Month: May 2021

After Media Detour, AT&T Confronts Previous Issues

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Post date May 18, 2021

After Media Detour, AT&T Confronts Old Problems

“It would have been an amazing merger,” said David Barden, senior research analyst at Bank of America. “It would have somehow maintained AT & T’s growth juggernaut through acquisition – not organic – but it failed.”

Mr. Stephenson then looked at the attractive profit margins in the media and entertainment sectors. In 2014, he announced a deal for DirecTV, a deal he promised to “redefine the industry”.

But AT&T bought its way into the pay-TV industry at its peak. Not long after acquiring the satellite service, consumers were walking in droves.

“One thing they didn’t do – they couldn’t have predicted was that 2014 was the last year linear video would grow,” Barden said, referring to the cable television business. “Because who was out there in the wings? This little company called Netflix. “Customers started cutting their cables and cable subscriptions began to decline.

Then came Time Warner. Numerous analysts pointed out that owning a company that makes money by distributing shows and movies as widely as possible does not give AT&T an advantage. In other words, HBO and CNN would still need to be licensed to competitors like Verizon’s television service or cable giants like Comcast. AT&T would have a hard time keeping the contents to themselves.

The Justice Department sued AT&T for blocking the deal but lost its case in court.

Makan Delrahim, the former Justice Department antitrust chief who oversaw the lawsuit, said in an interview that AT & T’s widespread deal is a “classic case” of corporate misconduct. The company “went through a number of mergers and acquisitions and was not rational to do business,” he said, “T-Mobile, DirecTV and Time Warner. And this is the result. “

Mr. Whitacre, the founding chairman of the modern AT&T, offered a different view.

“The business we did when I was chairman – which was a long time – was taking over the companies we were familiar with, the companies we were in,” he said in an interview. “And when I left, that changed.”

Mr. Whitacre, who is still an AT&T shareholder, said he liked the Discovery deal and brought the company back to “where we come from if you will”.

Tags ATT, Confronts, Detour, media, Problems

Health

Jim Klobuchar Dies at 93; Minnesota Newspaperman and Amy’s Father

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Post date May 18, 2021

Jim Klobuchar was a noted sports journalist and general interest columnist in Minnesota for decades.

He was celebrated for his Derring-Do directly from the central casting: He once held a piece of chalk between his lips while a sniper was aiming at it. He was a finalist for NASA’s initiative to send a journalist into space until the 1986 Challenger explosion ended the program. He climbed the Matterhorn eight times and Kilimanjaro five times.

And he made readers cry when he wrote of a 5-year-old girl with a brain tumor who loved to ride on rails: “She was cradled in her mother’s lap on the Hiawatha observation car on Milwaukee Road, one neat young lady. A dying little girl making her last train ride. “

It wasn’t until 2018, when his daughter, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat of Minnesota, mentioned him on television during the controversial television hearings about Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court that he became aware of national attention.

During her interview with the candidate, Ms. Klobuchar found that her then 90-year-old father was a recovering alcoholic who was still attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. She asked Judge Kavanaugh if he had ever drank so much that he couldn’t remember events. He turned the question back to her, a violation of propriety for which he later apologized. She accepted the apology, adding, “If you have a parent who is an alcoholic, you are pretty careful about drinking.”

At this point, her father had been sober for more than 25 years. When she ran for the 2020 Democratic President nomination, Senator Klobuchar often spoke of his successful treatment and suggested spending billions of dollars on substance abuse treatment.

Mr Klobuchar died Wednesday in a care facility in Burnsville, a suburb of the Twin Cities. He was 93 years old. Senator Klobuchar, who announced his death on Twitter, gave no cause but said he had Alzheimer’s. He survived a fight with Covid-19 last year.

Mr. Klobuchar was long popular in Minnesota, even a folk hero. In addition to his newspaper columns – 8,400 of which when he retired from The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1995 – he wrote 23 books, ran a women’s soccer clinic, hosted talk shows, and ran Jaunt with Jim annually for nearly four decades. Bike rides across the state, stopping at payphones along the road to call his column and dictate. After he and his first wife, Rose (Heuberger) Klobuchar, divorced in 1976, he and Amy began long distance cycling tours to bond with each other.

As a young journalist for The Associated Press, he had a particularly exhilarating moment the day after the 1960 presidential election, when John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon were neck to neck and three states were still not reporting results. Mr. Klobuchar wrote the statewide bulletin announcing that Mr. Kennedy Minnesota had won and gave him enough votes to win the presidency. The bullet appeared in newspapers across the country.

James John Klobuchar was born on April 9, 1928 in Ely, a small town in the Iron Range in northern Minnesota, where he grew up. His father Michael Klobuchar worked in the iron ore mines. His mother Mary (Pucel) Klobuchar was a housewife.

From an early age, Jim read The Duluth Herald and his mother encouraged him to pursue a career in journalism, wrote Senator Klobuchar in her 2015 essay, The Senator Next Door.

He graduated from Ely Junior College (now Vermilion Community College) in 1948, then enrolled at the University of Minnesota, graduating with a degree in journalism in 1950.

He got a job as an editor at The Bismarck Daily Tribune. Six months later he was drafted into the army and assigned to a new psychological war unit in Stuttgart, where he wrote anti-communist material.

He briefly returned to the Bismarck newspaper and was then recruited by The Associated Press in Minneapolis, where he completed his election campaign. He joined The Minneapolis Tribune as a sports reporter in 1961 and focused on the Minnesota Vikings.

He left The Tribune in 1965 for the rival St. Paul Pioneer Press, but it wasn’t long before The Minneapolis Star lured him away by giving him a column to write about anything he wanted.

This was the heyday of print journalism when newspapers sent their star authors all over the world. During the height of the Cold War, Mr. Klobuchar reported from Moscow. In 1978 he reported on the murder and funeral of Aldo Moro, the former Italian prime minister. He challenged pool hustler Minnesota Fats to a game. He wrote about a flight service that employed topless flight attendants. He played a reporter in the 1974 film “The Wrestler” with Ed Asner.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. He was suspended twice, once for writing a speech for a politician and once for writing a quote in what he thought was an overt satire.

He also drank too much, his daughter said in her book. For a while, heavy drinking was part of his colorful public role. Not much happened when he was charged with some alcohol-related driving offenses in the mid-1970s.

However, public attitudes towards drinking and driving changed radically. When he was arrested for driving under the influence in 1993, he lost his driver’s license and was threatened with prison. He wrote a front-page apology to his readers. On an accompanying note, the newspaper’s editor, Tim McGuire, said Mr. Klobuchar had “put his life at risk” and that the newspaper insisted he seek treatment.

He followed. He entered an inpatient rehabilitation center, attended anonymous alcoholic meetings, and found God. Mrs. Klobuchar wrote that his readers had forgiven him.

“It was precisely his mistakes that made my father so attractive to her,” she said. “His hard life and personal struggles had a huge impact on his writing. That’s why he was at his best writing about what he called “the heroes among us” – ordinary people doing extraordinary things. “

In addition to Senator Klobuchar, another daughter, Meagan, survives; his wife Susan Wilkes; his brother Dick; and a granddaughter.

When he decided to retire from The Star Tribune in 1995, Mr Klobuchar told his office mates that he didn’t want any fuss just to go quietly. After packing his things and walking to the door, an editor got into the sound system and announced, “This is Jim Klobuchar’s last day. That’s 43 years of journalism. “

Everyone stood up and applauded.

