Month: May 2021

Categories
Business

Senate Poised to Cross $195 Billion Invoice to Bolster Competitiveness With China

Senate Poised to Pass $195 Billion Bill to Bolster Competitiveness With China

WASHINGTON – The Senate was on the verge of passing an expansive bill on Thursday to lead research and development into scientific innovation and fuel the first major government foray into industrial policy in decades to strengthen competitiveness with China.

Driven by growing fears from members of both parties that the United States will lose its lead over China and other authoritarian governments that have invested heavily in developing cutting-edge technologies, the measure would put around $ 195 billion in research in a wide variety of areas Flow sectors, including manufacturing and semiconductor industries.

The widespread support for the move reflected the bipartisan urgency to act amid a pandemic that has exposed Beijing’s bottleneck in critical supply chains, including a global semiconductor shortage that has shut down American auto factories and slowed consumer electronics shipments.

“If we don’t improve our game now, we will fall behind the rest of the world,” said New York Senator Chuck Schumer, majority leader and author of the bill. “That is what this legislation is ultimately about. Raise the ship. We invest in science and technology so that we can over-innovate, over-produce, and compete in the industries of the future, some of which we know and some of which we don’t know. “

The move, the result of a collaboration between Mr. Schumer and Indiana Republican Senator Todd Young, came together when a series of political changes produced a rare moment of consensus on the issue.

Mr Schumer, one of the Democratic Party’s fiercest China hawks in decades, was personally determined to use his new status as majority leader to enforce laws against Beijing. And a growing number of Republicans, led by former President Donald J. Trump, have put aside their party’s ancient orthodoxy against government interference in the economy and embraced the idea of ​​aggressive measures to help American companies compete with an emerging rival.

The legislation would prop up the struggling semiconductor industry by providing emergency funding for a $ 52 billion subsidy program while pouring hundreds of billions more into American scientific research and development pipelines, creating new grants, and agreements between private companies and research universities promotes to promote these breakthroughs in new technology.

However, it was unclear whether the bill – the popularity of which made it a magnet for industry lobbyists and legislators’ priorities for pets – could achieve its ambitious goals. A frenzied round of haggling watered down the legislation and reduced the amount of money for a concentrated center for research and development on new technologies from $ 100 billion to $ 29 billion. Instead, lawmakers have shifted much of that funding to the National Science Foundation’s traditional mission of basic research and laboratories in the Energy Department, rather than the new technology initiative.

The move was also weighed down by parish projects launched to gain broader support, including a new round of funding for NASA with terms likely to benefit Jeff Bezos’ space venture, a ban on the sale of shark fins, and a mandate for Identification of the country of origin for king crabs. At around 11:00 p.m. on Wednesday evening, the Senate added, with almost no debate, a section that would double the budget of the Agency for Advanced Defense Research Projects, a Pentagon research agency.

Hours before the legislation was due to be passed, the Senators were still drafting key components, such as a major trade measure that would re-approve an obsolete provision allowing the temporary suspension of tariffs on certain products imported into the United States. It would also direct the United States sales agent to negotiate forced labor and critical minerals agreements.

Mr Young, who made no secret of his disappointment over some changes to the measure at a recent hearing, said in an interview Thursday that the legislation is still “a significant increase in the funds we will see for applied research. ”

“We will be able to serve as a force multiplier in our efforts to counter China’s evil influence and activities,” he said.

Even so, partisan clashes plagued the legislation at the last minute after the Republicans. Fearing they would not have another chance to pass laws related to China, they urged Democrats to include more of their proposals.

At a closed lunch on Wednesday, Republicans tried to convince their colleagues to delay the passage of the bill. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana argued that the process should be slowed down and nudged Mr. Schumer: The majority leader was moving as fast as if “walking around like a five-year-old in a Batman costume on Halloween,” Mr. Kennedy said by two people familiar with his remarks.

The Democrats had voted on more than a dozen Republican amendments, but a filibuster’s threat to block the legislation sparked one final round of closed-door haggling when leaders put out a 15-minute procedural vote for four hours.

