Month: March 2021

Categories
Entertainment

Inside Husavik’s Oscar Bid for a ‘Eurovision Track Contest’ Movie Anthem

Inside Husavik's Oscar Bid for a 'Eurovision Song Contest' Film Anthem

HUSAVIK, Iceland – In the back room of an empty seaside hotel one Monday, a group of locals anxiously gathered around a computer to broadcast live the 93rd Academy Awards nominations, waiting to see if their campaign was successful.

The good news came shortly after 1 p.m. and residents heard the name of their town say again in an American accent: “Husavik”, a song from the Netflix movie “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga”. was nominated for the best original song.

The song takes its name from this tiny coastal town that is also home to the main characters in the film, and residents have been working for weeks to give the song an Oscar nomination.

“I’m sick of it,” when I heard the news, said Orlygur Orlygsson, 37, one of the activists gathered at the hotel. “The film gave Husavik worldwide recognition, and we wanted to do the same for the song.” Still, he was shocked by the nomination, he said.

Orlygsson is possibly the most famous fan of “Fire Saga” among the 2,300 people who live in this port city on the north coast of Iceland. He owns a cafe called Ja Ja Ding Dong, named after a silly song from the movie. And in February, when “Husavik” was one of the 15 titles on the academy’s longlist for best song, Orlygsson launched the campaign to convince members of the academy to nominate him.

“Fire Saga” tells the story of two musicians from Husavik, played by Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams. The couple – who are “probably not” brother and sister – are selected by default to represent Iceland in the Eurovision Song Contest after a ship exploded with more prominent Icelandic singers.

Let’s go into the world of “neon lights and billboards”, although in the end they find that there is no place like home. “Husavik” is their Eurovision act, the triumphant climax of the film.

When the film hit Netflix in June, critics weren’t impressed. Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for the New York Times: “This covered farce whips slapstick and cheese into an authentic soufflé of tastelessness.”

But fans of the Eurovision Song Contest, which draws 200 million television viewers each year, embraced the film in a pandemic year when the actual competition was canceled for the first time since its inception in 1956. And once the residents of Husavik started their online campaign, thousands of these fans spread the word on social media.

The campaign shows a fictional Husavik resident named Oskar Oskarsson, who raves about the city in a video published on the campaign website, in which only “another Oskar” is missing.

In the ironic video, a woman pretends that a fish is an Oscar statue and residents leave gifts to elves to help with the campaign. “People in Husavik are very excited,” said the campaign website.

The video was viewed up to 200,000 times on YouTube and social media platforms, according to the organizers.

The actor in the video is Sigurdur Illugason, a local house painter who is now performing in the musical “Little Shop of Horrors” in the Husavik Theater Club for a masked audience of 50 people.

Kristjan Magnusson, the mayor of Husavik, said the main value of the campaign is to lift the spirits of the people in the city. “The fun of getting together for a big project is the most important thing,” he said. “The rest is a bonus.”

Molly Sanden, who sings for McAdams’ character on the track, praised the Husavik people for gathering behind the song. “The campaign shows that the city has the heart and the spirit that the song is about,” she said in a telephone interview from her home in Sweden.

She said she hoped to visit Husavik once the pandemic is over to see the mountains, northern lights and seagulls described in the song lyrics.

The lyrics could apply to most of Iceland’s coastal communities, and the demo of the song was written with Husavik as a placeholder before the film’s director and producers visited Iceland to decide on a location for their film.

“I first heard a demo of the song when we were driving around Iceland looking for locations,” said Leifur Dagfinnsson, who runs the local production company True North that worked on Fire Saga.

The original plan, he said, was to find a town in the southern half of the island near the capital, Reykjavik, in order to save money on transportation. Husavik is closer to the Arctic Circle and has never been the setting for an international film production.

But the strong demonstration with Husavik was the decisive factor in favor of the northern city.

“Husavik is easier to pronounce than other Icelandic city names,” said Dagfinnsson. That gave him a clear textual advantage over Stykkisholmur (Stikk-is-hohlm-ur), a town he said “made sense from a budgetary point of view”.

Husavik has more whale watching boats than fishing vessels, and unlike the town in Fire Saga, there are half a dozen bars.

Tourism is the city’s main industry, and part of the reason a group of adults had time to campaign for the song is the widespread underemployment created by the pandemic. Residents hope that tourists will sing the city’s name in their car’s GPS as soon as Iceland allows vaccinated foreign visitors.

Leonardo Piccione, an Italian artist who lives in Husavik, noted that the tiny town had linked “two of the greatest television events in the world” and added, “I think you can work with that.”

The activists hope to build on the popularity of the Oscar nomination to open a Eurovision museum next to Café Ja Ja Ding Dong with memorabilia from Icelandic contestants who have never won the competition. And of course they will post more Oskar Oskarsson videos when the Academy members start voting next month.

It is widely predicted that “Speak Now” from “One Night in Miami” or Golden Globe winner “Io Si (Seen)” from “The Life Ahead” will win the best original song. Also nominated are “Fight for You” from “Judas and the Black Messiah” and “Hear My Voice” from “The Trial of the Chicago 7”, the third Netflix film in this category.

