Month: February 2021

Categories
Health

Biden Covid response workforce holds briefing after J&J requests FDA OK for vaccine

Biden Covid response team holds briefing after J&J requests FDA OK for vaccine

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

President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 Response Team will hold a briefing Friday on the coronavirus pandemic that left at least 455,875 Americans dead.

The briefing comes one day after Johnson & Johnson asked the Food and Drug Administration to approve the unique Covid-19 vaccine for use in the United States. The FDA has scheduled a meeting of its Advisory Committee on Vaccines and Related Biological Products in February 26 to discuss the vaccine, which could be distributed in the US as early as this month.

Federal and state officials are eagerly awaiting approval of J & J’s vaccine.Unlike Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines, which require two doses three to four weeks apart, J & J’s drugs only require one dose , which makes logistics easier for healthcare providers.

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

Categories
Business

Donald McNeil and Andy Mills Depart The New York Occasions

Donald McNeil and Andy Mills Leave The New York Times

Two journalists responsible for some of the New York Times’ best-known work over the past three years have left the paper after past criticism of their behavior inside and outside the organization.

In two memos on Friday afternoon, Dean Baquet, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, and Joe Kahn, the editor-in-chief, briefed staff on the departures of Donald G. McNeil Jr., a science correspondent covering the coronavirus pandemic, and Andy Mills Audio journalist who helped create “The Daily” and was the producer and co-host of “Caliphate,” a 2018 podcast that was found to be severely flawed after an internal investigation.

Mr. McNeil, a Times veteran who has covered from 60 countries, was an expert guide on a Times-sponsored student trip to Peru in 2019. At least six students or their parents complained about comments he made, The Daily Beast last week. The Times confirmed that he used a “racist bow” during the trip.

In their memo, Mr. Baquet and Mr. Kahn wrote that Mr. McNeil “did a lot of good reporting over four decades” but added “that this is the right next step”.

The statement was a turning point from last week when Mr. Baquet sent a message to staff defending his decision to give Mr. McNeil “another chance”.

“I cleared an investigation and found that what he had said was offensive and that he displayed extremely poor judgment,” wrote Mr Baquet, “but that it did not appear to me that his intentions were hateful or malicious.”

Days after this note, a group of Times staff sent a letter to the publisher, AG Sulzberger, criticizing the paper’s attitude towards Mr. McNeil. “Despite the Times’ apparent commitment to diversity and inclusion,” said the letter, viewed by a Times reporter, “we have given a prominent platform to someone who has chosen to use it – a critical blow, the one Pandemic that disproportionately affects people with color. ” Language that is offensive and unacceptable by newsroom standards. “

Mr. Sulzberger, Mr. Baquet and Meredith Kopit Levien, the CEO of the New York Times Company, responded to the group in a letter on Wednesday with the words: “We welcome this contribution. We appreciate the spirit in which it has been offered and broadly agree with the message. “

In a statement to Times staff on Friday, Mr. McNeil wrote that he used the bow in a discussion with a student about the suspension of a classmate who had used the term.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he wrote. “I originally thought that the context in which I used this ugly word could be defended. I now realize that it can’t. It’s deeply offensive and hurtful. “

Mr. McNeil concluded, “I am sorry for offending my coworkers – and for everything I have done to hurt The Times, an institution I love and whose mission I believe in and try to serve . I let you all down. “

The departure of Mr. Mills, the audio journalist, was announced nearly two months after an editorial note was posted about the bugs in “Caliphate”. The note says the series on Islamic State put too much faith in the misrepresentation or exaggeration of one of its main themes.

In an interview with Michael Barbaro, the host of the Times podcast “The Daily”, Mr. Baquet attributed the show’s shortcomings to “an institutional failure”. The note and the interview with the editors followed a month-long internal investigation into reporting on the “Caliphate”.

Following the correction, people who worked with Mr. Mills in his previous job on the WNYC show “Radiolab” posted complaints on Twitter about his behavior towards women in the Radiolab workplace and in social settings.

In February 2018, two months before the debut of Caliphate, an article in New York magazine The Cut about sexual harassment on New York public radio reported that Mr. Mills had been the subject of complaints while at Radiolab.

Women interviewed for the article said he asked them about dates, gave unsolicited back massages and poured beer on the head of a woman he worked with, and he said a woman in the office was about her a man’s sex has been set. WNYC Human Resources investigated Mr. Mills’ behavior, reported The Cut, and issued him a warning while allowing him to keep his job. In an interview for The Cut, Mr. Mills admitted much of the behavior described in WNYC’s HR report.

In an online post on Friday, Mr Mills said that his departure from The Times was not due to problems with “Caliphate” and that those responsible for the newspaper “did not blame us” for their shortcomings.

After posting the editor’s note, “Another story surfaced online: my lack of punishment was due to entitlement and male privilege,” he wrote. “This accusation gave some the opportunity to revive my previous personal behavior.”

He wrote that when he was hired, he told The Times about his past mistakes and received good reviews for his work in the newspaper. He also said he received a promotion in December. But in the weeks after Caliphate’s errors were publicized, “allegations on Twitter quickly escalated to the point where my actual flaws and past mistakes were replaced by gross exaggerations and unsubstantiated claims.”