Strong Republican support for the bill – particularly related to the decision to send $ 52 billion to chipmakers and fund a program created by Congress last year – was a paradigm shift in the party as Chinese hawks soar in Congress increasingly federal interventions in support of American manufacturing supported.

Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio went to the Senate hours before the vote, praising the results “the government and business partnership to resolve an urgent crisis of national concern” had produced during the pandemic, citing the rapid development of vaccines.

“When it comes to research and development technology, this is perhaps the greatest requirement that lies ahead of us,” he said. “The 21st century is determined by this contest between China and the United States, and it is a contest that we simply cannot win if we do not step forward and achieve it.”

Mr Rubio tried on Thursday to add stricter counter-espionage measures to the law, warning that it would be pointless to spend billions of dollars on research “if we allowed the Chinese to steal it”. However, this move did not earn the 60 votes required to be added to the bill.

To connect manufacturing centers and research universities in the United States, the legislation would allocate $ 10 billion to create regional technology centers to strengthen public-private partnerships and support emerging researchers and other workers.

“America’s technology-based economy needs all kinds of skilled workers, and the EFA will make sure we have them,” said the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a group that campaigned for the law, in a statement using the acronym for the Endless Frontier Act.

The bill also contains a foreign policy roadmap for future engagement in China. She called on the Biden government to sanction those responsible for forced labor practices in and around Xinjiang and the Chinese government’s campaign against systematic rape and forced sterilization against the Uighur minorities in the region.

Approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this piece of legislation includes measures to combat intellectual property violations and calls for a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

Emily Cochrane and Nicholas Fandos report.

Categories
Health

You Can Bid on NFTs Tied to Nobel Prize-Profitable Discoveries

You Can Bid on NFTs Tied to Nobel Prize-Winning Discoveries

How much will someone be willing to pay for a few pages of quarter-century-old bureaucratic university paperwork that have been turned into a blockchain-encoded piece of digital art?

The University of California, Berkeley, hopes quite a bit, and it is about to find out.

Berkeley announced on Thursday that it will auction the first of two digital art pieces known as nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, next week. The object being offered is based on a document called an invention and technology disclosure. That’s the form that researchers at Berkeley fill out to alert the university about discoveries that have potential to be turned into lucrative patents.

The title of the invention, from 1996, is “Blockade of T-Lymphocyte Down-Regulation Associated with CTLA-4 Signalling.”

The university hopes that potential bidders will be attracted to an early description of a revolutionary approach to treating cancer developed by James P. Allison, then a professor at Berkeley. He found a way to turn off the immune system’s aversion to attacking tumors and he showed that it worked in mice.

That advance eventually led to the creation of Yervoy, a drug for the treatment of metastatic melanoma, and Dr. Allison, who is now at the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2018.

Thus, the Berkeley disclosure form could be thought of as the scientific equivalent of Mickey Mantle’s rookie baseball card — a memento of the beginnings of greatness.

“I think of it almost as a history of science artifact,” said Richard K. Lyons, the chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer at Berkeley. “Imagine somebody saying, ‘I want to own the NFTs for the 10 most important scientific discoveries of my lifetime.’”

A 24-hour auction of the NFT of Dr. Allison’s invention disclosure will take place as early as June 2 using Foundation, an NFT auction marketplace that uses Ethereum, the cryptocurrency network of choice for NFT collectors.

Eighty-five percent of the proceeds will go to Berkeley to finance research, the remainder to Foundation. If the piece is later resold, Berkeley will receive 10 percent of the sale and Foundation 5 percent.

Because the making of an NFT requires a lot of computing power, part of the money the university earns from the NFT sale will be used for carbon offsets to compensate for the energy consumed, Berkeley officials said.

The second NFT that Berkeley plans to auction in the coming weeks will be the disclosure form describing the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing invention by Jennifer A. Doudna, a professor of molecular and cell biology at Berkeley. She shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens for their work on the technique.

