Month: March 2021

Intel plans to spend $20 billion on two new chip factories in Arizona.

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Post date March 23, 2021

Intel’s new CEO doubles chip manufacturing in the US and Europe, a surprise bet that government officials worried about component shortages and dependency on factories in Asia may please government officials.

Patrick Gelsinger, who took the top position in February, said Tuesday he plans to spend $ 20 billion on two new factories near existing facilities in Arizona. He also vowed that in addition to making the processors it has long developed and sold, Intel would become a major manufacturer of chips for other companies.

Intel had stumbled in developing new manufacturing processes that improve chip performance by packing more tiny transistors onto each piece of silicon. The lead in this costly miniaturization race had shifted to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung Electronics, whose foundry services manufacture chips for companies such as Apple, Amazon, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.

Some investors and analysts had urged Intel to outsource or stop manufacturing in favor of outside foundries, an approach most other chipmakers are taking to drive profits.

However, a pandemic-induced shortage of semiconductors for automobiles, appliances and other products has underscored the critical role that chip factories play in supporting many industries. And before recent concerns, concerns over Asian foundries’ proximity to China had already led Congress and several branches of the Trump and Biden administrations to support plans to encourage more domestic chip manufacturing, even though funding had not yet been made available.

Officials in Europe have also made proposals for new factories to reduce reliance on chips made abroad.

The Intel strategy recognizes that “the world no longer wants to depend on the ring of fire that is right next to China,” said G. Dan Hutcheson, industry analyst at VLSI Research. “It’s very trend-setting.”

TSMC previously announced plans for a new factory in Arizona, a $ 12 billion project that is expected to receive federal funding. Samsung is seeking government incentives to expand its Austin, Texas facility by $ 17 billion.

Mr. Gelsinger, who first came to Intel at the age of 18, left the company in 2009 after 30 years. He was CEO of software company VMware for eight years before Intel’s board of directors persuaded him to replace Robert Swan, who was fired in January.

Intel said its new global foundry service will be operated from the US and Europe. Further plant expansions are expected to be announced in the next year. It already has plants in Ireland and Israel.

“The industry needs more geographically balanced production capacities,” said Gelsinger.

Intel hopes to negotiate with the Biden administration and other governments to get incentives to expand manufacturing, said Donald Parker, vice president of Intel.

Although Intel manufactures most of its products in-house, Intel has long used outside foundries for some less advanced chips. Mr Gelsinger said the company will add some flagship microprocessors, the calculating machines used in most computers, to that strategy. This will include some chips for PCs and data centers in 2023 and will give Intel more flexibility in meeting customer needs.

However, manufacturing will remain the core of Intel’s strategy despite recent technical problems, Gelsinger said.

He said significant improvements were made in the next production process, which was delayed last summer. Intel will also form a new partnership with IBM to develop new chip manufacturing technologies, he added.

Mr Gelsinger’s plans are met with skepticism. In addition to recent manufacturing technology issues, Intel has historically tried to act as a foundry for other companies with little success.

However, Intel has changed these plans in several ways. For one, it will be ready for the first time to license its technical crown jewels – the so-called x86 designs used in most of the world’s computers – so customers can incorporate that processing power into chips they are developing for the Intel company, said.

Tags Arizona, Billion, chip, factories, Intel, plans, Spend

Health

Vaccinated Folks Can Get Covid, however It’s Most Seemingly Very Uncommon

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Post date March 23, 2021

Vaccinated People Can Get Covid, but It’s Most Likely Very Rare

More than two months after being fully vaccinated against Covid, a doctor in New York awoke with a headache and a dull, heavy feeling of tiredness. Fever and chills soon followed, and his senses of taste and smell began to fade.

That, he thought, couldn’t happen. But it was: He tested positive for the corona virus.

“It was a big shock,” he said. He knew that no vaccine was perfect and that the Pfizer BioNTech shots he received were 95 percent effective in a large clinical trial. “But somehow it was 100 percent in my eyes,” he said.

The doctor, who asked for anonymity to protect his privacy, is one of the few reported cases of people infected after a partial or even full vaccination. Nearly 83 million Americans have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine and it is unclear how many of them will have a “breakthrough” infection, although two new reports suggest the number is very low.

One study found that only four of 8,121 fully vaccinated employees at Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas became infected. The other found that only seven of 14,990 workers at UC San Diego Health and the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles two or more weeks after receiving a second dose of the Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccines tested positive. Both reports, published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, show how well the vaccines work in the real world and during a period of intense transmission.

While these breakthrough cases are quite rare, they are a clear reminder that vaccinated people are not invincible, especially if the virus remains widespread.

“We strongly believed that this data shouldn’t lead people to say, ‘Let’s all vaccinate and then we can all stop wearing masks,” said Dr. Francesca J. Torriani, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Diego Health, which led the California study, “These measures must continue until a larger part of the population is vaccinated.”

Only some of the virus-positive health workers in the California study showed symptoms, she said, and they tended to be mild, suggesting the vaccines were protective. This reflects data from the vaccine trials, which suggest that breakthrough infections were mild and did not require hospital admissions. Some people had no symptoms at all and were only discovered through tests in studies or as part of their medical care.

Updated

March 23, 2021, 1:20 p.m. ET

For example, doctors at the University of North Carolina found some asymptomatic cases in vaccinated patients tested for coronavirus before surgery or other medical procedures, according to Dr. David Wohl, the medical director of this center’s vaccination clinic.

He said the lack of symptoms may have caused the vaccine to do exactly what it was supposed to do: stop people from getting sick, even if it doesn’t completely stop the virus from infecting them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a small team studying breakthrough cases, said an agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund. One question the researchers are asking is whether certain variants of the coronavirus could play a role in breakthrough cases.

“There is currently no evidence that Covid-19 occurs after vaccination due to changes in the virus,” said Ms. Nordlund.

In the next few months, Pfizer and Moderna are expected to release data showing how often people who have been vaccinated become infected with the virus, even if they don’t show symptoms. The companies tested participants in their vaccine trials for antibodies to a protein called N, which is part of the coronavirus but not part of the vaccine. Finding these antibodies means that a vaccinated person has been infected with the virus. Some study volunteers also have their noses wiped regularly to test for an active viral infection.

Another question is how effective are the vaccines in people whose immune systems have been weakened by illness or medication, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University. Breakthrough cases can occur in these people because their bodies cannot produce a robust response to a vaccine.

“And it’s amazing how widespread immunodeficiency is,” said Dr. Conductor. He called the disease “a testament to modern medicine” because many patients with the disease are successfully treated for conditions that would have killed them not so long ago.