In the end: “I believe it is in the best interests of me and my team to leave the company at this point,” he wrote. “I do it without joy and with a heavy heart.”

Categories
Politics

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is true about local weather change disclosure

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is right about climate change disclosure

A firefighter moves a hose as he attempts to rescue homes on Mountain Hawk Drive while the shady fire burns in the Skyhawk area of ​​Santa Rosa, California, on September 28, 2020.

Scott Strazzante | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images

The recommendation that public corporations disclose their plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, as suggested in the recent letter from Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock and others, should be embraced by corporations and investors and pragmatic by regulators worldwide implemented.

We, a long-term investor and a seasoned market regulator, embrace this disclosure framework for what it will do – vastly improve the mix of decision-making information – and what it will not – direct corporate strategy or, worse, pick winners and losers. Based on the work we have done with FCLT Global and others, we believe it can be implemented quickly and effectively.

Based on the generally accepted thesis that environmental regulations will drive economic activity in the direction of CO2 neutrality in the next thirty years, this recommendation offers a focus for a meaningful engagement of investors and companies.

Past transformations show the wisdom of this approach. Imagine an important investment question that originated in the 1990s: How will your company deal with the transformation to a digital economy?

For the past thirty years, investors have used this forward-looking information to evaluate companies and to assess broader shifts in economic activity. Also note that the answers to this digital transformation question have changed dramatically from year to year due to the dynamics of the market, including innovation, globalization and the development of human capital.

A transition to a climate neutral economy will undoubtedly affect the performance and prospects of many companies and sectors. Some will benefit greatly, others will suffer or even fail.

A transition to a climate neutral economy will undoubtedly affect the performance and prospects of many companies and sectors. Some will benefit greatly, others will suffer or even fail. These outcomes will be the result of myriad strategic decisions and many changing economic and regulatory factors.

Investors are right to understand how these considerations will affect the future value of their investments. In addition, a wide variety of institutional money managers wish to demonstrate to their clients, including those who prefer “green” or “sustainable” investments, that they are allocating capital appropriately.

However, the quality of the transformational information available to investors, companies and governments is far from what it should be. Each constituency is responsible for this matter. Governments have been inconsistent in their approach to climate-related regulation. Companies were reluctant to make forward-looking statements; and investors have been adopting simplistic rules to classify companies as “green” or not.

Fortunately, this framework leverages an incredibly powerful tool: the information, insights, and perspectives from thousands of companies on their climate compliance plans.

For some companies, their transformation would require very few adjustments. For others, such as airlines and utilities, transformation may not be possible without fundamental changes in their business and the market in general, including, for example, developing a market for carbon credits.

Forward-looking information

This type of company-specific, forward-looking information, focused on a common future goal, is exactly what investors should want when allocating capital over the long term. It answers the key question: does the company have a credible strategy to adapt to and perform in the expected future commercial and regulatory environment?

Compare this approach to a rigid, metrics-based disclosure framework. In some industries in which climate effects have been taken into account for some time – think of property insurers – certain indicators can clearly lead to insights. However, finding universal metrics in our diverse economy is analogous to taking a long journey down the wrong end of the telescope.

Metrics are legitimate and can be included in the approach we advocate and should not be abandoned, but like financial statements, they provide limited forward-looking information.

For investors, it is more important how companies take on the costs, risks and opportunities of climate change and the associated regulation, just as the expected future profits are more important than past performance.

Access to this information also provides an informed, cross-sectoral basis for assessing whether and how the emerging global goal of 2050 can be achieved (and which countries, companies and individuals will bear the costs and benefit from the benefits) – questions from governments, Investors and companies should keep asking.

Adoption of this disclosure framework will, of course, raise questions of interpretation and implementation, including the extent to which companies would be legally responsible for their Strategy 2050 disclosures.

To address concerns about unjustified legal action in US courts, this disclosure should be kept in a safe haven that provides special protection for good faith estimates and assumptions and liability for willful fraud standards.

We should initiate a fundamental change in collective, predictive disclosure and not play with company-specific “gotcha”. With this in mind, and in order to minimize the potential for unfair competitive advantages and enforcement asymmetries that have undermined similar global regulatory efforts, these frameworks must be resolutely and simultaneously adopted and enforced.

The right framework

Regulating a global problem requires joint implementation to avoid regulatory arbitrage and corrosive industrial policy. It is important that this framework can be adopted promptly and consistently, as opposed to a metrics-specific framework, which would require extensive cross-border analysis and debate and could be out of date for a variety of reasons prior to implementation.

This framework not only reflects the fundamental characteristics of the underlying theme – a multi-year, dynamic, market-driven transition – but also provides fertile ground for virtuous dynamism.

With this information, investors are more likely to identify attractive investment opportunities more quickly, which in turn prompts companies to provide more information (to attract more capital) and encourage innovation (think carbon capture).

In a broader sense, this dynamic can lead to a better match between informed regulatory policy and company value. In other words, an improved convergence of values ​​and values.

