Month: April 2021

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Business

Restaurant Revitalization Fund Will Open Monday, Could 3

Restaurant Revitalization Fund Will Open Monday, May 3

A $ 28.6 billion grant fund for restaurants, bars, caterers and other food businesses will open Monday, the government said Tuesday, providing an extra lifeline to some of America’s hardest hit small businesses.

The Restaurant Revitalization Fund, launched last month by the US $ 1.9 trillion rescue plan, will offer grants of up to $ 10 million to replace lost sales. The amount any business can receive is generally the difference between 2019 and 2020 gross earnings minus certain other federal aids such as paycheck protection program loans.

The money is expected to go quickly. Eligible companies have lost hundreds of billions of dollars, according to Congress estimates, but lawmakers have allocated funds to cover only a fraction of that amount.

“Restaurants are at the heart of our neighborhoods and are the driving force behind business on major highways across the country,” said Isabella Casillas Guzman, the head of the Small Business Administration that will pay out the grants. “They are among the hardest hit companies and need support to weather this pandemic. We want restaurants to know that help is here. “

All eligible companies can apply from Monday. However, for the first 21 days, the Small Business Administration will only approve claims from companies that are majority owned by people who fall into one of the priority groups set by Congress: women, veterans, and people who are socially and economically disadvantaged. The agency said the latter group includes those who meet certain income and wealth limits and are Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian-Pacific American, or South Asian American.

Applicants belonging to these groups are asked to certify their eligibility for the exclusivity period themselves. This three-week priority period alone should exhaust the fund.

Listed companies, companies with more than 20 locations and permanently closed restaurants are not eligible for grants.

Applications can be submitted through a Small Business Administration website and some point-of-sale systems. Technology companies Clover, NCR Corporation, Square and Toast work with the agency to enable applications for their clients.

Eager restaurateurs are preparing for the application – and are campaigning for additional funds to prevent eligible applicants from being excluded.

“This is great news, but the $ 28.6 billion won’t be enough,” Russell Jackson, a New York City chef, wrote on Twitter in a message urging Congress to “replenish the program as needed.”

Categories
World News

Jane Austen Museum to Handle Ties to Slavery

Jane Austen Museum to Address Ties to Slavery

Austen’s novels are about a tight upper class of British society and are set in picturesque villages that are largely cut off from the problems of the outside world. “Jane Austen is now standing on a pedestal as an expression of something delightful, comforting, beautiful, clever,” said Paula Marantz Cohen, English professor and dean of Honors College at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Many of her fans, she said, want to enjoy her stories about a simpler time and place.

Some Austen scholars say passages in her novels “Emma” and “Mansfield Park” suggest that she supports abolitionism, others say it is unclear. Few of her letters survived. But her favorite authors – Samuel Johnson, Thomas Clarkson, and William Cowper – were abolitionists. Nevertheless, like almost all English families of all kinds in the 18th century, her family had ties to the slave trade, according to “Jane Austen: A Life”, a book by Claire Tomalin.

Addressing the issue of slavery, Sherard Cowper Coles, President of the Jane Austen Society, said, “This is England’s story and as we understand it we should relate and update it.”

But Mr Cowper Coles, a former diplomat who was Britain’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009-10, warned: “It is not fair to expect people to have awareness outside of their time. But even in our time we are aware of slavery and live with its consequences in Minneapolis and in many other places. “

Frances Brook, a tour guide in England who has taken groups to Austen sites, said she was in favor of the museum that presented more context about Austen’s time, but that it would have “woken up” to judge her for wearing cotton and taking sugar in their tea -is gone a little too far. “Like the rest of us, Austen did things in her everyday life that contradicted her broader views of the world,” said Ms. Brook, who last visited the museum in 2017.

Prof Johnson, of Princeton, said the museum’s attempt to add context to Austen’s life would not suppress readers’ enthusiasm for her.

“Just because you involve Austen in the mess of the story doesn’t mean you don’t love her,” she said.

Categories
Health

Pfizer at-home Covid capsule could possibly be out there by year-end, CEO Albert Bourla says

Pfizer at-home Covid pill could be available by year-end, CEO Albert Bourla says

Pfizer’s experimental oral drug to treat Covid-19 at the first sign of illness could be available by the end of the year, CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC on Tuesday.

The company, which developed the first approved Covid-19 vaccine in the US with the German drug manufacturer BioNTech, started an early clinical study in March testing a new antiviral therapy for Covid. 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.

If the clinical trials go well and the Food and Drug Administration approves it, the drug could be distributed in the US by the end of the year, Bourla told CNBC’s Squawk Box.

Health experts say the orally taken drug could be a game changer as people newly infected with the virus could use it outside of hospitals. The researchers hope the drugs will prevent the disease from getting worse and prevent hospital stays.