The doctor, who fell ill in New York despite being fully vaccinated, stayed home in isolation for almost two weeks. He described his illness as relatively mild and said he had been treated with monoclonal antibodies to fight the virus. “If the worst flu is a 10, it was a four,” he said.

Without the vaccine, he said, he thinks he would have been sicker.

“I would have been afraid for my mortality,” he said. “But I wasn’t afraid for a moment. I didn’t think I was going to die. I think you won’t die – that’s a pretty big deal. “

Apoorva Mandavilli contributed to the coverage.

Tags Covid, people, Rare, Vaccinated

Business

Disney to debut ‘Black Widow,’ ‘Cruella’ in theaters and Disney+

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Post date March 23, 2021

Scarlett Johansson plays Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow, in Marvel’s “Black Widow”.

Disney wonder

Disney made some key changes to its summer movie on Tuesday.

The studio announced that “Cruella” and “Black Widow” will be released in theaters and on Disney + with world-class access, and its Pixar film “Luca” will go direct to Disney +.

“Today’s announcement reflects our focus on providing consumers with choice and meeting the changing preferences of audiences,” said Kareem Daniel, chairman of Disney’s media and entertainment distribution.

“By leveraging a flexible sales strategy in a dynamic market that is gradually starting to recover from the global pandemic, we will continue to leverage the best of options to bring the Walt Disney Company’s unparalleled storytelling to fans and families around the world,” he said.

“Cruella” will debut as scheduled on May 28th and “Black Widow”, which was originally scheduled for May 7th, will now debut on July 9th. Both titles will also be available on Disney + for an additional $ 30 rental fee.

Originally slated for theatrical release, Luca will be streamed direct on Disney + as part of the traditional subscription. In markets where Disney + is not available, “Luca” will be released in theaters.

Other changes to the theatrical release date are:

“Free Guy” moves to August 13, 2021
“Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” from September 3, 2021
“The King’s Man” arrives on December 22, 2021
“Deep Water” has been postponed to January 14, 2022
“Death on the Nile” for February 11, 2022

Tags Black, Cruella, debut, Disney, Theaters, Widow

Business

Watch as Powell and Yellen Testify on Financial Restoration: Dwell Updates

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Post date March 23, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

VideoThe Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome H. Powell, and Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen testify before the House Financial Services Committee on the state of the economy.CreditCredit…Jessica Mcgowan/Getty Images

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell told lawmakers that the economy is healing from the pandemic downturn and continued to play down inflation concerns at a hearing before House lawmakers on Tuesday.

Mr. Powell, in response to a question about whether the $1.9 trillion spending package to combat the virus, combined with President Biden’s plan to spend as much as $3 trillion on an infrastructure bill, could cause prices to shoot higher, said any spike would likely be temporary.

“We do expect that inflation will move up over the course of this year,” Mr. Powell said, saying that some of that would be mechanical as low readings from March and April 2020 drop out of the data, and part of it might be driven by a bounce-back in demand.

“Our best view is that the effect on inflation will be neither particularly large nor persistent,” he said.

Mr. Powell is testifying along with Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary, before the House Financial Services committee on the economic recovery from the pandemic.

The testimony is the first time Ms. Yellen and Mr. Powell have appeared side by side in their current roles. President Donald J. Trump chose to replace Ms. Yellen with Mr. Powell at the Fed, but the two economic officials spent several years working together at the Fed and have a good rapport.

Mr. Powell told lawmakers on Tuesday that the economy was healing and that although many workers and businesses continued to suffer, the aggressive response from the central bank, Congress and the White House helped to avoid the most devastating economic scenarios.

“While the economic fallout has been real and widespread, the worst was avoided by swift and vigorous action,” Mr. Powell said at House Financial Services committee.

Ms. Yellen is expected to face questions on executing Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic relief legislation, as well as the existing programs that were created during the Trump administration that the Treasury is still required to oversee.

The Treasury Department has been racing to distribute $1,400 checks to millions of Americans, posing a test for Ms. Yellen’s team, which is not yet fully in place.

Ms. Yellen pushed hard for a robust fiscal relief package and has suggested that the next bill needs to be focused on addressing longer-term structural issues facing the economy that have led to vast income inequality.

In her opening statement, Ms. Yellen described the rescue legislation as precisely what the economy needed.

“With the passage of the rescue plan, I am confident that people will reach the other side of this pandemic with the foundations of their lives intact,” Ms. Yellen said. “And I believe they will be met there by a growing economy. In fact, I think we may see a return to full employment next year.”

Mr. Powell pointed out that the economy has recently improved and that the labor market has begun adding back jobs after a winter lull. But he will note that those metrics may not capture the full extent of the damage to workers.

“However, the sectors of the economy most adversely affected by the resurgence of the virus, and by greater social distancing, remain weak, and the unemployment rate — still elevated at 6.2 percent — underestimates the shortfall,” Mr. Powell said.

The Fed chair added that the central bank, which has rates at near-zero and is buying bonds to keep credit flowing and to bolster the economy, “will not lose sight of the millions of Americans who are still hurting.”

Mr. Powell told lawmakers that the Fed’s many market-facing programs in 2020, which supported credit to corporations, midsize businesses and municipalities, helped to “keep organizations from shuttering and put employers in both a better position to keep workers on and to hire them back as the recovery continues.”

And he underlined that the programs, in most cases, have either shut down or will soon end. Mr. Powell consistently has said that the lending efforts, supported by the Treasury, were emergency tools that the Fed would stop using once conditions were stable.

Credit…Nathan Bajar for The New York Times

Cineworld, the parent company of the U.S. movie theater chain Regal Cinemas, announced on Tuesday that it would reopen its cinemas in the United States in April and in Britain in May as those countries ease lockdown restrictions.

“We have long-awaited this moment,” said Mooky Greidinger, the chief executive of Cineworld, which is based in London. “With capacity restrictions expanding to 50 percent or more across most U.S. states, we will be able to operate profitably in our biggest markets.”

Regal Cinemas is the second largest theater chain in the United States, after AMC Theaters. The announcement by Cineworld comes six months after the movie theater chains were forced to shut down across the United States and Britain last October in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The decision affected a total of 45,000 employees in both countries and forced studios to postpone film releases.

Cineworld also announced a multiyear agreement with Warner Bros. starting in 2022 that will allow the theater chain to show the studios’ films for 45 days in the United States and 31 days in Britain. The deal shortens the typical window that theaters have to show movies before they are released to on-demand streaming services.

The reopening plans in the United States will coincide with the release of two movies from Warner Bros. Pictures, “Godzilla vs. Kong” on April 2 and “Mortal Kombat” on April 16.