Win or lose, “Husavik” is now part of the urban fabric. The local soccer team, the Volsungs, play the pre-game soundtrack, and the children’s choir regularly plays the Icelandic portion of the song.

Fire Saga executive producer Savan Kotecha co-wrote the lyrics for the song using Google Translate for the Icelandic lines and Google Street View to get a feel for the city.

“It never occurred to me that the song would have a special meaning for the people there,” he said in an interview. “Now we really want to win for Husavik.”

Categories
Health

GlaxoSmithKline asks FDA for emergency authorization for antibody drug

GlaxoSmithKline asks FDA for emergency authorization for antibody drug

In this photo illustration, the UK multinational pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) logo is displayed on a smartphone with a computer model of the COVID-19 coronavirus in the background.

Budrul Chukrut | SOPA pictures | Getty Images

GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology filed Friday with the Food and Drug Administration for emergency approval for their monoclonal antibody drug.

The companies apply for the permit for high risk individuals aged 12 and over.

The FDA filing is based on an interim analysis of a Phase 3 study evaluating the drug for the early treatment of Covid-19 in adults at high hospital risk. The drug reduced hospital admissions or death from Covid by 85% compared to a placebo. The test results were based on 583 patients.

“As a result, the Independent Data Monitoring Committee recommended that the study be discontinued because of the evidence of profound effectiveness for the registration,” the company said in a statement.

Companies began testing the antibody on early-stage Covid patients in August in hopes of preventing symptoms from getting worse. Antibody drugs gained attention after they were used to treat former President Donald Trump last year.

U.S. health officials say antibody drugs already approved for use – by Regeneron and Eli Lilly – are not being used adequately.

GSK said the companies would also continue talks with the European Medicines Agency and other global regulators to make the drug available to Covid patients as soon as possible.

-Reuter contributed to this report.

Categories
World News

Dozens Gunned Down in One in every of Myanmar’s Bloodiest Days Since Coup

Dozens Gunned Down in One of Myanmar’s Bloodiest Days Since Coup

At a military parade on Saturday, the general, who led the overthrow of the civilian government in Myanmar last month, said the army was determined to “protect people from all dangers”.

Before the day was over, security forces under his command had shot dead a 5-year-old boy, two 13-year-old boys and a 14-year-old girl. A little girl in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, was hit in the eye with a rubber bullet, even though her parents said she was likely to be alive.

The children killed were among the dozen of people killed on Saturday as security forces cracked down on protests across Myanmar. This appeared to be one of the deadliest days since the February 1 coup led by Major General Min Aung Hlaing, the commander of the Tatmadaw, as the military is known. A news agency, Myanmar Now, put the death toll at 80 on Saturday.

“Today is a day of shame for the armed forces,” said Dr. Sasa, a spokesman for a group of elected officials who say they represent the Myanmar government, in a statement.

The killings took place on Armed Forces Day, a holiday in honor of the Tatmadaw that gave rise to General Min Aung Hlaing’s speech in the capital, Naypyidaw.

The general promised to pave the way for democracy despite rejecting the results of the November 8 elections and arresting many of those elected to parliament that day. He reiterated his promise to hold new elections but did not offer a schedule.

More than 3,000 people arrested by the military since the coup include the fallen civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint. Your party, the National League for Democracy, won a landslide in November.

In his speech to the assembled troops, which was broadcast on national television, General Min Aung Hlaing stated that the Tatmadaw was founded by General Aung San, a national hero. He did not mention that the general was Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s father.

The Armed Forces Day ceremony, a highlight of the year for the Tatmadaw, is usually attended by a large number of foreign diplomats. This year there were fewer representing China and several other neighboring countries.

Also present was Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin, who was honored by General Min Aung Hlaing for his praise. On Friday the general gave Mr. Fomin a medal and a ceremonial sword.

Russia has been a major arms supplier to the Myanmar military and, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, can be trusted to work with China to block any attempt by the international body to impose sanctions on Myanmar.

The United States said Thursday that it is imposing its own financial sanctions on two military conglomerates that control much of Myanmar’s economy.

On Saturday, US Ambassador to Myanmar Thomas Vajda said security forces “murdered unarmed civilians, including children,” and called the bloodshed “terrible”.

The U.S. embassy said shots were fired on Saturday at their Yangon cultural center, the American Center. The embassy said no one was injured and that it was investigating.

In an apparent blow to the military on their vacation, the ethnic rebel group known as the Karen National Union said on Facebook that they had overrun and seized a Tatmadaw camp. The group posted photos of weapons it allegedly confiscated, including what appeared to be machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

The Tatmadaw has fought with various ethnic groups in Myanmar, including the Karen, for decades. Some opposition leaders hope that urban protesters, mostly from the majority of the Bamar ethnic groups, can form a coalition with the ethnic groups to resist the Tatmadaw.

The widespread murders on Saturday came a day after military-run television threatened protesters “shot in the back and in the back of the head” if they continued to oppose military rule.

About a quarter of those killed before Saturday were shot in the head, according to the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, which has tracked arrests and killings since the coup.

Saturday’s killings took place in more than two dozen cities across the country. Many of the victims were spectators.

14-year-old Ma Pan Ei Phyu was at home in Meiktila, a city in central Myanmar, when the security forces accidentally started shooting in the neighborhood, said her father U Min Min Tun. that she had been killed until she fell to the ground. She had been hit in the chest.