Tags Amys, Dies, Father, Jim, Klobuchar, Minnesota, Newspaperman

Business

U.S. Home lawmakers search Boeing, FAA data after manufacturing issues

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Post date May 18, 2021

U.S. House lawmakers seek Boeing, FAA records after production problems

A Boeing logo is on the fuselage of a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft manufactured by Boeing Co. on display ahead of the opening of the Farnborough International Airshow in Farnborough, UK on Sunday 13 July 2014.

Simon Dawson / Bloomberg

Two key House Democrats are soliciting records from Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration after discovering production problems with the company’s 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner aircraft.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., Chair of the Transportation Committee, and Rick Larsen, D-Wash., Chair of the Aviation Sub-Committee, requested a list and descriptions of FAA inspections at the 737 manufacturing facility in Renton, Wash., Since 2017 and the Dreamliner South Carolina factory since 2015, according to a letter they sent to Dave Calhoun, CEO of Boeing, Tuesday that has been audited by CNBC.

Among other things, they requested records of supervision, the results of audits and the number of Boeing employees assigned to perform supervisory tasks at each location.

“While it is important that Boeing continue to voluntarily report such issues to the FAA, we are concerned that even after the longest civil airliner establishment in history, persistence of quality control and manufacturing defects – in two different cases – aircraft programs – remain “wrote the legislature. “This naturally raises questions about whether the FAA adequately oversees Boeing’s commercial aircraft programs, as well as Boeing’s internal quality controls and safety culture.”

The request comes less than a year after a report by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure informed Boeing about the design and development of the 737 Max and the FAA for oversight failures. Two of these planes crashed between October 2018 and March 2019, killing all 346 people on the flights.

Boeing said last year it found the wrong clearance in some areas of the 787 fuselage. After inspections and a five-month break, delivery of the wide-body aircraft resumed in March. Regardless, an electrical issue with Boeing’s best-selling 737 Max grounded more than 100 aircraft in April, despite the FAA approving a solution last week.

Legislators asked for replies by June 8, but said that “continued production of these records will be considered if you cannot fully complete your answer by that date”.

A Boeing spokesman said the company is looking into the request.

The FAA did not respond immediately.

The agency announced last month that it was reviewing Boeing’s process for minor design changes, as well as the causes of the electrical problem on the 737 Max. This problem is not related to the system involved in the two major crashes.

Tags Boeing, FAA, House, lawmakers, Problems, production, records, Seek

Health

Every day U.S. knowledge on Could 18

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Post date May 18, 2021

Erica Aparitio will receive a Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine from Yelany Lima, a trained nurse, on May 17, 2021 at UHealth’s Pediatric Children’s Hospital in Miami, Florida.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

According to a CNBC analysis of the data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, Covid case numbers are falling 5% or more in almost all US states as the nationwide number of infections and deaths continues its downward trend.

In the US, an average of 1.8 million vaccinations per day were given over the past week, according to federal data, and 47.5% of the population received at least one dose of vaccine.

US Covid cases

The country reports an average of 32,000 daily infections in the past seven days, a sharp drop from more than 71,000 daily cases from mid-April. That seven-day average of 32,000 is the lowest since late June.

The average daily caseload has dropped 5% or more in 42 states over the past week, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins’ data. However, President Joe Biden warned on Monday that the number of cases in US states with low Covid-19 vaccination rates could rise again.

US Covid deaths

According to Johns Hopkins data, the most recent 7-day average daily death toll in the US is 587, an 8% decrease from a week.

Since the pandemic began, a total of more than 586,000 deaths from Covid have been reported in the United States.

US vaccine shots administered

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US received an average of 1.8 million vaccinations per day over the past week.

The pace of daily shots has been on a downward trend since its peak in mid-April, as have many of the most avid and best able to get vaccinated.

US percentage of the vaccinated population

More than 47% of Americans are at least partially vaccinated, CDC data shows, and about 37% are fully vaccinated.

Tags daily, Data

Business

Former Brooks Brothers minority shareholder sues, claiming ‘dangerous religion.’

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Post date May 18, 2021

Former Brooks Brothers minority shareholder sues, claiming ‘bad faith.’

In 2020, he told the New York Times that none of the sales and investment discussions “met the needs we saw”. The TAL lawsuit, which also cites the Del Vecchio family holding company, Delfin, as a defendant, alleges that none of the discussions with the board of directors or shareholders were shared. Like many global apparel suppliers, TAL, which owns 11 factories and reportedly employs over 26,000 people, was hit hard by the volatility caused by the outbreak of the pandemic. At one point, apparel production fell to just 30 percent of group capacity due to the drop in demand from retailers, resulting in the permanent closure of several factories and a relocation to the manufacture of personal protective equipment.

In August 2020, Brooks Brothers was sold to SPARC Group, a joint venture between Simon Property Group, the largest mall operator in the United States, and Authentic Brands Group for $ 325 million, after stores closed on their balance sheets had led to chaos, a licensing company. TAL is also an unsecured creditor in bankruptcy proceedings.

Paul Lockwood of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, lawyer for Claudio Del Vecchio, said: “The allegations in the complaint are false and we expect the court to dismiss the case.” Katie Jakola of Kirkland & Ellis, the law firm representing TAL, said they’d look forward to her day in court.

However, some observers doubt that it will come to that.

“This appears like two rich parties are making complaints,” said William Susman, chief executive officer at Threadstone Advisors. “The owners of the Brooks Brothers have already endured their pain. TAL is a large, demanding company. Hard to feel they were betrayed. Sounds like a settlement is in everyone’s future. “

Elizabeth Paton contributed to the coverage.

Tags Bad, Brooks, Brothers, Claiming, Faith, Minority, shareholder, sues

World News

Israel-Palestinian Battle: Stay Updates – The New York Instances

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Post date May 18, 2021

In 2016, then Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Pool photo by Debbie Hill

President Biden on Monday delivered a firmer message in private to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel than he has done in public, warning that he could put off growing pressure from the international community and from Congress to call on Israel to change its approach to Hamas for only so long, according to two people familiar with the call.

The private message hinted at a time limit on Mr. Biden’s ability to provide diplomatic cover for the actions of the Israeli government, as well as a new dynamic in American politics: the president presenting himself as a closer friend to Israel than it might find in Congress.

“We have a new dynamic with Congress playing the bad cop with Israel and asking the president to put a hold on an arms sales while the president plays the good cop,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration official and the director of the Middle East Security program at the Center for a New American Security. “It may give President Biden more flexibility and leverage down the line with the Israelis.”

The tactic — private pressure, combined with the president’s public support for Israel’s right to defend itself — has come under fire from Democratic members of Congress and progressive Jewish groups. But administration officials defended it on Tuesday as a product of Mr. Biden’s decades of foreign policy experience.

“He’s been doing this long enough to know that the best way to end an international conflict is typically not to debate it in public,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday.

She added: “Sometimes diplomacy needs to happen behind the scenes, it needs to be quiet and we don’t read out every component.”

Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu on Monday discussed Israel’s right to defend itself against “indiscriminate rocket attacks,” according to the White House’s public readout of the call. In the brief summary, the White House said that Mr. Biden “expressed his support for a cease-fire,” while stopping short of calling for one.

The statement, released Monday, earned Mr. Biden criticism for failing to call on Israel to change its approach despite rising international condemnation.

