Month: May 2021

Health

Provide chains could return to China amid Covid resurgence in India, Vietnam

Post author By
Post date May 25, 2021

The Covid-19 resurgence in some parts of Asia could lead to a change in fortunes for China, according to an economist.

Previously, the U.S.-China trade war caused companies to move their supply chains out of China, shifting their production and distribution networks for products and services. As a result, countries like Vietnam and India benefited as companies moved to set up shop in their countries.

But the situation appears to be changing, and supply chains could pivot back to China as cases spike in India and Vietnam, according to Zhang Zhiwei, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.

individuals use social media to seek out hospitals, drugs

Post author By
Post date May 25, 2021

Pandemic far from over despite vaccinations

A healthcare worker wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) looks after a Covid-19 patient at a Covid-19 care center set up in the Shehnai Banquet Hall and at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital (LNJP ), one of the largest COVID-19 institutions.

Naveen Sharma | SOPA pictures | LightRocket | Getty Images

As India’s devastating second wave of the coronavirus outbreak overwhelmed the healthcare system, desperate users turned to social media to seek help from the public as hospital beds and oxygen supplies became scarce.

People who need help for themselves or their relatives have made inquiries on websites like Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Others gathered information about hospital bed availability, as well as contact details for oxygen cylinder providers and other scarce resources. In many cases, the efforts have helped save lives.

“Quite often we just hear one very dystopian social media narrative in which political polarization is increasing and causing deep levels of social harm,” said Apar Gupta, executive director of Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital freedom organization in India, told CNBC.

“But social media also has the potential to bring people together,” he said, explaining why it is important to fight for the right kind of incentive-based system design and algorithmic accountability when it comes to social media.

“I think this Covid disaster, which continues in India, shows the promise that social media can be used as a tool for organizing relief supplies and calling for greater political accountability at all levels – from our health officials to decision-makers who Set budgets, “said Gupta.

Social media cannot replace the core responsibility of the state to help citizens in times of crisis.

Ankur bisen

Technopak consultant

#CovidSOS

Twitter hashtags like #CovidSOS and #CovidEmergency became popular with users searching for hospital beds, ventilators, and oxygen bottles. The retweet feature helped expand their inquiries.

Strangers banded together to help each other through the unprecedented crisis.

Volunteers have gathered up-to-date information in Google Sheets, which is widely shared on social platforms.

Some have set up websites to track vaccine availability while others have created apps that generate Twitter search links that users can use to find Covid-19 resources in their cities. Many people also volunteered to prepare homemade meals for patients who were quarantined at home while others offered help with tasks such as grocery shopping.

For its part, Twitter has added a Covid-19 resource page to improve the visibility of information.

Social media influencers, celebrities, and politicians also participated in the crowdsourcing effort. Some of them helped organize beds and oxygen bottles as India’s daily caseload rose in April and early May.

Although Twitter has become the most visible social media platform in India’s crowdsourcing efforts due to its ability to amplify inquiries and tag influencers and politicians, Gupta said other platforms have been used extensively as well.

He said volunteers also came together in WhatsApp groups to focus on more detailed communities like housing associations and alumni groups. Gen-Z – or those born between 1996 and early 2010 – and younger millennials turned to Instagram, he said.

Daily cases in India have peaked at more than 414,000 new infections per day, which was reached on May 7th. However, experts say the virus is spreading in rural India, where health infrastructure is not prepared for unexpected surges.

On Twitter, which has a greater impact in the urban centers of India compared to rural areas, users have already started gathering resources and initiatives to respond to the outbreak in India’s countryside.

Deficiencies in the Indian health system

Users who turned to social media for help also reflected how ill-prepared the Indian health system was to respond to a sudden response Increase in cases. Growing case numbers and rising death tolls exposed the deep-seated problems that persist in the Indian health system after decades of neglect and underinvestment.

“Social media cannot replace the core responsibility of the state to help citizens in times of crisis,” Ankur Bisen, senior vice president of Indian management consultancy Technopak Advisors, told CNBC. It can only act as a complementary channel and not replace the core functions of the state such as disaster management and health care, he said.

