Month: May 2021

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Business

Fox Information Intensifies Its Professional-Trump Politics as Dissenters Depart

Fox News Intensifies Its Pro-Trump Politics as Dissenters Depart

Fox News once devoted its 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. time slots to relatively straightforward newscasts. Now those hours are filled by opinion shows led by hosts who denounce Democrats and defend the worldview of former President Donald J. Trump.

For seven years, Juan Williams was the lone liberal voice on “The Five,” the network’s popular afternoon chat show. On Wednesday, he announced he was leaving the program, after months of harsh on-air blowback from his conservative co-hosts. Many Fox News viewers cheered his exit on social media.

Donna Brazile, the former Democratic Party chairwoman, was hired by Fox News with great fanfare in 2019 as a dissenting voice for its political coverage. She criticized Mr. Trump and spoke passionately about the Black Lives Matter movement, which other hosts on the network often demonized. Ms. Brazile has now left Fox News; last week, she quietly started a new job at ABC.

Onscreen and off, in ways subtle and overt, Fox News has adapted to the post-Trump era by moving in a single direction: Trumpward.

The network has rewarded pro-Trump pundits like Greg Gutfeld and Dan Bongino with prize time slots. Some opinion hosts who ventured on-air criticism of the former president have been replaced. And within the Fox News reporting ranks, journalists have privately expressed concern that the network is less committed to straight-ahead news coverage than it was in the past.

The shifts at Fox News, which is controlled by father-and-son moguls Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, have come in the wake of what amounted to an existential moment for a cable channel that is home to Trump cheerleaders like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham: the 2020 election.

Fox News’s ratings fell sharply after the network made an early call on election night that Mr. Biden would carry Arizona and later declared him the winner, even as Mr. Trump advanced lies about fraud. With viewers in revolt, the network moved out dissenting voices and put a new emphasis on hard-line right-wing commentary.

In January, the network fired its veteran politics editor, Chris Stirewalt, who had been an onscreen face of the early call in Arizona for Mr. Biden. Earlier this month, it brought on a new editor in the Washington bureau: Kerri Kupec, a former spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s former attorney general, William P. Barr. She had no prior journalistic experience.

Financially, the Murdochs’ formula has produced results: after a rare loss to archrivals CNN and MSNBC in January, Fox News’s ratings strength has recovered; the channel is now once again the Nielsen leader in cable news. In May, Fox News is on track to more than double CNN’s prime-time viewership.

Its new 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. opinion shows — with segments that lament “cancel culture” and attack Mr. Biden — are attracting bigger audiences than the newscasts they replaced. And the niche right-wing network Newsmax has failed to sustain its postelection audience gains.

In some ways, the Murdochs are making a rational business decision by following the conservatives who have made up the heart of the Fox News audience; recent surveys show that more than three-quarters of Republicans want Mr. Trump to run in 2024.

But under Roger Ailes, the network’s founder who shaped its look and feel, Fox News elevated liberal foils like Alan Colmes, a Democrat who shared equal billing in prime-time with Mr. Hannity until the end of 2008, and moderates like Mr. Williams.

Credit…Andrew Toth/FilmMagic

“Roger’s view was you had to have some unpredictability and you had to challenge the audience; you couldn’t just be reading Republican talking points every night,” said Susan R. Estrich, a Democratic lawyer and former commentator on Fox News who negotiated Mr. Ailes’s exit from the network amid his sexual misconduct scandal.

Today in Business

Updated 

May 28, 2021, 12:54 p.m. ET

Ms. Estrich recalled that Mr. Ailes had defended Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News host, when Mr. Trump, then a presidential candidate, attacked her in misogynist terms. Now, she said, “instead of trying to broaden their audience, Fox News is narrowing it and digging in.”

Partisanship plays well on cable news, an insight not lost on programmers at other networks who are chasing fatigued viewers. Liberal-leaning MSNBC expanded the show hosted by the anti-Trump commentator Nicolle Wallace; it also replaced the moderate Chris Matthews at 7 p.m. with the partisan commentator Joy Reid. Last week, CNN dropped one of its chief conservative commentators, Rick Santorum, after he was criticized for remarks about Native Americans.

Ms. Brazile said she had left Fox News of her own accord.

“Fox never censored my views in any way,” she wrote in an email. “Everyone treated me courteously as a colleague.” Ms. Brazile added: “I believe it’s important for all media to expose their audiences to both progressive and conservative viewpoints. With the election and President Biden’s first 100 days behind us, I’ve accomplished what I wanted at Fox News.”

Mr. Williams will remain at Fox News as a senior political analyst; the network said in a statement that he had requested to be closer to his family in Washington rather than commute to New York, where “The Five” is taped. Fox News said he will be replaced by another liberal host; among those in contention is a newly hired contributor to the Fox stable, the former Democratic congressman Harold Ford Jr.