In Yangon, 13-year-old Maung Wai Yan Tun was playing outside when the police and soldiers arrived. Frightened, he ran away and was shot, his mother told the online news agency Mizzima. The family went to retrieve his body, but when they found him surrounded by security guards, they did not dare go near.

One of the bloodiest incidents occurred in Yangon’s Dala Township. Police arrested two demonstrators at their home on Friday afternoon.

Soon after, neighbors gathered in front of the police station and requested her release. Police responded by firing rubber bullets and stunning grenades at the crowd, a witness said.

Residents withdrew but returned to the police station after midnight. This time the security forces opened fire with live ammunition after a long break. At least 10 people were killed and 40 injured.

Categories
Business

Cheniere and Shell gas tankers change course to keep away from logjam as oil tankers divert routes

Cheniere and Shell fuel tankers change course to avoid logjam as oil tankers divert routes

A dredger tries to free the stranded container ship Ever Given, one of the largest container ships in the world, after it ran aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal on March 26, 2021.

Suez Canal Authority | Reuters

According to MarineTraffic and ClipperData, companies are trying to divert shipping ships to avoid congestion on the Suez Canal, including at least two U.S. ships carrying natural gas for Cheniere and Shell / BG Group.

At least ten tankers and container ships change course as Ever Given, one of the largest container ships in the world, continues to be stranded along the canal along Egypt, MarineTraffic spokesman Georgios Hatzimanolis told CNBC in an interview.

“We assume that this number will increase as the closure continues,” said Hatzimanolis.

The 1,300-foot ship ran aground on Tuesday en route from Malaysia to the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The stranded ship has caused other ships to return in the canal, holding goods worth around $ 400 million an hour, according to Lloyd’s List shipping journal. That has slowly increased in recent days after Egypt’s repeated efforts to get the 247,000-ton container ship afloat again failed. The officials there are digging sand around the earthed ship on the banks of the canal with eight large tugs and excavation equipment.

According to MarineTraffic, 97 ships are stuck in the upper part of the canal, 23 ships are waiting in the middle and 108 ships are waiting in the lower part. The traffic jam extends through the Red Sea, past the Gulf of Aden to the border between Yemen and Oman.

“Ships from Asia to Europe are being diverted in the Indian Ocean below the southern tip of Sri Lanka,” added Hatzimanolis. For Europe-bound ships from Asia, the journey through Africa instead of the canal can take up to seven days, he said.

The LNG tanker Maran Gas Andros took off from Ingleside, Texas on March 19, loaded with Cheniere fuel and a deadweight of 170,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas. Pan Americas’ LNG tanker carrying Shell / BG fuel left Sabine Pass on March 17 and can carry up to 174,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas. Matt Smith, Director of Commodity Research at ClipperData, confirmed which companies are using the ships.

Both tankers changed course in the middle of the North Atlantic before sailing around the cape.

ClipperData is also showing the Suezmax Marlin Santorini loaded with 700,000 barrels of Midland West Texas intermediate crude oil diverted away from the canal. Smith said the original route to Suez was an “unusual diversion”.

“The vast majority of US crude exports avoid the Suez Canal and instead head either to Europe or to Asia around the Cape of Good Hope,” said Smith. The Suezmax Marlin was at Magellan’s Seabrook Terminal in Houston, Texas on March 10, where it was replenished with 330,000 barrels of West Texas light crude before heading to Galveston, Texas the next day.

The ship then left the United States, declaring itself for Port Said in northeastern Egypt, but turned south on Thursday after passing the Azores near Portugal. “The ship has yet to update its declared destination,” said Smith.

ClipperData shows the number of fully loaded fuel tankers waiting outside Port Said and on the US Gulf Coast. From Friday afternoon, two more tankers and a Suezmax, the largest tanker that can navigate the Suez Canal and transport vacuum gas oil from the USA, drove past Crete and anchored off the coast of Egypt.

Another ship, the container ship HMM Rotterdam, turned away from the canal shortly before entering the Strait of Gibraltar and changed course to circumnavigate Africa.

Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst at BIMCO, said the diversion pattern is similar for other ships.

“We see not only container ships diverting in both directions, but also LNG carriers and dry matter from the US Gulf of Mexico,” said Sand. “The ships turn sharply right in the middle of the Atlantic to head south to the Cape of Good Hope and avoid the traffic jam around Suez.”

Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, says while a long Suez hiatus introduces latency into the utility system, the length of the delay depends on where the ship started, where it is going, and where it changed course in the voyage Has .

“For US golf exporters, circumnavigating the Horn means only three days or less at sea for the port of Tokyo,” Book said. “For cargoes from Doha to northwestern Europe, this route could take ten days.”

Cargo originating in the Gulf of Mexico and stuck in the Mediterranean Sea may face a ten-day diversion instead of three, he said.

At the time of publication, Cheniere and Shell / BG responded to CNBC’s request for comment.

The MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company announced that 11 of their ships were diverted, 19 ships were anchored on either side of the canal and two ships were turned back from Friday afternoon.

The blockade of the Suez Canal is one of the “biggest disruptions to world trade in recent years,” said Caroline Becquart, senior vice president of MSC, in an email on Saturday.