Bisen added that in this case, social media is the only option for many as the other media are lacking – this only poorly reflects how central and state governments are struggling to cope with the Covid-19 crisis, he said .

“The state often has to deal with disasters and ensure that it communicates and comforts the citizens, that the state is watching their backs, which it has not done here,” Bisen said. He added that social media “is always a complementary medium and can never be the main driver in managing disasters”.

Gupta of the Internet Freedom Foundation said some of the volunteers had been threatened by the authorities for their informal and legal efforts.

Local media reported last month that some Covid-19 aid groups that provided hospital beds and oxygen information through messaging apps like WhatsApp, Discord and Telegram had been disbanded, while some online resource trackers were deleted.

Volunteers complained about police threats demanding their closure – but police have denied making such demands. In Uttar Pradesh, the BBC reported that police had charged a man who tried to use Twitter to find oxygen for his dying grandfather.

The Supreme Court of India reportedly said there should be no crackdown when people voice their complaints on issues such as lack of oxygen and others on social platforms. This came after the federal government, under new regulations, ordered social platforms to cut jobs that were critical to dealing with the pandemic, according to the New York Times.

Social media fraud

Another unfortunate outcome, according to Gupta, was the proliferation of a black market in resources where malicious actors on social media cheated on vulnerable people.

“While social media – Twitter in particular – has broadly mitigated the harmful effects of the current wave, I would say that it has actually saved lives, it has also shown that there is very little tolerance for opinion and expression Freedom of expression exists, “he said.

Additionally, “there are law and order issues that always arise due to social interaction … and certain participants may use them maliciously,” he added.

Gupta added that the efforts of the volunteer groups continue to this day, but state services have also caught up to some extent.

Tags Find, hospitals, media, medicine, people, Social

Politics

$100 million New Jersey deli gross sales elevated in early 2021

Post author By
Post date May 25, 2021

Hometown International, NJ deli owner, worth millions in stock

Sales at this mysterious $ 100 million deli in New Jersey rose nearly a whopping 50% in the first quarter of 2021 – but that was just measly sandwiches, sodas, and fries valued at $ 5,305, a new financial file revealed on Monday.

Losses at deli owner Hometown International also skyrocketed, rising to $ 173,658 in the first three months of this year. That’s about $ 97,000 more in losses than in the same period last year.

The recent filing from Hometown International also highlights a number of previously unreported developments at this strange company.

The moves, like others recently, appear to be designed to clean the house and make the company an attractive takeover candidate for a private company. This seems to be the real reason investors in Hong Kong and Macau have taken large stakes in Hometown International as opposed to the love of selling cheesesteaks.

These developments include the decision not to renew a $ 25,000 per month advisory contract with a Macau-based company that is a major investor in Hometown International. This was based on the company’s quarterly 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This includes the full repayment of two curious $ 150,000 loans to Shell companies made to Shell companies closely linked to the father of Hometown International Chairman and new President Peter Coker Jr.

Hometown International drew attention in mid-April when hedge fund manager David Einhorn stated in a customer letter that the company recently had a market capitalization of more than $ 100 million, despite sales of less in 2019 and 2020 combined than had made $ 37,000 at his Paulsboro restaurant.

CNBC has since detailed the criminal history and government penalties of a number of people linked to the company, as well as other strange details about the deli owner.

Following these articles, Hometown International’s controlling shareholders announced a $ 15,000 monthly advisory agreement with Tryon Capital, a North Carolina company controlled by Peter Coker Sr. who is a major investor in the deli owner.

Hometown International then fired its President Paul Morina, who is daytime principal and head wrestling coach at the nearby Paulsboro High School. The company has also canned its only other senior executive, Christine Lindenmuth, who is an administrator at the same high school.

Both Hometown International and an affiliate Shell company, E-Waste, have declined their sky-high market caps, claiming their stock prices in the over-the-counter market were unfounded on financial grounds.

The 10-Q, which like other filings from the deli owner was delayed by about a week, contains details that are inconsistent for most companies with nearly 8 million common shares outstanding.