In addition to the drug, Pfizer is also testing its vaccine in 6-month-old to 11-year-old children. Vaccinating children is critical to ending the pandemic, say public health officials and infectious disease experts.

Earlier this month, the company asked the FDA to extend their vaccine approval to teenagers ages 12-15 after a study found the shot was 100% effective.

Bourla told CNBC on Tuesday that he was “very optimistic” that the FDA would approve the use of the shot in teenagers.

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Business

FCC approves SpaceX Starlink modification, regardless of objections

FCC approves SpaceX Starlink modification, despite objections

Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA – A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with 58 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband internet network and three SkySat Earth image satellites will launch from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral on August 18, 2020, Florida.

Paul Hennessy | NurPhoto | Getty Images

The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday approved SpaceX’s proposed change to the Starlink satellite license, a win for Elon Musk’s growing broadband network, despite objections from competitors like Amazon, Viasat, and others.

“We conclude that the granting of the SpaceX Third Modification Application is in the public interest,” the FCC wrote in the order. “Our action will allow SpaceX to make safety changes to the deployment of its satellite constellation to deliver broadband services across the United States, including those living in areas underserved or unserved by terrestrial systems.”

SpaceX tabled the amendment a year ago asking for its first 1,584 satellites to be raised to an altitude of 550 kilometers. The FCC approval comes at a crucial time for SpaceX as the company has nearly 1,400 satellites in orbit and likely would have had to suspend its quick start campaign if the FCC hadn’t approved the change.

Starlink is the company’s capital-intensive project to build an interconnected internet network of thousands of satellites, known in the aerospace industry as a Constellation, designed to deliver high-speed internet to consumers around the world.

Opponents submitted numerous responses to the change proposed by SpaceX. Companies like Amazon said doing so would disrupt other satellite networks. SpaceX’s competitors also argued that the change was too significant for the FCC to treat as a simple modification, saying it should instead be included in a wider round of processing with new satellite systems.

The FCC dispute between SpaceX and Amazon became public in January when Musk claimed on Twitter that his competitor was trying to “impede Starlink,” adding that Kuiper was “at best several years away from operations.” While Amazon hasn’t announced when its first Kuiper satellites will launch, the system’s approval by the FCC last year requires the company to deploy half of its planned satellites within six years. This corresponds to the provision of around 1,600 satellites by Amazon in orbit by July 2026.

The regulator denied allegations of signal interference in approving the SpaceX change.

“We also conclude that this change does not cause significant interference issues that would warrant treating the SpaceX system as if it were submitted in a later processing round,” the FCC wrote.

The FCC’s appointment requires SpaceX to issue a report twice a year that includes the number of Starlink conjunctivities – that is, near misses with other satellites – over the past six months and the number of Starlink satellites that have been discarded or re-discarded -enter the earth’s atmosphere.

Categories
Politics

Justice Dept. Requested to Study Whether or not Swiss Financial institution Stored Serving to Tax Dodgers

Justice Dept. Asked to Examine Whether Swiss Bank Kept Helping Tax Dodgers

WASHINGTON – The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday asked Attorney General Merrick B. Garland for information on whether Credit Suisse continues to help rich Americans defraud the IRS, even after signing a settlement agreement with the Justice Department promising to to finish the practice.

It’s about a retired professor named Dan Horsky, who Credit Suisse helped avoid tax payments on assets of $ 200 million. In the summer of 2014, a whistleblower drew the attention of the federal prosecutor’s office to Mr. Horsky’s account and clearly violated the provisions of the settlement agreement that Credit Suisse had agreed a few weeks earlier.

However, the Justice Department under the Obama and Trump administrations never punished Credit Suisse for violating the agreement, despite the whistleblower’s information leading to Mr Horsky pleading guilty of tax evasion in 2016.

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asked Mr. Garland for more information about the Horsky account and anything else that could reveal whether Credit Suisse executives have made false statements to Congress, the Department of Justice, and the courts when it said it vowed to work with the US government’s efforts to force the richest Americans to pay their taxes.

The review of Credit Suisse’s private wealth management practices comes at a sensitive time for the bank. Significant losses were reported last week on loans to a collapsed investment firm and the Swiss financial regulator said it was investigating the bank’s risk management practices. Regulators are also investigating a spying scandal and sales of billions of dollars worth of investments reminiscent of the bad subprime mortgage bonds that led to the 2008 global financial crisis.

“Public reports and documents from the federal court raise important questions as to whether Credit Suisse has complied with its declaration of consent in full,” wrote Wyden in a letter to Garland.