“We expect the second quarter of 2021 to be more disruptive than the first three months and maybe even more challenging than the end of last year,” she said. “Companies should expect the Suez blockade to reduce shipping capacity and equipment in the coming months, and thus to some deterioration in the reliability of the supply chain.”

Categories
Politics

Construct America Bonds could also be key to financing Biden infrastructure plans

Build America Bonds may be key to financing Biden infrastructure plans

Republicans and Democrats agree that the US desperately needs a major infrastructure overhaul and that Congress should at least approve significant repairs to roads and bridges.

The violent disagreement between the two parties begins with which provisions are worth adding to the federal deficit and how such a massive enterprise can be funded.

And while Wall Street worries about potential increases in corporate and individual income tax rates, Democrats could soon turn to an Obama-era tool to fund their infrastructure plans: Build America Bonds.

BABs are special municipal bonds that enable states and counties to pay off debts with interest costs subsidized by the federal government. This underwriting not only helped to relieve nervous investors after the financial crisis, but also made municipal debt even more attractive, with interest rates sometimes exceeding 7%.

This approach could be especially helpful as President Joe Biden is pushing his infrastructure forward, especially after the high price of his $ 1.9 trillion Covid-19 aid package. Even the most modest estimates put the cost of repairing the country’s infrastructure in the trillions of dollars.

According to a report released by the American Society of Civil Engineers in early March, the country’s total infrastructure needs will be nearly $ 6 trillion over the next 10 years. It is said there is a $ 125 billion backlog on bridge repairs, a $ 435 billion backlog for roads, and a $ 176 billion backlog for transit systems.

Those amounts, just for repairs already deemed necessary, come before the expansive and innovative technology that the Democrats are looking to include in Biden’s upcoming bill. The White House is expected to come up with a bill worth at least $ 3 trillion and include a litany of infrastructure and welfare programs.

Biden for BABs?

Vikram Rai, head of Citi’s municipal bond strategy, believes Build America Bonds are the answer.

Build America Bonds entered US markets more than a decade ago when the Obama administration was looking for ways to fund capital projects across the country and stimulate the economy after the great recession.

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

The beauty of subsidizing the interest associated with Muni bonds, Rai says, is that every dollar the federal government spends helps strengthen the integrity of larger spending projects that legally only states and communities can operate.

The federal government owns less than 10% of the national infrastructure, while the rest is run by states, cities, and the private sector.

“That $ 2 trillion, $ 3 trillion price tag – that’s not really accurate because the only way the price is that high is when the federal government grants state and local governments,” Rai said in a phone interview in early March.

If the federal government subscribes to BABs, states and cities can issue far more debt than investors would otherwise accept, with no astronomical interest costs and doubts as to whether they could repay.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is that just a few tax increases – like increasing the corporate tax rate or introducing a carbon tax – even those very minor tax increases are more than enough to fund the initial outlay on infrastructure projects,” Rai said.

“These projects are ultimately self-sustaining,” he added. “There is a magnifying glass effect, a stimulating effect: it creates employment, it creates tax revenue. So it’s child’s play.”

Rai added at the time that it is almost certain that the White House is considering BABs among a variety of funding options.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg later confirmed Friday, after this story was originally published, that the administration is considering the bonds among other funding options.

“I hear a lot of appetite that there are sustainable flows of funding,” said Buttigieg. Build America Bonds “show promise in terms of the way we use this type of funding. There have also been ideas about things like a national infrastructure bank.”

A critical characteristic of BABs is that, unlike 83% of the municipal bond market, they are taxed by the federal government.

Most of the bonds issued by state and local governments under “normal” terms are attractive to investors because the interest is generally exempt from federal income tax. As a result, US investors are willing to accept a lower interest rate than they would otherwise charge.

However, for overseas investors, US municipal bond rates are still taxable from their home country, so they are typically apathetic, low-yielding debt issued in the US

By making BABs subject to federal taxes, state and local governments are forced to offer higher interest rates on their bonds in order to guarantee investors the same effective return.

Given that overseas investors, with their multi-trillion dollar demand base, have shown an unwavering interest in investing in US infrastructure, they would be keen to see a taxable structure. This is because, according to Rai, from her point of view, BABs are indistinguishable from a conventional taxable bond.

Political dangers

The downside to BABs, while they may be more effective than grants made for that amount, is that the federal government is still paying billions of dollars in interest costs by the time the BABs mature.

The Obama-era program, which had no annual caps and subsidized interest costs of 35%, expired in late 2010 after states and communities sold more than $ 180 billion of the bonds, far more than the federal government originally expected.

Some lawmakers, such as Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore, continue to support the program and are open to the possibility that they could play a role again in future infrastructure initiatives.

“Build America Bonds were an overwhelming success on the Recovery Act,” Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told CNBC on Wednesday. “I’m incredibly proud of this program and a similar funding structure will be part of the conversation as we move forward.”

Leading Republicans, on the other hand, were fed up with the costs associated with BABs by 2011. GOP lawmakers said the federal government’s pledge to subsidize 35% of interest payments on local bonds was too high.

Former Senator Orrin Hatch, then the senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said in February 2011 that the bonds were “simply a disguised government bailout” that had helped New York and California disproportionately.