Jay Clayton, a CNBC employee, served as the chairman of the SEC from 2017 to 2020. Prior to joining the Commission, Clayton was a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, where he served on the firm’s management committee and co-headed the firm’s Corporate Practice. From 2009 to 2017 he was a Lecturer in Law and Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Mark Wiseman is a Canadian investment manager and business executive, and an industry leading expert in alternative and active equity investing. Until last year, Wiseman was Senior Managing Director at BlackRock and Chairman of BlackRock’s Global Investment Committee. Prior to joining BlackRock in 2016, he was President and CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB).

Categories
Business

Vroom guarantees torture-free automotive shopping for

Vroom promises torture-free car buying

Used car dealer Vroom buys and sells vehicles online without consumers having to go to a physical dealer.

Screenshot

Online used car dealer Vroom is buying its first Super Bowl airtime Sunday to introduce the company to the 100 million or so fans who watch the game every year – and to poke fun at its competition.

Vroom buys and sells vehicles online without customers having to go to a dealer. The 30-second Super Bowl ad, titled “Dealership Pain,” focuses on pressure to buy a vehicle through a traditional auto dealer.

“We felt that the Super Bowl would be such an opportunity for us to get that message across about our brand promise. That means you never have to go to a dealer again,” said Peter Scherr, Vroom’s chief marketing officer CNBC. “We felt this was a way of creating a new normal for Vroom for buying and selling cars. And we will continue that dynamic into 21”.

Vroom’s business is similar to Carvana, a larger e-commerce platform for buying and selling used cars. Rather than reaching out to such a competitor, Vroom focused on physical dealerships in general – a much larger market than Carvana’s customers, who are already knowledgeable about buying a car online.

“The way we see it, our traditional competitors are traditional dealers,” said Scherr. “There is plenty of room for us to be successful in the Super Bowl and Carvana is continuing on its road to success.”

Paul Hennessy, CEO of Vroom added, “It just didn’t make sense to pick one of the smallest players in the room and then compete with them. We are competing with the goal of our customers, which are basically traditional traders.”

In the Vroom ad, a car buyer is pressured almost so much by a used car dealer that he is tortured with jumper cables. While the customer asks to leave, the seller leans over to attach the jumper cables to him. The chair and scene turn to the man sitting in his front yard and a woman who is picking up a vehicle from Vroom. “Well, that was painless,” says the actor when the vehicle is delivered.

The Super Bowl ad is part of an advertising campaign for Vroom with similar spots, including one titled “Dealership Deceit,” which aired during Sunday’s AFC championship game for the NFL.

Both Hennessy and Scherr expect the Super Bowl ad to further increase awareness and business for Vroom, which went public in June.

“We’re thinking long term and building a business long term,” said Hennessy. “We expect Vroom to be a household name.”

Vroom’s sales rose 86% to 10,860 vehicles in the first three quarters of last year, which resulted in the company’s revenue increasing 62% to $ 630.5 million in that period compared to 2019. Compared to Carvana, which had sales of nearly 172,000 vehicles and sales of $ 3.8 billion in the first nine months of last year. Both companies are unprofitable.

Vroom’s shares are up about XX% from their initial public offering price of $ 22 per share. The stock closed Tuesday at $ X.XX per share, down XX percent and XX this year.

– CNBC’s Megan Graham contributed to this report.

CUTS
Raise company awareness and build on strong growth during the coronavirus pandemic.

Categories
Health

In Afghanistan, a Booming Kidney Commerce Preys on the Poor

In Afghanistan, a Booming Kidney Trade Preys on the Poor

HERAT, Afghanistan – In the midst of the hustle and bustle of beggars and patients outside the crowded hospital, there are sellers and buyers looking at each other suspiciously: the poor looking for money for their vital organs, and the seriously ill or their surrogate mothers looking for something to buy.

The illegal kidney business is booming in the western city of Herat, fueled by sprawling slums, poverty and endless war in the surrounding country, an entrepreneurial hospital bidding as the country’s first kidney transplant center, and officials and doctors turning a blind eye to organ trafficking.

In Afghanistan, as in most countries, the sale and purchase of organs is illegal, as is the implantation of purchased organs by doctors. However, the practice remains a worldwide problem, particularly with respect to the kidneys, as most donors can live with just one.

“These people need the money,” said Ahmed Zain Faqiri, a teacher who is looking for a kidney for his seriously ill father in front of Loqman Hakim Hospital. He was eyed uncomfortably by a young farmer, Haleem Ahmad, 21, who had heard about the kidney market and wanted to sell after his harvest failed.

The consequences will be dire for him. For the impoverished kidney vendors recovering in cold, unlit Herat apartments with peeling paint and concrete floors that have been temporarily freed from debt but are too weak to work, in pain and unable to afford medication, the deal is a portal for new misery. In one such apartment, half a sack of flour and a modest container of rice were the only food for a family with eight children last week.

Transplants are big business for Loqman Hakim Hospital. Officials boast more than 1,000 kidney transplants in five years, involving patients from across Afghanistan and the global Afghan diaspora. It offers them bargain deals at one-twentieth the cost of such procedures in the United States in a city with a seemingly endless supply of fresh organs.

