuit institution. When actor Danny Thomas, a practicing Catholic who grew up in the Midwest, learned during lunch with Marquette officials that a student who was an Orthodox rabbi said it would take up to $ 4,000 to complete his medical degree he told the officials, “He has it,” and he did well.

Rabbi Twerski was trained as a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh. He was due to take up a teaching position at the university, but after Sister Adele of St. Francis Hospital informed him of the hospital’s needs for a stronger mental health program, he became its director of psychiatry. He stayed there for 20 years.

Categories
Entertainment

Paris Hilton Has a Podcast, With a Twist

Paris Hilton Has a Podcast, With a Twist

Podcasting is a major draw for potential media distraughters and visionaries. In the medium that is still developing, they see moist clay that can be formed into an ideal vessel for long-form narrative journalism or fiction or game shows or musicals or memoirs.

Add Paris Hilton to their ranks. Hilton, master of an earlier era of mass communication in the early years of the tabloid, is stepping into a form with a new company, her own show, and an unusual spin that seeks to create an audio that matches social media.

“This Is Paris” will debut on February 22nd, in partnership with iHeartMedia, the radio giant that has grown to become one of the largest podcast distributors, with more than 750 shows that collect more than 250 million downloads per month. The new show is aimed at Hilton’s 40 million+ followers on social media platforms and features a mix of personal content and conversations with their family, friends and other celebrities. It will be the flagship of a planned list of seven shows produced by Hilton’s London Audio and iHeartPodcast Network. The other programs with different hosts will be released over the next three years.

“I’ve always been an innovator and a trailblazer when it comes to reality TV, social media and DJing, and now I really believe that language and audio are the next frontier,” she said in an interview.

A key feature of their podcast will be their use of a format that Hilton calls “podposts”: short (between one and three minutes), slimmed-down shows designed to mimic the cadence and tone of social media posts. The “This Is Paris” podcast feed will feature longer (around 45 minutes), more traditional episodes each week, with intermittent podposts filling the void several times a week.

“I really think it’s like another form of social media,” said Hilton. “I do so many things – as a DJ, businesswoman, designer, and writer – that I can talk about them a lot.”

Pre-planned categories of podposts are inspired by Hilton’s famous buzzwords, including “That’s Hot” for product recommendations, “Loves It” for cultural recommendations, and “This Is my Hotline,” in which Hilton responds to voicemail messages sent by listeners. Conal Byrne, president of the iHeartPodcast network, said the company is currently looking to partner with brands for sponsorship at various levels.

“Her ability to recommend products she believes in to her fans is almost unrivaled,” said Byrne.

Since the end of “The Simple Life,” her reality television series starring Nicole Richie, in 2007, Hilton, who turns 40 this month, has branched into a variety of industries through her company Paris Hilton Entertainment. The assets include 45 retail stores and 19 product lines in various categories such as fragrance, fashion and accessories. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Hilton was a sought-after DJ around the world, paying her $ 1 million per gig.

With this new deal, iHeartMedia will fully fund the list of shows produced in association with London Audio on a multi-million dollar budget. The two companies will be joint partners at every trade fair and will share all sources of income. After “This Is Paris,” the rest of the list is said to be focused on topics such as beauty, wellness, dating, philanthropy and technology, with Hilton and Bruce Gersh, President of London Audio serving as executive producers.

“This is a medium that has so many dimensions and it really allows you to connect with an audience in unique ways,” said Gersh. “Paris wanted to step in with all of its heart.”

Hilton, who named “Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions,” and Kate and Oliver Hudson’s “Sibling Revelry” as their favorite shows, immersed themselves in the medium during the pandemic at home in Los Angeles.

“I usually travel 250 days a year and work all the time,” she said. “During the whole year in quarantine, I had more free time than ever before in my career. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts and I was really interested in them. When I cook or work or do my art, I always have it in the background. “

Podcasts have become a preferred medium for celebrities looking to delve deeper into fans than a typical post on Instagram or Twitter, while avoiding the control and vulnerability associated with speaking to the press. Name recognition is a huge perk on the platform – shows from celebrity podcasters like Dax Shepard, Jason Bateman, Anna Faris and Bill Burr regularly appear in the top 50 Apple Podcasts charts. (In addition to the Hilton deal, iHeartMedia has partnered with Will Ferrell and Shonda Rhimes to watch shows.) And podcast audiences tend to be relatively friendly: there are no comment areas highlighting uncomfortable behavior and podcasts The Nature requires a level of active engagement that will deter passing critics.

