Month: February 2021

Categories
Politics

Trump tax returns in arms of Manhattan district lawyer

Trump tax returns in hands of Manhattan district attorney

Former President Donald Trump’s tax records were turned over to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. after the Supreme Court rejected the ex-President’s recent efforts to keep the documents safe.

A Vance spokesman Danny Frost confirmed that a subpoena against Trump’s longtime accounting firm Mazars USA was passed on Monday, hours after the country’s highest court dismissed Trump’s appeal.

The subpoena requested Trump’s 2011 personal and company records, including his tax returns. Trump defied modern precedent by refusing to make his tax returns available to the public despite running two campaigns for the presidency.

A spokesman for the former president did not immediately comment on Thursday. After the court allowed the rendition, Trump promised to “keep fighting” and said Vance was pursuing a “fishing expedition.”

The long-term investigation was closely monitored. Early reports suggested that prosecutors were looking into hush money payments made on Trump’s behalf to women allegedly linked to the real estate tycoon. Trump denied the affairs.

Recent court records have revealed that Vance may be investigating Trump and his company of the same name, The Trump Organization, for possible banking and insurance fraud. Trump has repeatedly denied allegations of financial inappropriateness and accused investigators of partisan motives.

The dispute over Trump’s tax documents reached the Supreme Court twice. On both occasions the panel refused to stop the lower court’s decisions on Vance’s side. In July, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a statement for a 7-2 court rejecting Trump’s sweeping argument that he was immune to state criminal investigations during his tenure.

“In our judicial system, the public has a right to any man’s evidence.” Since the earliest days of the Republic, “every man” has included the President of the United States, “said Roberts, who was appointed to court by then-President George W. Bush.

After this decision, Trump’s lawyers continued to fight the subpoena on the grounds that it was too broad and badly issued, but the lower courts denied these claims. In October, Trump’s attorneys again called on the Supreme Court to intervene, but the court wrote in a one-line order on Monday that it was not.

Vance’s possession of Trump’s tax records does not guarantee that the public will ever know what they contain. The recordings were obtained in connection with a grand jury investigation and New York State law requires that the grand jury proceedings be confidential. It’s likely that the public will only be able to see the records if Vance ultimately charges and includes portions of the records in billing documents.

Categories
Health

Studying to Take heed to Sufferers’ Tales

Learning to Listen to Patients’ Stories

The pandemic has been a time of painful social isolation for many. Few places can be as isolating as hospitals, where patients are surrounded by strangers, subjected to invasive tests, and hooked up to a series of beep and gurgle machines.

How can the experience of receiving medical care be made more welcoming? Some say that having a sympathetic ear can go a long way in healing patients who are under the stress of hospitalization.

“It’s even more important now, when we can’t always see or touch patients’ faces, to really hear their stories,” said Dr. Antoinette Rose, an emergency doctor in Mountain View, California who now works with many patients sick with Covid.

“This pandemic has forced many caregivers to immerse themselves in the human stories that are playing out. They have no choice. They become “family” at the bedside, “said Dr. Andre Lijoi, medical director at York Hospital in Pennsylvania. Doctors, nurses, and others who assist with patient care “need time to slow down, take a breath, and listen”.

Both doctors find their inspiration in narrative medicine, a discipline that guides doctors in the art of listening deeply to those who come to them for help. Narrative medicine is taught in some form in approximately 80 percent of medical schools in the United States today. Students are trained in “sensitive interviewing skills” and the art of “radical listening” to improve the interaction between doctors and their patients.

“As doctors, we have to ask those who come to us, ‘Tell me about yourself,'” said Dr. Rita Charon, who founded Columbia University’s pioneering narrative medicine program in 2000. “We have fallen out of this habit because we think we know the questions we need to ask. We have a checklist of symptom questions. But there is an actual person in front of us who is not just a collection of symptoms.”

Columbia currently offers online training for medical students like Fletcher Bell, who says the course is helping to change the way he sees his future role as a healer. As part of his training as a storyteller, Mr. Bell stayed in virtual contact with a woman who was being treated for ovarian cancer. He described the experience of sharing as both heartbreaking and beautiful.

“It can be therapeutic just to listen to people’s stories,” noted Bell. “If there is fluid in the lungs, drain it. If there is a story in the heart, it is important to bring it out as well. It is also a medical intervention that is not easily quantified. “

This more personalized approach to medical care is not a new art. In the not too distant past, general practitioners often treated several generations of the same family and knew a lot about their lives. But as medicine became increasingly institutionalized it became faster and more impersonal, said Dr. Charon.

The typical doctor visit now takes 13 to 16 minutes, which is usually all insurance companies pay for. A 2018 study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that the majority of doctors at the prestigious Mayo Clinic didn’t even ask people what the purpose of their visit was, and often interrupted patients talking about themselves.

Updated

Apr. 26, 2021, 1:26 p.m. ET

But this fast food approach to medicine is sacrificing something essential, says Dr. Deepu Gowda, assistant dean of medical education at Kaiser-Permanente School of Medicine in Pasadena, California, led by Dr. Charon was trained in Columbia.

Dr. Gowda recalls an elderly patient he saw during his stay who suffered from severe arthritis and whom he found angry and frustrated. He came to fear her office visits. Then he began to ask the woman questions, listening with interest as her personal story unfolded. He was so intrigued by her life story that he asked her permission to photograph her outside the hospital, which she granted.