“These bonds rightly expired in late 2010, and I hope the Obama administration does not try to revive such a nonsensical provision in its upcoming budget,” he said at the time.

Senator Pat Toomey, R-Penn., A member of the Senate Finance Committee, is a “no” to the bond revival.

“State and local governments have never been more cashless. In addition to the record tax rallies last year, Congress sent them $ 500 billion. Despite all of this, Congress sent them another $ 350 billion that they didn’t need two weeks ago.” he told CNBC on Friday. “So no, I don’t support misallocating billions of dollars more to incentivize potentially unworthy projects and to encourage bankrupt or irresponsible state and local governments to take on even more debt.”

Rai acknowledged that appetites for BABs can vary depending on the creditworthiness of each state. States like New York with stronger balance sheets may be more attractive than Illinois.

He countered, however, that even cities in Illinois could see significant revenue generation from BABs if the state works to stop local municipal borrowing. The federal government’s pledge to subsidize interest costs could be cut from 35% to 30% or even 28%, as the Democrats proposed in 2011, Rai said.

Given the plight of national infrastructure, some Republicans may see BABs as a compelling option for funding infrastructure projects that will ultimately pay for themselves in job creation and tax revenue over time.

Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, the highest ranking GOP member on the Commerce Committee, co-sponsored a bill in 2020 with Senator Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Calling for a revival of the BABs with certain improvements.

As with BABs, their so-called American Infrastructure Bonds program would create a class of taxable “direct-pay” municipal bonds to help troubled governments fund critical public projects.

The Wicker and Bennet bonds would be exempt from seizure, the process by which Congress has gradually undermined the level of its payments to fund the original class of BABs.

“Enabling our local executives to launch critical infrastructure projects is a proven and cost-effective way to help our communities get out of severe financial difficulties with assets that will add value to the region over the years,” Wicker said in a press release dated July.

Categories
Business

Lending Apps in India Disgrace Debtors Who Cannot Pay Cash Again

Lending Apps in India Shame Borrowers Who Can't Pay Money Back

HYDERABAD, India – The harassing calls started shortly after sunrise. Kiran Kumar stayed in bed thinking for hours about how he would end his hostage of a lifetime.

The cement seller initially borrowed about $ 40 from a lender through an online app to top up his $ 200 monthly salary. But he couldn’t pay the assembly fees and interest, so he borrowed from others. By that morning, Mr. Kumar owed about $ 4,000.

Worse, the lenders had the phone numbers of those closest to him and threatened to make his problems public.

“If I am classified as a fraud in front of everyone, my self-esteem is gone, my honor is gone,” said 28-year-old Kumar in an interview. “What’s left?”

The Indian authorities are increasingly concerned that there might be many more victims like Mr Kumar out there. They believe a new generation of lenders, whose tech has been honed in China, hunted down workers and rural populations devastated by the impact of the coronavirus on the Indian economy.

These lenders do not require credit scores or visits to a bank. However, they raise high costs within a short time. They also require access to a borrower’s phone to suck up contacts, photos, text messages, and even battery percentage.

Then they bombard borrowers and their social circles with requests, threats and sometimes forged legal documents that threaten dire consequences for non-payment. In conservative, close-knit communities, such a loss of honor can be devastating.

A police investigation in the city of Hyderabad alone planned around 14 million transactions valued at 3 billion US dollars nationwide over a period of six months. The Indian Central Bank and the national authorities are currently investigating.

“It will be difficult for us to count the zeros,” said Avinash Mohanty, the joint police commissioner in Hyderabad. Police attribute five suicides in the city to the lenders.

According to the Indian government, around 100 credit apps have been removed from the Google platform. A Google spokesperson said it checked hundreds of loan apps and removed those that violated its rules.

The investigation raises alarms in India over the vulnerability of a population of 1.3 billion people who are still getting used to digital payments. According to PwC, the consulting firm, online transactions in India will reach more than $ 3 trillion by 2025. Further fraud findings could lead the government, which has already restricted the personal data online businesses can use, to take a firmer grip on the industry.

The apps also speak for the global nature of online fraud. Many of the companies use techniques that flourished in China two years ago before the authorities there shut them down, and which have since resurfaced elsewhere.

The loan apps came about at a desperate time. The government issued a tough two-month lockdown a year ago to contain the virus, plunging India into deep recession. Millions have been made unemployed. Traditional forms of lending such as banks and micro-lenders have been temporarily closed.

Updated

March 27, 2021, 10:13 p.m. ET

With names like Money Now, First Cash, Super Cash and Cool Cash – according to police documents – the apps came and went in the Google App Store in India, some reappearing with a slight change in identity. Most were created using off-the-shelf software that made it as easy to create as starting a blog, said Srikanth Lakshmanan, one of the coordinators of Cashless Consumers, a collective of technology volunteers who have studied the apps.

With a few taps on the phone and a fresh selfie, a borrower could get the money they needed for a doctor’s appointment, refilling the kitchen, or paying a child’s school fees.

The repayment can be made after a week. Lenders often added interest and fees of up to a third of the loan even before sending the money, leaving borrowers to owe more than they received. And in order to get money, the borrowers had to share their personal information.