“While a large number of congressional Democrats and at least one senior Senate Republican have called on both Israelis and Palestinians to reach an immediate cease-fire, the Biden administration has still not publicly done so,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J-Street, a liberal pro-Israel advocacy group that has worked for years to shift the debate as a counterweight to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

“This combination of inadequate ‘quiet’ appeals for de-escalation,” he added, “and otherwise nearly unquestioning public support for and tolerance of the Netanyahu government’s actions, is unhelpful.”

VideoPalestinian citizens, activists, workers and business owners shuttered stores and downed their tools in an organized strike, and took to the streets protesting Israel’s air campaign in Gaza and other measures targeting Palestinians.CreditCredit…Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel downed tools for the day on Tuesday, as did workers across the occupied West Bank and in Gaza, protesting violence against Arab Israelis, the unfolding Israeli military campaign targeting Hamas militants in Gaza and the looming eviction of several families from their homes in East Jerusalem.

Streets were deserted in Arab areas across both Israel and the occupied territories, as shopkeepers shuttered stores along the waterfront in Jaffa, central Israel; the steep roads of Umm el-Fahm, an Arab town in northern Israel; and West Bank cities such as Hebron, Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah.

Demonstrators gathered instead in central squares, waving Palestinian flags, listening to speeches and chanting against Israeli policies. Outside Ramallah, a group of Palestinians who had gathered separately from the protesters set fires on a major thoroughfare and later exchanged gunfire with Israeli soldiers, officials said.

Since hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in 1948, they have been divided not only by geography, but also by lived experience.

They were scattered across Gaza, the West Bank, and the wider Middle East, as well as the state of Israel itself. Some struggled under differing forms of military occupation, while others were given Israeli citizenship — diluting their common identity.

But on Tuesday, millions of them came together in a general strike to protest their shared treatment by Israel, in what many Palestinians described as a rare show of political unity.

Credit…Nasser Nasser/Associated Press

Mustafa Barghouti, an independent politician who attended a rally in central Ramallah on Tuesday morning, said the protests constituted “a very significant day.”

“It reflects how Palestinians now have a unified struggle against the same system of apartheid,” he added.

Israel fiercely rejects longstanding accusations of apartheid by Palestinians, a claim now taken up by a small but growing number of rights watchdogs, including Human Rights Watch last month.

Israeli officials say that the occupation of the West Bank is a temporary measure until a peace agreement is achieved. And the blockade of Gaza, they say, is a security measure to prevent Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza and opposes Israel’s existence, from acquiring weapons. They also highlight how Arab citizens of Israel have the right to vote and elect lawmakers, have representation in Israel’s Parliament, and often rise to become judges and senior civil servants.

Mark Regev, a senior adviser to the prime minister, told The Times last month: “To allege that Israeli policies are motivated by racism is both baseless and outrageous, and belittles the very real security threats posed by Palestinian terrorists to Israeli civilians.”

But many Palestinians on either side of the boundary between Israel and the occupied territories say that they are the victims of the same system of oppression — one that operates with varying degrees of intensity, and offers Arabs varying degrees of freedom, but ultimately seeks to assert Jewish supremacy wherever that system is in force.

“We’re one big family,” said Enass Tinah, a 46-year-old researcher at the Ramallah protest. “It’s the same suffering.”

Some did not participate in the strike — including health workers in northern Israel, who felt they had a moral need to keep on working, and the Arab residents of Abu Ghosh, a town west of Jerusalem known for its good relations between Arabs and Jews.

Other Palestinians simply saw the strike as an attempt to show solidarity with Gaza, and to strengthen calls for an independent Palestinian state.

But for some, the strike, and the unity it implied, was a sign of a new era for the Palestinian cause.

For Ms. Tinah, the old hope of an independent Palestine now seemed unlikely.

A single state for Palestinians and Jews, with equal rights for both, now felt a better goal to Ms. Tinah. “That’s where we’re moving,” she said. “One state with equal rights for all citizens.”

“I don’t know what that looks like,” she said. But, she added, “I think this is the new path.”

Credit…Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

Fighting between Israel and Hamas extended into a ninth day on Tuesday but subtle signs emerged that the sides were privately edging toward a cease-fire, according to three people involved in the negotiations.

The indications came as a growing chorus of international parties called on Israel, Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza to lay down their weapons.

For the first time, President Biden expressed support for a cease-fire on Monday, but he also reiterated that Israel had a right to defend itself, stopping short of publicly calling on Israel to change its approach.

A person working on the cease-fire talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations are politically delicate, said Egypt and the United Nations were working together to “restore calm.”

A senior Hamas official based in Qatar, Moussa Abu Marzouk, said Qatar was also involved in the effort.

A senior Israeli government official, who is privy to cease-fire talks and also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Israel was not ready for a cease-fire yet, but acknowledged that it might be soon.

Mr. Abu Marzouk said Hamas was ready for a cease-fire with Israel. But he said the Israeli government was demanding Hamas unilaterally halt its fire for two to three hours before Israel decides whether it will do the same — a position he described as “stubborn.”

“We agreed to an end to the war in a simultaneous and mutual way,” he said.

But he hinted that a new escalation was possible if Israel moved forward with the evictions of several Palestinian families in East Jerusalem or acted violently against Palestinians at the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, two issues that played a role in the buildup to the current fighting.

The Israeli official cautioned against what he called a premature cease-fire, contending that Hamas would take advantage of such an arrangement by regrouping and attacking Israel anew. The official said Israel was seeking what he described as a sustained period of peace and calm.

Credit…Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BRUSSELS — European Union foreign ministers overwhelmingly called for an immediate cease-fire to stop fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in an emergency meeting on Tuesday.

All of the member states except Hungary backed a statement that also condemns Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israel, supports Israel’s right to self-defense but cautions that it “has to be done in a proportional manner and respecting international humanitarian law,” said the E.U.’s top foreign policy official, Josep Borrell Fontelles.

He said that the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, “including a high number of women and children,” was “unacceptable.” And he said that the European Union, as part of the quartet with the United States, Russia and the United Nations that seeks peace in the Middle East, would push to relaunch a serious diplomatic process.

“The priority is the immediate cessation of all violence and the implementation of a cease-fire,” Mr. Borrell said.

Foreign policy in the European Union works by unanimity, so Mr. Borrell’s comments were an effort, he said, “to reflect the overall agreement.”

In terms of impact, a few individual European nations tend to carry more weight with Israel. In general, European governments have been supportive of Israel and its right to self-defense against barrages of rockets aimed at Israeli civilians.

Still, as the fighting has gone on, key European countries are pressing for a quick cease-fire, including Germany, which is traditionally a strong backer of Israel.

On Monday, after speaking with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany “again sharply condemned the continued rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel and assured the prime minister of the German government’s solidarity,” said her spokesman, Steffen Seibert. “She reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself against the attacks,” he said.

But given the many civilian lives lost “on both sides,” Mr. Seibert said, “the chancellor expressed her hope that the fighting will end as soon as possible.”

On Tuesday, after Ms. Merkel had spoken with Jordan’s King Abdullah, “Both agreed that initiatives for a speedy cease-fire should be supported in order to create the conditions for the resumption of political negotiations,” Mr. Seibert said.

Before the E.U. meeting, the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said that “right now, ending the violence in the Middle East is the first priority. But we also need to talk about how to avoid such an escalation in the future.”

Mr. Maas added that the European Union “has a role to play here,” both in terms of political and humanitarian action. Germany has pledged 40 million euros for humanitarian aid for Gazans.