“The plea agreement expressly depends on Credit Suisse fulfilling all essential obligations,” added Wyden. it “stipulates that the agreement not to initiate further prosecution will be void if Credit Suisse fails to fully comply with its obligations.”

Should prosecutors decide that Credit Suisse is in breach of its agreement with the Justice Department, the bank could face legal liability and higher fines.

Mr. Wyden requested the Justice Department to report the Horsky case by May 11th.

A spokesman said the Justice Department received the letter but had no immediate comment. A Credit Suisse spokeswoman said the company “has been and will continue to have fully cooperated with the US authorities since the 2014 settlement.”

Wyden also asked the department to help determine whether Credit Suisse executives had made false statements to the Senate in February 2014 when they testified whether the bank had stopped helping wealthy Americans evade taxes.

Brady Dougan, then managing director of Credit Suisse, told the senators that the bank had strived to “meet 100 percent of the US taxpayer’s requirements,” wrote Wyden. At the same hearing, the bank’s general counsel, Romeo Cerutti, testified that Credit Suisse is “really looking into whether someone is a US person” in an attempt to eradicate Americans who were hiding their assets from the IRS

For nearly 15 years, Republicans and Democrats have been participating in a well-known campaign to weed out tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts, with a focus on UBS and Credit Suisse, both of which are headquartered in Zurich.

When Credit Suisse executives testified in 2014, they were in the midst of negotiations with the Justice Department about an agreement on the bank’s treatment of US tax dodgers.

The two sides signed the deal in May 2014, in which Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to assisting some American clients with tax evasion and fined a total of $ 2.6 billion. But even higher fines were avoided because federal prosecutors swore they had abandoned the practice of “closing down all accounts of recalcitrant account holders” and helping the US with other criminal investigations.

The confession of guilt and the heavy fine were rare in 2014, and it was the first time in more than 20 years that a lender of his size had admitted wrongdoing in an American court.

But a whistleblower surfaced in July of that year telling Justice Department tax officials and federal attorneys who worked on the case about an account owned by Mr. Horsky, a retired economics professor who lived in Rochester. NY and amassed much of his fortune by investing in start-ups in the 1990s.

In September 2014, when Credit Suisse appeared in court to plead guilty, the judge asked both the bank and prosecutors if they had any information that would affect the settlement agreement. Both sides said no.

But the whistleblower spike let prosecutors find out that with the help of Credit Suisse bankers using offshore shell companies, Mr. Horsky had hidden a fortune of $ 200 million, court documents show. The deal lasted months after the bank signed its pleading agreement.

As part of the scheme to hide Mr. Horsky’s assets, it was placed by bankers in the name of a relative of Mr. Horsky who lived abroad. When an account of this size changes hands, it is subject to advanced due diligence, including notifying bank managers of the change.

Mr Wyden also sent a letter to Credit Suisse Tuesday asking for information on when the Justice Department told Credit Suisse about the Horsky account. He asked if the bank had informed the government of the account before reporting the whistleblower, and if not, whether it was due to poor internal controls or a deliberate decision not to report the existence of these accounts to US government agencies. ”

It is unclear why the Justice Department failed to inform the court of the whistleblower claim and change the terms of its settlement. The department would have had the authority to review the Credit Suisse case for possible violations and to pursue the bank.

Jack Ewing contributed to the coverage.

Categories
Business

Biden to Elevate Minimal Wage for Federal Contractors to $15: Stay Updates

Joseph R. Biden Jr., then vice president, at a 2015 event calling for a $15 minimum wage in New York.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times

President Biden plans to sign an executive order on Tuesday raising the minimum wage paid by federal contractors to $15 an hour, the latest in a set of ambitious pro-labor moves at the outset of his administration.

The new minimum is expected to take effect next year and is likely to affect hundreds of thousands of workers, according to a White House document. The current minimum is $10.95 under an order that President Barack Obama signed in 2014. Like that order, the new one will require that the new minimum wage rise with inflation.

White House economists believed the increase would not lead to significant job losses, a finding in line with recent research on the minimum wage, and that it was unlikely to cost taxpayers more money, two administration officials said in a call with reporters. They argued that the higher wage would lead to greater productivity and lower turnover.

The White House also contends that although the number of workers directly affected by the increase is relatively small as a share of the economy, the executive order will indirectly raise wages beyond federal contractors by forcing other employers to bid up pay as they compete for workers.

Several cities have a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour, and several states have laws that will raise their minimum wage to at least that level in the coming years. There is so far little evidence on how a $15 minimum wage affects employment in lower-cost areas of such states.

Two years ago, the House of Representatives passed a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, but the legislation has faced long odds in the Senate. Mr. Biden sought to incorporate such a measure in his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package so that it could pass on a simple majority vote, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled that it could not be included.