NFTs have become trendy collectibles in recent months. A unique code embedded in a digital image or video serves as a record of its authenticity and is stored on a blockchain, the same technology that underlies digital currencies like Bitcoin. NFTs can then be bought and sold, just like baseball cards, and the blockchain ensures they cannot be deleted or counterfeited.

A dizzying array of documents, far beyond traditional works of art, have been sold as NFTs. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, sold an NFT of his first tweet for $2.9 million. Kevin Roose, a New York Times columnist, sold an NFT of his article about NFTs for more than half a million dollars. (The money went to The Times’s Neediest Cases Fund.)

The pages of Dr. Allison’s disclosure form, drawn from the Berkeley archives, make for mostly dry reading. There is a July 11, 1995, letter from Carol Mimura, a licensing associate at Berkeley, thanking Dr. Allison for contacting the university’s office of technology licensing and asking him to fill out some forms. Another page includes Berkeley’s patent policy.

The documents reflect quaintly archaic technologies used in the mid-1990s — typewriters, fax machines and handwritten notes. “I am scrambling to protect patentable matter before late July,” reads a memo from Dr. Mimura, now the assistant vice chancellor for intellectual property and industry research alliances.

A fax from Dr. Allison to Dr. Mimura includes a simple chart with three lines and 21 data points. “Carol — This is the data that has got us excited,” Dr. Allison has scribbled.

His research group was experimenting with colon cancer in mice, and blocking CTLA-4 — a protein receptor that acts as an on-off switch for the immune system — “led to the rejection of the tumor in 5/5 mice,” Dr. Allison wrote.

Until now, these forms, filed away, unseen, have had no value, Dr. Allison concedes.

“That very first exposure to the world is sort of like, ‘This is the invention disclosure,’” he said. “But once they’ve served that purpose, historically, they get no attention.”

The NFT idea was the brainchild of Michael Alvarez Cohen, director of innovation ecosystem development in Berkeley’s intellectual property office. He said part of the idea came after the publication of “The Code Breaker” by Walter Isaacson, a biography of Dr. Doudna. His friends and relatives told him that they had not known that much of the gene editing technology had originated at Berkeley.

“So I was kind of like, ‘Maybe we should post excerpts from the invention disclosure to help promote this,’” he said.

At the same time, he was following news about blockchain and NFTs.

“Then about a month ago, I put the two together,” Mr. Cohen said. Take the invention disclosures about Nobel-winning research like CRISPR, turn them into NFTs, “and drive awareness and also fund research by auctioning the NFTs.”

He sat on the idea for a while.

“I come up with a lot of ideas,” Mr. Cohen said. “Some of them are bone-headed and everything.”

Just over two weeks ago, he started discussing it with his colleagues, and quickly a plan fell into place. In addition to CRISPR, they decided to highlight Dr. Allison’s work.

The Allison NFT is more than a simple digital document. “It’s a combination of a lab notebook and digital art,” Mr. Cohen said. A single image includes 10 pages but one can zoom in and read the documents. “I really wanted to preserve the ability to read the history in addition to viewing the beauty of the image,” he said.

The designers of the NFT also included subtle nods to the initial resistance to Dr. Allison’s ideas. The pages are all slightly tilted, because “people looked at him askew,” Mr. Cohen said. “There’s a lot of little things like that in the art.”

Dr. Lyons was reluctant to predict how much the artwork would fetch at auction. “I’d be surprised if it went for less than $100,000,” he said. “It could go into seven figures. This is a new category, and it’s hard to price anything that is a new category.”

Categories
Entertainment

Chief of Individuals for the Arts Retires After Office Complaints

Leader of Americans for the Arts Retires After Workplace Complaints

Robert L. Lynch, the longtime president and chief executive of the Washington-based advocacy organization Americans for the Arts who had been on paid leave since December amid workplace complaints, has agreed to retire effective immediately, the organization’s board announced Thursday.