“I think once people understand that this is a platform where they can interact directly with their fans without any sort of middle person, it will be a very attractive proposition,” said Tom Webster, senior vice president from Edison Research, a media research company.

Webster added that Hilton’s podposts concept reminded him of the proto-podcast field of audio blogging, where writers published short audio diaries for sites like The Quiet American and The Greasy Skillet. “It enables them to engage with their personal interests in ways that they cannot achieve in their day-to-day work,” he said.

“This Is Paris” takes its name from Hilton’s YouTube documentary that was released last fall. In this film, which has nearly 20 million views, she distances herself from the carefree, ditsy person she has been identified with since she appeared in the glitz of paparazzi onions two decades ago. Hilton also says she was molested by administrators of a private boarding school she attended as a teenager, an experience that leaves her traumatized.

The podcast is supposed to follow in the same open direction. Hilton records it in a home studio (built for her music projects) and uses her much discussed natural voice (which to my ear is deeper than her girly trill, but no dramatic departure).

“She speaks in a way that is very relaxed and approachable, unlike someone doing a performance,” said Byrne. “Right away she felt like a one-on-one conversation and not a one-to-many media object.”

It was initially uncomfortable for Hilton to include the pilot for the show – unlike on social media, there were no glamorous photos or videos to hide behind. “It’s all about the knowledge you bring and what you say with your voice,” she said.

But soon she fell into a groove. After being the subject of interviews for a lifetime, she has enjoyed turning the tables when asking questions. Compared to their old jobs, the commute isn’t bad either.

“I love being a homebody,” she said, thinking about her new chapter. “I’ve worked so incredibly hard to build my empire – now I can finally enjoy it.”

Categories
Business

The Hopes That Rose and Fell With GameStop

The Hopes That Rose and Fell With GameStop

Some wanted to be on the front lines of a revolution. Some wanted to be rich. And at the end of a wild two-week fortune made and lost drive, some just hoped they could pay their rent.

Winners and losers are determined every day on Wall Street. And for a while, the improbable trading boom in the beleaguered video game retailer GameStop brought the little guy to the top. A staggering fortune appeared overnight.

But they disappeared almost as quickly.

At its highest point, GameStop shares were priced at $ 483. On Friday the stock was worth $ 63.77. The trade frenzy – fueled by online hype about a rebellion against traditional Wall Street powers – had created around $ 30 billion in fortune on paper and then destroyed it.

Many retail investors trapped at the height of the mania lost a lot. Perfect timing of a trade is next to impossible even for the best stock pickers. Even those who made money have missed out on far greater fortunes if they didn’t sell at the height of the rally.

Regardless of whether they wanted to make a coin or a point, these traders rode up and down the GameStop wave.

What do you do when you’re 19 and suddenly have a quarter of a million dollars in store? Shawn Daumer went to Hooters.

Armed with cash that came in part from graduation gifts and profits from trading stocks like Tesla, Mr. Daumer had spent about $ 47,000 on GameStop stock the week before it hit the roof.

It was January 26 – just two days after GameStop’s big week – when he and his brother hit Hooters, peeled off 30 wings, and had 10 more left. Two days later, GameStop hit its intraday high of $ 483 and Mr. Daumer, a real estate agent in Valparaiso, Indiana, held 1,233 shares. It had risen more than half a million dollars on its initial investment.

Mr Daumer pursued his interest in GameStop in the same place many others did: Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, where chair vendors gather for slippery jokes, success stories, and even bragging about enormous losses.

“Really the biggest part is when you see everyone buying stocks day in and day out and seeing them live on their own screen and watching them go up,” Daumer said amid GameStop’s surge. “It follows the trend, you know? If that’s the trend, follow it and you will make money. “

GameStop versus Wall Street

Let us understand you

GameStop’s stock declined abruptly, however, when the trading app Robinhood and other brokerage firms announced a series of restrictions on trading a handful of stocks that had soared. Mr. Daumer made about $ 200,000 in profit almost immediately.

“I was still up 500 percent,” he said at the time. “I’m OK.” Also, Mr. Daumer and his fellow editor-in-chiefs believed GameStop would skyrocket again: “We’re going to make $ 1,000,” he said.

They never came close.

He’d had enough last week when the stock fell 72 percent in two days. Mr. Daumer placed an order for sale Tuesday afternoon and the order was filled Wednesday morning at a price of $ 91.22.

He made more than $ 65,000 in profit, doubling his investment.

Not everyone was so lucky.