Dr. Gowda was particularly impressed by a picture of his patient holding on to the railing of her walk-in apartment, stick in hand. “This picture represented their daily struggles for me,” he said. “I gave her a copy. It was a physical representation of the fact that I cared about who she was as a person. Her pain did not subside, but there was an ease and a laugh in those later visits that weren’t there before. There was some kind of healing that took place in this simple human appreciation. “

While few working doctors have the free time to photograph their patients outside of the clinic or delve deep into their life stories, “people pick it up” when the doctor shows genuine interest in them, said Dr. Gowda. You will trust such a doctor more and be motivated to follow their directions and return for follow-up visits, he said.

Some hospitals have started conducting preliminary interviews with patients before clinical work begins in order to get to know them better.

Thor Familler, a family therapist, started the My Life, My Story program in 2013 at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. Professional writers are hired to interview veterans – via telephone and videoconferencing since the pandemic outbreak – and compose a brief bio that is added to their medical record and read by their attending physician.

“My goal was to give veterinarians an opportunity to be heard in a large bureaucratic system in which they do not always feel heard,” said Ringler.

The program has expanded to 60 VA hospitals, including Boston, where over 800 veteran stories have been compiled over the past three years. Jay Barrett, nurse manager at VA Boston Healthcare System, said these biographies often provide important information that can serve as a guide to treatment.

“Unless they have access to the patient’s history,” Ms. Barrett said, “healthcare providers do not understand that this is a mother who looks after six children or who does not have the funds to pay for medication. ” or this is a veteran with severe trauma that needs to be addressed before even discussing how to deal with the pain. “

Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, a family doctor who teaches at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine, has examined veterans undergoing pain management. Those asked to share about their lives had less chronic pain and rated their relationship with their doctor higher than those who hadn’t. The doctors who requested the stories also reported greater job satisfaction and less emotional burnout, which has become a particularly worrying problem during the Covid pandemic.

The demands on the time of the healthcare workers have never been so high. However, proponents of narrative medicine say it takes only a few moments to establish an authentic human connection, even when the communication is online, as is often the case today. Dr. Mehl-Madrona argues that remote video conferencing platforms like Zoom can make it even easier to keep tabs on people at risk and solicit their stories.

Derek McCracken, a professor at Columbia University who helped develop training protocols for the use of storytelling in telemedicine, agrees. “Telehealth technology can be a bridge,” he said, “because it is a balance that forces both parties to slow down the conversation, be vulnerable, and listen carefully.”

The critical point for Dr. Flour madrona is that people asked to speak about themselves – whether in person or on screen – “don’t just throw themselves in to the doctor for repairs. They are actively involved in their own healing. “

“Doctors can be replaced by computers or nurses if they feel their only job is just to prescribe medication,” he added. “If we are to avoid the fate of the dodo bird, we need to establish dynamic relationships with patients and place symptoms in the context of people’s lives.”

Categories
Business

Chinese language electrical automobile start-up Li Auto expects to promote fewer than Nio

Chinese electric car start-up Li Auto expects to sell fewer than Nio

A Li Xiang One Hybrid SUV is on display during the 18th Guangzhou International Auto Show in Guangzhou, China on Nov 23, 2020.

Li Zhihao | Visual China Group | Getty Images

BEIJING – Chinese automaker Li Auto, listed on the Nasdaq, is forecasting deliveries in the first quarter that will be below those of its competitors.

Li Auto announced late Thursday that it is expected to deliver between 10,500 and 11,500 cars, or fewer than 4,000 vehicles per month, for the first quarter of the year. Shares fell 9.8% in the New York trading session on a wider market sell-off. The stock lost another 3.75% in over-the-counter trading.

Nio, which competes directly with Li Auto in the high-end SUV market, shipped more than 7,000 units in both December and January. The company will release its latest financial report on Monday.

Xpeng shipped 5,700 cars in December and more than 6,000 in January.

Although the numbers of startups suggest rapid growth, they still pale in comparison to Tesla. Elon Musk’s electric car company shipped nearly half a million vehicles worldwide last year, which is an average of more than 41,000 cars per month.

Despite the New Year holiday in mid-February this year, Li Auto’s poor forecast is worrying, said Tu Le, founder of Beijing-based consulting firm Sino Auto Insights.

He pointed out that the company only has one product compared to the other startups and that it should deliver at least 5,000 to 7,000 vehicles a month to keep up.

Li Auto’s only vehicle, the Li One, is a hybrid electric vehicle equipped with a fuel tank to charge the battery.

Analysts have said the feature makes the Li One attractive to Chinese consumers who are concerned about running out of power without access to a charging station.

Last year, the Li One was one of the top 10 high-end SUVs sold in China, regardless of the fuel type, according to the passenger car association. However, the company announced that January shipments fell from 6,126 the previous month to 5,379 units.

The company reported total revenue of 4.15 billion yuan ($ 635.5 million) for the fourth quarter, compared with 2.51 billion yuan in the previous quarter.

Li Auto expects total sales for the first three months of this year to be in line with the last two quarters, with an expected range of 2.94 to 3.22 billion yuan.

Categories
Business

A Spreadsheet of China’s Censorship Exhibits the Human Toll

A Spreadsheet of China's Censorship Shows the Human Toll

In China, don’t ask the heroes.

At least seven people were threatened, detained or arrested in the past week for expressing doubts about the government’s account of the deaths of Chinese soldiers in a clash with Indian troops last year. Three of them are held for between seven and 15 days. The other four are being prosecuted, including a man who lives outside of China.

“The Internet is not a lawless place,” the police said in their cases. “Blasphemies from heroes and martyrs will not be tolerated.”

Her punishment might have gone unnoticed had it not been for an online database of language crimes in China. A simple google spreadsheet that everyone can see. She lists nearly 2,000 times when people were fined by the government for their online and offline statements.