Mr. Biden’s executive order will also eliminate the so-called tipped minimum wage for federal contractors, which currently allows employers to pay tipped workers $7.65 an hour as long as their tips put them over the regular minimum wage. Under the new minimum, all workers must be paid at least $15 an hour.

The order will technically begin a rule-making process that is expected to conclude by early next year. The wage will be incorporated into new contracts and existing contracts as they are extended.

Traffic in Philadelphia last month. BP reported higher earnings on Tuesday, and said it expected demand for oil would continue to recover from the pandemic.Credit…Matt Rourke/Associated Press

BP reported a sharply higher profit for the first quarter of 2021 on Tuesday, signaling that after a grim 2020, oil companies’ earnings are recovering along with demand for their products.

BP said that underlying replacement cost profit, the metric most closely watched by analysts, was $2.6 billion, up from $791 million in the period year earlier. The London giant said that the price it received for its oil in the quarter was up more than 20 percent. BP described its trading and marketing of natural gas, where prices also increased, as “exceptionally strong.”

Citing strong economic growing in China and the United States, BP said that it expected the oil market to continue to recover from the effects of the pandemic.

Bernard Looney, the chief executive, has said he wants to use the cash from oil and gas operations to finance a shift toward electric power and other clean energy.

In the first quarter, the plan seemed to work well. The company raked in about $10.9 billion, a sum that included revenue from sales of fossil fuel businesses, among them a stake in a gas field in Oman. Because of divestments, BP’s oil production fell by 22 percent compared with the same period a year earlier.

At the same time, BP expanded into the offshore wind business. It entered into a partnership with Equinor, the Norwegian energy company that is developing wind farms off the East Coast of the United States, and is acquiring offshore wind acreage off Britain at what some in the industry considered high prices.

BP also said that, having met debt reduction targets, it would resume a program of buying back shares, a way to increase the price of BP stock; it had not bought back shares since the first quarter of last year, as its business was battered by the pandemic. In the second quarter the company plans to spend $500 million on such purchases.

Last summer, BP also cut its dividend for the first time since the Deepwater Horizon disaster a decade ago, to 5.25 cents a share. The dividend will remain at that level, the company said.

BP said it could generate a surplus with oil prices above $45 a barrel. Lately, prices have been considerably higher, with Brent crude, the international benchmark, at about $66 a barrel.

Nonprofit organizations “across the ideological spectrum” filed briefs supporting Americans for Prosperity Foundation, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted. Credit…T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

A Supreme Court case argued on Monday has created strange bedfellows, which did not escape the attention of the justices.

The matter pits charities against the State of California over donor disclosure requirements, and it’s a dispute over a seemingly small technical issue that some say has serious implications for political donations. It has turned groups that are often on opposite sides of political fights into — tentative — allies, the DealBook newsletter reports.

Nonprofit organizations “across the ideological spectrum” filed briefs supporting the petitioners, the Koch-backed charity Americans for Prosperity Foundation, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted. The foundation argues that California violates the constitutionally protected right to anonymous association by collecting major donor data and failing to protect it (the state’s website has experienced security breaches). Justice Kavanaugh cited a filing from the American Civil Liberties Union, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Education Fund and others who all agreed that “a critical corollary of the freedom to associate is the right to maintain the confidentiality of one’s associations.”

“Certainly, we don’t see eye to eye with the petitioners in this case on every issue,” Brian Hauss of the A.C.L.U. said at a news conference after arguments at the court. In this case, the A.C.L.U. standing with the Americans for Prosperity Foundation because of what it calls California’s “systemic incompetence” in failing to protect nonpublic data. Legally speaking, however, it recognized a distinction between public disclosure and nonpublic disclosure. In other words, the brief didn’t argue for a general extension of anonymity.

Opponents say this is a case about “dark money.” Democratic senators argued in a brief that the foundation is advancing the matter as a way to make it easier for special interests to influence politics with untraceable money. “This case is really a stalking horse for campaign finance disclosure laws,” Justice Stephen Breyer said. A ruling is expected in June.

Shares in UPS were rising in premarket trading after the delivery company released first-quarter results that showed consolidated operating profit up 158 percent compared with a year ago.Credit…Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

  • U.S. stocks were little changed on Tuesday as investors digested more company earnings reports and awaited the Federal Reserve’s next policy decision on Wednesday. The S&P 500 drifted between gains and losses soon after the start of trading.

  • Tesla fell 2 percent even after the electric-car maker posted a quarterly profit of $438 million, its highest ever. UPS rose 11 percent after the parcel delivery company reported earnings that beat analysts’ expectations.

  • Alphabet, Microsoft and Visa are among companies also reporting earnings on Tuesday after the market closes.