When asked if the hospital made good money from the operations, Masood Ghafoori, a senior finance manager, said, “You could say that.”

The hospital takes care of the removal, transplant, and initial recovery for both patients without asking questions. Sellers say their hospital fees will be covered by the buyers and after a few days at the recovery center they will be sent home.

How the organ recipient gets the donor to agree to the procedure is not the hospital’s concern, the doctors say.

“It’s none of our business,” said Dr. Farid Ahmad Ejaz, a hospital doctor whose business card reads “Founder of Kidney Transplant in Afghanistan”.

Dr. Ejaz initially claimed that more than a dozen impoverished Herat residents lied when they told The Times that they had sold their kidneys for cash. He later admitted that “maybe” wasn’t the case. Interviews with other health officials here followed the same arc: initial denials, followed by reluctant appreciation.

“Everything has value in Afghanistan except human life,” said Dr. Mahdi Hadid, member of the Herat Provincial Council.

According to the United Nations, reports of organ sales in India date back to the 1980s, and today the practice accounts for around 10 percent of all global transplants. Iran, less than 80 miles from Herat, is the only country where kidney sales are not illegal as long as the parties are Iranian.

“There is always a gap between international guidelines and what governments do in practice,” said Asif Efrat, a faculty member at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, a university in Israel, pointing out that Afghanistan compares to the countries in which it is located Organ trafficking is taking place, a new player is most productive: China, Pakistan and the Philippines. “The current international consensus is on the ban side, but governments have incentives not to follow it,” he said.

The moral scruples that keep business underground elsewhere are barely noticeable in Herat. Dr. Ejaz and health officials point out the hard logic of poverty. “The people in Afghanistan sell their sons and daughters for money. How does that compare to selling kidneys? “He asked. “We have to do this because someone is dying.”

Dr. Ejaz seemed unimpressed when he was shown the business card of a kidney broker: “In Afghanistan there are business cards with which people can murder others.”

On the fourth floor of the hospital, three in four recovering patients said they had bought their kidneys.

“I’m fine now,” said Gulabuddin, a 36-year-old imam, a kidney recipient from Kabul. “No pain at all.” He said he paid about $ 3,500 for his kidney that he bought from a “total stranger” with a $ 80 commission to the agent. He did a good deal: kidneys can cost up to $ 4,500.

“If there is approval, Islam has no problem with it,” said Gulabuddin.

Dr. Herat Province Public Health Director Abdul Hakim Tamanna acknowledged the rise of the kidney black market in Afghanistan but said there was little the government could do.

“Unfortunately, this is common in poor countries,” he said. “There is a lack of the rule of law and a lack of regulation related to this process.”

According to the World Bank, the poverty rate in Afghanistan is set to reach over 70 percent by 2020 and the country remains largely dependent on foreign aid. Domestic revenue only finances around half of the state budget. Without a substantial public safety net, healthcare is just another opportunity to take advantage of the most vulnerable people in the country.

Mir Gul Ataye, 28, regrets every second of his decision to sell his kidney deep in the maze of sandy streets in Herat’s slums. As a construction worker who made up to $ 5 a day prior to his surgery last November, he can now lift no more than 10 pounds, and hardly can.

“I am in pain and weak,” he said. “I’ve been sick and can’t control my piss.” Four children huddled in front of him on the concrete floor in the bare, unlit room. He said he supported a total of 13 family members and had around $ 4,000 in debt.

“It was difficult, but I had no choice. Nobody wants to give any part of their body to someone else, ”he said. “It was very embarrassing for me.”

Mr. Ataye received $ 3,800 for his kidney. That was almost three months ago. He’s still in debt and can’t pay his rent or electricity bill.

He said he felt “sadness, despair, anger and loneliness”. One night he was in such severe pain that he hit his head against the wall and fractured his skull.

Others around Herat gave similar reasons for selling a kidney: outstanding debts, sick parents, a marriage that would otherwise have been unaffordable.

“My father would have died if we hadn’t sold,” said Jamila Jamshidi, 25, who was sitting on the floor across from her brother Omid, 18, in a cold apartment on the outskirts of town. Both had sold their kidneys – she five years ago and he a year ago – and both were weak and in pain.

Mohammed Zaman, a tribal elder in a white turban, spoke of the irresistible attraction of Loqman Hakim’s kidney operation in a mud-walled camp just outside Herat, a vortex of sun, wind and dust filled with war refugees from other provinces. More than 20 from his village who have now been evicted from their homes had sold their kidneys.

“My people are hungry. We have no land. We can’t be shopkeepers. We don’t have any money, ”he said. “I can’t stop it.”

In a local restaurant, five brothers talked about being driven from their land in Badghis province by constant attacks by the Taliban. In Herat everyone had sold their kidneys. The youngest was 18, the oldest 32 years old.

“We had no choice,” said Abdul Samir, one of the brothers. “We had to sell. Otherwise we wouldn’t have sold a fingernail. “

Asad Timory and Kiana Hayeri contributed to the coverage.

Categories
Business

HNA Was As soon as China’s Largest Dealmaker. Now It Faces Chapter.