“Bob has dedicated his life to the arts, in particular increasing access to the arts for everyone,” the board’s statement said, “and we know he will continue to be a passionate advocate for many years to come.”

The board did not say whether Mr. Lynch had received a severance package.

Mr. Lynch, 71, had voluntarily stepped aside late last year while investigations into the organization’s equity and diversity practices and workplace management were ongoing. Those investigations have now concluded, the board’s statement said, though it did not disclose the findings.

He will be succeeded by Nolen Bivens, a retired Army brigadier general and former board member who had led the organization since December. Mr. Bivens helped found the National Initiative for Arts & Health Across the Military, which provides access to creative arts therapies at military clinical sites across the country.

Before he went on leave on Dec. 16, Mr. Lynch had led AFTA for more than three decades. He served on the Biden-Harris transition team for the arts and humanities and was a prominent advocate for resources for nonprofit organizations. His annual compensation package exceeded $900,000, according to the organization’s tax filings.

Mr. Lynch was criticized by a number of current and former AFTA employees and advisory council members late last year, who called out the organization for falling short with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion. Several complainants also said they had been sexually harassed while they worked at AFTA, and said the organization had a management culture rooted in intimidation.

Critics had called for Mr. Lynch to resign from the organization, because, they said, he had long been unresponsive to the issues they raised. As calls grew for AFTA to diversify its leadership and better serve creative communities and artists of color, Mr. Lynch publicly defended the group’s actions, and vowed to do better.

AFTA said in December that it would be the subject of two independent investigations: one related to the work environment, and one focused on AFTA’s policies and procedures surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion. Those have now concluded, though the board did not say when or if it plans to release the findings.

Caitlin Strokosch, the president and chief executive of the National Performance Network, a group of artists and organizations that campaign for racial and cultural justice, said in an email on Thursday that while Mr. Lynch’s resignation had been a positive step, the “toxic practices of supremacy culture” remain within the organization he built. She criticized AFTA for declining to share the findings of the investigations.

“Americans for the Arts had an opportunity for truth-telling,” she said, “and has instead chosen a path that seeks to sweep their practices under the rug, to reject transparency, and to bank on the status quo to keep them in power.”

Categories
Politics

Jamie Dimon is skeptical of Biden’s minimal international company tax price

Jamie Dimon is skeptical of Biden's minimum global corporate tax rate

JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon testifies during a US House Financial Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, June 19, 2012, about JPMorgan Chase’s trading loss.

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Citigroup chief Jane Fraser on Thursday expressed concerns over President Joe Biden’s effort to hike the amount of taxes businesses pay on foreign profits and a concurrent goal to set a global minimum corporate tax rate.

Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, Dimon argued that a plan to raise the U.S. tax rate on foreign profits to 21% could, over time, push firms to move business overseas. Dimon thinks that shift could accelerate if allies renege on their promises to impose a similar global minimum tax rate.

“America would be the only country, I think, in the world that would have what we call a global tax rate,” he said, referring to the proposed 21% rate on U.S. companies’ foreign income.

“There’s no question in my mind that, at the margin … that will drive capital and, eventually, brains and R&D and investment overseas,” he said. “And that would be a mistake for America.”

Fraser, Citigroup’s new CEO, concurred, adding that “it’s very hard to get other countries to sign on to an equivalent program despite some optimism.”

“I think that will be extremely difficult,” she continued. “And, therefore, it could put the U.S. in a position of being less competitive around the world.”

The commentary from two of the nation’s top bankers came as the Biden administration continued to seek international support for a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15%.

CNBC Politics

Read more of CNBC’s politics coverage:

The Treasury Department, which has taken the lead in trying to persuade Germany, France and others to back the plan, contends that a universal floor on corporate tax rates would allow governments to more effectively generate tax revenue.

Neither the White House nor the Treasury Department wished to comment on the record.

The current system, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, incentives countries to offer lower effective corporate rates over time in a “race to the bottom” to lure corporations across geographies.