For Nora Samir it seemed like a dream.

She woke up at her home in Sydney in the middle of the night of January 27th. On the other side of the world, GameStop grew rapidly.

The $ 735 she’d invested the day before had doubled. She ran down the stairs to tell her mother who was sleeping.

“Nora, don’t be greedy,” warned her mother. “You have to take it out.”

But Ms. Samir, 24, a child health researcher at the University of New South Wales and a newcomer to the stock market,

not sold – she bought.

After investing about $ 800 more, she owned just over nine shares of GameStop. She later plowed $ 1,800 into BlackBerry, the cell phone maker that once dominated and had mobile email was swept in the frenzy.

“I was at a peak,” she admitted. “When the stock goes up, don’t think about how deep it can go.”

The high didn’t last long – and the decline got worse when her trading app crashed and she had no choice but to hold on while GameStop stocks fell.

She managed to sell a share for $ 134 on the way down. The shares she still owned on Friday were worth $ 528. She lost more than half of what she put in GameStop.

In the lesson, Ms. Samir said, “Don’t be greedy.”

Jacob Chalfant, a high school graduate from Westfield, New Jersey, enjoyed the way his “diamond hands” put pressure on hedge funds.

Mr. Chalfant, now 18, a poster on WallStreetBets since he was 15, enjoyed the GameStop rally because of the pressure it put on hedge funds like Melvin Capital, which had bet GameStop stocks to fall would.

In Reddit’s parlance, Mr. Chalfant’s diamond-hard hands, unlike the “paper hands” of the salespeople, will not fold. He’s still holding the stock he bought for $ 1,035 – roughly a month’s wages from his pizza shop job and freelance photography business – when GameStop was trading at $ 290. On Friday, his investment was worth $ 220.

“I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ve already lost the money,” he said. “Realistically, the stock won’t go where it was before.”

But the losses are also an investment, said Mr Chalfant. They earned him “internet points” at WallStreetBets. “If you say, ‘I’m still holding,’ you have more influence than if you didn’t,” he said.

(Many on the WallStreetBets forum insist that GameStop stocks could rise again. On the other hand, another Reddit forum opened last week where users report losses from trading stocks whose ticker symbol is GME: GMEbagholdersclub.)

Mr Chalfant said he and other teen traders enjoy gamifying the investment, and many of his friends got onto GameStop just because they thought it was fun not to make any money.

“We live in a system where there is no more justice and the whole world is falling apart,” said Chalfant. “Nothing really matters, so we might as well try and have fun while we’re here.”

For Terrell Jones, it wasn’t a GameStop investment that taught him a lesson.

Instead, Mr. Jones, a student from Kenosha, Wisconsin, bought $ 300 from AMC, the cinema chain whose stocks were also driven insane.

“I just caught the social media hype and got into it right away,” he said. “I fell for it.”

When AMC began to fall and lost $ 112, 24-year-old Mr. Jones panicked.

“I just had to get out of there ASAP,” he said. “It’s a lot of money, we’re in the middle of a pandemic and I have rent that has to be paid.”

Usually C. Arthur Davitt is a model of financial discipline.

He automatically pays $ 200 a month into an index fund, saves enough to score a corporate match on his 401 (k), and has aggressively paid off his $ 35,000 debt.

But 29-year-old Davitt thought it might be fun to get into some of the skyrocketing stocks. He’s invested less than $ 1,500 in GameStop and AMC – GameStop’s stake is now down almost in half, and his stake in AMC is down more than 20 percent.

“I’m not a player by nature,” he said, “and that’s money I’ve already written off.”

Mr. Davitt, who lives in Chicago and works for a company that offers employer assistance programs to employers, might as well stick with both companies. GameStop has just named several new leaders who could help breathe new life into the company, and AMC could see a recovery once people venture out of their homes again.

“If I didn’t like GameStop or AMC,” said Davitt, “I wouldn’t find it pleasant.”

In almost every way, Mr. Daumer, the Indiana teenager, is one of the winners of the GameStop deal. He more than doubled his money even if he didn’t make the biggest payday possible.

“Are you fishing?” he asked, trying to find a way to explain the experience.

If you’re fishing, he said, and you feel a tug on your line, it might just be a nibble or a bite. If you wait to feel a stronger jolt, you risk losing the fish you didn’t know you had.

The climax, he said, was such a moment. He thought it was just a little nibble and decided to wait.

“The fish got away,” he said.