The Germans, like the British, have also seen a number of demonstrations against Israel’s military actions, a few of them openly anti-Semitic. France, the only E.U. member of the United Nations Security Council, has also pressed for a quick cease-fire.

On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron of France told a news conference that “there needs to be a process for a cease-fire as quickly as possible and construction of a possible path to discussions between the different protagonists.”

Mr. Macron said he was having discussions with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt and the king of Jordan “to be able together to see how we make a concrete proposal.” It is “absolutely necessary” to end hostilities, he said.

Credit…Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Until Monday evening, the Al-Rimal health clinic in central Gaza City was a key cog in the Palestinian health system. Its eight doctors and 200 nurses administered hundreds of vaccinations, prescriptions, and screenings a day. And Al-Rimal housed the only laboratory in Gaza that could process coronavirus tests.

But then, on Monday night, an Israeli airstrike hit the street outside, sending shrapnel into the clinic, shattering windows, shredding doors, furniture and computers — and wrecking Gaza’s only coronavirus test laboratory.

“During times of war people need more treatment than usual,” Mohammed Abu Samaan, a senior administrator at the clinic, said Tuesday. “Now we can’t give people medicine.”

The wreckage at Al-Rimal is one of the most striking examples of devastation wrought by the nine-day-old battle between Hamas militants and the Israeli military — creating a humanitarian catastrophe that is touching nearly every civilian living in Gaza, a coastal territory of about two million people.

Sewage systems have been destroyed, sending fetid wastewater into the streets of Gaza City. A critical desalination plant that helped provide fresh water to 250,000 people is offline, and water pipes serving at least 800,000 people have been damaged. Landfills are closed, with trash piling up. And dozens of schools have been either damaged or ordered to close, forcing some 600,000 students to miss classes on Monday.

The level of destruction and loss of human life have underlined the challenge in the Gaza Strip, already overpacked with people and suffering under the weight of an indefinite blockade by Israel and Egypt even before the latest conflict.

President Biden added his voice to the growing chorus of international leaders calling for a cease-fire on Monday night, but there was little indication that an end to the hostilities was near on Tuesday morning.

Militants in Gaza aimed a barrage of around 100 rockets at southern Israel overnight, adding to the more than 3,300 fired in just over a week. And the Israeli bombardment showed no signs of letting up, with the sound of explosions once again rocking Gaza before dawn.

General Hidai Zilberman, a military spokesman, who spoke to the Israeli network Army Radio, said there was no plan to suspend operations.

“We have a bank of targets that is full, and we want to continue and to create pressure on Hamas,” he said. “This morning, the chief of staff gave us the plans for the next 24 hours, the targets. We will hit anyone who belongs to Hamas, from the first to the last.”

Credit…Dan Balilty for The New York Times

Hamas said it would not stop its assault, accusing “the criminal Zionist enemy” of “bombing of homes and residential apartments.”

“We warn the enemy that if it did not stop that immediately, we would resume rocketing Tel Aviv,” the militant group’s spokesman Abu Ubaida said, according to Reuters.

While Hamas fighters move through an extensive series of tunnels under Gaza, and as Israeli warplanes drop bombs aimed at destroying that network, it is the people caught between who suffer the most calamitous losses.

Schools in southern Israel within range of the rocket fire have been closed and many families have left the border areas. The constant wailing of sirens warning of incoming rocket fire punctuate daily life, particularly in the south, sending Israelis repeatedly running to shelters.

At least 10 people in Israel have been killed in rocket attacks, the Israeli authorities said.

The death toll in Gaza itself has surpassed 200, including at least 61 children, according to the health authorities in the territory.

And the sprawling humanitarian crisis in Gaza — documented by both United Nations agencies and the local authorities — is growing by the day, adding to pressure on political leaders to pause the hostilities so that relief can reach those in desperate need.

Palestinian activists across Israel took part in a general strike on Tuesday to protest Israel’s air campaign in Gaza and other measures targeting Palestinians.

Even before the current conflict, Gaza was facing an economic crisis and political crisis.

Hamas won elections in the territory in 2006 and took full control in 2007, after which Israel put a blockade on the region, citing the need to curb weapons smuggling. Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza, also put in restrictions that tightly control the movement of people and goods in and out of the territory.

Since 2007, Hamas has engaged in three major conflicts with Israel and several smaller skirmishes. After each eruption of violence, Gaza’s infrastructure was left in shambles.

The result, according to a report last year by the United Nations, is that Gaza has “the world’s highest unemployment rate, and more than half of its population lives below the poverty line.”

The latest round of fighting has crippled that fragile infrastructure.

Six hospitals and eight clinics have suffered bomb damage, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian affairs office, limiting medical treatment available for many people living in the region.

By Monday, Israeli bombs had destroyed 132 residential buildings and damaged 316 housing units so badly that they were uninhabitable, according to Gaza’s housing ministry.

More than 40,000 people have been forced into shelters and thousands more have sought refuge with friends or relatives, according to the U.N. humanitarian affairs office.

“Until a cease-fire is reached, all parties must agree to a ‘humanitarian pause,’” the office said in a statement. “These measures would allow humanitarian agencies to carry out relief operations, and people to purchase food and water and seek medical care.”

Credit…Hosam Salem for The New York Times

The worst Israeli-Palestinian fighting in years spilled into a ninth day on Tuesday as the Israeli military bombarded Gaza and southern Lebanon and Hamas militants fired rockets into southern Israeli towns, hours after President Biden expressed support for a cease-fire during a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

Mr. Biden’s carefully worded statement fell short of an immediate demand for an end to Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, which showed little sign of ending after Mr. Netanyahu said on Monday that his country’s armed forces would “continue striking at the terrorist targets.”

Despite growing concern in foreign capitals over the violence — and among some of Israel’s staunchest defenders in Washington — the region’s heaviest clashes since a 2014 war threatened to escalate. Late Monday, the Israeli military fired artillery shells into Lebanon for the first time since the hostilities began, striking what it said were Palestinian militants who had attempted to fire rockets into Israel.

The Israeli Army said it believed that a small Palestinian faction in Lebanon — and not the militant group Hezbollah — had fired the rockets, most of which failed to reach Israeli territory. The United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon tweeted that it had intensified patrols in the area and that the situation on Tuesday morning was calm.

But the toll on civilians continued to grow. By late Monday, the Israeli bombardment had killed 212 people in Gaza, including dozens of children, and Hamas rockets had killed at least 10 in Israel.

The Israeli Army said that Hamas had fired almost as many rockets in eight days — 3,350 — as it did in the 50-day war the two sides fought in 2014. About 90 percent of them were destroyed in midair by the Iron Dome, an antimissile defense system partly financed by the United States, the Israeli Army said.

The fighting has been focused on the Gaza Strip, the crowded coastal enclave ruled by Hamas, as the Israeli Army bombards infrastructure and underground tunnels that it says Hamas uses to support its military operations. But protests and violence have also erupted in the West Bank and Israel, where Arabs have clashed with the Israeli police and Jewish residents.

The Biden administration has stepped up its diplomatic engagement, dispatching an envoy to the region last week. In a readout of Mr. Biden’s call with Mr. Netanyahu, White House officials said the president had “expressed his support for a cease-fire and discussed U.S. engagement with Egypt and other partners towards that end.” But Mr. Biden had “reiterated his firm support for Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks,” the statement added.