At this point, according to police and analysts, the call centers went into action. First, they would get the borrowers to repay the principal, interest, and fees. Then they called friends and family, sometimes falsely saying that the borrower was wanted by the police. Some created WhatsApp groups, added members from the borrower’s contact list, and then bombarded the group with allegations. Some would direct desperate borrowers to other money-lending services and further entangle them.

The police in Hyderabad took note of this last winter after the suicides and after the people filed harassment complaints. They were blocked until an informant came forward and, in return for a reward of around $ 150, provided the address and details of a call center where a close friend worked as a debt collection agency.

In an interview with the New York Times, the debt collection agency – a quick-talking 24-year-old who was making about $ 130 a month – said he received electronic files on about 50 borrowers every day. The files contained her personal information, copies of her government IDs, and her contact lists.

Workers could earn a weekly bonus of around $ 7 if they pressured three-quarters of borrowers to repay loans, said the debt collection agency, which asked for anonymity fearing reprisals from its former employer. The bonus doubled with a success rate of four fifths or more. Customers often begged for time, the agent said, and some even said the constant harassment would lead to their deaths. The debt collection agency that had the bonus in mind would continue anyway.

So far, the Hyderabad investigation has led to raids on call centers in at least four Indian cities, with each center employing between 100 and 600 people.

Some of the companies have ties to China. At least four Chinese nationals have been arrested so far, the police said. In reverse engineering the most exploitative apps, activists like Mr. Lakshmanan found that large numbers were hosted on Chinese cloud services and used Chinese software development kits and facial recognition tools.

The police have so far frozen bank accounts of around $ 40 million. However, the path often leads to shell companies, money laundering networks or cryptocurrencies that are difficult for governments to trace.

Nonetheless, the advertising in Hyderabad has sparked a public backlash.

Mr. Kumar, the cement salesman, is now part of an online advocacy group. About 60 victims have joined the WhatsApp channel developing responses to harassing calls that will continue or provide support.

What Mr. Kumar saved on the morning of last summer, when he was in bed thinking about ending his life, was one last phone call to a friend. Realizing the urgency, the friend rushed into the room, and within hours helped collect the $ 400 Mr. Kumar had to pay that day to ease the nuisance.

“If it wasn’t for my boyfriend, I would be 90 percent sure that I would commit suicide that day,” said Mr. Kumar. “I still get calls. But now I’m telling them, “Do whatever you can.” I am not worried now. I feel protected. “

But for some families, neither the pain nor the harassment has gone away.

G. Chandra-Mohan, a 38-year-old father of three who worked in a clothing warehouse, took out approximately $ 1,000 in loans. After interest, fees and penalties, as well as borrowing from other service providers to stay afloat, his balance was five times as high. With a salary of $ 200 a month and the $ 80 a month his wife Sarita earned from a part-time job in a lab, he couldn’t pay it back.

Mr Chandra-Mohan has taken full advantage of his credit cards and pulled them off dozens of credit apps, his family said. When he complained to the police about the harassment, they told him to turn off his phone for a few days and come back if it continues, said his father-in-law, M. Sailu. Police said he may have called a cybercrime hotline but they did not record that he visited a police station.

One morning after Mr. Chandra-Mohan drove his wife to their office on the back of his motorcycle, he gave his three young daughters some change and sent them to their grandparents’ house around the corner. Then he hanged himself from a fan.

“Even after his suicide,” said his wife, “the phone keeps ringing.”

If you are thinking of suicide, call the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). In India, contact 91-9820466726 or visit the Aasra.info website for more resources.

Cao Li contributed to the coverage from Hong Kong.

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Health

Why Coronavirus Testing Nonetheless Issues

Why Coronavirus Testing Still Matters

Last May, the city of Los Angeles turned a fabled baseball park into a mass test site for the coronavirus. In its prime, Dodger Stadium tested 16,000 people for the virus every day, making it the largest testing site in the world, said Dr. Clemens Hong, who oversees coronavirus testing in Los Angeles County.

But in January the city turned and turned the stadium into a huge drive-through vaccination station. Local demand for coronavirus testing has dropped, said Dr. Hong. He said he saw the evidence firsthand recently while visiting a community hospital: “The test site had three people and the vaccination site had a line around the block.”

Los Angeles is not an anomaly. Across the country, attention has largely shifted from testing to vaccination. According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the US is currently running an average of 1.3 million coronavirus tests per day, up from a high of 2 million per day in mid-January.

In some ways, the decline is good news and can be partly attributed to falling case numbers and the increasing pace of vaccination. But the decline is also worrying many public health experts, who find the prevalence of Covid-19 remains stubbornly high. More than 50,000 new cases and 1,000 deaths are counted every day, and only 14 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated.

“We’re very concerned about the resurgence,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. “Everyone was mentally concerned with vaccines. Vaccines are of course very important. But until most of us are protected, testing remains essential. “

The $ 1.9 trillion stimulus package that went into effect this month includes $ 47.8 billion earmarked for testing, tracking and monitoring the virus.

However, with the reopening of society and the spread of vaccines, testing strategies are evolving. Here are four reasons testing is still important, and how officials see the next months and years.