“We are very happy for the agreement with Warner Bros.,” Mr. Greidinger said. “This agreement shows the studio’s commitment to the theatrical business.”

Last week, AMC Theaters announced the reopening of nearly all of its U.S. theaters.

The moves come at a time of concern that looser restrictions will lead to rise in coronavirus cases. On Monday, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that relaxed pandemic restrictions could lead to another spike. “If we don’t take the right actions now,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, “we will have another avoidable surge.”

In September, Cineworld reported a pretax loss of $1.6 billion for the first half of 2020. In 2019, 90 percent of the company’s revenue was generated in the United States and Britain.

Credit…Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA, via Shutterstock

Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami is selling his city as the world’s cryptocurrency capital. “We want to be on the next wave of innovation,” he told the DealBook newsletter.

To make that happen, Mr. Suarez said he was “refashioning” the city’s “fun in the sun” image. Thanks in part to the mayor’s marketing efforts, tech and finance titans have flocked to Miami during the pandemic.

Last month, Mr. Suarez, a Republican, suggested Miami pay municipal workers and accept tax payments in Bitcoin, as well as invest city funds in the cryptocurrency. Local officials have agreed to study the proposals.

The notion has made Mr. Suarez popular in the crypto community, advancing his rebranding campaign. His efforts have also won him campaign donations from tech investors, attracted money to cultivate Miami’s growing tech sector and may soon pay a big county bill.

The cryptocurrency exchange FTX is seeking naming rights for the city’s N.B.A. arena, known as AmericanAirlines Arena. Miami-Dade County took over branding deals in 2018 and is supposed to pay the team $2 million per year, sponsor or no (American Airlines’ contract ended in 2019). The FTX agreement is nearly final, pending a vote by county commissioners on Friday. “It’s awesome that we’ve attracted a huge cryptocurrency exchange,” Mr. Suarez said, noting that FTX’s bid “complements the brand” that Miami is establishing.

It would be the N.B.A.’s first crypto sponsorship of an arena, but it would also tie a county revenue stream to a relatively young exchange and chief executive. FTX was founded in 2019 and is run by Samuel Bankman-Fried, a 28-year-old billionaire who was one of the biggest donors to President Biden’s campaign.

The pandemic has prompted people to relocate to Florida from Silicon Valley and New York as Bitcoin gained legitimacy and value. The mayor sees the trends as interrelated, and he is seizing the moment.

“People come here and start realizing that there’s way more tech talent than they thought,” he said. All that’s missing, he added, is a regulatory overhaul: Lawmakers are modeling Florida’s approach on Wyoming’s crypto policies.

But the success of the mayor’s effort won’t be apparent until it’s clear that people are making their moves permanent and maintaining their enthusiasm for crypto if — or when — there is another market downturn.

Credit…Reuters

Baidu, the Chinese search company that some people once called the Google of China, raised $3.1 billion in a share listing in Hong Kong on Tuesday, the latest homecoming of a Chinese company against a toughening regulatory backdrop in the United States.

Investors showed a muted appetite for the company, which already has a listing in New York and has been eclipsed by other Chinese technology firms in recent years. In the United States, Google has used its search power to become a dominant internet company, but Baidu has not grown as quickly as Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, or Tencent, a conglomerate with holdings in video games and social media.

Its stock finished its first day trading on the Hong Kong exchange flat at 252 Hong Kong dollars, or about $32, a share.

The broader Hang Seng exchange fell 1.3 percent amid rising tensions between the United States and China. The United States said on Monday it would join the European Union, Canada and Britain in sanctioning Chinese officials over human rights abuses against China’s mostly Muslim Uyghur community.

Baidu follows other New York-listed Chinese companies like Alibaba, NetEase and JD.com in offering their shares to Chinese retail investors through a listing in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong. More companies have done “homecoming listings” in recent years as Chinese officials have tried to lure back companies that chose to list overseas.

Secondary listings by Chinese companies have also become more popular as American regulators have pledged to delist Chinese companies from their exchanges if they do not adhere to local accounting rules. Baidu is among a group of Chinese companies that has denied access to inspections by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, an auditing watchdog created by the U.S. government.

An executive order by former President Donald J. Trump preventing Americans from investing in companies deemed to have ties to the Chinese military has also led to an exodus of Chinese companies. The New York Stock Exchange delisted China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom earlier this year.

The Hong Kong market has shown less interest for secondary listings than it has for newer technology companies like Kuaishou, a short-video app, that nearly tripled in value on its debut last month and valued the company at $160 billion.

Baidu is valued at $92 billion on the Nasdaq stock market.

Credit…Manu Fernandez/Associated Press

Stocks were uneven on Tuesday amid new concerns about the global economic recovery from the pandemic.

Europe has been reporting a rise in new virus cases and increasing lockdown restrictions. Fresh confusion about the AstraZeneca vaccine were raised on Tuesday morning as U.S. health authorities questioned whether some of the U.S. trial data submitted by the drugmaker was outdated.

Investors were awaiting testimony from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, about the recovery of the U.S. economy. They will be questioned by the House Financial Services Committee later Tuesday. According to prepared remarks, Mr. Powell is expected to tell lawmakers that “while the economic fallout has been real and widespread, the worst was avoided by swift and vigorous action.”

In the Markets

Wall Street was up slightly midday after wavering between losses and gains. The S&P 500 was up 0.2 percent coming off a 0.7 percent rise on Monday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note dropped slightly to 1.66 percent.
European indexes were trading lower, with the Stoxx Europe 600 down about 0.1 percent.
Energy prices fell. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, was down about 4 percent to below $60 a barrel. Brent, the international benchmark, fell by more than 3.5 percent, to about $62.30 a barrel. Natural gas also fell.

GameStop’s chief customer officer, Frank Hamlin, will leave the company at the end of the month, according to a regulatory filling on Tuesday. The video game retailer, which was at the center of a retail trading frenzy earlier this year that sent its share price soaring, will release its quarterly earnings later on Tuesday. Last month, GameStop also said its chief financial officer, Jim Bell, would leave. The company is under pressure from an activist shareholder to complete a digital transformation. It will report earnings Tuesday afternoon.
Microsoft shares were up about 2 percent after reports late Monday that the company was in talks to acquire Discord, a social media company popular with gamers.

Credit…CJ Gunther/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Senate confirmed Martin J. Walsh, the mayor of Boston and a former leader of the city’s powerful building trades council, as labor secretary on Monday. The vote was 68 to 29.

The confirmation filled the last leadership role for the 15 executive departments in President Biden’s cabinet. Of nine other cabinet-level leadership roles, seven have been filled.