The Biden administration previously avoided the use of the term “cease-fire,” with top officials like Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken talking instead about the need for a “sustainable calm” and others referring to the need for “restraint.”

Credit…Hosam Salem for The New York Times

Since Covid-19 first emerged in the blockaded Gaza Strip, a shortage of medical supplies has allowed authorities to administer only a relatively tiny number of coronavirus tests.

Now, the sole laboratory in Gaza that processes test results has become temporarily inoperable after an Israeli airstrike nearby on Monday, officials in Gaza said.

The strike, which targeted a separate building in Gaza City, sent shrapnel and debris flying across the street, damaging the lab and the administrative offices of the Hamas-run Health Ministry, said Dr. Majdi Dhair, director of the ministry’s preventive medicine department.

One ministry employee was hospitalized and in serious condition after shrapnel struck him in the head, Dr. Dhair said in a phone interview on Tuesday.

“This attack was barbaric,” he said. “There’s no way to justify it.”

The Israeli Army did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the strike. Since Israel began its bombing campaign in Gaza on May 10, the army has said that its airstrikes aim solely at militants and their infrastructure.

Dr. Dhair said that he believed the equipment inside the lab was unharmed but emphasized that it would take at least a day to clean up the damage and prepare it to process coronavirus tests again. In the meantime, he said, medical teams would stop administering tests.

Rami Abadla, the director of the Gaza ministry’s infection control department, said that the lab would also be temporarily unable to process results for other tests related to H.I.V., hepatitis C and other conditions.

Over the past week, the authorities in Gaza have tested an average of 515 Palestinians daily for the virus. Only 1.9 percent of Gaza’s two million people were fully vaccinated as of Monday, according to official data, compared with 56 percent in Israel.

After a surge in cases in April, blamed mostly on the highly transmissible coronavirus variant first identified in Britain, new infections in Gaza had recently fallen to a manageable level, health experts said. But with Israeli airstrikes destroying buildings, causing widespread damage and leaving more than 200 people dead as of Monday, United Nations officials have warned that coronavirus cases could rise again.

Unvaccinated Palestinians were crowding into schools run by the United Nations relief agency in Gaza, turning them into de facto bomb shelters. Matthias Schmale, the U.N. agency’s director of operations, said last week that those schools “could turn into mass spreaders.”

Mr. Schmale and the top World Health Organization official in Gaza, Sacha Bootsma, also said that all vaccinations had stopped when hostilities broke out, and that any vaccine supplies headed to the territory had been delayed by the closure of Gaza’s border crossings.

Credit…Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

The United Nations Security Council held its fourth meeting in a week on Tuesday over efforts to devise a common statement condemning the deadly force used by Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.

It was not immediately clear whether the council’s 15 members, who were meeting privately, would be able to overcome objections to any common statement from the United States, Israel’s most powerful ally.

Top United Nations officials have said the absence of a singular message from the Security Council demanding a halt to the fighting has not been helpful. “A strong unified voice, we believe, will carry weight,” the United Nations spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, told reporters on Tuesday.

Frustrated by what they see as U.S. intransigence even as the deaths and devastation — overwhelmingly Palestinian — extended into a second week, the representatives of China, Norway and Tunisia put the subject on the agenda for the Tuesday meeting.

Any statement from the Security Council requires all members to approve it. The United States has been the only holdout, irritating even some of America’s closest allies on the council.

“Conflict is raging, resulting in utterly devastating humanitarian impact,” the ambassador of Ireland, Geraldine Byrne Nason, told the council, according to a statement released by Ireland’s U.N. mission. “The Security Council has yet to utter a single word publicly.”

She said “it is high time the Council steps up, breaks its silence and speaks out.”

European Union foreign ministers, who also met on Tuesday to discuss the conflict, overwhelmingly called for a cease-fire. All 27 members except Hungary backed the demand. At the Security Council’s third meeting, on Sunday, the E.U. representative’s statement could not be made on behalf of member states because Hungary, strongly pro-Israel, objected.

Other European member states, such as Austria, Bulgaria and Romania, are similarly steadfast in supporting Israel, while countries like Belgium, Luxembourg and Sweden are more critical of Israeli military responses and expansion of settlements in occupied territory.

But President Biden’s call on Monday for a cease-fire, even without using the word “immediate,” is likely to be followed by other Western nations.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has previously defended American reluctance to join other Security Council members in a statement, arguing that it would not be helpful while intense but private diplomatic efforts are underway to persuade Israel and Hamas to stop fighting.

Diplomats from the United States, Egypt and Qatar, as well as the special U.N. coordinator for Middle East peace, have all been enmeshed in the efforts. The United States is prohibited from talking directly to Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization under American law, so Egypt and Qatar are acting as intermediaries for both Israel and the United States.

But neither Israel nor Hamas has shown any indication that they are ready for an immediate truce. At the same time, the Israeli military’s continual bombings and shelling in Gaza, which have killed at least 212 Palestinians there, according to the health authorities in the territory, have stunned much of the world, threatening to further isolate the Israelis and their American defenders.

The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Volkan Bozkir of Turkey, scheduled that body’s own meeting over the Israel-Hamas conflict on Thursday. While that meeting may have no practical impact on events on the ground, a majority of the 193 members of the United Nations are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and highly critical of Israel’s occupation of lands seized in the 1967 war. That gathering could therefore be the biggest stage yet for international condemnation of Israel’s actions.

In another sign of growing exasperation with Israel, King Abdullah of Jordan blamed the escalating violence on what he described as Israeli provocations. In a Twitter post on Monday from the royal Jordanian court, the king said that he had conveyed his view in a phone call with António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general.

King Abdullah’s statements carry weight because his country signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, and Jordan is the custodian of the religious site in Jerusalem that houses Al Aqsa, the mosque where tensions between Palestinians and Israelis played an early role in the latest upsurge of violence.

Credit…Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As the seeming intractability of the latest Israel-Gaza conflict provoked concern around the world on Tuesday, the ninth day of fighting was marked by a worrying development: It spilled over into Southern Lebanon for the first time.

The Israeli military said it had launched artillery shells into Lebanon in response to Palestinian militants’ trying to fire rockets into Israel. Fears of the conflict spreading were offset by the fact that the Israeli Army said that it believed the rockets had come from a small Palestinian faction in Lebanon — and not from Hezbollah, the militant group sponsored by Iran.

Amid growing concern in foreign capitals over the violence — and among some of Israel’s staunchest defenders in Washington — the region’s heaviest clashes since a 2014 war threatened to escalate. The death toll in Gaza has already surpassed 200, including dozens of children. In Israel, at least 10 people have been killed in rocket attacks.

As the casualties mount, along with the suffering of those Palestinians and Israelis left behind, several attacks stand out as seminal moments in a conflict that has transformed with surprising velocity, polarizing Israeli society and spurring mob violence on both sides.