The company’s stock closed at $ 12.10 per share on Monday, down 40 cents per share. Only 423 shares changed hands. On paper at least, Hometown International’s market capitalization based on common stock alone is more than $ 97 million, while its intrinsic value, including tens of millions of stocks available through stock warrants, is a whopping $ 1.8 billion .

Among the odd details in the new filing is the fact that the deli had a labor cost of $ 126 in the first quarter.

In the same period a year ago, no labor costs were reported at all.

Revenue, which was just $ 3,577 in the first quarter of 2020, rose to $ 5,305.

“The increase in sales is mainly due to an increase in customers [sic] Visits after our delicatessen reopened as a result of the easing of restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, “the 10-Q file says.

This filing also shows that Hometown International’s advisory agreement with VCH Limited, an investor in the company, expired on April 30th and was “not renewed”.

That deal had paid VCH Limited $ 25,000 a month.

VCH Limited is one of four companies that are major shareholders of Hometown International and whose postal addresses are in Macau, a special administrative region in China.

The 10-Q announcement notes that $ 120,000 of the $ 178,963 in operating expenses for the first quarter was chewed through Hometown International’s advisory agreements with VCH Limited and Tryon Capital.

Filing indicates that by April 14, Hometown International had received full principal payments and over $ 1,000 accrued interest on a $ 150,000 loan to Shell company E-Waste, which works closely with Coker Sr. is connected November.

In a move that reflected Molina’s layoff, John Rollo, president of E-Waste, recently resigned from the company after CNBC published articles on E-Waste, which has no business operations but a market cap of over $ 112 million.

Hometown International loaned $ 150,000 in February to another company affiliated with Coker Sr. – Med Spa Vacations Inc. – which Rollo remains in charge of.

The deli owner’s 10-Q filing reveals that on May 12, “the full principal of the bond and related accrued interest claims of $ 2,250 were paid in full by the debtor,” Med Spa Vacations.

Both loans had an interest rate of 6%.

Tags deli, Early, increased, Jersey, million, sales

Business

‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ to Go away YouTube After NFT Sale

Post author By
Post date May 25, 2021

The original 2007 video “Charlie Bit My Finger,” a standard-bearer of viral internet fascination, has sold as a nonfungible token for $760,999, and the family who created it will take down the original from YouTube for good.

The original video, which has close to 900 million views, features Charlie Davies-Carr, an infant in England, biting the finger of his big brother, Harry Davies-Carr, and then laughing after Harry yells “OWWWW.”

The owner will also be able to create their own parody of the video featuring Charlie and Harry Davies-Carr.

Many duplicates of the video remain online, including one apparently rebranded by the family itself in anticipation of the auction. But the auction allowed bidders to “own the soon-to-be-deleted YouTube phenomenon” and be the “sole owner of this lovable piece of internet history.”

The market for ownership rights to digital art, ephemera and media, known as NFTs, continues to grow and bring attention to widely viewed videos and memes that many people have long forgotten.

NFT buyers are not usually acquiring copyrights, trademarks or the sole ownership of whatever they purchase. They’re mostly bought with the idea that their copy is authentic.

“Disaster Girl,” a meme from a photo of Zoë Roth in 2005 looking at a house on fire in her neighborhood, sold last month in an NFT auction for $500,000. Nyan Cat, an animated flying cat with a Pop-Tart torso that leaves a rainbow trail, sold for roughly $580,000 in February. Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sold as an NFT for more than $2.9 million; a clip of LeBron James blocking a shot in a Lakers basketball game went for $100,000 in January; and an artist sold an NFT of a collage of digital images for $69.3 million, among other headline-grabbing auctions.

During an NFT sale, computers are connected to a cryptocurrency network. They record the transaction on a shared ledger and store it on a blockchain, sealing it as part of a permanent public record and serving as a sort of certification of authenticity that cannot be altered or erased.

There were 11 active bidders in the war for the NFT that was driven mainly between two bidders named 3fmusic and mememaster, who ultimately was outbid by 3fmusic by $45,444. The bidding closed on Sunday.