The list, which is directly linked to public judgments, police notices, and official news reports from the past eight years, is far from complete. Most of the punishment takes place behind closed doors.

Still, the list paints a grim picture of a government punishing its citizens for the slightest hint of criticism. It shows how random and merciless China’s legal system can be when it punishes its citizens for what they say despite freedom of expression being enshrined in the Chinese constitution.

The list describes dissidents who have been sentenced to long prison terms for attacking the government. It is about petitioners who appeal directly to the government to correct the injustice against them, are locked up for shouting too loudly. It includes nearly 600 people fined for testifying about Covid-19 and too many others cursing the police, often after receiving parking tickets.

The person behind the list is a bit of a mystery. In an interview, he described himself as a young man with the surname Wang. Of course, if the government found out more about him, he could end up in jail.

Mr. Wang said he decided to compile the list after reading about people punished for allegedly insulting the country during the celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic in October 2019. Although he is young, he told me he remembers having more freedom of expression before Xi Jinping became the top leader of the Communist Party in late 2012.

“I knew there was language crime in China, but I never thought it was that bad,” wrote Mr. Wang on his Twitter account in August, writing in both English and Chinese. He wrote that after more than 1,000 judgments, he became depressed.

“Big Brother is watching you,” he wrote. “I tried to look for Big Brother’s eyes and found them everywhere.”

The list, bluntly titled “An Inventory of Language Crimes in China in Recent Years,” contained details of the events that challenged Beijing’s official report of the clash between Chinese and Indian forces at its controversial Himalayan border in June. The Indian government said at the time that 20 of its soldiers had died. Last week, the Chinese government finally said four of its troops had died.

State media in China called them heroes, but some people had questions. One, a former journalist, asked if more had died, a matter of great interest both inside and outside the country. According to the clue to which the chart is linked, the former journalist has been accused of engaging in disputes and provoking trouble – a common accusation by authorities against those who speak up – and faces a prison sentence of up to five years.

Updated

Apr. 25, 2021, 9:43 p.m. ET

Reading the list, it becomes clear how well Mr. Xi and his government have tamed the Chinese Internet. People once thought the internet was uncontrollable, even in China. But Mr. Xi has long seen the Internet both as a threat and as a tool to control public opinion.

“The internet is the biggest variant we face,” he said in a 2018 speech. “Whether we can win the war over the internet will have a direct impact on national political security.”

Liberal voices and media were among the first to be silenced. Then the internet platforms themselves – including the Chinese versions of Twitter and YouTube – were punished for what they allowed.

Now, Chinese internet companies are bragging about their ability to control content. Nationalist online users report speeches that they find offensive. Of the seven people who were accused of insulting the heroes and martyrs, six were reported by other users, according to police. In a way, the Chinese internet is self-monitoring.

China’s police force, disliked for their extensive powers to indefinitely detain people, is a big beneficiary. According to the table, people were arrested for calling the police “dogs”, “bandits” and “bastards”. Most are only locked up for a few days, but one man is there Liaoning Province was sentenced to 10 months in prison for posting five offensive posts on its WeChat timeline.

Petitioners are among those who suffer the most. In one case in the table, a woman in Sichuan Province whose son died suddenly in school and whose husband committed suicide was sentenced to three years in prison for disseminating false information. The ruling listed the headlines of 10 articles she posted and the pageviews they had garnered. Most of them have 1,615 page views, the least only 18.

Perhaps the most depressing things are about people who have been punished for what they said about the Covid-19 pandemic. At the top of the list is Dr. Li Wenliang, who was reprimanded on January 1, 2020, along with seven others who have tried to warn the country about the coronavirus. He died of the virus in early February last year and is now known as a whistleblower who tried to warn the world about the coronavirus outbreak. However, 587 other cases are listed in the table.

Even cheesy skits by aspiring online influencers can be viewed as obnoxious. Two men in northwest Shaanxi Province streamed a funeral they held for a sheep. In the video, one man cried over a photo of the sheep while the other was digging the grave. They were detained for 10 days for violating social norms.

But the table also shows inspiring cases in which people spoke out to challenge authority.

In 2018, a 19-year-old man in the northwestern city of Yinchuan decided to test the newly passed law prohibiting questioning and criticizing heroes and martyrs. He wrote on Weibo that two famous martyrs died meaningless deaths and that he wanted to see if he would be arrested, indicating a lack of freedom of speech in China. He was detained for 10 days and fined $ 70.

A man, Feng Zhouguan, criticized Mr. Xi and was charged with disputes by the local police in Xiamen City. He was detained for five days, but after his release he appealed and alleged that the police had illegally interfered in possible defamation cases between two people. The local police, he argued, were “not the military bodyguards or family militias of the national leader”. The court upheld the verdict.

Still, many people pay a steeper price.

Huang Genbao, 45, was a senior engineer with a state-owned company in the eastern city of Xuzhou. He was arrested two years ago and sentenced to 16 months in prison for insulting the national leader and damaging the national image on platforms such as Twitter. He shared a cell with more than 20 people and had to follow a strict routine, including toilet breaks. He and his wife have lost their jobs and he is now delivering meals to support his family.

“My life in the detention center reminded me of the book ‘1984’,” he said in an interview. “Many of the experiences are likely worse than the storylines in the book.”

Categories
Health

Moderna strikes ahead to extend Covid vaccine provide in every vial

Moderna moves forward to increase Covid vaccine supply in each vial

A detail of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

Allen J. Cockroaches | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

Moderna said Monday it had “positive feedback” from the Food and Drug Administration on its proposal to increase the number of Covid-19 vaccine doses in each of its vials.