In a statement after the vote, Mr. Walsh said that he was grateful for the Senate’s bipartisan support and that he shared Mr. Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’s “commitment to building an economy that works for all.”

“I have been a fighter for the rights of working people throughout my career, and I remain committed to ensuring that everyone — especially those in our most marginalized communities — receives and benefits from full access to economic opportunity and fair treatment in the workplace,” Mr. Walsh said in the statement. “I believe we must meet this historic moment, and as the nation’s secretary of labor, I pledge to help our economy build back better.”

Mr. Walsh’s nomination had won widespread praise from union officials, who were enthusiastic about having one of their own oversee the department, a historical rarity. Many union officials regard his close relationship with the president as an advantage for labor groups.

“Because he enjoys mutual trust and respect with President Biden, he will be positioned to put labor’s concerns front and center on the national agenda,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said in an email.

One of Mr. Walsh’s top priorities as labor secretary will be re-energizing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which critics have accused of failing to protect workers during the pandemic. The safety agency recently put out new guidance to employers on protecting workers from Covid-19 and is considering a new rule to mandate safety measures that the Trump administration rejected.

The department has already moved to set aside a number of rules issued by the Trump administration that weakened worker protections. One of those rules would probably have deemed most gig workers to be independent contractors rather than employees, making them ineligible for the federal minimum wage and overtime pay.

Under Mr. Walsh, the department will be charged with crafting replacements for some of these rules. It will most likely move to expand other protections, such as raising the threshold — currently set at about $35,500 — below which most salaried workers are automatically eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay.

As mayor, he offered support to undocumented immigrants whom federal officials were seeking to detain, pressed contractors to set aside at least 40 percent of their work on public construction projects for racial minorities, and created gender-neutral bathrooms in City Hall.

“If you know Marty Walsh, you know that he has transcended race and class lines and fights for all with a real focus on the vulnerable,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Mr. Walsh plans to resign as mayor on Monday evening, according to an aide.

Credit…KTVU-TV, via Associated Press

Federal officials are looking into a series of recent accidents involving Teslas that either were using Autopilot or might have been using it.

Autopilot is a computerized system that uses radar and cameras to detect lane markings, other vehicles and objects in the road. It can steer, brake and accelerate automatically with little input from the driver. Tesla has said it should be used only on divided highways, but videos on social media show drivers using Autopilot on various kinds of roads.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed last week that it was investigating 23 such crashes, Neal E. Boudette reports for The New York Times.

In one accident this month, a Tesla Model Y rear-ended a police car that had stopped on a highway near Lansing, Mich. The driver, who was not seriously injured, had been using Autopilot, the police said.
In February in Detroit, under circumstances similar to the 2016 Florida accident, a Tesla drove beneath a tractor-trailer that was crossing the road, tearing the roof off the car. The driver and a passenger were seriously injured. Officials have not said whether the driver had turned on Autopilot.
NHTSA is also looking into a Feb. 27 crash near Houston in which a Tesla ran into a stopped police vehicle on a highway. It is not clear if the driver was using Autopilot. The car did not appear to slow before the impact, the police said.

“The Ellen DeGeneres Show” has lost more than a million viewers, according to the research firm Nielsen, averaging 1.5 million viewers over the last six months, down from 2.6 million in the same period last year. This year’s season opener in September, in which Ms. DeGeneres apologized in the wake of reports of workplace misconduct at her show, had the highest ratings for an “Ellen” premiere in four years. But since then, the show has seen a 43 percent decline in viewers. Even with the complications affecting all talk shows during the pandemic, the show has suffered a steeper decline than its rivals. “Dr. Phil” is down 22 percent, and “The Kelly Clarkson” show has lost 26 percent of its viewers.
Some investors have started distancing themselves from Dispo, a fast-growing photo-sharing app, after its co-founder, the YouTube creator David Dobrik, became embroiled in controversy. In an investigation by Insider that published last week, Mr. Dobrik was accused of playing a role in a sexual assault scandal involving a former member of his “Vlog Squad.” He later told The Information that he would leave Dispo and step down from its board. And some of Dispo’s investors, including Spark Capital, Seven Seven Six and Unshackled Ventures, have also started backing away.
President Biden on Monday nominated Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, installing a vocal critic of Big Tech into a key oversight role of the industry. If her nomination is approved by the Senate, Ms. Khan, 32, would fill one of two empty seats earmarked for Democrats at the F.T.C. Ms. Khan became recognized for her ideas on antitrust with a Yale Law Journal paper in 2017 called “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” that accused Amazon of abusing its monopoly power.

VideoCreditCredit…By Timo Lenzen

In today’s On Tech newsletter, Shira Ovide looks at one more way technology companies are becoming more like conventional corporations: When they talk about jobs, it’s often a political message.

Tags Economic, Live, Powell, recovery, Testify, Updates, Watch, Yellen

Politics

Senate Panel to Debate Gun Management After Two Mass Shootings

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Post date March 23, 2021

Senate Panel to Debate Gun Control After Two Mass Shootings

Senators quickly split by partisan standards on Tuesday as Democrats called for action after two mass shootings last week and Republicans denounced their calls to highlight the political divide that has fueled a decade-long cycle of inaction against gun violence.

At a Senate Justice Committee hearing scheduled ahead of the Atlanta and Boulder shootings that killed at least 18 people, Democrats argued that the recent slaughter left Congress with no choice but to issue stricter guidelines. They lamented the grim pattern of fear and outrage, followed by partisanship and paralysis that had become the norm after mass shootings.

“In addition to a moment of silence, I would like to invite a moment of action,” said Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the committee. “A moment of real care. A moment when we don’t allow others to do what we have to do. Prayer leaders have an important place here, but we are Senate leaders. What do we do?”

Even before the recent shootings, the Democrats had begun to push for stricter arms control measures, which face great opportunities in the 50:50 Senate. House Democrats passed two bills this month aimed at expanding and strengthening background checks on gun buyers by applying them to all gun buyers and extending the time it takes for the FBI to review those flagged by the national emergency inspection system.

But the two laws passed in the House were deemed too expansive by most Republicans – only eight Republicans in the House voted to push universal background scrutiny legislation. The bills would almost certainly not get the 60 votes required to clear a filibuster in the Senate.

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the panel, said in his opening address he was confident that Democrats and Republicans could work together to make “bipartisan, sensible” progress on gun control. But he said that the legislation passed by the House did not fit this bill as the measures would be passed almost entirely on a party-political basis.

“That’s not a good sign that all voices and perspectives are being considered,” said Grassley.