Mr. Williams’s departure came after a harder edge had crept into his exchanges with colleagues like Mr. Gutfeld and Jesse Watters. “The Five” had long been a venue for heated, if friendly debate, but Mr. Williams was repeatedly mocked and shouted down when he accused Mr. Trump of lying about the election and fueling the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Mr. Williams also noted, on-air, an erroneous Fox News report about Mr. Biden that falsely claimed he wanted to restrict Americans’ consumption of hamburgers. (Fox News later issued a correction.)

Credit…Fox News

His prime antagonist, Mr. Gutfeld, started an 11 p.m. show last month that is meant to compete with late-night fare like “The Daily Show.” “Gutfeld!” has attracted a bigger viewership than the previous 11 p.m. offering, a newscast anchored by Shannon Bream that was shifted to midnight.

Fox News is still determining a permanent host for its new 7 p.m. opinion hour, which is now a reliable venue for pro-Trump commentary. It was where Tucker Carlson, the network’s 8 p.m. host, made his remarks about white replacement theory that prompted an outcry from the Anti-Defamation League.

A pro-Trump drift at Fox News is not new: George Will, a traditional conservative who opposed Mr. Trump’s candidacy, lost his contributor contract in 2017. Shepard Smith, a news anchor who was tough on Mr. Trump, left in 2019.

Some Fox News journalists, though, say privately they are increasingly concerned with the network’s direction. Kristin Fisher, one of the network’s rising stars in Washington and a White House correspondent, left Fox News last month despite the network’s effort to keep her. She had faced criticism from viewers in November after a segment in which she aggressively debunked lies about election fraud advanced by Mr. Trump’s lawyers.

The longtime Washington bureau chief, Bill Sammon, resigned in January after internal criticism over his handling of election coverage, around the time that Mr. Stirewalt was fired. (Mr. Stirewalt was let go along with roughly 20 digital journalists at Fox News, which the network attributed to a realignment of “business and reporting structure to meet the demands of this new era.”)

Mr. Sammon has effectively been replaced by Doug Rohrbeck, a producer with extensive news experience on Bret Baier’s newscast and Chris Wallace’s Sunday show. Still, some Fox journalists were surprised when the network hired Ms. Kupec, the former Barr spokeswoman, to work under Mr. Rohrbeck. (In 2019, CNN hired Sarah Isgur, the spokeswoman for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as a political editor. After protests from staff, she was shifted to an on-air role and later left the network.)

Fox News says its news coverage remains robust. Mr. Baier, its chief political anchor, announced in May that he had extended his contract through 2025. He regularly lands newsy interviews; a recent conversation with Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming grew testy when she faulted Fox News for perpetuating Mr. Trump’s lies about the election and Mr. Baier responded that he had made clear to viewers that Mr. Biden was the legitimate victor.

Fox News has a smaller international footprint than rivals like CNN, but it maintains several foreign bureaus and has had multiple reporters on the ground in Israel covering the recent violence there. On Wednesday, the network announced an expansion of Fox News International, a streaming service available in 37 countries in Asia and Europe.

Despite ongoing criticism from liberals, Fox News remains a financial juggernaut for the Murdoch empire; it is expected to earn record advertising revenues this year, the network said.

Even as its programming decisions seem aimed at attracting Trump supporters, Fox News does face one roadblock: Mr. Trump. The former president has maintained his stinging criticism of Fox News, which, he has claimed, betrayed him by calling the election for Mr. Biden.

On Friday, after criticism from the former House Speaker Paul Ryan, Mr. Trump wrote that “Fox totally lost its way and became a much different place” after the Murdochs appointed Mr. Ryan to the Fox Corporation board.

“Fox will never be the same!” Mr. Trump wrote.

Categories
World News

Spain Issued ‘Equality Stamps’ in Pores and skin Tones. The Darker Ones Had been Price Much less.

Spain Issued ‘Equality Stamps’ in Skin Tones. The Darker Ones Were Worth Less.

MADRID – A new campaign by the Spanish Postal Service to condemn racism has backfired, offending many people with a series of stamps in skin tones – the lighter the hue, the more valuable the stamp.

The Equality Stamps were issued this week to mark the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, the black man whose murder by a Minneapolis police officer fueled outrage on the American streets and led to widespread calls for the fight against racism in the United States and America Furthermore. The release of the stamps also coincided with the European Diversity Month.

Moha Gerehou, the author of a new book on racism in Spain, said on Twitter that he understood the postal service was well meant – but said it was badly fired.