The impact of the “Charlie Bit My Finger” video continued to be felt several years after it was first posted. It was written into a Gerber spot and a “30 Rock” episode and was the subject of countless parody videos. But it’s still well known for setting off a genre of contagious viral videos.

Howard Davies-Carr, the father of Charlie and Harry, told The New York Times in 2012 that even though he didn’t think of his sons as celebrities, they had nonetheless become a brand. The family was recognized in random places, like on the subway in London.

In an interview with the brothers in 2017 on The Morning, a British talk show, Howard Davies-Carr said he was filming the brothers growing up “just doing normal things” and that Charlie bit his brother’s finger while watching T.V. after a busy day in the garden.

“The video was funny, so I wanted to share it with the boys’ godfather,” Howard Davies-Carr said, adding that their godfather lived in America and that the video was initially private, but people, including his parents, had asked to see it since it was difficult to share, so he made the video public.

A few months later, when the video had at least 10,000 views, Howard Davies-Carr said he almost deleted it. Profits from the video and other opportunities allowed the family to send Charlie, Harry and their two other brothers to private school, said Shelley Davies-Carr, the boys’ mother.

The viral video with humble beginnings, which Charlie and Harry decided to sell, helped Shelley Davies-Carr stop working full-time when her fourth child was born.

“I was just watching TV and just decided to bite him,” Charlie Davies-Carr said in the interview. “He put his finger in my mouth, so I just bit.” Harry Davies-Carr couldn’t remember the pain from that bite.

Tags bit, Charlie, Finger, Leave, NFT, Sale, YouTube

Entertainment

Evaluate: The Charms and Pitfalls of Dancing the Gods on Digital camera

Post author By
Post date May 25, 2021

Since 2011, the World Music Institute’s Dancing the Gods festival has consistently delivered high-quality Indian dance to New York. Last year, like so much else, it was canceled. This year, like so much else, it’s virtual — which means that another stage experience is being mediated by cameras, with all the attendant possibilities and pitfalls.

In at least one respect, classical Indian dance should benefit from the camera’s eye. One of its glories is storytelling, often concentrated in facial expressions — details that close-ups can magnify. But just as a stage actor’s performance pitched to the second balcony can seem too broad, too loud, when it fills a screen, so can a dancer’s.

That’s what I came to feel about Rama Vaidyanathan’s contribution. Vaidyanathan appears on a porch in Delhi, embodying three women in love in three Bharatanatyam pieces titled “Vexed,” “Arrogant” and “Anxious.” (The festival, available on demand for the next three weeks, comes in two installments, each featuring a headliner filmed in India and an opening act who’s a New York local.)

As is common, Vaidyanathan introduces each dance with a synopsis. That’s helpful for those who don’t know the story or language of the accompanying song, but also useful for anyone wanting to track how a simple scenario can be elaborated and expanded into song and dance. Perhaps it was the true-confessions tone of her synopses that put me off. “I knew something was wrong when my friends started behaving strangely with me,” begins one, a story of a woman whose lover kisses and tells, “the worst thing that can happen to a woman.”

Vaidyanathan is a masterful artist, but in the collapsed distance of film, her program’s emphasis on what the text called “feminine wiles” was too much: too much eye-rolling, too much attitude. Only in the final episode, when her character is extolling the beauty of her lover, Krishna, did the dance expand and vibrate with the energy of a god.

In the second program, Surupa Sen appears at Nrityagram, the village in southern India where she has lived and worked for three decades. She, too, offers three solos in her style, Odissi; three poems from the Gita Govinda; three depictions of women in love with gods. But these achieve an immediacy and intimacy suited to the closer view.

The first is a prepandemic stage performance, which shows Sen’s authority in her usual setting. But I preferred the second two: gorgeous compositions choreographed by the Odissi guru Kelucharan Mohapatra and filmed in a cozy dance studio at Nrityagram.

In one, the woman waits in a bower for her lover, adorning herself, and the anticipation, so strong it hurts, comes through in the physicality and rhythms of the dance. If that’s before, the final piece is after, a postcoital scene. Here, the languor and softness of Sen’s performance are very far from the stagy attitudes of Vaidyanathan. The camera captures something close to emotional nakedness.