Here is what is driving the conflict, and its arc so far:

In the bombardment before dawn on Monday, the Israeli Army said that 54 warplanes used 110 rockets and bombs as they attacked around 35 targets for a period of 20 minutes. Much of the assault was aimed at a network of underground tunnels used by Hamas to move people and equipment. Israeli strategists refer to this strategy of targeting the tunnels as “mowing the grass.” Airstrikes also targeted the homes of Hamas’s military leaders, the Israeli military said.
An Israeli airstrike over the weekend at a refugee camp killed at least 10 Palestinians, including eight children. Mohammed al-Hadidi said that his wife and their sons Suhaib, 14; Yahya, 11; Abdelrahman, 8; and Wissam, 5, were killed, as were his wife’s brother’s four children and her sister-in-law. Only a 5-month-old baby boy, Omar, was pulled from the rubble alive. The attack magnified growing criticism against Israel’s military for the number of children killed in airstrikes on Gaza. Outrage has been fanned on social media where images of children’s bodies have circulated.
On Saturday, an Israeli airstrike destroyed the 12-story Jalaa tower in Gaza City that housed some of the world’s leading media organizations, including The Associated Press and Al Jazeera. The destruction of the building drew global criticism that Israel was undermining press freedom. On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces tweeted that the building was “an important base of operations” for Hamas military intelligence. But The A.P. said it had operated from the building for 15 years and had no indication that Hamas was installed there. There were no casualties.

Credit…Hosam Salem for The New York Times

A 5-year-old Israeli boy, Ido Avigal, was killed on Wednesday when a rocket fired from Gaza made a direct hit on the building next door to his aunt’s apartment, where he was visiting with his mother and older sister. He had been sheltering in a fortified safe room. More than 3,300 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza this week, the Israeli authorities have said.
The conflict began last Monday when weeks of simmering tensions in Jerusalem between Palestinian protesters, the police and right-wing Israelis escalated, against the backdrop of a longstanding local battle for control of a city sacred to Jews, Arabs and Christians. Among the main catalysts was a raid by the Israeli police on the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites, in which hundreds of Palestinians and a score of police officers were wounded. Militants in Gaza responded by lobbing rockets at Jerusalem, spurring Israel to respond with airstrikes.
The root of the latest escalation was intense disputes over East Jerusalem. The Israeli police prevented Palestinians from gathering near one of the city’s ancient gates during the holy month of Ramadan, as they had customarily. At the same time, Palestinians faced eviction by Jewish landlords from homes in East Jerusalem. Many Arabs called it part of a wider Israeli campaign to force Palestinians out of the city, describing it as ethnic cleansing.
Intense political struggles for leadership of Israel and the Palestinians are part of the backdrop for the fighting. After four inconclusive elections in Israel in two years, no one has been able to form a governing coalition. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on trial on corruption charges, has been able to remain in office, and hopes Israelis will rally around him in the crisis. In Palestinian elections that were recently postponed, Hamas hoped to take control of the Palestinian Authority, and has positioned itself as the defender of Jerusalem.

Israel’s Iron Dome system intercepting rockets launched from GazaAnas Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Streaks through the sky left by the Iron Dome systemFatima Shbair/Getty Images
Ashkelon, IsraelNir Elias/Reuters
Ashdod, IsraelMenahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Sderot, IsraelJack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Ashkelon, IsraelJack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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As the worst violence in years rages between the Israeli military and Hamas, each night the sky is lit up by a barrage of missiles and the projectiles designed to counter them.

It is a display of fire and thunder that has been described as both remarkable and horrifying.

The images of Israel’s Iron Dome defense system attempting to shoot down missiles fired by militants in Gaza have been among the most widely shared online, even as the toll wrought by the violence only becomes clear in the light of the next day’s dawn.

“The number of Israelis killed and wounded would be far higher if it had not been for the Iron Dome system, which has been a lifesaver as it always is,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, said this week.

The Iron Dome became operational in 2011 and got its biggest first test over eight days in November 2014, when Gaza militants fired some 1,500 rockets aimed at Israel.

While Israeli officials claimed a success rate of up to 90 percent during that conflict, outside experts were skeptical.

The system’s interceptors — just 6 inches wide and 10 feet long — rely on miniature sensors and computerized brains to zero in on short-range rockets. Israel’s larger interceptors — the Patriot and Arrow systems — can fly longer distances to go after bigger threats.

The Iron Dome was recently upgraded, but the details of the changes were not made public.

It is being tested like never before, according to the Israeli military.

“I think it will not be a big mistake to say that even last night there were more missiles than all the missiles fired on Tel Aviv in 2014,” Major General Ori Gordin, commander of Israel’s home front, said during a news conference on Sunday. “Hamas’s attack is very intense in terms of pace of firing.”

Militants in the Gaza Strip have about 3,100 missiles, the Israeli Air Force said on Sunday, noting that about 1,150 of them had been intercepted.

“Despite the layers of defense, there is never 100 percent defense,” Gen. Gordin said. “Sometimes the aerial defense will miss or not be able to intercept, and sometimes people will not get into shelters or lay on the ground and sometimes a whole building will collapse.”

Credit…Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

It used to be that when Palestinians were under fire, protests would follow in the streets of Arab cities. But solidarity with the Palestinians has shifted online and gone global, creating a virtual Arab street that has the potential to have a wider impact than the physical ones in the Middle East.

A profusion of pro-Palestinian voices, memes and videos on social media has bypassed traditional media and helped accomplish what decades of Arab protest, boycotts of Israel and regular spurts of violence had not: yanking the Palestinian cause, all but left for dead a few months ago, toward the mainstream.

As Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza stretches into a second week, the online protesters have linked arms with popular movements for minority rights such as Black Lives Matter, seeking to reclaim the narrative from the mainstream media and picking up support in Western countries that have reflexively supported Israel during past conflicts with Palestinians.

“It feels different this time, it definitely does,” said Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, 29, the Palestinian-Jordanian-American founder of MuslimGirl.com, whose posts on the topic have been ubiquitous over the past week. “I wasn’t expecting this to happen so quickly, and for the wave to shift this fast. You don’t see many people out on the streets in protest these days, but I would say that social media is the mass protest.”

Palestinian activists say that they aim to seize control of the narrative from media outlets that have suppressed their point of view and falsely equated Israel’s suffering with that of its occupied territories.

They refer to Israeli policies as “the colonization of Palestine,” describe its discrimination against Palestinians as apartheid and characterize the proposed eviction of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, which helped set off the current conflict, as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing

As images of Sheikh Jarrah, destruction in Gaza and police raids on Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem have barreled from Palestinian online platforms — including PaliRoots and Eye on Palestine — across Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, they have united a new generation of Arab activists with progressive allies who might not have known where Gaza was two weeks ago.

Credit…Pool photo by Ken Cedeno

President Biden’s urging of a halt to Israeli-Palestinian fighting followed calls from Democratic lawmakers for his administration to speak out firmly against the escalation of violence. But unlike during past clashes in the region — when most Democrats have called for peace without openly criticizing Israel’s actions — skepticism around Israel’s current campaign in Gaza has spread to even some of its strongest defenders in Congress.

They include Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who told Democrats on the panel on Monday that he would ask the Biden administration to delay a $735 million tranche of precision-guided weapons to Israel that had been approved before tensions in the Middle East boiled over.

Mr. Meeks is a fixture at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. His call to delay the arms package came after a number of Democrats raised concerns about sending American-made weapons to Israel at a time when it has bombed civilians, as well as a building that housed press outlets.

A day earlier, 28 Democratic senators put out a letter publicly calling for a cease-fire. The effort was led by Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia and, at 34, the face of a younger generation of American Jews in Congress.

On Saturday, Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who is known as one of Israel’s most unshakable allies in the Democratic Party, issued a statement saying he was “deeply troubled” by Israeli strikes that had killed Palestinian civilians and the tower housing media outlets. He demanded that both sides “uphold the rules and laws of war” and find a peaceful end to fighting that has killed more than 200 Palestinians and 10 Israelis.