One vial of Moderna’s two-shot vaccine contains ten doses, enough to vaccinate five people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CNBC reported last month that Moderna had asked the FDA for permission to fill their Covid-19 vaccine bottles with up to five extra doses to remove a manufacturing bottleneck.

In a prepared statement filed ahead of a House hearing on Tuesday, Stephen Hoge, President of Moderna, said the US agency had “given the company positive feedback on our proposal and we are pursuing a plan that will keep the withdrawal up.” allows up to 15 doses from each vial. “

“That way we can produce and deliver more cans faster,” Hoge told the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee. “We will continue to work with our manufacturing partners and the federal government to increase the efficiency of our production process without.” Impairment of quality or safety. “

The announcement comes as President Joe Biden tries to accelerate the pace of vaccinations in the US after a slower-than-expected rollout under former President Donald Trump and states are complaining that they are running out of doses.

Biden announced on Feb. 11 that his government had signed contracts with Pfizer and Moderna for an additional 200 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, bringing the US number to 600 million. Since both approved vaccines require two doses three to four weeks apart, a total of 600 million doses would be enough to vaccinate 300 million people. The Biden government expects all of this to happen by the end of July.

It is unclear whether Moderna expects to be able to dispense 300 million doses by the end of July due to the increase in the doses per vial.

In December, the FDA announced that healthcare providers could use additional doses from vials of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. These vials are said to contain five doses, but some vendors have been able to extract a sixth or even a seventh dose. As with Pfizer, some vendors were able to use special syringes to obtain an additional dose of the Moderna vaccine.

Categories
Business

Nikola is paying $8.1 million in authorized charges for ousted chairman Milton

Nikola is paying $8.1 million in legal fees for ousted chairman Milton

Trevor Milton, CEO and Founder of US Nikola, speaks during a presentation of his new all-electric and hydrogen fuel cell battery truck in collaboration with CNH Industrial at an event on December 2, 2019 in Turin, Italy.

Massimo Pinca | Reuters

Competitive electric vehicle startup Nikola is paying $ 8.1 million in legal fees for ousted founder and chairman Trevor Milton, who left the company in September over a short seller fraud case that led to federal investigations.

This helped increase the company’s legal expenses to $ 27.5 million last year. Most of that, $ 24.7 million, was spent answering regulatory investigations and other litigation related to Hindenburg Research’s claims, Nikola said in its annual filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to the company, around $ 1.5 million in Milton’s legal fees were paid in 2020. The start-up lost $ 384.3 million last year, including $ 147.1 million in the fourth quarter, it said on Thursday. Adjusted pre-tax loss for 2020 was $ 200.5 million.

As part of the result, Nikola also lowered delivery expectations for its first product, called Tre Semitruck, from 600 this year to 50-100 due to supplier issues. The company’s shares fell at $ 19.72 each during after-hours trading after Thursday’s close Share, down 6.8% for the day.

“The pandemic has caused significant supply chain disruption,” Nikola CEO Mark Russell said during a call for earnings, specifically referring to a shortage of battery cells to power his vehicles.

A Nikola spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the company will attempt to recoup Milton’s legal fees. In his filing, Nikola said the fees were part of his compensation agreement with the company. Additional legal costs are expected this year related to the Hindenburg report, which led to investigations by the SEC and the Justice Department.

“We incurred significant costs due to the regulatory and legal issues surrounding the Hindenburg article,” Nikola said in the filing. “The total cost of these matters will depend on many factors, including the duration of these matters and the determination made.”

Hindenburg accused Milton of making false statements about Nikola’s technology to grow the company and partner with auto companies. The report, titled Nikola: How to Partner an Ocean of Lies with America’s Largest Automaker, was released two days after the announcement of a deal with General Motors that skyrocketed both companies’ shares in September . It characterized Nikola as “an intricate fraud based on dozens of lies” by Milton.

Nikola has denied and denied many of the allegations, but the company confirmed one of Hindenburg’s biggest claims – that it staged a video showing a truck that appeared to be functional but not working.

An internal investigation by Kirkland & Ellis LLP into statements made by Milton and the Company during this period has “substantially been completed”. The Chicago-based law firm has not reached a conclusion whether statements that may have been inaccurate when filed are against any law, the company said.

Categories
Politics

High Senate Official Disqualifies Minimal Wage From Stimulus Plan

Top Senate Official Disqualifies Minimum Wage From Stimulus Plan

The Republicans applauded their decision.

“This decision to strengthen reconciliation cannot be used as a means to pass major legislative changes – by either party – by simple majority,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Republican chief on the Budgets Committee. “This decision will strengthen Senate traditions over time.”

While the majority tend to follow the advice of the MP, Democrats could also try to override their leadership by effectively insisting on including the wage increase in legislation anyway, or trying to rewrite the provision to include the Rules of the Senate. In 2001, then MP Robert B. Dove was unceremoniously ousted from his position after Republican leaders objected to his decisions.

But senior White House officials, including Ron Klain, the chief of staff, have publicly stated that Vice President Kamala Harris, in her role as Senate President, would not vote to override Ms. MacDonough. Ms. MacDonough, the first woman to hold the office, has maintained both the position and bipartisan respect under the leadership of both parties since her appointment in 2012.

Some Democrats privately grumbled Thursday night that Mr Klain’s comments in a television interview Wednesday in conjunction with Mr Biden’s public admission earlier that month that he did not believe the wage increase would survive made Ms. MacDonough the “permit structure” in essence gave kill the proposal, according to a Democratic aide who described his thinking on the condition of anonymity.

It was not clear whether the Democrats could have won a majority to defeat the MP. The Liberal Democrats, who have been calling for the removal of the 60-vote threshold, were concerned about the procedural defeat and asked Ms. Harris to intervene to change the decision.