That’s a gain for a virtual festival, whereas the festival’s opening acts are mostly misfires. In “Willow,” the New Jersey-based Kathak dancer Jin Won goes in for double exposures and crass music reminiscent of a cheap horror film; it buries her skill. In “The Sun Unto a Day,” the Bharatanatyam dancer Sonali Skandan places herself in cyclorama void like the one on “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver”; it exposes her imprecision.

Dancing the Gods

Through June 12 (Program 1) and June 13 (Program 2), worldmusicinstitute.org.

Tags Camera, Charms, Dancing, Gods, Pitfalls, Review

Health

Kids With Covid Inflammatory Syndrome Might Overcome Their Most Critical Signs

Post author By
Post date May 24, 2021

Dr. Newburger, who was not involved in the UK report, called it a “small but important study” that “adds new information to the knowledge gap about the long-term effects of MIS-C”.

They and the authors themselves noted that the results were limited because the children in the study were not compared with a control group of children without MIS-C or those with other diseases. For example, it is unclear whether her emotional problems and muscle weakness were the result of the syndrome, the process of being hospitalized for an illness, or other stressors during that time. “Mental health and physical condition affected children and adolescents in general during the pandemic,” said Dr. Newburger.

Dr. Srinivas Murthy, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of British Columbia who was not involved in the new study, said it may be difficult to figure out which residual problems were directly due to the syndrome and which could result from critical illness. He said the fact that some of the children still had problems with muscle weakness and stamina could bring important lessons as such problems may require different types of care, including “post-hospital rehabilitation options.”

Dr. Penner said the Great Ormond Street Hospital team had made changes to the way they treat children hospitalized with the syndrome since the fall because they recognized “how badly their muscles are initially affected and how much they are tired and these children are weakened. “

In the hospital, for example, “it is extremely difficult for these children to just go from bed to the bathroom,” he said.

The hospital is now more focused on providing hospitalized physiotherapy and working with musculoskeletal therapists to the children, sending them home with a customized rehabilitation plan linked to an app.

“We also involved our occupational therapists and developed a once-a-month fatigue program where parents dial in for a group session,” said Dr. Jerk. “I think the main message we are giving them is to avoid this boom-and-bust cycle where the kids try to do the things they used to do at full speed and then kind of crash afterwards – as opposed to a gradual increase in activity back to its normal state. “

Tags Children, Covid, Inflammatory, Overcome, Symptoms, Syndrome

Business

Lordstown slashes ’21 manufacturing plans, says extra capital wanted

Post author By
Post date May 24, 2021

Lordstown Motors Corp Chief Executive Steve Burns poses with a prototype of the electric vehicle start-up’s Endurance pickup truck, which it will begin building in the second half of 2021, at the company’s plant in Lordstown, Ohio, U.S. June 25, 2020.

Lordstown Motors | Reuters

Shares of Lordstown Motors tumbled more than 9% during after-hours trading after the company slashed its production guidance for the year and said it will need to raise additional capital.

In a statement Monday, Lordstown CEO Steve Burns said the company has “encountered some challenges” as it prepares to begin production of an electric pickup truck called the Endurance in late September.

Lordstown said it expects to produce, at best, half the number of vehicles it previously forecast for this year, according to a release for its first-quarter earnings.

During a call Monday with investors, Burns said the production cut, from about 2,200 vehicles to 1,000 vehicles this year, is based on the company not receiving any additional funding. He said if the company receives funding, it could reinstate its previous production guidance.

Lordstown also said its projected expenses will be between $335 million and $350 million, up from between $220 million and $235 million. It also lowered its forecast for year-end liquidity from at least $200 million to between $50 million and $75 million in cash and cash equivalents.

Burns cited “significantly higher than expected expenditures for parts/equipment, expedited shipping costs, and expenses associated with third-party engineering resources” as reasons for the increase in expenses.

“We secured a number of critical parts and equipment in advance, so we are still in a position to ramp the Endurance, but we do need additional capital to execute on our plans,” he said. “We believe we have several opportunities to raise capital in various forms and have begun those discussions.”