It is “a huge contradiction”, he wrote, “a campaign that launches stamps with different values ​​depending on the color to show the same value in our lives. The news is an absolute disaster. “

The cost of the postage starts at € 0.70 (85 cents) for the darkest color, and as the hue becomes progressively lighter, the value for the pale color increases steadily to € 1.60.

The postal service said on Twitter that the pricing was aimed at “reflecting an unfair and painful reality that shouldn’t be,” and that it had hoped the campaign would “give a voice to a generation committed to equality and diversity starts “.

However, some critics said that message was easily lost and that the campaign played into the hands of Vox, the far-right party that became the third largest group in the Spanish parliament after the elections in late 2019.

Mr Gerehou, the author and a Spanish native of Gambian descent, said the postal service had joined an anti-racism push that had spread from the United States to Spain. But he said such efforts “must be accompanied by profound changes”.

The campaign was designed with the help of SOS Racismo, an anti-racism organization, and promoted in a video by El Chojín, a rap artist.

SOS Racismo defended the stamps as “a very visual way of denouncing the racism that affects thousands of people in the Spanish state”.

The group said the campaign also highlighted broader issues such as the rise in xenophobia in Europe and the plight of migrants preparing to make the dangerous journey from North Africa and the Middle East across the Mediterranean to Spain.

Categories
Business

Memorial Day field workplace could possibly be first to high $100 million throughout pandemic

Memorial Day box office could be first to top $100 million during pandemic

Emma Stone stars in Disney’s “Cruella.”

Disney

This Memorial Day weekend could have the right combination of new movie releases, number of cinemas open and increased consumer confidence to break the $100 million mark at the box office.

Since the pandemic began, theaters have struggled to lure back moviegoers, even with enticing titles like “Godzilla vs. Kong,” “Mortal Kombat” and “Wonder Woman 1984.”

The weekend of April 23 is currently has the highest-grossing weekend box office tally since the pandemic locked down theaters last spring. Ticket sales reached $57 million, with only around 60% of movie theaters open, according to data from Comscore. The weekend’s top earners were “Demon Slayer: Mugen Train” and “Mortal Kombat.”

Heading into this Memorial Day weekend, more than 70% of theaters are open and Hollywood has two blockbuster releases: “Cruella” and “A Quiet Place Part II.”

The last time the box office topped $100 million over the weekend was March 6, 2020. In non-pandemic times, Memorial Day weekend has averaged around $200 million in ticket sales.

Memorial Day weekend in 2020 shrunk to just $842,000 in ticket sales, driven almost entirely by drive-in movie theaters.

“What a difference a year makes as we now look toward what will be a pivotal Memorial weekend for movie theaters and, thankfully, the start of a true summer movie season, something the industry hasn’t seen in two years,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.

While “Cruella” will have a dual release in theaters and on Disney+ Premiere Access, “A Quiet Place Part II” will only be available in theaters. The sequel has been widely praised by critics and been earmarked as a must-see film, especially in theaters. In reviews, critics touted how seeing the film in a theater heightened the experience because sounds — whether on the screen or in the seats nearby — made the thriller more suspenseful.

With more theaters open and the pent-up demand, Dergarabedian foresees a chance that Paramount’s “A Quiet Place Part II” could usurp “Godzilla vs. Kong” for the highest opening weekend debut since the health crisis started. “Godzilla vs. Kong” opened with a $32 million haul during the first weekend in April. At that time only 55% of theaters were open in North America.

The fate of Disney’s “Cruella” is a little less certain because it will be available in theaters and through Disney+ for $30 on the same day. Some consumers may venture out to the cinema to see the film, but others may choose to stay on the couch and stream. Plus, the film is getting mixed reviews.

“The performance of the two new films will serve as a bellwether of consumer confidence and enthusiasm for the movie theater experience,” said Dergarabedian. “[They will] also help to bolster the perception of the movie theater experience as more viable and essential than ever before and not as some had erroneously predicted a pre-ordained casualty of the pandemic.”  

Categories
Health

Every day U.S. knowledge on Might 28

Moderna says shot is 100% effective in teens, plans to seek FDA OK in June

A young man receives his Covid-19 vaccination at a vaccination clinic. People receive the Moderna vaccine in Milford, Pennsylvania.

Preston Ehrler | LightRocket | Getty Images

Roughly half of all Americans have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data published Thursday, as nationwide infection levels continued their downward trend.

New Covid cases are 23,033 per day, on a seven-day average, down 21% from a week prior, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

U.S. share of the population vaccinated

CDC data shows 49.9% of the U.S. population has received one shot or more, with 40% having completed a full vaccination program.

Among those aged 18 and older, 62% are at least partially vaccinated.