“I’m sorry – an unelected MP cannot withhold 32 million Americans the raise they deserve,” California Democrat Ro Khanna wrote on Twitter. “This is a recommendation, not a decision. VP Harris must ignore and regulate a minimum wage of $ 15 to achieve this. We were chosen to deliver for the people. It’s time we did our job. “

Some Republicans have spoken out in favor of legislation that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $ 10 instead of $ 15.

Categories
World News

U.S. companions in Asia might not wait round as Biden prioritizes home points

U.S. partners in Asia may not wait around as Biden prioritizes domestic issues

President Joe Biden speaks with State Department officials on his first visit to Washington, DC on February 4, 2021.

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

President Joe Biden’s administration has indicated that trade talks are not high on the agenda right now – but that is exactly what the US might need to draw closer to its partners in the Asia-Pacific region, two former US trade officials said.

Trade is important to the Asia-Pacific region as many economies in the region are export dependent. Improving trade ties with these countries will be vital for the U.S. to build its standing in the region where China’s influence is growing, officials said during a panel discussion on Wednesday at The Economist’s Asia Trade Week event.

Over the past few years, Asia-Pacific countries have signed two mega-trade deals excluding the US – suggesting the region won’t wait for Washington, said Wendy Cutler, a former US trade negotiator.

“Asia is just moving on with its trade deals,” said Cutler, who is now the vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute think tank.

“As Biden talks about improving and strengthening ties with allies and partners, and working in multilateral institutions, our trading partners in Asia are sure to be asking about trade issues,” she added.

The two mega-trade deals excluding the US are the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (CPTPP) signed in 2018 and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) signed last year.

CPTPP is a renegotiated and renamed version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that the Obama administration sought with 11 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. But former President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the deal and let the remaining countries form the CPTPP.

RCEP is now the world’s largest trade agreement and includes China and 14 other economies in the Asia-Pacific region. The deal covers a market of 2.2 billion people and a production of $ 26.2 trillion – around 30% of the world’s population and economy.

Ironically, RCEP was “in a way” conceived as China’s response to the then-US-led TPP, said Charlene Barshefsky, who served as US trade agent under former President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001.

We helped create this system in Asia, the fastest growing region in the world, the place of economic power from which we are excluding the US …

Charlene Barshefsky

Senior International Partner, WilmerHale

But the U.S. eventually shut itself out of the region when it pulled out of the TPP, said Barshefsky, who is now a Senior International Partner at the WilmerHale law firm.

“We helped create this system in Asia, the fastest growing region in the world, the place of economic power from which we exclude the US, not because Asia excludes us – we excluded ourselves,” she said.

What’s next for US-Asia relations?

The U.S.’s absence from deals like RCEP means it won’t be there when major Asia-Pacific economies meet, Cutler said.

She said that heads of state and government from TPP countries met at events such as the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). RCEP participants will instead be involved in such meetings, she said.

“We will not be there, we will not be invited. And you are not only talking about the agreement itself, you are also talking about new topics, you are talking about new challenges – and we are not going to be at the table for it,” said Cutler.

Some observers said the US could sign a new trade deal – or even join the CPTPP – with countries in the Asia-Pacific region to improve its position in the region. However, the Biden administration has stated on several occasions that it would like to invest in American workers and infrastructure as a priority before signing new trade deals.

Joining the CPTPP will also be politically difficult as the Americans have a “clouded view” of their predecessor, Barshefsky said. The TPP was widely criticized in the USA and never approved by Congress. Critics said the deal would hasten the demise of US manufacturing and hurt American workers.

However, the US may feel the urgency to participate if key partners like South Korea, UK and the European Union want to join the CPTPP, she added.

“That could mean a very significant jolt for the United States, positively losing ground to the countries they want to depend on. And I think that could change the equation,” Barshefsky said.

I don’t think the CPTPP is the only way for the US to get involved in the Asia-Pacific region.

Wendy Cutler

Vice President of the Asia Society Policy Institute

Until then, Biden could close closer deals that focus on specific sectors, Cutler said. In many cases, such deals may not require Congressional approval and could be easier to negotiate, she added.

“I don’t think the CPTPP is the only way for the US to get involved in the Asia-Pacific region,” Cutler said, adding that the Biden administration is initially focusing on issues such as climate change, digital commerce and improving security of supply chains.

“I think that’s how we should look at the region now because I think it’s a way to get us back there without trying to come up with a comprehensive deal that we’re not ready to do for domestic reasons,” she said .

Categories
Health

The Coronavirus Is Plotting a Comeback. Right here’s Our Likelihood to Cease It for Good.

The Coronavirus Is Plotting a Comeback. Here’s Our Chance to Stop It for Good.

Across the United States, and the world, the coronavirus seems to be loosening its stranglehold. The deadly curve of cases, hospitalizations and deaths has yo-yoed before, but never has it plunged so steeply and so fast.

Is this it, then? Is this the beginning of the end? After a year of being pummeled by grim statistics and scolded for wanting human contact, many Americans feel a long-promised deliverance is at hand.

We will win against the virus and regain many aspects of our pre-pandemic lives, most scientists now believe. Of the 21 interviewed for this article, all were optimistic that the worst of the pandemic is past. This summer, they said, life may begin to seem normal again.

But — of course, there’s always a but — researchers are also worried that Americans, so close to the finish line, may once again underestimate the virus.

So far, the two vaccines authorized in the United States are spectacularly effective, and after a slow start, the vaccination rollout is picking up momentum. A third vaccine is likely to be authorized shortly, adding to the nation’s supply.