The changes are the latest blow to Ohio-based Lordstown. Shares of the aspiring automaker tumbled last week after Wolfe Research downgraded the stock to underperform with a $1 price target following the debut of the Ford F-150 electric pickup, a competitor to the Lordstown Endurance.

Without naming Ford, Burns said EV pickups are more mainstream following a “watershed moment” last week. He said Lordstown continues to have first-mover advantage. Ford’s electric F-150 is expected to go into production next spring.

“We are on par with somebody like that at this point, and we’re getting to market faster,” he said. “We want as many people buying our vehicle while we’re the only game in town. We want to be on version 2.0 when somebody comes out with version 1.0.”

In March, Lordstown also confirmed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had requested information regarding claims by short seller Hindenburg Research that it misled investors.

Hindenburg accused Lordstown in a March report of using “fake” orders to raise capital for the Endurance. The short seller claimed the pickup was years away from production; however, Lordstown maintains it’s on track to start making the vehicle in September.

Burns on Monday reiterated the company is continuing to cooperate with the SEC.

Lordstown went public through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in October. It is among a growing group of electric vehicle start-ups going public through deals with SPACs, which have become a popular way of raising money on Wall Street because they have a more streamlined regulatory process than traditional initial public offerings.

The company plans to produce the Endurance at General Motors’ former Lordstown Assembly plant in Ohio, which it purchased in 2019.

Tags Capital, Lordstown, needed, plans, production, slashes

World News

Bitcoin’s buying and selling motion recently is wild even by crypto’s requirements and the drama shouldn’t be over but

Post author By
Post date May 24, 2021

Bitcoin is still in double-digit intraday movement after briefly halving its value last week, and Wall Street strategists say this insane run won’t be over anytime soon.

It was a rude awakening for Bitcoin investors who thought they could handle the crypto volatility. The world’s largest digital currency suffered a 30% daily decline last Wednesday, dropping to around $ 30,000 apiece. It wasn’t until mid-April that Bitcoin hit a record high of USD 64,829. The turbulence was dramatic even by crypto standards. The last time Bitcoin saw a drop of this magnitude was in March 2020 at the height of the Covid pandemic. And even then, trading wasn’t that annoying.

According to Coin Metrics, Bitcoin experienced 14 days of failure in May alone. So far this year there have been 39 days of daily fluctuations of 5% or more in either direction based on Bitcoin’s closing prices. There were a total of 42 such days in 2020.

While the digital token quickly rebounded over $ 39,000 in price on Monday, rising 20% in price, heightened regulatory pressures as well as the technical picture point to wilder trading, strategists said.

“The drubbing that cryptocurrencies have received over the past two weeks is just a taste of what’s to come,” Peter Berezin, chief strategist at BCA Research, said in a note. “The crypto markets will continue to face tighter regulation … In the near future, the pain in the crypto markets could weigh on other speculative assets such as technology stocks.”

The recent fluctuations were due to increased government scrutiny in the US and abroad. The Federal Reserve is due to issue a paper shortly setting out its own research into the central bank’s digital currencies space. In the meantime, the Chinese authorities have promised to take action against the mining and trading of cryptocurrency.

Elon Musk, a proponent of the cryptocurrency, also made a sort of 180 on Bitcoin when he announced that the electric automaker had suspended vehicle purchases with the asset, citing environmental concerns about what is known as the computational mining process.

“Bitcoin remains weirdly volatile,” said Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge. “The economic benefits of nothing are shifting so quickly.”

Bitcoin’s 31.1% intraday decline was the cryptocurrency’s fourth-largest decline in history, according to Cornerstone Macro.

Momentum signals remain “problematic”

On the positioning of Bitcoin futures, JPMorgan analysts believe the worst correction is not yet in the rearview mirror.

Momentum traders have scaled back their Bitcoin futures bets after failing to break above $ 60,000, which made sentiment bearish and caused further position settlement, according to the Wall Street firm.