But there are others who are addicts, he said. He is already trying his hand at a penny stock, Castor Maritime, based in Cyprus. So far this year it’s over 300 percent.

What kind of business is the company in?

“You know what? I wish I could tell you,” said Mr. Daumer. “I just like the numbers.”

Categories
Health

CDC director says to observe Tremendous Bowl nearly or solely with individuals you already stay with

CDC director says to watch Super Bowl virtually or only with people you already live with

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Joe Biden’s chief executive officer for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), listens as Biden announces candidates and officers for his health and coronavirus response teams during a press conference at his transitional headquarters Wilmington, Delaware, December 8, 2020.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

Americans shouldn’t gather indoors with people outside their households to watch the Super Bowl this weekend to keep the coronavirus from spreading, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.

“Whichever team you choose and which commercial is your favorite, be sure to watch the Super Bowl and only meet virtually or with the people you live with,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Wednesday at a Covid-19 briefing in the White House. “We have to take prevention and intervention seriously.”

Walensky noted that the number of new Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations continues to decline and that the daily death toll is likely to follow. But she added, “This is not the time to let go of our watch.” She said new, more contagious variants of the coronavirus are threatening to reverse the country’s progress in fighting the outbreak.

The CDC has issued guidelines on how to safely watch the Super Bowl, urging people not to travel to parties. It has been said, “Meeting virtually or with people you live with is the safest choice.”

According to CDC instructions, if people choose to gather, they should wear a mask, practice physical distance, wash their hands frequently, and watch the big game in a well-ventilated room or outdoors.

Epidemiologists say the country is just recovering from a spate of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, largely caused by gatherings over Christmas, New Year, and other holidays in recent years. Infection levels remain worryingly high in much of the country, and inter-household gatherings for Sunday’s Super Bowl could lead to renewed spikes in some cases.

This is particularly worrying given that three other contagious variants of the virus have been discovered in the US that are of concern to federal health officials. The strain B.1.1.7 was discovered in the United Kingdom in autumn and is the dominant variant there. The B.1.351 was recently found in South Africa and has established itself in that country. The P.1 variant in Brazil has become the dominant Covid-19 strain there.

The US doesn’t do nearly as many genetic sequences as, say, the UK, which means it’s difficult to know exactly how widespread the variants are in the US. The CDC has confirmed more than 500 B.1.1.7 cases, three cases from B.1.351 and two cases from P.1 to date.

Dr. Leana Wen, former Baltimore health commissioner, said in a telephone interview that the spread of the new variants could lead to an “exponential explosive spread” of the virus. She added that the nation is in a race to vaccinate people before the new strains take root in the United States

Jeff Zients, coordinator of President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 task force, said Wednesday that the new administration had increased the pace of vaccine distribution by 20% since the president took office. As vaccinations rise, some public health specialists say the government could do more to increase the number of Americans who are vaccinated each day.

According to the CDC, more than 52.6 million doses of the vaccines have been distributed to states, but fewer than 32.8 million doses have actually been given.

“We have triggered a response from the entire government. We have increased the vaccine supply. And we are making sure that all Americans in every community have more vaccination sites,” Zients said on Wednesday.

Categories
Politics

Biden halts U.S. help for offensive navy operations in Yemen

Biden halts U.S. support for offensive military operations in Yemen

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Thursday announced the end of US support for offensive operations in Yemen and appointed a new envoy to oversee the nation’s diplomatic mission to end the civil war there. This is part of a broader foreign policy address that highlights greater US engagement in the world.

“This war has to end,” said Biden during his first foreign policy address as president. “We are ending all American support for offensive operations in the Yemen war, including arms sales.”

“At the same time, Saudi Arabia is facing rocket attacks, UAV strikes and other threats from Iranian forces in several countries,” said Biden. “We will continue to help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity and people.”

The President appointed Tim Lenderking, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran, Iraq and Regional Multilateral Affairs, to oversee the US diplomatic mission to end the war in Yemen.

“I have asked my Middle East team to ensure our support for the United Nations initiative to impose a ceasefire, open humanitarian channels and re-establish long dormant peace talks,” said Biden.

“Tim’s diplomacy is strengthened by USAID, which is committed to ensuring that humanitarian aid reaches the Yemeni people who are suffering from unbearable devastation,” said Biden.

The US will continue to target al-Qaeda

Biden’s policies of ending support for offensive operations, however, will not extend to US military action against al-Qaeda’s subsidiary known as AQAP in the region.

“It does not extend to measures against AQAP that we are taking to protect the homeland and American interests in the region, as well as our allies and partners,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters at a news conference at the White House earlier Thursday.