HNA Was Once China’s Biggest Dealmaker. Now It Faces Bankruptcy.

HONG KONG – Lenders are pushing for bankruptcy. Its chairman and co-founder has been tacitly stripped of power. Almost $ 10 billion of his money was misappropriated.

HNA Group, the giant Chinese conglomerate that has thrown tens of billions of dollars in trophy deals around the world, is nearing the biggest corporate collapse in recent Chinese history. The downsizing is an extraordinary twist for the company, which began as a regional airline in southern China’s Hainan Province and owned large stakes in Hilton Hotels, Deutsche Bank, Virgin Australia, and others. At that time, HNA employed 400,000 people worldwide.

For China’s leadership, HNA is now a cautionary story. Its story offers a glimpse of how Beijing treats its most powerful entrepreneurs. China has got its economy tighter, and regulators recently conquered another empire – that of China’s most famous billionaire, Jack Ma.

“It is a sharp reminder to China’s private sector and big soaring corporations and executives that you are never more important than the Communist Party,” said Jude Blanchette, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Narrowing down large companies isn’t exactly central planning, but it certainly sets guidelines for how companies behave to make sure they’re going in the right direction.”

The pressure on companies whose behavior could pose a risk to the Chinese financial system is mounting. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, told a meeting of senior officials from the country’s Communist Party late last month that the government must foresee and anticipate risks even if it seeks growth. He urged officials to make plans to deal with the “gray rhino” events, highlighting major and obvious problems in the economy that are being ignored until they become urgent threats. Chinese media had often referred to HNA as a gray rhinoceros before its demise.

The party has strengthened its hand in private business in recent months and urged entrepreneurs to identify “politically, intellectually and emotionally” with their goals. It has also pledged to prevent something called “disorderly capital expansion,” an indication of the type of lavish spending on borrowed money that HNA had become known for.

The party’s recent high profile targets include Chinese online shopping giant Alibaba Group. In December, the authorities launched an antitrust investigation into the company Mr. Ma co-founded. A month earlier, days before a planned IPO of Mr. Ma’s financial giant Ant Group, regulators stepped in to stop this.

HNA was once the face of modern enterprise China, leading the first wave of private Chinese companies with political backing to make large global acquisitions. His propensity to fund borrowed money to buy shares in global famous names was expensive and risky, and seemed to dare regulators in Beijing and around the world to turn it upside down.

As HNA’s creditors wait for a Chinese court to approve their bankruptcy and reorganization petition, questions about the extent of the conglomerate’s problems arise. It has $ 200 billion in debt that it can’t pay off, and those owed money have to sift through dozens, possibly hundreds, of its subsidiaries, said Michelle Luo, a bankruptcy attorney at Hui Ye law firm.

The task became even more daunting when three of HNA’s subsidiaries announced late last month that HNA shareholders and dozen of subsidiaries had embezzled nearly $ 10 billion in corporate funds to repay their own debts. The HNA Group was one of dozens of shareholders and subsidiaries listed in the alleged allegedly money embezzled. Hainan Airlines, one of HNA’s subsidiaries, said some funds were used to pay for wealth management products but did not disclose specific details.

HNA’s bankruptcy is the largest China has seen since the country first implemented its bankruptcy law in 2007, Ms. Luo said. It will also test the strength of the law – only 76 publicly traded companies have gone through bankruptcy proceedings in China.

Much of HNA’s restructuring is likely to take place behind closed doors and with strong government involvement. Officials from China’s Civil Aviation Administrator and the China Development Bank, the country’s main political bank, took over management of some of the company’s affairs last year, and two government officials joined the board of directors.

The fate of Chen Feng, chairman and co-founder of HNA, has been in doubt since he was removed from a list of members of the HNA Communist Party Committee, the company’s main decision-making body, according to an official release late last month.

While building HNA, Mr. Chen shaped his corporate culture with his own personal interests as a Buddhist and calligrapher. Mr. Chen, a former People’s Liberation Army pilot, said he was different from other entrepreneurs. “I don’t drink, smoke, do banquets, go to karaoke or get massages,” he once told the South China Morning Post. He had the company headquarters in Hainan built to look like a Buddha.

For years, doors opened for the company. It was cheaply funded by China’s state-sponsored banks. The executives had the kind of political connections that private companies in China could only dream of.

On his first state visit to the UK, China’s top leader Xi Jinping performed at an event in Manchester for HNA’s Hainan Airlines. Mr. Chen was once an advisor to Wang Qishan, China’s vice president. Another HNA manager partnered with the son of Wen Jiabao, the former prime minister of China, the New York Times reported in 2018.

HNA also had an influence abroad. One of the earliest supporters was George Soros, the billionaire. Executives mingled with Wall Street power brokers at black-tie galas and met with leaders in Washington. You have a business deal with Governor Jeb Bush. They attempted to buy Skybridge Capital, an investment firm co-founded by Anthony Scaramucci who at the time expected to create a link between the White House and the US business community. (The deal was canceled after companies realized regulators weren’t going to approve it.)