But Dimon and others have expressed doubts over any chance of long-term success in persuading U.S. peers to adhere to a global minimum at 15% or any other level, especially when it may be more lucrative for governments to cheat the system by offering backdoor incentives or flouting the agreement entirely.

A JPMorgan spokesperson explained that the concern is that the U.S. would adopt a relatively high tax on foreign income, at 21%, only for foreign partners to shirk their own tax promises. That scenario could put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage and encourage the offshoring of factories, profits and workers.

The Treasury Department has reiterated that the 15% proposal should be thought of as a sort-of floor and that subsequent talks could eventually push it higher. That, in theory, could work to reduce a tax disadvantage.

That the White House is keen to coax others into a global minimum tax isn’t necessarily a surprise given the amount of spending it wants to see to achieve its agenda priorities.

Its American Jobs Plan, an infrastructure-focused proposal, would funnel $2.3 trillion over a decade into traditional infrastructure as well as toward scientific innovation, pay for home health aides and the construction of 500,000 electric-vehicle charging stations.

The GOP countered with its own version Thursday, a more modest $928 billion proposal with a greater emphasis on “hard” infrastructure like roads, bridges and public transit.

The White House also hopes to enact the American Families Plan, a $1.8 trillion piece of legislation aimed at funding for social programs like paid family leave, free early childhood education and free community college. 

Biden’s economic team says its Made In America tax plan would help cover the costs of both bills. Broadly, that tax plan seeks fortify the IRS and crack down on tax evasion, raise the amount the wealthiest households pay on capital gains, and hike the rate U.S. businesses pay on domestic profits to 28%.

President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts reduced the U.S. corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%. 

The bank CEOs appeared on Wednesday before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

One testy exchange from that hearing came between Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Dimon. Warren accused JPMorgan Chase, and the other consumer banks, of not doing enough to communicate to its customers about relaxation of certain overdraft fee rules during the coronavirus outbreak.

Dimon countered that the bank had accommodated customers who had made qualifying overdraft fee waiver requests and that the bank would not be refunding billions it collected in such fees in 2020.

Categories
Business

Mondelez CEO calls $2 billion Chipita acquisition a win for each corporations

Mondelez CEO calls $2 billion Chipita acquisition a win for both companies

Dirk Van de Put, CEO of Mondelez, described the latest acquisition on Thursday as a “win win” for both companies involved in the deal.

The oreo maker announced on Wednesday that it had acquired Chipita, a Greek company whose croissants and baked snacks contributed to sales of $ 580 million last year. The purchase will give Mondelez back approximately $ 2 billion, which will be funded through new debt issuance and existing cash on hand.

“We can use their sales and presence to build our sales, but also to bring our brands to their products,” Van de Put told CNBC’s Jim Cramer about Mad Money. “Imagine a Cadbury chocolate or Milka chocolate croissant.”

Van De Put said that while Chipita’s products are mostly popular in Eastern Europe, they have growth potential around the world, particularly in emerging markets.

“I think it’s a real win-win,” he said.

Mondelez’s shares are up 8% this year for a market value of $ 89.2 billion.

Categories
Business

With gross sales rebounding, Hole sees its post-pandemic future outdoors malls.

With sales rebounding, Gap sees its post-pandemic future outside malls.

Old Navy, the company’s biggest brand, brought in $7.5 billion in revenue last year globally, while Athleta, which caters to women, is the company’s highest-margin business. Athleta’s first-quarter sales surged 56 percent from the same period in 2019.

Ms. Syngal was appointed chief executive of Gap in March 2020 just as the pandemic hit and has been trying to chart the retailer’s path forward. Before she became the top executive, Gap was planning to spin off Old Navy into a separate company. Now, it’s focusing on expanding its four $1 billion-plus brands and shedding distractions. It recently agreed to sell its Janie and Jack and Intermix chains.