“Despite the rebound in prices to around $ 40,000, the momentum signals, and in particular the longer lookback period as a signal, remain problematic,” said Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, managing director of JPMorgan, in a note. “It is too early to say the end of the recent Bitcoin downtrend.”

Carter Worth, chief market technician at Cornerstone Macro, said there are interested sellers waiting at the $ 42,000 level, and that high overhead offering will make it hard for Bitcoin to reach and exceed that level. In the meantime, buyers who have pulled at their recent lows will sell if the price rises too much, he said.

“It sold on its trend line,” Worth said. “Every step was technical.”

Repetition of the lows of the last week possible

Many believe investors shouldn’t be surprised if Bitcoin is sold again soon to retest last week’s lows.

“A possible re-test or even a modest drop below the lows of last week in the near future is quite possible due to China’s crackdown on digital assets and the regulatory overhang in the US,” said Julian Emanuel, chief strategist for stocks and derivatives at BTIG.

Still, Emanuel believes that further downside volatility would be a buying opportunity. He set his Bitcoin year-end goal at $ 50,000.

– CNBC’s Nate Rattner and Michael Bloom contributed to this story.

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Tags action, Bitcoins, Cryptos, drama, Standards, trading, Wild

Health

NY Covid vaccine charges plummet as states roll out extra freebies for pictures

Post author By
Post date May 24, 2021

Naomi Hassebroek receives her second COVID-19 vaccine at NYC Health+Hospitals Gotham Health Sydenham, in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, March 29, 2021.

Caitlin Ochs | Reuters

New York’s Covid-19 vaccination rate has declined dramatically in recent days, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday as he pleaded with residents to get immunized against the disease that’s claimed more than 590,000 lives in America.

The state administered just 63,000 vaccines in the last 24 hours, with a seven-day average of about 133,000 shots administered in the past week as of May 24, according to state data.

The current seven-day average is a small increase from last week’s but a sharp drop from the state’s peak when it reported a seven-day average of about 266,000 vaccinations on April 4.

Cuomo urged New Yorkers to take vaccines seriously, saying the coronavirus pandemic is still a cause for caution.

“It’s not over, it’s managed, but it’s not over,” Cuomo said at a press briefing. “The number of vaccinations is dropping off dramatically, we’re now doing fewer than 100,000 per day — that’s a dramatic decline, 55% decline in how many vaccines we’re doing.”

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the U.S. is reporting an average of 1.8 million vaccinations per day over the past week. About 49% of the U.S. population has had at least one shot with 39% fully vaccinated.

The nationwide seven-day average for reported administered vaccines is currently 1.7 million, down from a peak seven-day immunization average of 3.4 million reported on April 13.

The slowing immunization rate has public officials like Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio offering different perks to convince reluctant people to get their vaccine shots. They’ve previously offered free Yankees tickets, “vax & scratch” lottery tickets, free subway and railroad rides, and tickets to popular attractions like zoos and gardens and more.

State parks will now be offering free passes with access to any of New York’s 16 state parks to anyone who gets the vaccine this week at a state park vaccination site, a campaign Cuomo dubbed “a shot in the park.”

Cuomo said he’s targeting the “youthful and the doubtful” with the latest round of incentives.

“Enjoy the park, come get a vaccine, we’re going to set up a vaccine site at everyone of the 16 state parks,” he said.

Maryland, Ohio and Oregon have set up vaccine lotteries to increase declining vaccination rates.

In Ohio, where vaccination rates were falling, the number of people 16 and older getting the shots jumped 28% the weekend after the state announced its vaccine lottery program. Ohio also announced that it would give five full college scholarships to randomly chosen vaccinated students.

New Jersey is offering anyone who gets their Covid shot in May a free beer at several local breweries as part of Gov. Phil Murphy’s “shot and a beer” campaign.

Private businesses across the U.S. have also offered incentives to vaccinated patrons like gift cards, free snacks, marijuana, beer and even free tickets to Six Flags in Illinois.

— CNBC’s Nate Rattner contributed to this report.