But the glory days of HNA were numbered as the authorities in China began to question the enormous debt that HNA and some of its politically affiliated counterparts such as Anbang Insurance Group, Fosun International and Dalian Wanda took up to fuel their global shopping spree.

Authorities took control of Anbang, a troubled insurance conglomerate that owned the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, and sentenced its founder, Wu Xiaohui, to 18 years in prison for fraud. Wanda, the former owner of AMC Entertainment, and Fosun, which owns Club Med and luxury fashion house Lanvin, quickly sold some of their overseas acquisitions.

As HNA turned to its own growing bill, it began to lose some of its businesses. She also tried to borrow money from her own employees by offering them high-yield investment products.

The Chinese government has not commented on the decryption of the HNA. The China Securities Regulatory Commission and the Hainan Supervision Bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission did not respond to a faxed request for comment. HNA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

China’s state-controlled news media has tried to portray HNA’s bankruptcy process as a measure aimed at protecting the company’s assets rather than trying to get to the heart of them.

“The focus of bankruptcy and restructuring is not on ‘destruction’ but on ‘building’,” said a comment in Shanghai Security News. “It can also be seen as ‘rebirth’.”

On Chinese social media, some customers of HNA’s airlines asked if their tickets would be refunded, while people who had invested in its investment products complained that the company would repay the banks before returning any money it received from normal Had borrowed people. Others said they weren’t surprised at the company’s ultimate fate.

“In the end, the HNA Group still failed,” wrote Chen Haijian, a finance professional in Nanjing, on his personal page on WeChat, a Chinese social media platform.

“It feels like people have been saying this phrase for over 10 years.”

Cao Li contributed to the coverage from Hong Kong.

Categories
World News

To Battle or Cover: Worry Grips Myanmar With Navy Again in Cost

To Fight or Hide: Fear Grips Myanmar With Military Back in Charge

The red balloons rose over a frightened city. Hundreds of them hovered over the golden tower of Sule Pagoda in Yangon, the commercial capital of Myanmar, and drifted along an avenue where more than a dozen years ago soldiers shot dead citizens marching peacefully for democracy.

The balloons hovering over Yangon were released by activists, expressing their hope that elected leaders, detained in a military coup, would be free again. The color – later pink after red balloons sold out – symbolized the party of the National League for Democracy, which until Monday led the civilian government headed by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

On Saturday, balloons weren’t enough and the protesters’ familiar footsteps rang out in the city. When armed policemen stood behind protective shields, the demonstrators demanded “democracy rise, the military dictatorship fall” and sang protest anthems that once brought prison sentences.

With the abrupt takeover of power by the generals, the people of Myanmar are back in the crosshairs of the military – and increasingly cut off from the world. Although the coup led by Lieutenant General Min Aung Hlaing, the army chief, was bloodless itself, the military has resorted to familiar tactics in recent days: dozens of arrests, strikes by mysterious thugs, telecommunications outages, and this time social media bans on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram . A whole class of people – including poets, painters, reporters, and rap artists – have gone into hiding.

When officers of the special department, the fearsome secret service, knocked on the doors, the muscular memory of living under almost half a century of direct military rule had – look to the left, look to the right, don’t linger too long – people who had resorted to both camouflage and Cunning. The reflexes may have been rusty, but they have set in quickly in this new, uncertain era of terror.

The balloons and marches were among hundreds of acts of defiance by a population whose DNA is encoded with both resistance and vigilance. Every day brings growing disagreements on the street as well as moments of civil disobedience that are as subtle as they are powerful. People test the limits of what can be done and said.

On Saturday, thousands of people wearing hard hats and face masks marched in Yangon for the largest rally since the coup. But the world couldn’t watch. Live social media feeds of the protests were abruptly shut down as mobile internet, and then broadband services across the country were cut, just as they were during the coup.

Around the same time, in Mandalay, a convoy of hundreds of cars and motorcycles circled the iconic moat around the city’s old palace, honking their support for the protest movement. Soldiers and policemen stood with guns drawn.

Since the coup, cities across Myanmar have rang with the din of clinking pots, pans, gongs and empty water jugs, a traditional farewell for the devil, who in this case wears army green.

The generals have been busy this week. More than 130 officials and lawmakers and 14 civil society figures were arrested in the early hours of the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a group that focuses on political prisoners in Myanmar.

“I will do this until the dwarf Min Aung Hlaing dies,” said Daw Marlar, a participant in the protests. “I will fight until I die.”

On an offshore natural gas platform, workers in orange overalls waved red ribbons to support the National League for Democracy. More than 500 instructors at Yangon University also wanted to join the campaign, but activists had only prepared 200 tapes. The doctors posed with three fingers in a rebellious gesture from the “Hunger Games” films. The entire staff of the Ministry of Social Affairs resigned.

On Monday, the day of the coup, a daughter of Dr. Si Thu Kyaw, a surgeon at Mandalay General Hospital, was born. The 34-year-old doctor greeted his newborn baby and then led a campaign against civil disobedience among medical professionals.