Data in a Kaiser Family Foundation survey published Friday suggests that adult vaccination rates could reach 70% in the next few months. President Joe Biden is aiming to hit that target by July 4.

In addition to 62% of survey respondents reporting they have received one dose or more, 4% said they want the vaccine as soon as possible. Another 4% of adults — who said they want to “wait and see” before getting a shot — reported that they have already scheduled an appointment or plan to get the vaccine in the next 3 months.

The share of respondents saying they will “definitely not” get vaccinated or only do so if required has remained steady at around 20% in the past few monthly Kaiser Foundation surveys.

U.S. vaccine shots administered

About 1.6 million vaccine shots have been reported administered each day on average over the past week, CDC data shows.

A handful of states have reported that vaccine incentive programs have increased local vaccination numbers in some demographics after recent drops.

U.S. Covid cases

The seven-day average of daily U.S. Covid cases was 23,033 as of Thursday, down more than 6,000 from a week ago, according to Johns Hopkins data.JHU

Case counts have not been this low since June 2020.

Average daily case counts have fallen by 5% or more in 43 states and the District of Columbia over the past week, a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data shows.

In some countries outside of the U.S., infection levels are rising. Bahrain, for example, has seen a record-setting spike in cases since the beginning of May despite having 55% of its population vaccinated with at least one dose, according to data from Our World in Data.

U.S. Covid deaths

The latest seven-day average of daily U.S. Covid deaths is 667, JHU data shows, though the release of backlogged data from multiple states in recent days obscures the latest trend.

Wednesday’s figures included 373 deaths reported for Oklahoma, which the state announced is part of an “ongoing effort to investigate and reconcile backlog of COVID-19 related deaths.”

Maryland on Thursday added about 500 previously unreported deaths to its totals.

In some situations, state health departments will attribute a batch of previously unreported cases or deaths to a single day, even if those may have occurred previously. The data may be updated to reflect different dates in the future.

Prior to the reporting issues this week, the daily death toll had been on the decline for weeks.

Categories
Politics

How Ranked-Alternative Voting May Have an effect on New York’s Mayoral Race

How Ranked-Choice Voting Could Affect New York’s Mayoral Race

The competition for the nomination of the Democratic Mayor of New York City is wide open. It’s the kind of race that a ranking vote is designed to help with, with voters backing their top poll without losing the opportunity to weigh the most suitable candidates.

It’s also the type of race that could test one of the main risks of a ranked poll: a phenomenon known as ballot exhaustion. A ballot is considered “exhausted” when every candidate classified by a voter has been eliminated and this ballot is no longer included in the election.

With so many viable candidates and most New Yorkers first-time ranking polls, all the ingredients for a large number of depleted ballots are in place. If the race is close enough, it is a factor that could even decide the choice.

This possibility does not necessarily mean that New Yorkers are worse off when it comes to voting according to the rankings. However, the risk of exhaustion of the ballot paper is an underestimated reason why the alleged advantages are not always recognized when voting by ranking.

Cities and other local governments have polled eight states and across Maine nationwide. It will be used for the first time this year in the New York Mayor’s Race, allowing voters to rate up to five candidates in their order of preference.

If no candidate receives a majority of the first preferential votes, the race is decided by an immediate runoff: the candidate with the fewest votes in first place is eliminated, and the votes of those who preferred the eliminated candidate are voted on the second of these voters transfer decisions. The process continues until a candidate wins a majority of the remaining ballots.

However, such a system is complicated. It urges voters to use a new and unusual set of rules to make many more decisions than they would normally have to make. As a result, many will not rate the maximum number of candidates. There is a possibility that the election result will be different if every voter has filled out a complete voting slip.

A recent poll by the Manhattan Institute / Public Opinion Strategies found evidence that ballot exhaustion could be a major factor in New York’s mayoral elections. The poll, which asked voters to complete the full ballot, found that Eric Adams led Andrew Yang by 52 to 48 percent in a simulated instant runoff election. Behind the top scores lurked a group of 23 percent of respondents who had rated some candidates but had not rated Mr. Yang or Mr. Adams. If these voters had preferred Mr. Yang, the poll might have turned out differently.

A fatigue rate of 23 percent would be pretty high, but not without precedent. In the 2011 San Francisco Mayor’s Race, 27 percent of the ballots were neither of the two candidates who made it to the finals. And, on average, 12 percent of the ballots in the three special city council elections held in New York City this year were exhausted.

Even a lower percentage of depleted ballots can make a difference in a tight race. An analogous case is the special mayoral election in San Francisco in 2018, in which London Breed prevailed by just under one percentage point. In that race, 9 percent of the ballots rated neither Ms. Breed nor runner-up Mark Leno.