Tags Covid, freebies, Plummet, rates, Roll, shots, states, Vaccine

Business

Florida, in a First, Will Effective Social Media Corporations That Bar Candidates

Post author By
Post date May 24, 2021

WASHINGTON — Florida on Monday became the first state to regulate how companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate speech online, by imposing fines on social media companies that permanently bar political candidates in the state.

The law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is a direct response to Facebook’s and Twitter’s bans of former President Donald J. Trump in January. In addition to the fines for barring candidates, it makes it illegal to prevent some news outlets from posting to their platforms in response to the contents of their stories.

Mr. DeSantis said signing the bill meant that Floridians would be “guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites.”

“If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable,” he said in a statement.

The bill is part of a broader push among conservative state legislatures to crack down on the ability of tech companies to manage posts on their platforms. The political efforts took off after Mr. Trump was barred after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Lawmakers around the country have echoed Mr. Trump’s accusations that the companies are biased against conservative personalities and publications, even though those accounts often thrive online.

More than a hundred bills targeting the companies’ moderation practices have been filed nationwide this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many of the bills have died, but a proposal is still being debated in Texas.

Twitter declined to comment. Google and Facebook did not immediately offer comments on the signing of the bill.

The Florida law makes it illegal to bar a candidate for state office for more than 14 days, in a move that would seem to outlaw the kind of permanent ban the social media platforms applied to Mr. Trump’s accounts. Companies would be fined $250,000 per day for cases where they barred a candidate for statewide office. The fine is lower for candidates seeking other offices.

The law says the platforms cannot take down or otherwise prioritize content from a “journalistic enterprise” that reaches a certain size. Conservatives were outraged last year when Facebook and Twitter limited the reach of a New York Post article about the contents of a laptop it said belonged to Hunter Biden, the younger son of President Biden.

Under the law, platforms are also required to be clear about how they decide to take down content or leave it up. Users could sue the platform if they felt those terms were inconsistently applied.

A late amendment to the bill exempts companies from the law if they own a theme park or an entertainment venue larger than 25 acres. That means the law is unlikely to apply to websites owned by Disney, which operates the Walt Disney World Resort, and Comcast, which owns Universal Studios Florida.

In Florida, as in dozens of other states, the Republican lawmakers’ push to punish social media companies follows the party’s other efforts to feed the demands of a conservative base that remains loyal to Mr. Trump.

Florida, along with Republican-run legislatures in Oklahoma and Iowa, have in recent weeks passed legislation limiting the right to protest and providing immunity to drivers who strike protesters in public streets.

And the Republican push to make voting harder continues unabated after Mr. Trump’s relentless lying about the results of the 2020 election. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia signed into law new restrictions on voting, as did Mr. DeSantis in Florida, and Texas Republicans are poised to soon pass the nation’s biggest rollback of voting rights.

The partywide, nationwide push stems from Mr. Trump’s repeated grievances. During his failed re-election campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly pushed to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides immunity to certain tech firms from liability for user-generated content, even as he used their platforms to spread misinformation. Twitter and Facebook eventually barred Mr. Trump after he inspired his supporters, using their platforms, to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Republican lawmakers in Florida have echoed Mr. Trump’s statements.

“I have had numerous constituents come to me saying that they were banned or de-platformed on social media sites,” Representative Blaise Ingoglia said during the debate over the bill.

But Democrats, libertarian groups and tech companies all say the law violates the tech companies’ First Amendment rights to decide how to handle content on their own platforms. It also may prove impossible to bring complaints under the law because of Section 230, the legal protections for web platforms that Mr. Trump has attacked.

“It is the government telling private entities how to speak,” said Carl Szabo, the vice president at NetChoice, a trade association that includes Facebook, Google and Twitter as members. “In general, it’s a gross misreading of the First Amendment.” He said the First Amendment was designed to protect sites like Reddit from government intervention, not protect “politicians from Reddit.”

The Florida measure is likely to be challenged in court, said Jeff Kosseff, a professor of cybersecurity law at the Naval Academy.

“I think this is the beginning of testing judges’ limits on these sorts of restrictions for social media,” he said.

Tags Bar, Candidates, companies, Fine, Florida, media, Social

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