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, went further, slapping Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who said Republicans had offered “fig leaves” rather than actionable, meaningful gun control solutions.

“Every time there is shooting, we play this ridiculous theater where this committee comes together and proposes a number of laws that do nothing against these murders,” said Cruz. “But what they suggest – not only does it not reduce crime, it makes it worse.”

The renewed focus on gun control is expected to return attention to Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who speaks out against the downsizing of the legislative filibuster but has long – unsuccessfully – endeavored to propose a bipartisan Say goodbye to gun control. Following the 2012 massacre of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Mr. Manchin signed a contract with Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, to fill legal loopholes that would allow people to buy firearms at gun shows or on the Internet , allow background checks to be avoided, but proponents could not muster enough support to pass them.

Mr Manchin told CQ Roll Call earlier this month that he was speaking out against the General Background Review Bill passed by the House, citing its provision citing checks for individual sales, but said he was in favor of a legislative revival from Manchin-Toomey interested.

Tags control, Debate, gun, Mass, Panel, Senate, shootings

Health

Pfizer begins early stage scientific trial testing oral antiviral drug

Post author By
Post date March 23, 2021

Pfizer begins early stage clinical trial testing oral antiviral drug

Pfizer said Tuesday it had started an early clinical trial of an experimental oral antiviral drug for Covid-19.

The New York-based company announced that the Phase 1 study of the drug PF-07321332 will be conducted in the United States. The drug belongs to a class of drugs called protease inhibitors, and it works by blocking an enzyme that the virus needs to replicate in human cells.

Protease inhibitors are used to treat other viral pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis C.

“Fighting the COVID-19 pandemic requires both preventive vaccination and targeted treatment of those who become infected with the virus,” Pfizer’s chief scientist Mikael Dolsten said in a press release. “Given the way SARS-CoV-2 is mutating and the ongoing global impact of COVID-19, it is likely that access to therapeutic options will be critical both now and after the pandemic.”

The study comes as Pfizer is also working on an intravenously administered protease inhibitor known as PF-07304814. This drug is currently in a Phase 1b clinical trial in patients hospitalized with Covid-19.

A person walks past the Pfizer building in New York City on March 2, 2021.

Carlo Allegri | Reuters

Pfizer already has an approved vaccine in the US with German drug maker BioNTech, but health experts say the world will need a slew of drugs and vaccines to end the pandemic that is infecting more than 29.8 million Americans and is coming soon Has killed at least 542,991 people over a year, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

Preclinical studies have shown that the oral drug, the first orally ingested protease inhibitor for Covid-19 to be studied in clinical trials, has “strong” antiviral activity against the virus.

Because the drug is taken orally, it can be used outside of hospitals for people newly infected with the virus. The researchers hope the drugs will prevent the disease from getting worse and keep people out of the hospital.

Pfizer said it will provide more details on the drug at the Spring American Chemical Society meeting on April 6.

Tags antiviral, begins, Clinical, Drug, Early, Oral, Pfizer, Stage, Testing, trial

Business

Chipotle to open its first Canadian restaurant since 2018

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Post date March 23, 2021

A chicken burrito, guacamole, bag of tortilla chips and a drink at a Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. restaurant in El Segundo, California.

Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Chipotle Mexican Grill announced Tuesday that it will be opening a new restaurant in Canada for the first time since 2018 as it accelerates its Canadian expansion over the next 12 months.

The new restaurant will open on March 30th. The Burrito chain announced that it will add eight new locations in Canada, including one with a “Chipotlane” for picking up digital orders. Chipotle operates 23 Canadian restaurants, most of which are concentrated in and around Vancouver and Toronto.

“We will experiment with different location formats and restaurant designs across the country to measure consumer preferences in different markets,” CFO Jack Hartung said in a statement.

It has taken Chipotle longer than its peers to grow its international footprint as it focused on revitalizing US sales after a string of foodborne disease outbreaks battered its business a few years ago. Chipotle implemented new security measures and added menu items to lure customers back. It has also built several sites with chipotlanes.

The company has more than 2,750 locations worldwide, most of them in the United States

Chipotle’s shares are up more than 5% this year, equating to a market value of more than $ 41 billion. The stock gained 1.6% on Tuesday.

Tags Canadian, Chipotle, open, Restaurant

World News

Covid-19 and Vaccine Information: Reside Updates

Post author By
Post date March 23, 2021

AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine being administered in Milan on Monday.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times

Federal health officials said Tuesday that the encouraging results that AstraZeneca announced about its Covid-19 vaccine may have been based on outdated and incomplete information about the vaccine’s effectiveness, an extraordinary blow to the credibility of an already embattled vaccine.

In a statement released after midnight, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that an independent panel of medical experts that has been helping to oversee AstraZeneca’s U.S. trial had “expressed concern that AstraZeneca may have included outdated information from that trial, which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.”

The exact nature of the institute’s concerns — and the effect they might have on how effective the vaccine appears to be — was unclear. But it is highly unusual for such a dust-up about the integrity of a clinical trial, especially one as high-profile as this, to occur in public.

“This is really what you call an unforced error,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, said on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday morning. “Because the fact is: This is very likely a very good vaccine, and this kind of thing does, as you say, do nothing but really cast some doubt about the vaccines and maybe contributes to the hesitancy.”

AstraZeneca defended the data that it released on Monday, which showed the vaccine was 79 percent effective at preventing Covid-19. The company said in a statement on Tuesday that the interim results, which were current as of Feb. 17, appeared to be “consistent” with more recent data collected during the trial. AstraZeneca said it would immediately share its latest efficacy data with the monitoring board. The company said it would reissue fuller results within 48 hours.

The results that AstraZeneca announced on Monday seemed encouraging — especially because they came at a moment when concerns about the vaccine’s safety had led more than a dozen countries, mostly in Europe, to temporarily suspend the shot’s use over concerns about possible rare side effects.

But the statement from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, raised the prospect that the company was presenting an overly optimistic interpretation of the data.

In recent days, the independent monitoring board’s analysis was delayed several times because the board had to ask for revised reports from those handling trial data on behalf of the company, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Companies sponsoring drug or vaccine trials typically wait for the monitoring board to review analyses and conclude that the study has yielded an answer before they announce trial results.

Company executives do not see the results of the study until the monitoring board reports their study data back to the company. The monitoring board ultimately conveyed the results of the study to AstraZeneca in a meeting over the weekend, leading to the company’s announcement Monday morning.

The monitoring board’s slow progress fueled concerns among federal officials that AstraZeneca may have been sitting on the data or that the monitoring board had concerns about the way the data it was reviewing had been presented.