It’s impossible to know for sure, but there are plausible reasons to believe that if each voter had chosen one of the two final candidates, Mr. Leno would have won the election. Mr. Leno, for example, won broadcast votes – those cast by voters who did not select either Ms. Breed or Mr. Leno as their first choice – by a margin of 69 to 31 percent; he would have won if the exhausted ballots had expressed a similar preference.

The large number of depleted ballots in ranked elections might come as a bit of a surprise as the format is designed to ensure voters don’t waste their ballots by supporting non-viable candidates. In the archetypal case, the choice of rank could allow voters to endorse a small party candidate like Ralph Nader without the risk of jeopardizing their preferred large party candidate, whom they could safely move to second place.

Voters, however, do not always have the same degree of clarity about which candidates will make the final round of voting as they would have in the 2000 presidential election when Mr Nader finished third as the Green candidate with almost three million votes. Even without eligibility to vote, the primaries often have flowing multi-candidate areas where clear favorites in the general election are nowhere near as obvious as a Democrat versus a Republican.

Fortunately, ranking voting tends to increase the number of options available to voters and tarnish what may otherwise be a relatively clear final choice. Interest groups and ideological factions have less incentive to group behind a single candidate in a ranked election, knowing that their voters can still group behind a single candidate on election day.

Partly as a result, the number of depleted ballots is highest in wide-open races, where voters have the least clarity about the likely endgame.

In the three ranked special elections for New York City Council seats, the number of ballots exhausted was higher in races without a strong first-round candidate. For example, when the top candidate had only 28 percent of the vote in the first ballot in the 15th district, 18 percent of voters had not rated either of the two best candidates.

Understand the NYC Mayoral Race

    • Who is running for mayor? There are more than a dozen people in the running to become New York’s next mayor, and the primary is on June 22nd. Here is an overview of the candidates.
    • Get to know the candidates: We’ve hired leading mayoral candidates on everything from police reform and climate change to their preferred bagel order and training routine.
    • What is a ranking poll? New York City started voting in the primary this year, and voters can list up to five candidates in order of preference. Confused? We can help.

In the mayor’s primary today, the New York Democrats can’t be sure whether there will likely be a final matchup. There are currently 13 Democratic candidates in the running, at least five of whom can be considered front runners. Andrew Yang, the lead polling candidate for most of the year, has declined in recent polls; others, like Kathryn Garcia, seem to be on the rise. With so much uncertainty, even political junkies may not be entirely sure whether their vote will have an impact in the finals.

Voters who are not political junkies have a very different challenge. Voting according to the ranking is demanding. Voters have to make informed judgments about many more candidates than they would otherwise. Less informed voters are less likely to make such judgments and are therefore less likely to rate the maximum number of candidates, which increases the likelihood that they will not list either of the last two candidates on the ballot.

Other voters may not fully understand how ranking works. In a NY1 / Ipsos poll in April, only 53 percent of likely voters said they were very familiar with the ranking and 28 percent said they were uncomfortable with it.

According to a 2004 study by the Public Research Institute, only 36 percent of San Francisco voters who did not fully understand the ranking rated the maximum number of candidates in the 2004 mayoral contest, compared with 63 percent of those who said at least they did understood pretty well.

In order to take full advantage of the leaderboard choice, voters need to know something that is often not given: it works through the instant drain. This may seem obvious, but it is not mentioned on the ballot, it is not mentioned in the educational material sent by the city (and received at my address), and it is not highlighted on the city’s election website. There isn’t even an explanation as to why candidates are ranked.

Without an explanation of how their ballots affect election results, voters may not understand why it is in their best interest to rate the maximum number of candidates.

Categories
Business

‘Pals’ Reunion Is Censored in China, Slicing BTS and Woman Gaga

‘Friends’ Reunion Is Censored in China, Cutting BTS and Lady Gaga

In China, the Reunion episode of “Friends” was all about resentment.

The problem was not “friends” but the friends of “friends”.

Appearances by Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and K-pop group BTS were removed from various versions of the highly anticipated special when streamed on three Chinese video platforms on Thursday.

Each missing cameo involved a star or group who had been a previous target of Beijing’s anger, and fans suspected the show was in censorship gear.

Lady Gaga has been banned in China since she met with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, in 2016. Justin Bieber’s problems with China began in 2014 when he posted a photo of the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo honoring Japan’s war dead, including war criminals from World War II. And South Korean musical group BTS neglected to mention the sacrifice of Chinese troops last year when they remembered the pain of the Korean War – even though the troops fought on North Korea’s side.

One missing clip was a duet between Lady Gaga and Lisa Kudrow when they sang Phoebe’s jingle “Smelly Cat”. The Chinese broadcasts also lacked memories of BTS members watching the show when they were younger and an appearance by Mr. Bieber disguised as “Spudnik” as David Schwimmer’s character did in one episode.