But it will be many weeks before vaccinations make a dent in the pandemic. And now the virus is shape-shifting faster than expected, evolving into variants that may partly sidestep the immune system.

The latest variant was discovered in New York City only this week, and another worrisome version is spreading at a rapid pace through California. Scientists say a contagious variant first discovered in Britain will become the dominant form of the virus in the United States by the end of March.

The road back to normalcy is potholed with unknowns: how well vaccines prevent further spread of the virus; whether emerging variants remain susceptible enough to the vaccines; and how quickly the world is immunized, so as to halt further evolution of the virus.

But the greatest ambiguity is human behavior. Can Americans desperate for normalcy keep wearing masks and distancing themselves from family and friends? How much longer can communities keep businesses, offices and schools closed?

Covid-19 deaths will most likely never rise quite as precipitously as in the past, and the worst may be behind us. But if Americans let down their guard too soon — many states are already lifting restrictions — and if the variants spread in the United States as they have elsewhere, another spike in cases may well arrive in the coming weeks.

Scientists call it the fourth wave. The new variants mean “we’re essentially facing a pandemic within a pandemic,” said Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The United States has now recorded 500,000 deaths amid the pandemic, a terrible milestone. As of Wednesday morning, at least 28.3 million people have been infected.

But the rate of new infections has tumbled by 35 percent over the past two weeks, according to a database maintained by The New York Times. Hospitalizations are down 31 percent, and deaths have fallen by 16 percent.

Yet the numbers are still at the horrific highs of November, scientists noted. At least 3,210 people died of Covid-19 on Wednesday alone. And there is no guarantee that these rates will continue to decrease.

“Very, very high case numbers are not a good thing, even if the trend is downward,” said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “Taking the first hint of a downward trend as a reason to reopen is how you get to even higher numbers.”

In late November, for example, Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island limited social gatherings and some commercial activities in the state. Eight days later, cases began to decline. The trend reversed eight days after the state’s pause lifted on Dec. 20.

The virus’s latest retreat in Rhode Island and most other states, experts said, results from a combination of factors: growing numbers of people with immunity to the virus, either from having been infected or from vaccination; changes in behavior in response to the surges of a few weeks ago; and a dash of seasonality — the effect of temperature and humidity on the survival of the virus.

Parts of the country that experienced huge surges in infection, like Montana and Iowa, may be closer to herd immunity than other regions. But patchwork immunity alone cannot explain the declines throughout much of the world.

The vaccines were first rolled out to residents of nursing homes and to the elderly, who are at highest risk of severe illness and death. That may explain some of the current decline in hospitalizations and deaths.

But young people drive the spread of the virus, and most of them have not yet been inoculated. And the bulk of the world’s vaccine supply has been bought up by wealthy nations, which have amassed one billion more doses than needed to immunize their populations.

Vaccination cannot explain why cases are dropping even in countries where not a single soul has been immunized, like Honduras, Kazakhstan or Libya. The biggest contributor to the sharp decline in infections is something more mundane, scientists say: behavioral change.

Leaders in the United States and elsewhere stepped up community restrictions after the holiday peaks. But individual choices have also been important, said Lindsay Wiley, an expert in public health law and ethics at American University in Washington.

“People voluntarily change their behavior as they see their local hospital get hit hard, as they hear about outbreaks in their area,” she said. “If that’s the reason that things are improving, then that’s something that can reverse pretty quickly, too.”

The downward curve of infections with the original coronavirus disguises an exponential rise in infections with B.1.1.7, the variant first identified in Britain, according to many researchers.

“We really are seeing two epidemic curves,” said Ashleigh Tuite, an infectious disease modeler at the University of Toronto.

The B.1.1.7 variant is thought to be more contagious and more deadly, and it is expected to become the predominant form of the virus in the United States by late March. The number of cases with the variant in the United States has risen from 76 in 12 states as of Jan. 13 to more than 1,800 in 45 states now. Actual infections may be much higher because of inadequate surveillance efforts in the United States.

Buoyed by the shrinking rates over all, however, governors are lifting restrictions across the United States and are under enormous pressure to reopen completely. Should that occur, B.1.1.7 and the other variants are likely to explode.

Updated 

Feb. 25, 2021, 9:03 p.m. ET

“Everybody is tired, and everybody wants things to open up again,” Dr. Tuite said. “Bending to political pressure right now, when things are really headed in the right direction, is going to end up costing us in the long term.”

Looking ahead to late March or April, the majority of scientists interviewed by The Times predicted a fourth wave of infections. But they stressed that it is not an inevitable surge, if government officials and individuals maintain precautions for a few more weeks.

A minority of experts were more sanguine, saying they expected powerful vaccines and an expanding rollout to stop the virus. And a few took the middle road.

“We’re at that crossroads, where it could go well or it could go badly,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The vaccines have proved to be more effective than anyone could have hoped, so far preventing serious illness and death in nearly all recipients. At present, about 1.4 million Americans are vaccinated each day. More than 45 million Americans have received at least one dose.

A team of researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle tried to calculate the number of vaccinations required per day to avoid a fourth wave. In a model completed before the variants surfaced, the scientists estimated that vaccinating just one million Americans a day would limit the magnitude of the fourth wave.

“But the new variants completely changed that,” said Dr. Joshua T. Schiffer, an infectious disease specialist who led the study. “It’s just very challenging scientifically — the ground is shifting very, very quickly.”

Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, described herself as “a little more optimistic” than many other researchers. “We would be silly to undersell the vaccines,” she said, noting that they are effective against the fast-spreading B.1.1.7 variant.