  • By last Friday, a quarter of companies in the S&P 500 had published their first-quarter results, with 84 percent of them reporting earnings that were better than expected, according to FactSet. If this trend holds, it would be the highest percentage since FactSet started tracking the metric in 2008.

  • Most European stock indexes fell. The Stoxx Europe 600 declined nearly 0.3 percent.

  • HSBC rose 2 percent, becoming the best performer in the FTSE 100, after the bank said its pretax profits rose nearly 80 percent in the first quarter compared with last year. As the global economic outlook has improved, the bank released $435 million it had set aside for loan losses.

  • UBS dropped 3 percent after the Swiss bank said it lost $774 million in the first quarter from the collapse of the American hedge fund Archegos Capital Management.

Talasheia Dedmon enrolled her son Braylon in a college savings account through SEED for Oklahoma Kids, an effort to help a new generation climb the educational ladder and build assets. Credit…September Dawn Bottoms for The New York Times

An experiment called SEED for Oklahoma Kids, or SEED OK, is one of a growing number of efforts by cities and states — governed by Democrats and Republicans alike — to help a new generation climb the educational ladder and build assets

SEED OK is a far-reaching research project begun in Oklahoma 14 years ago to study whether creating savings accounts containing $1,000 for newborns would improve their graduation rates and their chances of going to college or trade school years later, Patricia Cohen reports for The New York Times.

Research about the Oklahoma project published this month by the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, which created SEED OK, found that families that had been given accounts were more college-focused and contributed more of their own money than those that hadn’t been. And the effects are strongest among low-income families.

The 1,300-plus children who were chosen at random to be given accounts in 2007 had an average of $3,243 saved by the end of 2019. Among the control group — another 1,300 children who were randomly selected to take part but were not given any money — only 4 percent had an account.

Proposals at the federal level to establish savings accounts at birth, for college, homes, business or retirement savings, go back to the 1990s. Canada, Israel, South Korea and Singapore have established versions of the idea. Pennsylvania, Nebraska and Illinois are among the states that have created programs.

Technical problems marred the Small Business Association’s first attempt at accepting applications for the grant program.Credit…Zack Wittman for The New York Times

After months of delays and technical problems, the federal government finally opened a $16 billion grant fund for music club operators, theater owners and others in the live-event business on Monday.

Thousands of people hit the website for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program the moment it began accepting applications. Speed mattered: The money — awarded on a first-come-first-served basis — is widely expected to run out fast.

One applicant posted a screenshot showing that he was in line behind more than 6,000 others waiting for their turn to apply. “Hunger Games” memes — “May the odds be ever in your favor” — popped up in Twitter posts from desperate business owners venting their collective anxiety.

But this time, the system stayed up. As of 5 p.m. on Monday, the agency had received 6,040 grant applications, according to Andrea Roebker, an agency spokeswoman. Nearly 8,400 more had been created but not yet been completed.

Sarah Elger, chief executive of Pseudonym Productions, an events production company in Philadelphia, successfully submitted her application 16 minutes after she got access to the system.

“It was such a relief,” Ms. Elger said. She was one of thousands of business owners who had their hopes dashed earlier this month, when the Small Business Administration, the agency that runs the program, tried — and failed — to start taking applications. After four hours, the agency took the system offline for what turned into weeks of technology repair work.

Ms. Elger estimated that she uploaded more than 100 documents for her application, which she and her husband, Ricky Brigante, spent months preparing. They knew they would have to move quickly once the application website opened.

“We turned it into a game,” Ms. Elger said. “We had lots of folders on the desktop and raced through the uploads.”

The Small Business Administration said it would immediately start reviewing the applications, which are intended to yield grants for 45 percent of applicants’ prepandemic gross earned annual revenue, up to $10 million.

“We recognize the urgency,” said Barb Carson, the deputy associate administrator of the agency’s Office of Disaster Assistance. “With venue operators in danger of closing, every day that passes by is a day that these businesses cannot afford.”

The program, created in the $900 billion economic support package that President Donald J. Trump approved in December, is the first large direct-to-businesses grant program the Small Business Administration has ever run. The process, for both the agency and applicants, has for months been fraught with complexity and confusion.

John Russell, the executive director of the Montford Park Players, a nonprofit community theater group in Asheville, N.C., submitted his application on Monday afternoon. He is relying on the grant to help cover his group’s return to the stage.

After a full year of hosting only virtual events, the group is planning to open its first full in-person production, the Shakespeare play “The Comedy of Errors,” next month.

“We figured people are in the mood for comedy,” Mr. Russell said. The show’s actors are volunteers, but the production creates paid jobs for its director, stage manager, lighting designer, food vendors and others, as well as for the theater troupe’s support staff.