The special, which premiered on HBO Max in the US on Thursday, brought the cast of the ’90s sitcom back together for memories and performances. It was a major television event in China where the show is loved, in part, by a millennial generation who grew up and watched it on DVD and used it often to learn English. The sitcom was so popular that it spawned fan-cafes similar to the show’s Central Perk coffee shop in major Chinese cities.

Some fan accounts on social media found that the length of each version of the special varied depending on the users of the streaming site. This is a likely indication that the online video hosting sites had cut the show itself to avoid potential grief with China’s vigilant internet regulator.

In business today

Updated

May 28, 2021, 9:09 a.m. ET

The incident marks the second reminder in a week of the power China wields over Hollywood stars and Beijing’s willingness to exclude celebrities from its massive market if they deviate from its political dogma. This week, John Cena, the professional wrestler and star of the latest film, Fast and Furious, apologized after referring to Taiwan as a country in an interview. China regards the self-governing island as part of its territory.

Given that most of the celebrities are cut off from business in China and its precious box office, they have tried to stay away from sensitive issues in China like Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang and protests in Hong Kong.

On Chinese social media, nostalgia for “friends” overwhelmed the discussion of censorship on Friday. Still, some grumbled.

“That’s crazy, if you put the show in China, don’t cut the scene. If you need to cut it, then don’t insert it. What’s the point of eating this castrated content? “Wrote a fan.

Others liked to take a break from celebrities who they believed offended China.

“It’s good to cut it. All the cut parts are made by animators who offended China. Don’t let rat droppings spoil the whole pot of congee, ”one wrote.

“It goes without saying that these entertainers who have insulted China and support Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tibet independence, cut their parts,” added another.

Lin Qiqing contributed to the research.

Categories
Health

70 % Covid Vaccination Fee Might Be in Attain, New Ballot Suggests

70 Percent Covid Vaccination Rate May Be in Reach, New Poll Suggests

A new poll suggests the US may be on track to vaccinate at least 70 percent of the adult population against Covid-19 by the summer.

In the latest survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 62 percent of respondents said they had received at least one dose of vaccine, up from 56 percent in April. At the same time, around a third of those classified as “waiting” stated that they had already made vaccine appointments or that they would have planned to do so shortly.

Dr. William Schaffner, National Infectious Disease Foundation medical director and vaccine expert, found the results encouraging.

“I think there are many people on the fence worried about things moving too fast and possible side effects. However, those concerns will be allayed as more friends and acquaintances celebrate the vaccination,” said Dr. Schaffner, who did not participate in the monthly survey, the Covid-19 Vaccine Monitor.

“You get a growing sense of comfort and security that ‘people like me’ will be vaccinated,” which he said was essential in building confidence in the vaccines.

The two populations that saw the largest increases in vaccination rates from April to May were Latino adults (from 47 percent to 57 percent) and adults without a college degree (from 48 percent to 55 percent).

The telephone survey of 1,526 adults was conducted in English and Spanish from May 18-25.

On May 10, the Food and Drug Administration approved Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine for children 12 years and older. The survey found that 40 percent of parents said either their child has already received at least one dose or will soon receive one.

However, the parents of younger children were much more cautious. Only about a quarter expressed willingness to have their children vaccinated once the shots have been approved for them.

The results suggest that efforts to protect as many young students as possible from Covid-19 at the start of the school year may face obstacles.

While public health experts welcomed the continued improvement in vaccination rates, they found that the pool of most willing adults was shrinking.

“There is almost no low hanging fruit at this point, but there is a path to a slow but steady increase in vaccination rates through improved access, information, advocacy and incentives,” said Drew Altman, president and chief executive officer of Kaiser Family Foundation.

President Biden’s goal is to achieve 70 percent adult vaccine coverage by July 4th. Dr. Schaffner said he thought the goal was possible. “We have to work harder,” he said.

The survey authors said the target was realistic because in addition to 62 percent of adults who received at least one dose, another 4 percent said they wanted the shot as soon as possible and another 4 percent – a third of the ” “wait and see” group said they had made an appointment or intend to do so within three months.

Despite the positive news, vaccination rates in adults who previously reported significant hesitation (7 percent) or outright rejection (13 percent) have remained unchanged for several months. And a third of the “wait and see” group said they would wait at least a year before taking the picture.

The survey also looked at attitudes towards vaccination incentives and the impact of government news about the shots. Financial incentives, such as the million dollar lottery in Ohio for the newly vaccinated, are being pushed back a little.