Even as Gap and Banana Republic shrink their physical footprints, the brands plan to have more than 800 combined locations in North America. Both have been working toward revivals, with Gap planning a highly anticipated collaboration with Kanye West for a new clothing line called Yeezy Gap. Executives have said that would be available in the first half of 2021, but Ms. Syngal declined to confirm the timing: “We’re going to let Yeezy reveal the exact date.”

“We are pleased with the creative process that we’re seeing with Yeezy, and as we said, creativity really takes time,” she said. “I’m staying very, very close to it, and think that the planning that we’re doing is really about this multiyear potential — it’s not a one drop and done. We’re planning for multiyear growth.”

Ms. Syngal said that the Gap brand was “healthy and growing and cool,” and that Banana Republic was also seeing a recovery after taking a hit last year as customers worked from home and sales at urban locations fell.

“Banana certainly had challenges unique to Covid, between occasion wear and work wear,” she said. “Now that we’re getting past that in North America, we’re really pleased with the customer response.”

Broadly, Ms. Syngal said, there is a “peacocking effect” among shoppers, who are seeking bold and colorful clothing.

Categories
Health

FDA official says coronary heart challenge presumably linked to pictures is uncommon

FDA official says heart issue possibly linked to shots is rare

A healthcare worker administers a dose of a Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to a child at a pediatrician’s office in Bingham Farms, Michigan, U.S., on Wednesday, May 19, 2021.

Emily Elconin | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A heart inflammation condition in adolescents and young adults who received Covid-19 vaccines appears to be very rare and it remains unclear if the issue is actually related to the shots, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulator, Dr. Peter Marks, said Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine safety group said last week it was looking into a condition called myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart muscle, in a “relatively few” people who received Covid vaccinations.

Myocarditis can affect one’s heart muscle and heart electrical system, “reducing its ability to pump and causing rapid or abnormal heart rhythms,” according to the Mayo Clinic.

The cases were predominantly in adolescents and young adults and usually occurred within four days after getting the shot, according to the CDC. The condition was seen more often in men and most cases appear to be mild, the agency said, though officials are following up with the patients.

“We still don’t know whether this is truly related to the vaccine,” Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said during a virtual Q&A event with the COVID-19 Vaccine Education and Equity Project.

The CDC is coordinating its investigation with the FDA, which recently authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for adolescents ages 12 to 15. The vaccine has been available for Americans 16 and up since December. Vaccines from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are available to those 18 and older.

Health experts say finding rare side effects once a vaccine or drug is administered to the general population is common and if myocarditis turns out to be related to the Covid vaccine, the risk is negligible when compared with the risks of being infected with Covid-19.

Marks, who has been at the FDA for nearly a decade, added Thursday that the “handful” of cases reported have been “very mild, lasting a day or two” and usually happened after a second dose.

“My kids are a little older, but I wouldn’t hesitate to vaccinate my children, just because this is a pretty rare finding and we really don’t know yet if it’s truly related” to the vaccines, he said.

Categories
World News

Salesforce (CRM) earnings Q1 2022

Salesforce (CRM) earnings Q1 2022

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Salesforce stock rose 3% in expanded trading on Thursday after the cloud software maker posted a profit in the first quarter that exceeded analysts’ expectations.

This is how the company did it:

  • Merits: According to Refinitiv, $ 1.21 per share, adjusted down from 88 cents per share as analysts expected.
  • Revenue: According to Refinitiv, $ 5.96 billion versus $ 5.89 billion as analysts expected.

Revenue was up 23% year over year for the quarter that ended April 30, the company said in a statement. In the previous quarter, sales rose by 20%.

The Platform and Other segment, which includes MuleSoft and Tableau products, currently Salesforce’s top segment for subscription and support revenue, contributed $ 1.75 billion to revenue, up 28%.

Salesforce’s core Salesforce product, which sales reps use to pursue business opportunities, had sales of $ 1.39 billion, up 11%.

In the quarter, Salesforce acquired Acumen Solutions, a professional services company, and announced voice capabilities for its Service Cloud offering. The company said over 150 government agencies and health organizations used its software to manage vaccine distribution.