The Small Business Administration is also preparing to open a second grant program, the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, a $28.6 billion support fund for bars, restaurants and food trucks that was created in last month’s $1.9 trillion relief bill. That program is planning a seven-day test to help the agency avoid the kind of technical problems that plagued the venue program.

Lyft lost $1.8 billion last year as the pandemic cut into its revenue.Credit…Mike Blake/Reuters

Lyft will sell its unit devoted to developing autonomous vehicles to Woven Planet, a Toyota subsidiary, the companies announced on Monday. Woven Planet will pay $200 million in cash for Level 5, Lyft’s self-driving car initiative, and will follow up with additional payments of $350 million over five years.

Lyft is among several tech companies that have stepped back from developing autonomous vehicles over the last year as the technology has proved difficult to master and the pandemic has placed pressure on the company’s bottom lines. In December, Uber essentially paid Aurora, a self-driving truck start-up, to take its autonomous vehicle unit.

Some automotive executives have said they overestimated how soon the technology would be ready for the road. And although Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has recently expanded its operations, the chief executive of Waymo stepped down earlier this month to pursue “new adventures.”

Lyft said unloading Level 5 would cut about $100 million in annual expenses, helping the company edge closer to profitability after the pandemic sliced into its revenue. Lyft lost $1.8 billion last year. The company is set to report earnings for the first three months of 2021 next month.

Lyft will still have a team focused on third-party self-driving technology and will continue to collect data from trips to help train autonomous systems, the company said.

“Not only will this transaction allow Lyft to focus on advancing our leading autonomous platform and transportation network, this partnership will help pull in our profitability timeline,” Lyft’s president, John Zimmer, said in a statement.

Categories
Entertainment

Hari Ziyad Black Boy Out of Time Interview | E book Assessment

Hari Ziyad Black Boy Out of Time Interview | Book Review

Black boy from the time is the debut memoir by Hari Ziyad, who is among other things editor-in-chief of Racebaitr, Lambda Literary Fellow 2021 and prolific essayist. In a word, it’s exquisite.

At the heart of the memoir is the concept of abolition, which, according to Critical Resistance, refers to “a political vision aimed at eliminating detention, policing and surveillance, and creating permanent alternatives to punishment and incarceration”. In practice it looks like living together in an actual community: a real hug of our perceived other beyond institutions that would put people in cages and out of the public eye rather than social problems like homelessness, inadequate health care and unemployment to tackle. as trumped by the abolitionist icon Angela Davis. According to Ziyad, “It all comes back to the work we do to become free.”

Ziyad writes with a clarity and strength that surpasses any recent memories, and interweaves writing about abolition and carcinoma with a rousing series of letters to her younger self as part of her inner-child work. One of 19 children in a mixed family, Ziyad was born to a Hindu Hare Krishna mother and a Muslim father in Cleveland, OH. They are black, strange, and – like too many racial children are made – grew up painfully fast. But in her memoir, Ziyad dials back the clock and turns inward. As they peel off the fetters, they reveal to the black child and adult a plethora of truths about the need for blacks’ liberation, and when given the grace to grow freely they become variable.

Carcinogenic logic is so widespread that the work of abolition goes beyond dismantling prisons and wards that wreak havoc and penetrate deep into the psyche, which becomes a place of reproductive logic of carcinogenic until we consciously unlearn it.

Ziyad patiently reveals how harmful cancer is for black people and how intrinsically punitive thinking can be, how we understand our outer and even inner life. Carcinogenic logic is so widespread that the work of abolition goes beyond dismantling prisons and wards that wreak havoc and penetrate deep into the psyche, which becomes a place of reproductive logic of carcinogenic until we consciously unlearn it. Liberation is therefore as much inner work as outer work. Like a social archaeologist, Ziyad tries to discover his true self – the inner child – who lives beneath binary thinking and what shape it as misafropedia, or “the anti-black contempt for children and childhood experienced by black youth” . They encounter places of trauma and get away with nuances and new meanings by taking care of their inner child with the care of a loving parent. “I would like to offer colonized blacks – and especially myself – a kind of road map to win back those childhoods we sacrificed,” writes Ziyad, “or which were given up for us because of misafropedia.”

The joy of Black boy from the time is in the unconditional love it exudes for all blacks and how it cares for black children’s experiences. It is in its utter surrender to freer, more daring black futures; in his mind. It lies in the calm and wisdom of its author who is the kind of cultural critic and black liberation advocate that our political moment yearns for. Hailed by Darnell L. Moore as “the black-loving art that is both shotgun and balm”, Black boy from the time is just great, to the point that the best this reviewer can do is ask you to read it and know for yourself.