Case numbers remain high and doctors still need to identify people who have contracted the virus so that those people can receive appropriate treatment and care. The gold standard for diagnosing Covid-19 is the polymerase chain reaction or PCR test, which can identify even small traces of genetic material from the coronavirus.

This type of testing will be required while there are Covid-19 cases. However, because the disease is less common, diagnostic tests are less likely to be centralized.

“The game has changed a bit,” said Dr. Hong. “Before, there was just one infection anywhere and we just needed comprehensive access to comprehensive testing. Now we have to be much more focused. “

According to Dr. Hong are shifting diagnostic testing from large, government-run locations to smaller, more dispersed locations that are spread across local communities. Ultimately, if vaccination rates are high enough and cases are low enough, no special testing sites are needed at all. “Then we just get back to the health system,” he said, and coronavirus testing will simply be one of many options on the doctor’s office menu.

Tests are important not only to identify individual patients in need of treatment, but also to public health. If the system works, a timely Covid-19 diagnosis triggers the tracing and quarantine of contacts and can stop the transmission of viruses.

“The vaccine – wonderful, wonderful as it is – is not going to contain this pandemic in and of itself,” he said A. David Paltiel, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Yale School of Public Health.

Slowing transmission means fewer people will get sick, but it also gives the virus fewer opportunities to mutate. And that reduces the likelihood that dangerous new variants – some of which may potentially evade vaccine-induced immunity – will appear.

If community prevalence is kept low, vaccines can be given “a chance to fight,” said Dr. Paltiel. “The less work we put into the vaccine, the better.”

As schools and offices reopen, routine screening of asymptomatic individuals will help minimize the spread of virus. These screening programs are now starting to run. Many will rely on rapid antigen tests, which are less sensitive than PCR tests but are cheaper and can give results in 15 minutes. (Antigens are molecules like the well-known spike protein that are present on the surface of the coronavirus that stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies.) When used routinely and frequently, antigen tests can be effective in identifying infectious individuals and in several ways Analysis suggests reducing virus transmission.

As vaccination rates increase, these screening programs can become more targeted. If 70 to 80 percent of Americans are vaccinated, the prevalence of Covid-19 is dropping, and there are no outbreaks in groups, it may be possible to simplify comprehensive screening, said Dr. Mary K. Hayden, an Infectious Disease Specialist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “Then, yes, I think we could relax the surveillance tests,” she said before adding.

Frequently asked questions about the new stimulus package

How high are the business stimulus payments in the bill and who is entitled?

The stimulus payments would be $ 1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $ 1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $ 75,000 or less. For householders, the adjusted gross income should be $ 112,500 or less, and for married couples filing together, that number should be $ 150,000 or less. To be eligible for a payment, an individual must have a social security number. Continue reading.

What Would the Relief Bill do for Health Insurance?

Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become much cheaper. Under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, COBRA generally lets someone who loses a job purchase coverage through their previous employer. But it’s expensive: under normal circumstances, a person must pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the Relief Act, the government would pay the full COBRA premium from April 1 to September 30. An individual who qualified for new employer-based health insurance elsewhere before September 30th would lose their eligibility for free coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would also be ineligible. Continue reading

What would the child and dependent care tax credit bill change?

This loan, which helps working families offset the cost of looking after children under the age of 13 and other dependents, would be significantly extended for a single year. More people would be eligible and many recipients would get a longer break. The bill would also fully refund the balance, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill were zero. “This will be helpful to people on the lower end of the income spectrum,” said Mark Luscombe, chief federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Continue reading.

What changes to the student loan are included in the invoice?

There would be a big one for people who are already in debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on debt relief if you qualify for loan origination or cancellation – for example, if you’ve been on an income-based repayment plan for the required number of years, if your school cheated on you, or if Congress or the President whisper $ 10,000 debt gone for a large number of people. This would be the case for debts canceled between January 1, 2021 and the end of 2025. Read more.

What would the bill do to help people with housing?

The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility benefits to people who are struggling and at risk of being evicted from their homes. About $ 27 billion would be used for emergency rentals. The vast majority of these would replenish what is known as the Coronavirus Relief Fund created by CARES law and distributed through state, local, and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. This is on top of the $ 25 billion provided by the aid package passed in December. In order to receive financial support that could be used for rent, utilities and other housing costs, households would have to meet various conditions. Household income must not exceed 80 percent of area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or residential instability, and individuals would have to be due to the pandemic. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, assistance could be granted for up to 18 months. Lower-income families who have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for support. Continue reading.

Even then, officials may want to do some level of surveillance testing in high-risk environments such as nursing homes or on high-risk individuals such as travelers, she said.

Tests can help public health officials assess whether efforts to end the pandemic are paying off.

“Do we want to know how well vaccines work? We need to test, ”said David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “How do we know if the variants are more contagious? We have to test. How do we know if the vaccines are effective at controlling the variants? We have to test. “

Large screening programs can also help institutes evaluate the effectiveness of their risk reduction strategies. As cases increase, schools and offices may need to change their mask guidelines, enforce greater social distancing, or increase their ventilation rates.

Testing could also help uncover worrying case clusters that may indicate that a community has not yet reached herd immunity and could benefit from a targeted vaccination campaign.

Many experts today believe that the coronavirus will likely never go away completely. But even if the virus continues to circulate in very small amounts, it’s important to keep an eye on it.