Turning to the projections, Salesforce sees adjusted earnings per share of 91 to 92 cents for the second quarter on revenue of $ 6.22 to $ 6.23 billion. Analysts polled by Refinitiv were looking for adjusted earnings per share of 86 cents and sales of $ 6.15 billion.

Salesforce called for adjusted earnings per share of $ 3.79 to $ 3.81 and revenue of $ 25.9 to $ 26.0 billion for the full fiscal year 2022. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv agreed that adjusted earnings per share were $ 3.43 and revenue was $ 25.76 billion.

Despite the post-close shift, Salesforce stock is up less than 2% since the start of the year, while the S&P 500 index is up nearly 12% over the same period.

Morgan Stanley analysts upgraded their rating on Salesforce stock to the equivalent of buying versus the equivalent of holding earlier this month. “While concerns about the appetite for mergers and acquisitions and permanent margin expansion remain, leading franchisees are not staying cheap for long, especially given the strong demand we anticipate over the next few years,” they write.

Executives will discuss the results with analysts in a conference call starting at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time.

This is the latest news. Please try again.

CLOCK: Jim Cramer on Nvidia, Salesforce and Williams-Sonoma

Categories
Business

‘Cruella’ critiques: What critics are saying

'Cruella' reviews: What critics are saying

Emma Stone stars as Cruella de Vil in Disney’s “Cruella.”

Disney

The critics are as split on “Cruella” as the main character’s iconic black-and-white hair.

For some, the campy, fashion-fueled manic fever dream of a film is a delight. For others, it’s a tangled, loud mess that doesn’t quite justify the cost of a movie ticket or the $30 Disney+ Premiere Access fee.

“Cruella” follows the life of Estella, a curious, rambunctious and creative young girl who doesn’t quite fit into the world. Her mother warns her not to let the “Cruella” side of her personality get the better of her, but it lurks and arrives in full-force a decade later.

After a tragedy leaves Estella orphaned and alone on the streets of London, the young girl teams up with two other street urchins, Jasper and Horace, to survive in the world by pickpocketing and small-time thieving.

A decade later, the trio is still working together, but Estella’s dream of becoming a fashion designer hasn’t waned. She is played by a fiercely committed Emma Stone, who embodies the “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” villain, mimicking her iconic chuckle and crazed driving with glee.

Through a twist of fate, Estella lands a job working for a legendary designer known as the Baroness, who is played with horrible delight by Emma Thompson. The two characters clash, leading Estella to embrace her Cruella side and transition into a ruthless competitor to the Baroness.

As of Thursday afternoon, “Cruella” holds a 72% Fresh rating on review site Rotten Tomatoes from 156 reviews.

Here’s what critics thought of “Cruella” ahead of its debut in theaters and on Disney+ Premiere Access on Friday:

Moira Macdonald, The Seattle Times

“Imagine ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ on steroids, set in ’70s London, with Anne Hathaway’s character vengeful rather than sweet. Sounds kind of great, right?” Moira Macdonald wrote in her review of “Cruella” for The Seattle Times.

Macdonald praised the film for its wild imagination and the chemistry between Stone and Thompson, who spend the majority of the film at odds with each other.

She called Stone’s “dark-syrup” British accent “slightly feral and wickedly smart,” a foil to the Baroness’ drawl and withering retorts.

“‘Cruella’ is an absolute kick, and if you’ve been looking for a reason to go back to movie theaters, here it is,” Macdonald wrote.

Read the full review from Seattle Times.

Emma Stone stars in Disney’s “Cruella.”

Disney

A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“‘Cruella’ is a tame revenge story among a slate of recent tales of retribution that include ‘Joker,’ and “Promising Young Woman.”

“Cruella’s transgressive energies are kept within the bounds of social acceptability and the PG-13 rating,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review of the film for The New York Times. “Her motive is revenge, and her methods include fraud, theft and deceit, but the closest she comes to evil is occasional selfish insensitivity to her friends. She isn’t a monster. She’s an artist, and her theatrically outrageous misbehavior is a sign of her uncompromising creativity.”