In February, I sat down one on one with Ziyad – then one on one plus a live studio audience (via Google Hangouts) as part of a speaker series at Group Nine Media – to talk about it Black boy from the time and the healing work of abolition in action.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Categories
Health

Can You Have Alcohol After the Covid Vaccine?

Can You Have Alcohol After the Covid Vaccine?

After a long year and much anticipation, receiving the Covid-19 vaccine can be cause for celebration, which for some could mean pouring a drink and toasting their new immunity. But can alcohol affect your immune response?

The short answer is that it depends on how much you drink.

There is no evidence that a drink or two could affect the effectiveness of the current Covid vaccines. Some studies have even found that, over the longer term, small or moderate amounts of alcohol can actually support the immune system by reducing inflammation.

On the other hand, heavy drinking, especially in the long run, can suppress the immune system and potentially affect your vaccination response, experts say. Since it can take weeks after a Covid shot for the body to generate protective antibodies against the novel coronavirus, anything that disrupts the immune response is cause for concern.

What you need to know about the Johnson & Johnson US vaccine break

    • On April 23, an advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to lift a hiatus on Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine and put a label on an extremely rare but potentially dangerous bleeding disorder.
    • Federal health officials are expected to officially recommend states lift the hiatus.
    • The vaccine was recently discontinued after reports of a rare bleeding disorder surfaced in six women who received the vaccine.
    • The overall risk of developing the disorder is extremely small. Women between the ages of 30 and 39 appear to be most at risk, with 11.8 cases per million doses. There were seven cases per million doses in women between 18 and 49 years of age.
    • Almost eight million doses of the vaccine have now been given. There was less than one case per million doses in men and women aged 50 and over.
    • Johnson & Johnson had also decided to postpone the launch of its vaccine in Europe for similar reasons, but later decided to continue its campaign after the European Union Medicines Agency announced the addition of a warning. South Africa, devastated by a contagious variant of the virus, also stopped using the vaccine, but later continued to use it.

“If you are really a moderate drinker, there is no risk of having a drink at the time of your vaccine,” said Ilhem Messaoudi, director of the Center for Virus Research at the University of California at Irvine, who has conducted research on the effects of alcohol on the immune response. “But be very aware of what moderate drinking really means. Drinking large amounts of alcohol is dangerous because the effects on all biological systems, including the immune system, are quite severe and appear fairly quickly after leaving this temperate zone. “

Moderate drinking is generally defined as no more than two drinks per day for men and a maximum of one drink per day for women, while heavy drinking is defined as four or more drinks per day for men and three or more drinks for women. Remember that a “standard” drink is considered to be 5 ounces of wine, 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits, or 12 ounces of beer.

Some of the first concerns about alcohol and Covid vaccinations came after a Russian health official warned in December that people should abstain from alcohol for two weeks before vaccination, and then abstain for 42 days afterwards. According to a Reuters report, the official claimed that alcohol could affect the body’s ability to develop immunity to the novel coronavirus. Your warning sparked a violent backlash in Russia, which has one of the highest drinking rates in the world.

Updated

April 27, 2021, 7:34 a.m. ET

In the United States, some experts say they heard similar concerns about whether it is safe to drink at the time of vaccination. “We have received a lot of questions from our patients about this,” said Dr. Angela Hewlett, an associate professor of infectious diseases who leads the Covid Infectious Diseases team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “Understandably, people who receive these vaccines want to make sure they are doing the right things to maximize their immune response.”

Clinical trials of Covid vaccines currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration did not specifically look at whether alcohol had an effect on the vaccines’ effectiveness, said Dr. Hewlett. It is possible that there will be more information on this in the future. Most of what is known, however, comes from previous research, including studies looking at how alcohol affects the immune system in humans and whether it interferes with the immune response in animals that have received other vaccines.

Studies have shown that heavy alcohol consumption impairs the immune response and increases your susceptibility to bacterial and viral infections. It prevents immune cells from reaching foci of infection and performing their tasks, e.g. B. the destruction of viruses, bacteria and infected cells. makes it easier for pathogens to enter your cells and causes a variety of other problems.

In contrast, moderate drinking does not seem to have this effect. In one study, scientists exposed 391 people to five different respiratory viruses and found that moderate drinkers are less likely to develop colds, but not if they are smokers.

In another study, Dr. Messaoudi and colleagues gave rhesus monkeys access to alcoholic beverages for seven months and then studied how their bodies reacted to a vaccine against the smallpox virus. Much like humans, some rhesus monkeys enjoy alcohol and drink a lot, while others show less interest and limit themselves to small amounts. The researchers found that the animals that chronically drank heavily had a poor response to the vaccine. “They had almost no immune response,” said Dr. Messaoudi.