“We went through life in fear under the military junta, but we will not let it happen to the next generation,” he said. “We are not afraid of the military. We are not afraid of their weapons. If we agree, it’s like we’re in the morgue. We have to fight back. “

The generals may have ruled Myanmar for nearly 50 years, but they are taking over a country that has changed remarkably over the past decade. In 2007, in downtown Yangon, invisible blood seeped into the burgundy robes of Buddhist monks who were shot by soldiers in yet another downcast protest movement. Discarded flip-flops indicated panicked feet fleeing bullets. The nation was largely unplugged at the time, and cell phone cards were only available to those who could pay $ 3,000. News whispered in tea shops.

Today there are skyscrapers and shopping malls, billboards for iPhones and cafes suitable for Instagram in the same streets. It often feels like all of Myanmar is on Facebook. Shortly after the Department of Transportation and Communications blocked the social media site, the use of virtual private networks to circumvent the ban rose 6,700 percent, according to a technology research firm. Twitter and Instagram bans followed.

By Friday, the campaign against civil disobedience had harnessed the energy of students and even some soldiers. Satirical memes and protest art have increased. A national association representing the interests of Nats and Weizzas, the various ghosts and wizards believed to live in the country, said it would cast a spell over the coup plotters. The organization was created after the military takeover on Monday.

Some young people defiantly bow to the light of their phones and remain defiant. The generation with the panda eyes, as they call themselves, mounts vigils night after night.

On Facebook, a grandson of a former junta leader, retired Lieutenant General Than Shwe, posted a sticker with bouncing teddy bear bottoms to aid someone deciphering the coup. “Stay strong,” he wrote along with emojis with a heart and muscular arms. “You will never go alone.”

Tens of thousands of people liked Facebook campaigns to boycott a beer company and cellular operator that are part of the military’s immense business empire. Another embargo is on a member of the new military cabinet who owns gold and diamond businesses.

The hashtag #savemyanmar has attracted tens of millions of supporters, and even Rihanna, the pop singer, sent her prayers to the citizens of the country.

But when the resistance has become sharper and more refined, the military still shows its strength. 21 people were picked up by police on Thursday evening, banging pots and pans in Mandalay. Activists and reporters were shadowed again. The generals transferred power to the National League for Democracy in 2015 after the party won elections in a landslide, but they did not dismantle the vast security apparatus that had locked the country in place for decades.

In the elections last November, the National League for Democracy received an even more crucial mandate. But the army, whose proxy party did terribly, claimed that the election was tarnished by fraud.

It did not help that, even in the years of hybrid military-civil governance, the number of political prisoners grew larger than in the previous era of transitional military rule. The Relief Society for Political Prisoners says that before the coup, more than 700 people were either in jail or tried for crimes of conscience.

The army, which has vowed to rule for at least a year with a board of 15 member states reporting to General Min Aung Hlaing, has shown that it will use any legal pretext to imprison people.

A court document surfaced Wednesday confirming that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who had been under house arrest for 15 years, was charged with an arcane violation related to walkie-talkies and other imported equipment in her mansion was Naypyidaw, the capital. President U Win Myint, who was also detained Monday, faces separate charges of violating coronavirus regulations by welcoming supporters in last year’s election campaign.

The charges against the two civilian leaders may seem absurd, but they could jail anyone for up to three years, which is a reminder that Myanmar can be run like a penal state. In 2016, a poet who wrote about a former president’s tattoo on his penis was sentenced to six months in prison for online defamation. During the years of direct military rule, critics of the army were imprisoned for holding foreign currency and reversing on motorcycles, among other things.

The coup on Monday took place before daybreak, when the taps were not overcrowded and the monks had not gone barefoot to their morning pastures. As dusk falls every night after the army is taken over, the national mood is desperate. Who will be taken tonight?

Since little information is known about the fate of those still in custody – some have been released and placed under house arrest – people again rely on “oral radio”, as rumors are called.

“We know that protesting on the street is very risky, but we have to do it,” said Ko Ye Win Aung, a protest organizer. “We cannot let democracy go backwards.”

If there is one constant, as Myanmar’s military is called, in the history of the Tatmadaw, it is a willingness to shed blood. The military put down tens of thousands of protests in 1988 and 2007. When Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest in 2003, generals sent thugs into her convoy and killed dozen.

And in the border areas of the nation the Tatmadaw has killed, raped and burned. According to United Nations investigators, a genocide was committed against the Rohingya, which culminated in an exodus of the Muslim minority in 2017.

As protests intensify, some fear that bloody crackdown will be inevitable. U Tun Shein, a trishaw driver, said he peeled a photo of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi from his vehicle.

“She will still be in my heart,” he said.

On Thursday, U Win Htein, an elder from the National League for Democracy, sat in his home awaiting arrest.

Win Htein, a former army captain who joined the opposition movement and became one of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s closest advisers, spent about 20 years in prison. In the notorious Insein Prison, he read international business papers and wrote love letters to his wife.

When he was released in 2010, the same year as Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, he joked that he was “out for the time being” and made fun of others in the National League for Democracy who had served shorter sentences. Mr. Win Htein became a legislator in the civil government.

Around midnight, in the shade between Thursday and Friday, soldiers and men from Special Branch came for him. Win Htein, 79, was charged with criticizing the coup.