But Dr. Dean worried about the forms of the virus detected in South Africa and Brazil that seem less vulnerable to the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna. (On Wednesday, Johnson & Johnson reported that its vaccine was relatively effective against the variant found in South Africa.)

About 50 infections with those two variants have been identified in the United States, but that could change. Because of the variants, scientists do not know how many people who were infected and had recovered are now vulnerable to reinfection.

South Africa and Brazil have reported reinfections with the new variants among people who had recovered from infections with the original version of the virus.

“That makes it a lot harder to say, ‘If we were to get to this level of vaccinations, we’d probably be OK,’” said Sarah Cobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago.

Yet the biggest unknown is human behavior, experts said. The sharp drop in cases now may lead to complacency about masks and distancing, and to a wholesale lifting of restrictions on indoor dining, sporting events and more. Or … not.

“The single biggest lesson I’ve learned during the pandemic is that epidemiological modeling struggles with prediction, because so much of it depends on human behavioral factors,” said Carl Bergstrom, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Taking into account the counterbalancing rises in both vaccinations and variants, along with the high likelihood that people will stop taking precautions, a fourth wave is highly likely this spring, the majority of experts told The Times.

Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, said he was confident that the number of cases will continue to decline, then plateau in about a month. After mid-March, the curve in new cases will swing upward again.

In early to mid-April, “we’re going to start seeing hospitalizations go up,” he said. “It’s just a question of how much.”

Now the good news.

Despite the uncertainties, the experts predict that the last surge will subside in the United States sometime in the early summer. If the Biden administration can keep its promise to immunize every American adult by the end of the summer, the variants should be no match for the vaccines.

Combine vaccination with natural immunity and the human tendency to head outdoors as weather warms, and “it may not be exactly herd immunity, but maybe it’s sufficient to prevent any large outbreaks,” said Youyang Gu, an independent data scientist, who created some of the most prescient models of the pandemic.

Infections will continue to drop. More important, hospitalizations and deaths will fall to negligible levels — enough, hopefully, to reopen the country.

“Sometimes people lose vision of the fact that vaccines prevent hospitalization and death, which is really actually what most people care about,” said Stefan Baral, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Even as the virus begins its swoon, people may still need to wear masks in public places and maintain social distance, because a significant percent of the population — including children — will not be immunized.

“Assuming that we keep a close eye on things in the summer and don’t go crazy, I think that we could look forward to a summer that is looking more normal, but hopefully in a way that is more carefully monitored than last summer,” said Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

Imagine: Groups of vaccinated people will be able to get together for barbecues and play dates, without fear of infecting one another. Beaches, parks and playgrounds will be full of mask-free people. Indoor dining will return, along with movie theaters, bowling alleys and shopping malls — although they may still require masks.

The virus will still be circulating, but the extent will depend in part on how well vaccines prevent not just illness and death, but also transmission. The data on whether vaccines stop the spread of the disease are encouraging, but immunization is unlikely to block transmission entirely.

“It’s not zero and it’s not 100 — exactly where that number is will be important,” said Shweta Bansal, an infectious disease modeler at Georgetown University. “It needs to be pretty darn high for us to be able to get away with vaccinating anything below 100 percent of the population, so that’s definitely something we’re watching.”

Over the long term — say, a year from now, when all the adults and children in the United States who want a vaccine have received them — will this virus finally be behind us?

Every expert interviewed by The Times said no. Even after the vast majority of the American population has been immunized, the virus will continue to pop up in clusters, taking advantage of pockets of vulnerability. Years from now, the coronavirus may be an annoyance, circulating at low levels, causing modest colds.

Many scientists said their greatest worry post-pandemic was that new variants may turn out to be significantly less susceptible to the vaccines. Billions of people worldwide will remain unprotected, and each infection gives the virus new opportunities to mutate.

“We won’t have useless vaccines. We might have slightly less good vaccines than we have at the moment,” said Andrew Read, an evolutionary microbiologist at Penn State University. “That’s not the end of the world, because we have really good vaccines right now.”

For now, every one of us can help by continuing to be careful for just a few more months, until the curve permanently flattens.

“Just hang in there a little bit longer,” Dr. Tuite said. “There’s a lot of optimism and hope, but I think we need to be prepared for the fact that the next several months are likely to continue to be difficult.”

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Business

Anime Is Booming. So Why Are Animators Residing in Poverty?

Anime Is Booming. So Why Are Animators Living in Poverty?

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TOKYO – Business has never been so good for Japanese anime. And that’s exactly why Tetsuya Akutsu is thinking about ending it.

When Mr. Akutsu became an animator eight years ago, the global anime market – including TV shows, films, and merchandise – was just over half what it would be by 2019, when it hit an estimated $ 24 billion. The pandemic boom in video streaming has further accelerated domestic and international demand as people see kid-friendly dishes like “Pokémon” and cyberpunk extravaganzas like “Ghost in the Shell”.

But little of the gust of wind reached Mr. Akutsu. Though he works almost every waking hour, as the top animator and occasional director on some of Japan’s most popular anime franchises, he takes home only $ 1,400-3800 a month.

And he’s one of the lucky ones: Thousands of lower rung illustrators do grueling piecework for just $ 200 a month. Rather than rewarding them, the explosive growth in the industry has only widened the gap between the profits they make and their meager wages, and many wonder if they can afford to keep following their passion.

“I want to work in the anime industry for the rest of my life,” said 29-year-old Akutsu during a telephone interview. But as he prepares to start a family, he feels severe financial pressure to leave. “I know it’s impossible to get married and raise a child.”

Low wages and miserable working conditions – hospitalization due to congestion can be a badge of honor in Japan – has disrupted the usual laws of business. Normally, rising demand would, in theory at least, stimulate competition for talent, raise wages for existing workers, and attract new ones.