An AstraZeneca spokeswoman, whom the company declined to name, said on Friday that it was “completely incorrect” that the trial data had formatting problems or had not been submitted to the monitoring board in a clean fashion.

“As is often the case,” the spokeswoman said, monitoring boards “can request new or clarifying analyses of data from the trial. This would enable them to ensure the robustness of their determinations.”

The national institute’s statement, issued shortly after midnight, stunned experts. Dr. Eric Topol, a clinical trials expert at Scripps Research in San Diego, said it was “highly irregular” to see such a public display of friction between a monitoring board and a study sponsor, which are typically in close concordance.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “It’s so, so troubling.”

AstraZeneca’s relationship with the U.S. authorities has been fraught since last year, when senior health officials believed the company was not being forthright about the design of its clinical trials, its results and safety issues. That skepticism carried over to last week, when senior officials at a number of federal health agencies grew suspicious about why AstraZeneca had not announced data from its U.S. study.

United States ›	United StatesOn March 22	14-day change
New cases	55,621	–8%
New deaths	650	–35%

World ›	WorldOn March 22	14-day change
New cases	416,353	+25%
New deaths	7,301	+3%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Credit…Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, warning on Tuesday that her country is facing a significantly more deadly wave of the coronavirus, announced a five-day lockdown over Easter and the extension of existing restrictions until mid-April in an effort to break a spike in coronavirus cases.

Starting April 1, and until the following Monday, Germany will effectively shut down for an extended Easter break, with private meetings limited to no more than two groups of up to five adults and almost all stores ordered shuttered (supermarkets can open on the Saturday). Churches are asked to hold services online, and people are being asked to stay home and not travel.

“We are in a very, very serious situation,” Ms. Merkel told a news conference, after hours of deliberations with the leaders of the country’s 16 states over the Easter lockdown and extension of existing restrictions through April 18.

“After we were able to sharply bring down the number of new infections in January, we are now experiencing, through the spread of the more contagious British variant, a more dangerous variation — the numbers are going up and the intensive care beds are filling up,” she said.

Germany is the latest country in Europe to tighten restrictions as more contagious virus variants spread and the continent struggles to vaccinate its citizens. Poland, Italy and parts of France have ordered that residents stay home, and many businesses have shut before the holiday.

A resurgent virus and lagging vaccinations have forced governments to renege on promises that they would slowly reopen businesses and society as spring approached. That has spurred protests across Europe.

Europe’s vaccine campaign slowed after a small number of cases of blood clots and abnormal bleeding were reported in patients who received the AstraZeneca vaccine, dampening confidence in its safety. While the European drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency, cleared the vaccine for use last week and said it was “safe and effective,” the scare further complicated vaccination efforts.

Just three weeks ago, Ms. Merkel and state officials hammered out a road map to reopening that relied on a decline in case rates. But the number of new daily cases in Germany has increased by 69 percent in the past two weeks, to levels last seen in January.

Credit…Regeneron, via Associated Press

A monoclonal antibody treatment developed by the drug maker Regeneron sharply cut the risk of hospitalization and death when given to high-risk Covid-19 patients in a large clinical trial, the company announced on Tuesday.

The results are the latest in a growing flurry of evidence that the infused drugs, meant to mimic the antibodies that the immune system generates naturally in fighting the coronavirus, can help infected patients avoid the worst outcomes if given early.

Regeneron’s treatment, a cocktail of two antibody drugs, was given last fall to President Donald J. Trump shortly after he got sick with Covid-19 and is now one of three such therapies available in the United States.

The new results come from a Phase 3 trial that enrolled more than 4,500 patients beginning in late September, around the time virus cases began to climb dangerously in the United States. The study found that patients who got the infused treatment within 10 days of developing symptoms or testing positive had a roughly 70 percent reduced risk of being hospitalized or dying compared with patients who were infused with a placebo.

“I think these are exciting data,” said Dr. Rajesh Gandhi, an infectious diseases physician at Massachusetts General Hospital who was not involved in the study.

Even as vaccinations speed up, antibody treatments are expected to be helpful for high-risk people who still get sick for many months at least, and longer still if the virus can’t be wiped out. While there are signs that emerging virus variants may in some cases make antibodies less potent, Regeneron’s cocktail has not shown such vulnerability in laboratory tests.

In the new findings, Regeneron’s treatment worked equally well when given at half the dosing at which it was authorized. Regeneron said that it planned to request that the Food and Drug Administration allow the treatment to be given at that reduced strength.

Such a change would bring several advantages: While the cocktail is safe, getting it at a lower dose reduces the odds of side effects, such as an infusion reaction.

It would also allow Regeneron to increase the supply it can provide the United States. The company said that it had expected to supply the country with about 750,000 doses at the originally authorized higher strength by the end of June. If the lower strength is authorized, the company expects to provide about 1.25 million doses by then.

The antibody treatments from Regeneron and the drug maker Eli Lilly, which makes the other two such drugs authorized in the United States, were expected to be in high demand and to serve as a bridge in fighting the pandemic before vaccinations ramped up. Instead, they ended up sitting on refrigerator shelves in many places even during recent surges.

Many patients and their doctors did not know to ask for them or where to find them. Overwhelmed hospitals lacked the bandwidth to prioritize giving out the treatments. And some doctors were unconvinced by the relatively weak evidence available last fall supporting their use.

That picture is gradually shifting, thanks to improved logistics and more awareness. And more solid evidence, like the new data from Regeneron, also appears to be helping the drugs get used more widely. “As the data get stronger and stronger, I would expect that use will increase,” Dr. Gandhi said.

Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Positive trends in pandemic statistics in the United States are easy to distrust. After all, the country went through two false dawns last year, in the late spring and then again in the late summer, when declines in case reports prefaced even darker days. Each time, the apparent good news prompted relaxations and reopenings that helped bring on the next wave.

So it is no surprise that public health experts are wary about the latest flattening in the curve of the pandemic, from the steep decline in cases seen in late January and February to something like a plateau or slight decline more recently. With more contagious virus variants becoming prevalent, they fear the good news could be ending and a fourth wave might be building.

On Monday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, again warned Americans about the spread of the coronavirus, saying that with increased travel, looser pandemic restrictions and worrisome variants bearing down on the United States, another surge could erupt if Americans did not take protection efforts seriously “for just a little bit longer.”

“We are at a critical point in this pandemic, a fork in the road, where we as a country must decide which path we are going to take. We must act now,” said Dr. Walensky, who has been one of many federal officials in recent weeks to warn governors against lifting mask mandates too soon. “And I am worried that if we don’t take the right actions now, we will have another avoidable surge, just as we are seeing in Europe right now and just as we are so aggressively scaling up vaccination.”