However, the survey found that such rewards can be successful motivators for people to get the shots. Fifteen percent of non-vaccinated adults in the survey said their state’s offer of $ 100 may make them reconsider, as well as free transportation and tickets to a sporting event or concert.

Earlier this month, people vaccinated at an event at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama were able to complete two winning laps on the track. (Cars and trucks, yes; motorcycles, no.) Similar incentives are being offered across the country.

About 20 percent of unvaccinated workers said they would be more likely to get the shots if their employer gave them paid time off for the dates and time needed to recover from side effects.

The report also showed that the public had some confidence in the government’s health-related messages, although many were confused by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s announcement earlier this month that vaccinated people could largely avoid face masks and social distancing. Over half said the CDC’s guidelines were generally clear and accessible, but about 40 percent found them confusing and cloudy.

Notably, 85 percent of people who were not vaccinated said that the CDC’s new guidelines no longer made them ready to be vaccinated.

But another cohort viewed government approval as a potential launch vehicle. The survey found that a third of unvaccinated adults, including 44 percent in the “wait and see” group, said they would be more likely to receive a vaccine once it received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech recently announced that they are making progress towards this goal.

Categories
Business

5 issues to know earlier than the inventory market opens Friday

Earnings reports, the Fed will test the market rally in the week ahead

Here are the most important news, trends and analysis that investors need to start their trading day:

1. Dow futures rise as stocks head for winning week

A Wall Street sign is seen near the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, May 4, 2021.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Futures contracts for the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 150 points on Friday morning, leading the way as Wall Street looked to head into Memorial Day weekend with a winning week. The Nasdaq Composite has been the best performer this week, rising nearly 2%, while the S&P 500 and Dow have added roughly 1.1% and 0.7%, respectively. For the month, the S&P 500 and Dow are positive while the Nasdaq is down 1.6%.

Dow futures were helped by Salesforce, which rose more than 4% in premarket trading after a stronger-than-expected first-quarter report.

2. Meme stocks surging again

People wear face masks as they walk by a movie theater during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Newport, New Jersey, April 2, 2021.

Eduardo Munoz | Reuters

The renewed surge in so-called meme stocks that are popular on Reddit showed no signs of slowing on Friday morning. Shares of movie theater chain AMC jumped more than 20% in premarket trading, while GameStop was up nearly 5%.

AMC’s stock price has more than doubled over the past week, while GameStop could open at its highest level since March.

3. Biden to unveil $5 trillion spending proposal

U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy during a visit to Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio, May 27, 2021.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

President Joe Biden is set to release a proposal that calls for $5 trillion in additional spending over the next decade, a source familiar with the proposal tells CNBC. The proposal also includes raising $3.6 trillion in spending over that time frame, leaving an additional net deficit of $1.4 trillion.

The new spending is for Biden’s proposals to boost and extend the economic recovery: the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan.

The plan calls for $300 billion of that spending to be included in the 2022 fiscal year budget, which would push the total spending to $6 trillion for that period, according to the source.

4. Microsoft warns that the SolarWinds hackers are back

The Russian hackers thought to be responsible for the SolarWinds cyberattack have launched another assault, this time using emails from the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to Microsoft. The group, known as Nobelium, sent phishing emails to more than 3,000 accounts using a marketing email address from the platform Constant Contact used by the aid industry, Microsoft said in a blog post. The attack has target organizations across at least 24 countries, and at least a quarter of those organizations are involved in international development, humanitarian, and human rights work, Microsoft said.

5. Cathie Wood downplays inflation

Cathy Wood

Crystal Mercedes | CNBC

Don’t count Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood among the major investors worried about inflation. The star fund manager said Thursday during a conference that deflation was actually a bigger concern, predicting that prices for commodities and key industrial inputs would fall later in the year once the demand crush of the economic reopening normalizes.

A deflationary environment would be good innovation tech stocks and bitcoin, Wood said. She is a long-time bull of both asset classes.

— Follow all the market action like a pro on CNBC Pro. Get the latest on the pandemic with CNBC’s coronavirus coverage.

Categories
World News

Russia’s Nobelium utilizing USAID’s electronic mail system for hack, Microsoft says

Russia's Nobelium using USAID's email system for hack, Microsoft says

Annette Riedl | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

The Russian hackers believed to be behind the catastrophic SolarWinds attack last year launched another major cyberattack, Microsoft warned Thursday.

Microsoft said in a blog post that the hacking group known as Nobelium attacked over 150 organizations worldwide in the past week, including government agencies, think tanks, consultants and non-governmental organizations.

They sent phishing emails – fake messages designed to trick people into disclosing sensitive information or downloading malicious software – to more than 3,000 email accounts, the tech giant said.

At least 25% of the target organizations are involved in international development, humanitarian and human rights work, wrote Tom Burt, corporate vice president of customer security and trust at Microsoft.