However, the animals that consumed moderate amounts of alcohol responded the most to the vaccine, even compared to the tea totalers who did not consume alcohol at all. Studies in rats have found a similar pattern: those who consume large amounts of alcohol have poor immune responses to infections compared to animals who have been given moderate amounts or no alcohol. Other studies have found that people who drink moderately seem to lower the markers of inflammation in their blood.

Another reason to moderate your alcohol consumption is that heavy drinking – along with the resulting hangover – can potentially exacerbate all of the Covid vaccine side effects, including fever, malaise, or body ache, and make you feel worse, said Dr. Hewlett from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Dr. Hewlett chose not to drink after receiving the Covid vaccine. But she said people should feel free to drink as long as they drink within reason.

“A glass of champagne is unlikely to inhibit an immune response,” she said. “I think having a festive drink in moderation is fine.”

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Business

Crocs (CROX) Q1 2021 earnings

Crocs (CROX) Q1 2021 earnings

Crocs store in New York City.

Michael Brochstein | SOPA pictures | LightRocket | Getty Images

Crocs stock rose more than 8% on Tuesday after the shoe maker increased its full-year sales outlook and posted record sales in the first quarter.

CEO Andrew Rees said global demand for the Crocs brand is “stronger than ever”.

Here’s how the shoemaker developed for the quarter ended March 31st, compared to analysts’ expectations based on data from a refinitive survey:

  • Earnings per share: $ 1.49 adjusted versus 89 cents expected
  • Revenue: $ 460.1 million versus $ 415 million expected

Crocs’ net income rose to $ 98.4 million, or $ 1.47 per share, for the first quarter, compared to $ 11.1 million, or 16 cents per share, last year. Without one-off adjustments, the company earned $ 1.49 per share, well above the 89 cents expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.

Revenue rose a whopping 64% from $ 281.2 million last year to $ 460.1 million. This exceeded Street’s expectations for $ 415 million.

According to Crocs, digital sales increased 75.3% to 32.3% of sales compared to 30.1% in the same period last year.

For the second quarter, Crocs is now asking for revenue growth between 60% and 70% year over year.

For the year, an increase in sales of between 40% and 50% is now expected.

The full press release from Crocs can be found here.

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Categories
Politics

Biden capital positive factors tax hike would solely hit 0.3% of households, advisor says

Biden capital gains tax hike would only hit 0.3% of households, advisor says

Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, holds a press conference in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC on April 26, 2021.

Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images

President Joe Biden’s chief economic adviser on Monday defended a plan to increase capital gains tax on the country’s richest households as neither too much of a burden nor as a barrier to business investment.

Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, said during a news conference that the president’s plan would increase capital gains tax for 0.3% of US households – those with annual incomes above $ 1 million.

It’s “not the top 1%, it’s not even the top half of 1%,” said White House Deese. “For the other 997 out of 1,000 households in the country … this is not a change that will be relevant. It will not change the tax treatment of capital gains at all.”

He explained that the proposed tax hike would target those households who normally do not receive most of their income from work-place wages.

“For typical Americans, most of their income comes from wages,” he said. “For people who earn less than $ 1 million a year, about 70% of their income comes from wages. For people who earn more than $ 1 million, the opposite is the case. About 30% of their income. ” [income] comes from wages. “

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Though Deese didn’t mention a specific interest rate, his appearance Monday during a White House briefing gave credence to reports that the government will seek to raise the capital gains rate to 39.6% for households earning more than $ 1 million .

Biden is expected to officially launch the proposal on Wednesday to fund spending on the upcoming American family plan, which is said to be priced at around $ 1 trillion.

Separated from the US infrastructure-based employment plan, this bill is believed to include measures designed to help US workers learn new skills, expand childcare subsidies, and make tuition fees free for everyone at Community College.

When responding to criticism that increasing the capital gains rate could dampen investment in the US business, Deese argued that there is no evidence to support this claim. Capital Gains Tax is especially important to Wall Street as it dictates how much a portion of a stock sale is collected by the federal government.

“In a variety of academic and empirical data, there is no evidence of a significant impact of capital gains rates on the level of long-term investment in the economy,” he said. “There are many reasons for this, including the fact that if you look at where a lot of venture capital and early-stage investments are coming from, they are actually coming from pension funds, wealth funds and corporations that are actually not tax sensitive.”

Deese also claimed that the revenue generated by a higher rate for the richest Americans could then be used for programs and subsidies that have been shown to increase economic performance over time.

“Investing in early childhood and our children, for example, yields huge dividends in terms of their own academic success, reduced health care costs, productivity and future growth,” the NEC director and former Obama official told reporters.