“I’m back,” Win Htein said hours earlier, short for imprisonment. “But do not worry. My heart is free “

Categories
Health

New York Gov. Cuomo, New Jersey Gov. Murphy maintain joint press briefing on Covid

New York Gov. Cuomo, New Jersey Gov. Murphy hold joint press briefing on Covid

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

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy will hold a joint press conference on Friday on the coronavirus pandemic as both states gradually reopen their economies amid falling cases.

Both Cuomo and Murphy have taken steps over the past week to reopen more businesses in their states as they continue to introduce doses of Covid-19 vaccines. Last week, Cuomo said New York restaurants could reopen their limited capacity indoor eateries from February 14th.

Cuomo also said the state will take steps to allow some venues to reopen for wedding ceremonies from mid-March.

Meanwhile, Murphy announced on Wednesday that New Jersey restaurants could expand their indoor dining options from 25% to 35%. The state will also allow indoor gatherings for events such as weddings and funerals, as well as indoor venues with a 35% capacity or a limit of 150 people, he said.

New Jersey reports a weekly average of 3,973 Covid-19 cases per day, while New York reports an average of 9,722 cases per day, a decrease of more than 20% from the last one, according to a CNBC analysis of the compiled data for both states Week means from Johns Hopkins University.

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

Categories
Entertainment

Who Went Residence on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 13?

Who Went Home on RuPaul's Drag Race Season 13?

Though we saw the first major twist of season 13 of RuPaul’s Drag Race When we got there, we were still in shock that the lip-sync losers were sent to the “Porkchop Loading Dock” to await their fate. Surprisingly, we actually didn’t see anyone get the “pork chop” in the first episode. The queens learned that they would have to vote someone out at the beginning of the second episode, although their choice didn’t go home either. In fact, no one went home in episodes two or three – all of the queens were safe after performing separately on RuPaul’s classics “Condragulations” and “Phenomenon”. It wasn’t until the fourth episode of the Acting Challenge that the eliminations were finally implemented.

In the fifth episode, the queens appeared in “The Bag Ball”, while in the sixth episode choreography for a “Disco-Mentary” was shown. With such an unprecedented start to the season, there is no telling what other tricks and twists RuPaul might have up his sleeve in the further course of the season. However, we do know that at some point we have to say goodbye to each of the queens before one is crowned a “winner, baby”. See who’s knocked out ahead of time and check back every week to see who’s still in the running for the title of America’s next drag superstar.

Categories
Business

Ford will not ‘cede the longer term to anybody’ on electrical automobiles: CEO Farley

Ford won't 'cede the future to anyone' on electric vehicles: CEO Farley

Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley on Friday touted the automaker’s strategy for electric vehicles and told CNBC that the company intends to compete strongly in the growing market.

Farley’s comments on “Squawk on the Street” came a day after Ford reported better-than-expected earnings in the fourth quarter. As part of that announcement, Ford said it would increase its electric vehicle investment to $ 22 billion by 2025, almost double what it had previously promised.

Ford’s shares rose 2.7% on Friday to around $ 11.70 apiece.

“We won’t leave the future to anyone,” Farley told CNBC’s Phil LeBeau. “Our electric strategy is very specific. We will invest in segments where we are the dominant player and we have economies of scale like the F-150, the transit van and our Mustang.”

As Ford provides new capital for the years to come, Farley said the company’s EV transition is now yielding results, pointing out that its all-electric Mustang Mach-E crossover has hit showrooms. He said he viewed the Mach-E as a “credible competitor” to Tesla’s compact SUV known as the Model Y.

Ford’s all-electric transit van is expected to arrive by the end of this year, Farley said, and the company’s work on a Michigan plant to build the electric version of its best-selling F-150 is ongoing. “This is the year. We’re not talking about aspirations,” said Farley, who took over the business on October 1.

The charging connection for the Ford E-Transit is located in the radiator grille of the vehicle.

ford

Wall Street’s focus on electric vehicles has increased. A number of players in space, including battery manufacturers and charging station companies, have gone public in the past few months. Ford’s Crosstown rival General Motors has also drawn street attention for its aggressive investments in electric vehicles. GM said last week it plans to cease production of all diesel and gasoline-powered cars, trucks and SUVs by 2035.

Before the announcement, Adam Jonas, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, told CNBC that GM, led by CEO Mary Barra, may be orchestrating “one of the most profound strategic turns not only in the auto industry, but also in the economy.” GM stocks are up more than 100% in the past six months, while Ford’s stocks are up more than 65% over the same stretch.

As the production and adoption of electric vehicles increases, some have raised concerns that there could be a battery shortage. Farley acknowledged that the company “needs to make sure when Ford ramp up EV manufacturing” [battery] Care so that we don’t end up in a situation where we are in chips. “Ford had to temporarily cut F-150 production to respond to an ongoing semiconductor shortage affecting the global automotive industry.

“That will be due to each manufacturer making the commitment,” Farley said. “We have to make our own decisions about vertical integration. Our $ 22 billion [EV investment] doesn’t even include that. You could expect more news from us on this vertical integration. “