Scott noted that the film is “easy enough to watch but hard to care much about.”

Read the full review from The New York Times.

Katie Rife, AV Club

Set in the ’70s, “Cruella” leans heavily into the punk world, drawing inspiration from the period for its fashion and music. For some, the musical cues, which includes “Sympathy for the Devil,” were a little too on the nose, but others found the playlist of era-accurate songs to be a fitting tribute to the time period.

“There are 37 pop tunes sprinkled throughout ‘Cruella,’ culminating with the most obvious song you can think of for a character whose last name is de Vil and for whom we feel sympathy,” said Katie Rife in her review of the film for AV Club.

“The soundtrack includes the likes of The Zombies, Nancy Sinatra, David Bowie, The Clash, ELO, Rose Royce, Blondie, Doris Day, Suzi Quatro, Nina Simone, and Deep Purple, all tastefully chosen but not especially revelatory,” she wrote. “Many of these songs have been used in other films, for one, and few are deep enough cuts to prompt much excitement from adult music lovers.”

Read the full review from AV Club.

Emma Stone stars as Cruella de Vil in Disney’s “Cruella.”

Disney

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times

“We’re not even halfway through the Disney villain origins story ‘Cruella’ when this much is clear: If this movie DOESN’T win Academy Awards for best makeup and hairstyling and best costume design, I can’t wait to see what tops it,” wrote Richard Roeper in his review of the film for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Roeper is one of many movie reviewers that discussed the film’s exquisite costuming in his evaluation of Disney’s latest live-action remake. He called the film a “visual feast.”

“Reynolds Woodcock from ‘The Phantom Thread’ would pass out from the sheer overwhelming number of scenes involving fashion design, discussion of fashion design, more fashion design — and pop-up fashion events taking place during traditional fashion events,” he wrote. “This is a VERY fashionable film.”

Read the full review from the Chicago Sun Times.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal owns Rotten Tomatoes.

Categories
Politics

Biden’s Silence on Abortion Rights at a Key Second Worries Liberals

Biden’s Silence on Abortion Rights at a Key Moment Worries Liberals

However, as a presidential candidate, Mr. Biden was far less vocal than many of his rivals in the primary, including Vice President Kamala Harris, who compared an Alabama law effectively prohibiting abortion to “a scene from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale'”.

“If you look at him as a Catholic and his attendance at Mass and the way he looks at life and death and everything else, he is culturally 1,000 percent Catholic,” said Jo Renee Formicola, professor of political science at Seton Hall University, who describes the relationship between investigated by the Catholic Church and American lawmakers. “He’s very, very Catholic, but when it comes to being political he’s a lot more pragmatic than Catholic.”

In office, Mr Biden reversed several Trump administration policies, including removing restrictions on abortion pills, lifting a ban on federally funded medical research using fetal tissue from abortions, and lifting restrictions on funding for U.S. and U.S.A. international groups that offer abortion services or referrals.

Some abortion advocates say these early steps are neglected. In his joint address to Congress, the threat to abortion rights was not mentioned, but only incidentally referred to “protecting the health of women”. Ms. Harris, who was once fairly open on the matter, has made no significant comments since taking office.

“The scale of the crisis calls for stronger leadership,” said Kelley Robinson, executive director of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “We want them to be explicit advocates of sexual and reproductive health care and use this bullying pulpit to make sure this is a priority expressed by the highest office in the country.”

Many proponents consider the president’s budget for fiscal year 2022, due to be released on Friday, to be a key indicator of the government’s position. Reproductive rights organizations urge Mr. Biden to keep his promise to remove the Hyde Amendment and other restrictions on federal funds.

His administration has also urged Congress to codify abortion rights that would guarantee reproductive rights nationwide even if the Supreme Court overthrew Roe. However, it has not proposed any specific legislation or outlined a strategy to get such a bill through Congress.