“It’s less about stopping the transmission of the disease and more about understanding where the virus is.” Said Dr. Nuzzo. “What are we missing? And, you know, what could be coming down the road? “

The virus will continue to mutate and new genetic variants will emerge. Some amount of continued testing, even years later, could help scientists identify worrying variants early on.

Tests are of course not perfect and can lead to false negative and positive results. However, they provide a critical window into the activity of a pathogen that is too small to be seen.

“We’re going to want to make sure that after vaccination, people don’t gush up in some other unpredictable way that will get us back to where we started,” said Dr. O’Connor.

Categories
Business

Stellantis closing 5 North American vegetation attributable to chip scarcity

Stellantis closing five North American plants due to chip shortage

A member of United Auto Worker leaves the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Warren truck plant after the first shift on May 18, 2020 in Warren, Michigan.

Gregory Shamus | Getty Images

A global shortage of semiconductor chips is forcing Stellantis to temporarily close five North American plants starting next week, the company confirmed on Friday afternoon.

The affected plants are in Illinois, Michigan, Mexico and two in Ontario, Canada. They build a range of products for the company – from older Ram 1500 pickup trucks and Jeep models to minivans and Dodge and Chrysler cars. The facilities, which used to belong to Fiat Chrysler, are expected to be closed from Monday to early or mid-April, according to the company

“Stellantis continues to work closely with our suppliers to reduce the manufacturing impact caused by the various supply chain problems in our industry,” the company said in a statement emailed to CNBC. A Stellantis spokeswoman declined to indicate how many production units are likely to be lost.

Semiconductors are, among other things, key components for infotainment, power steering and brakes in new vehicles. Suppliers have moved semiconductors away from the automotive industry as several plants were closed due to Covid in the past year.

Consulting firm AlixPartners estimates the chip shortage will reduce global auto industry sales by $ 60.6 billion this year.

The deficiency affects every automaker differently. Several manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford Motor and the Chinese EV start-up Nio, also announced production cuts or plans to extend downtime at facilities already affected this week.

Vehicles affected by Stellantis’ production stops include the Chrysler 300 sedan, as well as the Pacifica and Voyager minivans, Dodge Charger and Challenger vehicles, Jeep Cherokee and Compass SUVs, and the Ram 1500 Classic pickup. A newer version of the Ram 1500 continues to be produced at a different facility in Michigan.

Stellantis is the merged automaker of Fiat Chrysler and France-based Groupe PSA. In the USA, the core brands include Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep and Ram.

Categories
Politics

C.D.C. Funding Gun Violence Analysis For First Time in Many years

C.D.C. Funding Gun Violence Research For First Time in Decades

This was the argument he used to persuade Congress to spend reasonable money on research into gun violence in 2019. The research itself was never banned entirely, and in 2013, weeks after the massacre that killed 26 people at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Barack Obama directed the CDC to reconsider funding studies on gun violence.

The agency commissioned a report from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council that set out the priorities, but that little changed. By 2019, after the Democrats took back the house, liberal organizations like MoveOn.org petitioned Congress to overturn the Dickey amendment. Almost every House Democrat has signed up.

Dr. However, Rosenberg argued that it should remain intact to “protect Republicans and gun-loving Democrats who can put money into science and tell their constituents,” This is not gun control money. “”

Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who chaired the House subcommittee that oversees the CDC’s budget at the time, said she put $ 50 million into the budget bill this year, but that of the House Republican-controlled Senate got rid of it. The two chambers reached a compromise of $ 25 million, but they hoped to double the funding this year.

Dr. Naik-Mathuria, the Houston trauma surgeon, said she would like Washington to address gun violence as an issue of injury prevention rather than policy. She began researching methods of reducing gun violence about six years ago after seeing “Children walked in dead for shooting themselves in the head when they found a gun at home”.

Her current study aims to determine risk factors for gun violence in children and adults, and her previous work has led to some changes in medical practice, she said.

Pediatricians in Texas, she said, are reluctant to talk about gun safety, fearing that “it would upset parents or become political”. So she and her group made a broader security video that included gun safety news – like locking and storing guns – with tips on how to keep children out of poison.

Categories
Health

Covid masks and hand sanitizer can get you a tax break, IRS says

Covid masks and hand sanitizer can get you a tax break, IRS says

Luis Alvarez | DigitalVision | Getty Images

Americans can get a tax break on masks, hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, and other personal protective equipment this filing season to help prevent the spread of Covid-19, the IRS said on Friday.

The tax code allows taxpayers to deduct medical expenses that exceed 7.5% of their adjusted gross income per year. The IRS counts the cost of PPE as a medical expense that is eligible for the tax break.

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For example, individuals with an income of $ 100,000 in 2020 can deduct medical expenses greater than $ 7,500 from their tax bill. You need to list your taxes to take advantage of this.

Expenses reimbursed by the insurance are not eligible.

PSA costs may be paid or reimbursed in certain tax-privileged medical accounts, according to the IRS. These include health savings accounts, flexible health spending accounts, Archer medical savings accounts, and healthcare reimbursement schemes. Taxpayers typically have two and a half months after year-end to spend unused FSA funds. According to the December Relief Act, employers can extend this grace period to up to 12 months.