“These attacks appear to be a continuation of Nobelium’s multiple intelligence-gathering efforts to target government foreign policy agencies,” Burt said.

According to Microsoft, organizations in at least 24 countries have been affected, with the US receiving the largest share of attacks.

The violation was discovered three weeks before President Joe Biden’s scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.

It also comes a month after the US government explicitly stated that the SolarWinds hack was carried out by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), a successor to the KGB’s overseas espionage operations.

The Kremlin said Friday it had no information about the cyber attack and Microsoft needed to answer more questions, including how the attack relates to Russia, Reuters reported. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The hack explained

According to Microsoft, Nobelium has gained access to an email marketing account used by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal government’s aid agency. The account is managed on a platform called Constant Contact.

Burt said Nobelium used the account to “distribute phishing emails that looked authentic but contained a link that inserted a malicious file when clicked”.

The file contains a backdoor, which Microsoft calls NativeZone, which “can enable a wide variety of activities from stealing data to infecting other computers on a network,” Burt said. Microsoft is in the process of notifying customers who have been targeted.

The SolarWinds attack uncovered in December turned out to be much worse than initially expected. It gave the hackers access to thousands of companies and government agencies that were using SolarWinds IT software.

Microsoft President Brad Smith described the attack as “the biggest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen”.

Earlier this month, Russia’s spy chief denied responsibility for the SolarWinds cyberattack, but said he was “flattered” by US and UK allegations that Russian foreign intelligence was behind such a sophisticated hack

Categories
Politics

Biden says rising wages are an indication his financial agenda is working

Biden says rising wages are a sign his economic agenda is working

WASHINGTON — After weeks of defending his economic policies against critics who blame them for overheating the economy, President Joe Biden went on the offensive Thursday, arguing that rising wages are a sign his agenda is boosting the fortunes of working Americans.

“The bottom line is this: The Biden economic plan is working,” said the president in a speech at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio. “We’ve had record job creation, we’re seeing record economic growth, we’re creating a new paradigm. One that rewards work — the working people in this nation, not just those at the top.”

Republicans and business groups claim that the enhanced federal unemployment benefits in Biden’s American Rescue Plan, his signature domestic accomplishment, are to blame for a “labor shortage” that has forced corporations like McDonald’s and Bank of America to raise their minimum hourly wage.

Biden rejected this view of the economy: “When it comes to the economy we’re building, rising wages aren’t a bug, they’re a feature,” he said.

The president on Thursday renewed his call for Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Biden credited the American Rescue Plan and his ambitious vaccination program with jump-starting a U.S. economy battered by the Covid pandemic.

The bill passed with no Republican votes, but several Republicans later sought to take credit for it with their constituents despite having voted against it.

“I’m not going to embarrass anyone, but I have here a list of who, back in their districts, they’re bragging about the rescue plan,” said Biden, holding up a list of Republicans who touted the relief funding.

“I mean, some people have no shame,” he added. “I’m happy they know that it benefited their constituents, that’s okay with me. But if you are going to try to take credit for what we’ve done, don’t get in the way of what we still need to do.”

As Biden seeks to build support for more than $3 trillion in additional economic stimulus programs, Republican opposition is solidifying.

As the economy improves, conservatives are arguing that Biden’s proposed stimulus is no longer necessary.

Private sector wages rose 3% in the first quarter of this year, the fastest pace in at least 25 years, according to economist Mark Zandi. This has made it harder for employers to attract workers willing to work for minimum hourly wages.

“We want to get something economists call full employment, where instead of workers competing with each other for jobs that are scarce, we want employers to compete to attract workers,” Biden said.

Biden rejected the growing alarm among some businesses and economists that higher wages and full employment will lead to runaway inflation. Instead, he said, corporations can afford to pay workers more without passing on higher prices to consumers.

“A lot of companies have done extremely well in this crisis, and good for them,” he said. “The simple fact is, though, corporate profits are the highest they’ve been in decades. Workers’ pay is at the lowest it’s been in 70 years. We have more than ample room to raise worker pay without raising customer prices.”

In addition to supporting higher wages, Biden pressed for a corporate tax increase to 28%, revenue he will need to fund his ambitious infrastructure proposal. The American Jobs Plan proposes to spend around $2 trillion over the next decade revitalizing the country’s infrastructure and manufacturing sector.

The president also made it clear that he sees these tax hikes as more than just a necessary evil to fund his big plans: They’re a key part of reestablishing a sense of shared responsibility and shared burden across the American economy.

“We have a chance to seize the economic momentum of the first months of my administration, not just to build back, but to build back better,” he said. “And this time we’re going to deal everyone in.”