Though they have no intention of ending the United States’ close alliance with Israel, a growing number of Democrats in Washington say they are no longer willing to give the country a pass for its harsh treatment of the Palestinians. Those most vocal in their criticism of the Israeli government said they meant to send a message to Mr. Biden: that the old playbook he used as a senator and as vice president would no longer find the same support in his party.

“That hasn’t worked,” Representative Mark Pocan, a progressive Democrat from Wisconsin, told a top adviser to Mr. Biden late last week, he said in an interview on Monday. “We’re going to be advocating for peace in a way that maybe they haven’t traditionally heard.”

The strongest push is coming from the energized progressive wing of the party, whose representatives in the House, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have in recent days accused Israel of gross human rights violations against Palestinians.

Republicans and AIPAC have been swift to warn against any perceived weakening of the U.S. commitment to Israel. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader and a vocal supporter of Israel, condemned Ms. Ocasio-Cortez on Monday for her description of Israel as an “apartheid state” and urged the president to “leave no doubt where America stands.”

Credit…Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Our Jerusalem bureau chief, Patrick Kingsley, examined the events that have led to the past week’s violence, the worst between Israelis and Palestinians in years. A little-noticed police action in Jerusalem was among them. He writes:

Twenty-seven days before the first rocket was fired from Gaza this week, a squad of Israeli police officers entered the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, brushed the Palestinian attendants aside and strode across its vast limestone courtyard. Then they cut the cables to the loudspeakers that broadcast prayers to the faithful from four medieval minarets.

It was the night of April 13, the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It was also Memorial Day in Israel, which honors those who died fighting for the country. The Israeli president was delivering a speech at the Western Wall, a sacred Jewish site that lies below the mosque, and Israeli officials were concerned that the prayers would drown it out.

Here is his full account of that night and the events that later unfolded.

Tags Conflict, IsraelPalestinian, Live, Times, Updates, York

Politics

U.S. army continues Afghanistan withdrawal as Israel-Gaza violence ensues

Post author By
Post date May 18, 2021

U.S. military continues Afghanistan withdrawal as Israel-Gaza violence ensues

Lance Cpl. Patrick Reeder, with Combined Anti-Armor Team 2, patrols Nawa district, Helmand province, Afghanistan, Oct. 28, 2009.

Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. James Purschwitz

WASHINGTON – Since President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, the US has completed up to 20% of the withdrawal process from the country, the US Central Command said on Tuesday.

Command monitored the removal of approximately 115 loads of equipment in C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft. More than 5,000 pieces of equipment that will not be handed over to the Afghan military have also been handed over to the Defense Logistics Agency for destruction.

The US has also officially handed over five facilities to the Afghan military. Central Command estimates the US has completed between 13% and 20% of the withdrawal process so far.

In April, Biden announced a full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan by September 11, ending America’s longest war.

The removal of approximately 3,000 US soldiers coincides with the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks that spurred America’s entry into protracted wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Biden’s withdrawal schedule breaks with a proposed deadline agreed by the Trump administration and the Taliban last year. All foreign armed forces should have left Afghanistan by May 1 under this agreement.

Last month, the White House confirmed that US troops had begun withdrawing from Afghanistan. The Pentagon was proactively deploying additional troops and military equipment to protect the armed forces in the area, the government said.

The central command has not disclosed the number of troops currently stationed there due to operational security measures.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday that the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas will not curb the Biden government’s ambitions to complete a full withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In a phone call Monday afternoon with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden raised concerns about the rising civilian death toll and called for a ceasefire.

Violence between militants from Israel and Hamas has increased for more than a week. Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip have resulted in at least 212 Palestinian deaths, according to the authorities there.

Meanwhile, Israel has said that more than 3,400 rockets have bombed its cities. At least 12 people have died in Israel.

The violence marked the largest escalation of the conflict in years. On Tuesday, the European Union became the youngest organization to call for a ceasefire.

Tags Afghanistan, continues, ensues, IsraelGaza, Military, Violence, withdrawal

Business

CDC examine finds disparities in protection between rural and concrete areas

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Post date May 18, 2021

CDC study finds disparities in coverage between rural and urban areas

An El Paso Fire Department health worker administers the Moderna vaccine for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a vaccination center near the Santa Fe International Bridge in El Paso, Texas on May 7, 2021.

Jose Luis Gonzalez | Reuters

According to a new study released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people in rural areas are receiving lower levels of Covid-19 vaccines than in urban areas, potentially boosting the country’s progress in ending the disease Pandemic hinders.

The CDC analyzed county-level vaccine administration data in American adults who received their first dose of the Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna Covid-19 vaccine or a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine. It examined data from 49 states and the District of Columbia through April 10.

The agency found, at 38.9% and 45.7%, respectively, a lower percentage of residents in rural districts who had received at least one shot than in urban districts. The CDC also found that people in rural areas who received a vaccine often had to travel farther to get it than people in urban areas.

“The hesitation of vaccines in rural areas is a major obstacle that doctors, health care providers and local partners must address in order to achieve equitable vaccination,” the CDC wrote in the report.

“As the availability of COVID-19 vaccines increases, public health doctors should continue to work with health care providers, pharmacies, employers, religious leaders and other partners in the community to identify and address barriers to COVID-19 vaccination in rural areas eliminate, “added the agency.

The new data comes as more studies have shown that rural residents may be more reluctant to get a vaccine. A report by the Kaiser Family Foundation published in April found that 3 out of 10 rural residents either “definitely won’t” get vaccinated or will only do so when needed.

CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky brought up the study before it was released Tuesday, saying the Biden administration was determined to reach communities “in every corner of the United States.”

The US is working to “ensure that access to vaccines is fair whether you live in rural or urban areas,” she said during a Covid-19 briefing at the White House. “Public health workers nationwide are working to provide trusted information through trusted messengers.”

Walensky said CDC employees attended the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama last weekend, where U.S. health officials were doing Covid tests and vaccinations.

“We’re really making strides across the country to make sure people have access to vaccines,” she said.

Tuesday’s study did not calculate coverage by race and ethnicity, according to the CDC, because information about it was missing for 40% of the data.

Tags Areas, CDC, Coverage, Disparities, Finds, Rural, Study, Urban

Health

Airstrike Damages Gaza’s Solely Covid-19 Testing Lab, Officers Say

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Post date May 18, 2021

Airstrike Damages Gaza's Only Covid-19 Testing Lab, Officials Say

Since Covid-19 first appeared in the blocked Gaza Strip, the authorities have only been able to conduct a relatively small number of coronavirus tests due to the lack of medical care.

Now the only laboratory in Gaza processing test results is temporarily inoperable after an Israeli air strike nearby on Monday, Gaza officials said.

The strike, which targeted a separate building in Gaza City, sent splinters and debris flying across the street and damaged the laboratory and administrative offices of the Hamas-led health ministry, said Dr. Majdi Dhair, Director of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Ministry.

A ministry official was hospitalized and in serious condition after being hit in the head by a splinter, said Dr. Dhair on Tuesday in a telephone interview.

“This attack was barbaric,” he said. “There’s no way to justify it.”

The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike. Since Israel began its bombing campaign in Gaza on May 10, the army has declared that its air strikes are aimed exclusively at militants and their infrastructure.

Dr. Dhair said he believed the equipment in the lab was intact, but stressed that it would take at least a day to clean up the damage and prepare him to run coronavirus tests again. In the meantime, the medical teams would stop doing tests.