That said, there are positive signs:

Daily death reports, which stayed stubbornly high long after the post-holidays surge, have finally come down sharply, to levels not seen since mid-November. As of Monday, the nation had averaged 1,051 newly reported virus deaths a day over the past week; the average had hovered around 3,000 for weeks over the winter.
Some recent hot spots have made major progress — notably Los Angeles, whose mayor, Eric Garcetti, said on CBS on Sunday that he had “not felt this optimism in 12 months.” The city and surrounding county, where cases in some areas leapt 450 percent over the holidays and hospitals became so swamped that some turned away ambulances, now has a test positivity rate of about 1.9 percent, and in an important shift, new case reports have fallen among people experiencing homelessness.
Vaccinations are becoming more accessible by the week, as states receive more doses and open up eligibility, in some cases to include all adult residents. The number of doses administered nationwide each day is rising, and the country surpassed President Biden’s initial goal to have administered 100 million shots on March 19, almost six weeks ahead of schedule.

The question now is which will prevail: the positive effects of trends like these or the negative effects of looser behavior and the evolution of the virus into more dangerous forms?

It’s still “a race between vaccinations and variants,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said on Twitter. Like other experts, he cautioned: “Opening up too fast helps the variants.”

Noah Weiland contributed reporting.

Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

In the fall, after Samar Khan came down with a mild case of Covid-19, she expected to recover and return to her previous energetic life in Chicago. She was 25 and healthy.

But weeks later, she said, “this weird constellation of symptoms began to set in.”

She had blurred vision encircled with halos. She had ringing in her ears, and everything began to smell like cigarettes or Lysol. One leg started to tingle, and her hands would tremble while she was putting on eyeliner.

She also developed “really intense brain fog,” she said. Trying to concentrate on a call for her job in financial services, she felt as if she had come out of anesthesia.

By the end of the year, Ms. Khan was referred to a special clinic for Covid-related neurological symptoms at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, which has been evaluating and counseling hundreds of people with similar problems.

Now, the clinic has published the first study focused on long-term neurological symptoms in people who were never physically sick enough from Covid-19 to need hospitalization, including Ms. Khan.

The study of 100 patients from 21 states, published on Tuesday in The Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, found that 85 percent of them experienced four or more neurological issues like brain fog, headaches, tingling, muscle pain and dizziness.

“We are seeing people who are really highly, highly functional individuals, used to multitasking all the time and being on top of their game, but, all of a sudden, it’s really a struggle for them,” said Dr. Igor J. Koralnik, the chief of neuro-infectious diseases and global neurology at Northwestern Medicine, who oversees the clinic and is the senior author of the study.

Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York Times

With virus cases seeming to stabilize in New York City and vaccinations becoming more widespread, city officials intend to send a message that New York is close to returning to normal: On May 3, the city will compel its municipal office employees to begin to report to work in person, according to planning documents shared with The New York Times. Workers will return in phases over several weeks.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to bring the nation’s largest municipal work force back to the office signals a remarkable turnabout in the fortunes of a city that was the national epicenter of the pandemic, coming to symbolize the perils of living in densely packed global capitals.

The move is meant to broadcast that New York City will soon be open for business, and to encourage private companies to follow suit.

The new policy is expected to affect about 80,000 employees who have been working remotely, including caseworkers, computer specialists and clerical associates. The rest of the city’s roughly 300,000-person work force, many of them uniformed personnel including police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers, have already been reporting to work sites.

“Above all else, this is a major momentum builder,” said Reggie Thomas, a senior vice president with the Real Estate Board of New York.

Yet the move has spurred concern among some workers and union leaders who fear it is premature. New York City still has among the highest coronavirus case rates in the nation. Many workers will have to commute an hour or more on mass transit.

Facial masks will be strongly encouraged but not required: A March 18 presentation from the city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services said agency leaders should “encourage face coverings to be worn at all times even if six-feet distancing can be maintained.” The provision allows workers to remove face coverings if they are more than six feet apart.

Vaccination will not be mandatory for those returning to the office because of legal concerns, though city officials are strongly encouraging their workers to get vaccinated and are trying to facilitate that process.

Credit…Henry Nicholls/Reuters

Residents of England who travel abroad without a valid reason will be fined 5,000 pounds, or $6,900, under coronavirus regulations that are scheduled to come into force on Monday if lawmakers approve.

Daily coronavirus deaths in Britain have dropped to their lowest level since fall, thanks in part to a vaccination program that has already reached more than half the adult population, and the country is preparing to slowly reopen its economy after months of national lockdown. A stay-at-home order is to be lifted on Monday, though many shops and other businesses will be closed until mid-April or later.

Travel abroad for leisure is banned until May 17 at the earliest, and the new regulations signal a potentially longer wait for vacationers.

If the new regulations are approved, travelers would have to provide a valid excuse for leaving the country, which would include some essential work, elite sports competitions and education. But opposition lawmakers have criticized an exemption that would allow travel “in connection with the purchase, sale, letting or rental of a residential property,” arguing that it would privilege those wealthy enough to own a second residence. Travel without an essential reason is also banned in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The legislation, which is set to be reviewed on April 12 and expire at the end of June, would also renew a ban on indoor gatherings and limit outdoor gatherings to six people. Lawmakers on Thursday will also vote on extending a coronavirus act that gave the government emergency powers during the pandemic, which has caused friction among some members of the governing Conservative Party who have called the laws extreme.

It comes as the country marks the one year since Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the first national lockdown. Britain has reported at least 4.3 million cases and over 126,000 deaths according to a New York Times database.

Credit…Nathan Bajar for The New York Times

The reopening plans in the United States will coincide with the release of two movies from Warner Bros. Pictures, “Godzilla vs. Kong” on April 2 and “Mortal Kombat” on April 16.

“We are very happy for the agreement with Warner Bros.,” Mr. Greidinger said. “This agreement shows the studio’s commitment to the theatrical business.”

Last week, AMC Theaters announced the reopening of nearly all of its U.S. theaters.

In September, Cineworld reported a pretax loss of $1.6 billion for the first half of 2020. In 2019, 90 percent of the company’s revenue was generated in the United States and Britain.

Credit…James Estrin/The New York Times

Most school districts in New Jersey have partly reopened, but one in four children still live in a district where public schools are closed. No state in the Northeast had more districts relying on all-virtual teaching in early March than New Jersey, according to Return to Learn, a database created by a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, and Davidson College. Nationwide, only seven states had a greater proportion of all-remote instruction.