This happens to some extent at the highest level of the company. According to statistics from the Japan Animation Creators Association, a labor organization, the average annual earnings for key illustrators and other top talent rose from around $ 29,000 in 2015 to around $ 36,000 in 2019.

These animators are known in Japanese as “Genga-Man”, the term for those who draw so-called keyframes. As one of them, Mr. Akutsu, a freelancer who hops around Japan’s many animation studios, makes enough to eat and rent a stamp from a studio apartment in suburban Tokyo.

But his wages are a far cry from what animators make in the US, where the average salary can be $ 65,000 a year or more and more advanced work costs around $ 75,000.

And it wasn’t long ago that Mr. Akutsu, who refused to comment on the specific compensation practices of the studios he worked for, worked as the “Douga man,” the entry level animators who do the frame-by – frame work that turns a Genga man’s illustrations into illusions of seamless movement. Those employees made an average of $ 12,000 in 2019, the Animation Association noted, but cautioned that that figure was based on a limited sample that didn’t include many of the freelancers who were paid even less.

The problem stems in part from the structure of the industry, which restricts the flow of profits to the studios. But studios can get away with the meager pay in part because there is an almost unlimited pool of young people who are passionate about anime and dream of making a name for themselves in the industry, said Simona Stanzani, who has worked as a translator for almost three years at Business has been in business for decades.

“There are a lot of artists who are great,” she said, adding that the studios “have a lot of cannon fodder – they have no reason to raise wages.”

Huge wealth has flooded the anime market in recent years. Chinese production companies have paid high premiums to Japanese studios for producing films for the domestic market. And in December, Sony – whose entertainment division has fallen sharply in the race to deliver content online – paid nearly $ 1.2 billion to purchase AT&T’s Crunchyroll anime video site.

Business is doing so well that almost every animation studio in Japan is solidly booked years in advance. According to Netflix, the number of households watching anime on their streaming service in 2020 increased by half from the previous year.

However, many studios have been banned from the bonanza due to an outdated production system that channels almost all of the industry’s profits to so-called production boards.

These committees are ad hoc coalitions of toy makers, comic book publishers, and other companies created to fund each project. They usually pay animation studios a set fee and reserve license fees for themselves.

While the system protects the studios from the risk of a flop, it also cuts them out of the windfalls caused by hits.

Rather than negotiating higher rates or profit-sharing with the production committees, many studios have continued to pressure the animators and cut costs by hiring them as freelancers. As a result, production costs for shows, which have long been well below those for projects in the US, have remained low despite rising profits.

Studios are typically run by “creatives who want to do something really good” and “they will try to bite off way too much and be way too ambitious,” said Justin Sevakis, founder of Anime News Network and managing director of MediaOCD. a company that produces anime for release in the United States.

“By the time they’re done, they may have lost money on the project,” he said. “Everyone knows it’s a problem, but unfortunately it’s so systemic that nobody really knows what to do about it.”

The same applies to the punishment for work. Even in a country with a sometimes fatal devotion to the office, the anime industry is notorious for its brutal demands on employees, and animators speak with perverted pride of such devotional acts as sleeping for weeks in their studios on a project.

In the first episode of “Shirobako,” an anime about young people’s efforts to break into the industry, an illustrator breaks down in a fever when a deadline looms. The cliffhanger ending doesn’t depend on her health, but on whether the show she is drawing will be ready in time.

Jun Sugawara, a computer animator and activist who runs a nonprofit that provides affordable housing to young illustrators, began campaigning for them in 2011 after learning of the difficult conditions under which workers were creating his favorite anime.

The animators’ long hours appear to be against Japanese labor regulations, but the authorities have shown little interest, although the government has made anime a central part of its public diplomacy efforts through its Cool Japan program.

“So far, national and local governments do not have effective strategies” to deal with the problem, Sugawara said. He added that “Cool Japan is a meaningless and irrelevant policy.”

In an interview, an official from Japan’s Ministry of Labor said the government was aware of the problem but had little recourse unless the animators filed a complaint.

A handful did. Last year at least two studios reached an agreement with employees over allegations that the studios violated Japanese labor laws by not paying for overtime.

In recent years, some of the bigger companies in the industry have changed their work practices after pressure from regulators and the public, said Joseph Chou, who owns a computer animation studio in Japan.

Netflix has also got involved, announcing this month that it will be partnering with WIT Studio to provide funding and training to young animators working on content for the studio. As part of the program, 10 animators will receive around $ 1,400 per month for six months.

But many of the smaller studios barely come by and don’t have much room to raise wages, Mr. Chou said. “It’s a very low-margin business,” he said. “It’s a very labor-intensive business.” He added that the studios that manage to adapt are the big ones that are public.

Not all studios pay such low wages: Kyoto Animation, the studio that an arsonist attacked in 2019, is known for avoiding freelancers in favor of employees, for example.

But these studios remain outliers. If something isn’t done soon, Sugawara believes, the industry could one day collapse as promising young talent drop out to find work that can make a better life.

Such was the case with Ryosuke Hirakimoto, who decided to leave the industry after giving birth to his first child. Working in the anime was his lifelong dream, he said, but even after years in the business, he never made more than $ 38 a day.

“I started to wonder if this lifestyle was enough,” he said during a video call.

Now he works in a nursing home, part of an industry where the high demand for workers in a rapidly aging society is rewarded with better wages.

“A lot of people just felt like being able to work on an anime they love was valuable,” said Hirakimoto. “No matter how little they got paid, they were ready to get the job done.”

Looking back on his departure, he said, “I don’t regret the decision at all.”