“It extends to the types of offensive operations that perpetuated a civil war in Yemen that has turned into a humanitarian crisis,” Sullivan said.

The US has informed Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of its decision, Sullivan said.

He added that the Biden government has stopped selling precision-guided ammunition to Saudi Arabia in order to assess possible human rights violations.

The civil war in Yemen escalated in 2014 when the Houthi forces, allied with former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, took over the country’s capital.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been carrying out attacks against the Houthis in Yemen since March 2015. The Saudi-led intervention in Yemen was previously supported by the administration of former President Donald Trump.

Trump vetoed a measure in 2019 aimed at ending U.S. military aid and engagement in Yemen. At the time, Trump said the Congressional resolution was “unnecessary” and “threatened the lives of American citizens and courageous members of the service both now and in the future.”

The legislature, which backed the measure, criticized Saudi Arabia for a series of bombing attacks that contributed to the deaths of civilians in Yemen.

The United Nations previously said that the ongoing armed conflict in Yemen has caused the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. The US provided more than $ 630 million in humanitarian aid to Yemen in fiscal 2020, according to the State Department.

– CNBC’s Christian Nunley contributed to this report from Virginia.

Categories
Business

Denmark needs to construct a renewable power island within the North Sea

Denmark wants to build a renewable energy island in the North Sea

The facility will be located in waters off the coast of Jutland.

ah_fotobox | iStock | Getty Images

Denmark will move ahead with its plans to build a huge man-made island in the North Sea that will act as a major renewable energy hub and cost billions of dollars to develop.

The Danish Energy Agency, which is part of the government’s Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities, said Thursday the project would be part of a public-private partnership, with the Danish state holding a majority stake.

The scope of the project, which will be located in waters 80 kilometers off the coast of Jutland, the large peninsula with mainland Denmark, is considerable.

In the first phase, with an output of 3 gigawatts (GW), around 200 offshore wind turbines are supplied with electricity to the hub, which is then distributed to the surrounding countries via the grid.

In the future, the hub’s capacity could be expanded to 10 GW. According to the Danish authorities, this would be enough to supply 10 million households in Europe with electricity. Depending on its final capacity, the island will cover an area between 120,000 and 460,000 square meters.

The estimated cost of building the artificial island, 10 GW capacity and the necessary transmission network is 210 billion Danish kroner (33.97 billion US dollars).

“The energy hub in the North Sea will be the largest construction project in Danish history,” said Danish climate minister Dan Jørgensen in a statement.

“It will go a long way towards realizing the enormous potential for European offshore wind and I look forward to our future collaboration with other European countries,” he added.

The project is now moving forward and the Danish climate department will start discussions with potential investors from the private sector. At the political level, the terms of the tender are negotiated, new legislation is passed and environmental impact assessments are carried out.

In addition to the artificial island, a second energy hub of 2 GW is planned for the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm.

Denmark is a pioneer when it comes to offshore wind projects. The world’s first offshore wind farm in waters near the Danish island of Lolland was commissioned in 1991 by Orsted – the company formerly known as DONG Energy. Other Danish companies like the turbine manufacturer Vestas are important players in wind energy.

Looking ahead, the European Union, of which Denmark is a part, wants its offshore wind capacity to reach 60 GW by 2030 and 300 GW by the middle of the century.

Categories
World News

The U.S. should concentrate on three enduring points in China relationship

Biden may draw 'red lines' against Chinese authoritarianism

The heated global debate sparked this week by a thought-provoking paper – “The Longer Telegram: Towards a New American China Strategy” – has underscored the urgency and difficulty of finding a durable and actionable US approach to China To develop China when the country becomes more authoritarian, more self-confident and more globally assertive.

The 26,000-word paper, published simultaneously by the Atlantic Council and, in a shorter form, by Politico Magazine, served the expert community for China as a kind of Rorschach test. Responses ranged from critics who found the paper’s rules too provocative to supporters who praised its groundbreaking contributions.

Beijing was noted not least because of the author’s obvious familiarity with communist party politics and the focus on President Xi Jinping. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman accused the anonymous author of “dark motives and cowardice” for starting “a new Cold War”.

Former CIA China analyst Paul Heer, who wrote in the realistic, conservative National Interest, seemed to agree, exposing the singular Xi emphasis as “a deeply misguided, if not dangerous, approach.”

Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf agreed with Anonymous that China “is increasingly behaving like an emerging great power ruled by a ruthless and effective despot,” but criticized the author’s myriad goals because of economic performance and underutilization China’s potential are not achievable.

After digesting the liveliest debate sparked by one of the growing industrial strategy papers in China, I stand with Senator Dan Sullivan, Republican of Alaska, who praised the paper during an extraordinary speech in the Senate.

Sullivan’s credibility grows from his history as a marine veteran, former Alaska attorney general, former National Security Council officer, and senior State Department official involved in business and economics.

“’The longer telegram’ is not perfect,” he argued, standing alongside an enlarged reproduction of the easel-balanced cover of the paper as the United States must tackle this significant challenge that we will face for decades. “

“I hope my fellow Democrats and Republicans all have the opportunity to read and analyze this. Like Kennan’s strategy of containment, to be successful our China policy must be very bipartisan and ready to be operationalized for decades will. “”

The three elements of The Longer Telegram’s approach that should stand the test of time are:

  1. The urgent need to better understand China’s domestic politics and political dynamics in order to succeed.
  2. The reality that a declining US state cannot handle an emerging China regardless of its strategy.
  3. The focus on reviving and reinventing alliances, not out of nostalgia, but because no policy will be successful that does not motivate the partners in creative new ways.

Let’s take each of these priorities in turn.

First, The Longer Telegram’s most innovative and controversial idea is to focus on China’s leaders and behavior.

“US strategy must continue to focus on Xi, his inner circle and the Chinese political context in which they govern,” argued the paper. “In order to change their decision-making, you have to understand their political and strategic paradigm, act in it and change it.”

Most of the newspapers’ most virulent critics picked up on this Xi focus. Some argued that the author overestimated Xi’s role; others argued over the idea that if Xi were replaced over time, under more moderate leadership, China would become a more cooperative partner.

Others warned that China would view any US policy directed at Xi as a dangerously escalating effort in regime change.

These points, however, miss the author’s more significant and irrefutable point: No American strategy towards Beijing can succeed without a better understanding of how China’s decision-making is developing.

“The core wisdom of Kennan’s analysis of 1946 was his assessment of the internal functioning of the Soviet Union and the realization that a US strategy was to be developed that corresponds to the core of this complex political reality,” writes Anonymous. “The same must be done to address China.”

The author’s informed view is that Xi’s concentration of power, his campaign to eradicate political opponents, and his emerging cult of personality “have sparked simmering resentments among large sections of the Chinese Communist Party elite.”

Whether or not you agree with the author’s view that China failed to recognize political rifts and fragility, the real point is that the US needs to invest more in understanding these dynamics. One of Beijing’s competitive advantages is its insight into America’s painfully transparent political divisions and vulnerabilities.

On the second point, President Biden’s first foreign policy speech underlined his agreement with the author’s second important point. “The US strategy must begin by taking into account the country’s economic and institutional weaknesses,” writes the author.

“We will compete from a position of strength by doing better at home,” said President Biden.

Nothing will be more important.

Finally, and this was the gist of the Biden speech, the author argues that the US must bring allies together behind a more coherent and coherent approach. That will be difficult to achieve because so many US partners have China as their leading trading partner.

Forging a common cause among traditional US partners and allies will require an unprecedented level of global commitment and give and take – and an acceptance of the reality of China’s economic influence.

Critics selected other elements of the paper. For example, some identified the author’s appeal for “red lines” in relation to affairs from Taiwan to the South China Sea as particularly dangerous.

Others viewed the author’s call for greater efforts to pull Russia away from its deeper ties with China as folly.

However, both would only be a return to a solid strategic practice à la Henry Kissinger. Sharing red lines privately can lead to miscalculations. Its enforcement can be measured and proportionate.

You don’t have to love Vladimir Putin either to realize that Russia’s tightening strategic alignment, military cooperation, and sharing of information with Beijing have been a profound US foreign policy failure.

We published the Longer Telegram at the Atlantic Council, where I am President and CEO, and I admit that the value of the paper is biased in some ways. I’m glad it sparked a global discussion with criticism and positive suggestions.

How we approach China is a complex and critical challenge. There would be no better time for this debate.

Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, award-winning journalist, and President and CEO of the Atlantic Council, one of the most influential US think tanks on global affairs. He worked for the Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years as a foreign correspondent, assistant editor-in-chief and senior editor for the European edition of the newspaper. His latest book – “Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place in the World” – was a New York Times bestseller and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter @FredKempe and subscribe here to Inflection Points, his view every Saturday of the top stories and trends of the past week.

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