As the distribution of vaccines has accelerated and President Biden has signaled a push for broader reopenings, frustration among parents has grown, particularly in New Jersey’s affluent suburbs, where schools with stellar reputations are a key reason families are willing to pay some of the nation’s highest taxes.

These parents have filed federal lawsuits, held protests, created online petitions and shown up at virtual board of education meetings to demand expanded in-person instruction.

The pressure to open schools more fully comes as the infection rate in New Jersey, which is small and densely populated, remains stubbornly high: With a weekly average of 45 cases for every 100,000 residents, the state leads the nation in new infections per capita, according to a New York Times database.

The drumbeat intensified after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a major policy shift on Friday, reducing its distancing recommendations to three feet from six feet for all elementary schools and for middle and high schools in areas where the virus infection rate is not high.

Anger at the pace of reopening has led some families who can afford it to enroll their children in private schools, start home-schooling them or move. If enough children leave a district in New Jersey, it could lead to cuts in state aid, scaled-back programming or potentially layoffs.

Several New Jersey cities and counties have held educator-only vaccine distribution events. But the virus’s hold on the state has left teachers and their powerful unions wary of expanded reopening.

Credit…Divyakant Solanki/EPA, via Shutterstock

Mumbai, India’s financial hub, has begun random testing for the coronavirus in malls, railway stations and other crowded places as officials attempt to tamp down on a worrying surge in cases.

Rapid antigen tests will be taken without individuals’ consent, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai said in a statement on Monday. Anyone who resists will be in violation of India’s colonial-era epidemic act, which gives the government the power to fine or imprison people who violate rules to contain an outbreak.

“We are trying to implement the existing protocol to the strictest possible level: use of face mask, regulating the number of people in one event, use of hand sanitizer, and now tests,” Suresh Kakani, a senior municipal official in Mumbai, told The New York Times.

Active Covid-19 cases in Mumbai have risen by more than 140 percent since March 1. With variants circulating and commercial activity almost back to prepandemic levels, the number of infections has also shot up in the surrounding state of Maharashtra. An entire district was forced back into lockdown last week.

Mr. Kakani said officials are determined to avert another lockdown in Mumbai, the city of 20 million that is home to Bollywood, India’s film industry, as well as the country’s largest stock exchange.

Another lockdown would be economically disastrous for India, which is just starting to recover from a lockdown last year that triggered a humanitarian crisis, as millions of migrant workers fled cities for their home villages, and a recession.

Tags Covid19, Live, News, Updates, Vaccine

Entertainment

A Malcolm X Opera Will Get a Uncommon Revival in Detroit

Post author By
Post date March 23, 2021

A Malcolm X Opera Will Get a Rare Revival in Detroit

Until then, productions will be performed outdoors or in unconventional locations. The season opens on May 15th with a concert performance of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” with Goerke as Santuzza. It is presented at the Meadow Brook Amphitheater in Rochester Hills, Michigan, under the direction of Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Jader Bignamini.

In September, Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s opera “Blue” will receive a new production by Kaneza Schaal after its premiere at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2019 via a family in Harlem who find their way around the American Black experience. Daniela Candillari will conduct. The location and timing have not yet been determined, but the following production, which will be staged by Sharon, will be “Bliss,” Ragnar Kjartansson’s marathon performance piece that covers the same three minutes of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” for 12 hours “plays.

Michigan Opera Theater will return indoors on February 26 for Robert Xavier Rodríguez and Migdalia Cruz’s “Frida,” conducted by Suzanne Mallare Acton, the company’s assistant music director. It will be a revival of Jose Maria Condemi’s 2015 production performed at the Music Hall in downtown Detroit.

Then, on April 2, the company will return to its theater, the Detroit Opera House, to produce Sharon’s production of “La Bohème,” directed by Vimbayi Kaziboni. Sharon has already discussed the concept in interviews: he will present the four acts of Puccini’s opera in reverse order.

“The reverse order means that we start with death and end with love and hope,” he said. “We will all come from a place of death – at least I hope this will be after Covid. And I love that this thing that everyone hears, the first thing that’s been in the theater in two years, is something they’ve never heard before. “

“X” in a newly revised score by Davis will end the season in May under the baton of Kazem Abdullah. Musicologist Ryan Ebright wrote for The New Yorker after Davis won the Pulitzer Prize for Music last year. He noted that the opera had only received one full revival at the Oakland Opera Theater in 2006. The San Francisco Opera once suggested staging “X” as part of his inner-city park performances, Davis countered by asking if they would do Philip Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach” in a park.

“I was trying to make it clear to them,” Davis told Ebright, “that it is time America saw black art as what is done in the playground, or what is basically the social part of culture. “

Tags Detroit, Malcolm, Opera, Rare, Revival

Health

Many metrics within the U.S. are bettering, although the specter of a brand new surge nonetheless looms.

Post author By
Post date March 23, 2021

Many metrics in the U.S. are improving, though the threat of a new surge still looms.

Positive trends in pandemic statistics in the US are easy to distrust. After all, the country saw two false dawns last year, in late spring and then again in late summer, as declines tapered if reports came even darker days ahead. Each time, the apparently good news led to relaxations and reopenings that added to the next wave.

It is therefore not surprising that public health experts are concerned about the recent flattening of the pandemic curve, from the sharp drop in cases in late January and February to a plateau or slight drop more recently. With contagious variants of the virus becoming more prevalent, they fear the good news will end and a fourth wave may emerge.

Even so, there are positive signs:

Daily death reports, which remained stubbornly high long after the surge after the holidays, ended up plummeting sharply to levels not seen since mid-November. As of Monday, the nation had recorded an average of 1,051 newly reported Covid deaths per day for the past week. The average was 3,000 for weeks over the winter.
Some recent hotspots have made great strides – particularly Los Angeles, where Mayor Eric Garcetti said on CBS Sunday that he “hasn’t felt that optimism in 12 months”. The city and surrounding county, where cases jumped 450 percent in some areas during the holidays and hospitals were so overcrowded that some ambulances were turned away, now have a positive test rate of about 1.9 percent, and in one important shift, new case reports have fallen among people affected by homelessness.
Vaccinations are becoming more accessible week by week as states receive more doses and open up authorization, in some cases to all adult residents as well. The number of daily doses given daily is increasing, and the country surpassed President Biden’s original target of 100 million shots by March 19, nearly six weeks ahead of schedule.

The question now is which one will prevail: the positive effects of such trends or the negative effects of relaxed behavior and the development of the virus into more dangerous forms?

It is still “a race between vaccinations and variants,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of Brown University School of Public Health, on Twitter. Like other experts, he warned: “Opening too quickly helps the variants.”

Tags Improving, looms, metrics, surge, Threat