Rami Abadla, director of the Infection Control Department of the Gaza Ministry, said the laboratory will also temporarily not be able to process results for other tests related to HIV, hepatitis C and other diseases.

Over the past week, Gaza authorities tested an average of 515 Palestinians for the virus every day. According to official data, only 1.9 percent of the two million people in Gaza were fully vaccinated on Monday, compared with 56 percent in Israel.

After an increase in cases in April, mainly due to the highly communicable coronavirus variant first identified in the UK, new infections in Gaza have recently dropped to manageable levels, health experts said. But with Israeli air strikes destroying buildings, causing widespread damage and killing more than 200 people by Monday, United Nations officials have warned coronavirus cases could re-emerge.

Unvaccinated Palestinians crowded into schools operated by the United Nations Relief Society in Gaza, turning them into de facto air raid shelters. Matthias Schmale, the head of operations at the UN agency, said last week that these schools “could become mass disseminators”.

Mr Schmale and the World Health Organization’s chief official in Gaza, Sacha Bootsma, also said that all vaccinations stopped when hostilities broke out and that any vaccine supply in the territory had been delayed by the closure of the border crossings in the Gaza Strip.

Tags Airstrike, Covid19, Damages, Gazas, lab, Officials, Testing

Business

How AT&T Obtained Right here, and What’s Subsequent: Dwell Updates

Post author By
Post date May 18, 2021

John Stankey, the chief executive of AT&T.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Mike Segar/Reuters

AT&T is painting a rosy picture for the future of its media business, which it will spin off and merge with Discovery. That new streaming giant is a formidable stand-alone competitor to Netflix and Disney. The move leaves AT&T to focus on its telecom business, which looks less bright after being overshadowed by its expensive — and ultimately futile — deal-making binge in media and entertainment under its previous chief, Randall Stephenson.

The DealBook newsletter explains how AT&T got here, in three key deals:

A $39 billion bid to buy T-Mobile. After regulatory pushback, in 2011 AT&T walked away from an effort to become the country’s largest wireless company. T-Mobile paired up instead with Sprint, and the two went on to buy huge amounts of spectrum in the high-stakes battle for 5G, leaving AT&T behind as it lobbies regulators to step in. The failed deal hit AT&T with a $3 billion dollar breakup fee, at the time the largest ever.

The $67 billion acquisition of DirectTV. In 2015, AT&T bet on cable TV as a way to amass customers whom it could eventually convert to streaming. But DirectTV bled subscribers as customers cut the cord, and AT&T unloaded a stake in the company last year to TPG that valued DirectTV at about a third of its acquisition price. The deal also cost AT&T about $50 million in advisory fees, according to Refinitiv.
The $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. In 2018, Stephenson called the deal a “perfect match,” but the combined group struggled to invest in its telecom business while also spending enough to compete with the entertainment specialists at Netflix and Disney. Three years later, AT&T is now spinning off the company so it can (re)focus on its quest for 5G market share. AT&T paid $94 million in advisory fees to put the two companies together and an estimated $61 million to split them apart.

After all of that deal-making, AT&T is sitting on more than $170 billion in debt. As part of the deal with Discovery, AT&T will get $43 billion to help reduce its debt load. (The spun-off media business will begin its independent life with $58 billion in debt.)

AT&T also said it would reduce its dividend payout ratio — effectively cutting the amount it pays in half, according to Morgan Stanley. “You can call it a cut, or you can call it a re-sizing of the business,” said John Stankey, AT&T’s chief executive, in an interview. “It’s still a very, very generous dividend.” AT&T’s shares closed down 2.7 percent on Monday.

Market watchers expect the deal to kick off more consolidation among content providers as they race for scale to compete against another giant. Candidates include what John Malone, Discovery’s chairman, calls the “free radicals” — like Lionsgate, ViacomCBS and AMC, as well as NBCUniversal and Fox. Meanwhile, Amazon is in talks to buy another independent studio, MGM.

In a sign of the pressure that players face to spend big to bulk up, shares in Comcast, the telecom company that owns NBCUniversal, fell 5.5 percent on Monday.

Credit…Marie Eriel Hobro for The New York Times

Walmart reported a strong first quarter on Tuesday, as its e-commerce business continued to drive sales and customers were helped by stimulus checks.

The retail giant said its sales in the United States in the first quarter increased 6 percent to $93.2 billion, while operating profit grew about 27 percent to $5.5 billion.

“Our optimism is higher than it was at the beginning of the year,” Walmart’s chief executive, Doug McMillon, said in a statement. “In the U.S., customers clearly want to get out and shop.”

Walmart is among a group of larger retailers that have experienced blockbuster sales during the pandemic, particularly for online groceries. The company’s e-commerce sales increased 37 percent in the first quarter.

The question now is whether Walmart can continue its pace of growth as shopping habits start to normalize.

Mr. McMillon said although the second half of the year “has more uncertainty than a typical year, we anticipate continued pent-up demand throughout 2021.”

Sales in the company’s international division declined 8.3 percent in the first quarter, as Walmart divested from some of its subsidiaries in places like Japan and Argentina. The company’s total revenue increased 2.7 percent to $138.3 billion.

Walmart raised its financial guidance for the rest of the year, projecting “high single digit” growth in operating income in its United States operation, with sales up in the single digits.

Credit…Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

Macy’s said on Tuesday that its first-quarter sales jumped more than 50 percent from last year, when the start of the pandemic pulverized the retailer’s revenue, and it raised its forecast for sales and profit this year.

The company, which also owns Bloomingdale’s, reported $4.7 billion in sales for the three months that ended May 1, and a profit of $103 million. That compares with about $3 billion in sales and a net loss of $3.6 billion in the same period last year. Macy’s said it anticipated sales in the range of $21.7 billion to $22.2 billion this year, up from a previous forecast of somewhere between $19.8 billion and $20.8 billion.

Macy’s executives said on an earnings call that customers, buoyed by government stimulus were shopping again as the weather warmed up and vaccines have become more readily available. They are beginning to attend events after a year of isolation, and snapping up dresses for proms, casual get-togethers and weddings. Men’s tailored clothing is also seeing increases. Traffic is improving at Macy’s flagship stores, which lost visitors in the past year, though the company said it did not expect international tourism to recover until next year.

Department stores, which have already been under pressure in recent years, were battered by the pandemic as consumers postponed gatherings and avoided enclosed spaces. The news out of Macy’s was a positive for the retail sector, but the company’s first-quarter sales were still down about 15 percent from $5.5 billion in the same period of 2019. Macy’s made headlines recently after proposing the construction of a commercial office tower on top of its flagship Herald Square store in New York. The company said on the call on Tuesday that it expected the project would produce a “significant” amount of cash to support future plans.

Credit…Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Long working hours are leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year, according to a new study by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization.

Working more than 55 hours a week in a paid job resulted in 745,000 deaths in 2016, the study estimated, up from 590,000 in 2000. About 398,000 of the deaths in 2016 were because of stroke and 347,000 because of heart disease. Both physiological stress responses and changes in behavior (such as an unhealthy diet, poor sleep and reduced physical activity) are “conceivable” reasons that long hours have a negative impact on health, the authors suggest. Other takeaways from the study:

Working more than 55 hours per week is dangerous. It is associated with an estimated 35 percent higher risk of stroke and 17 percent higher risk of heart disease compared with working 35 to 40 hours per week.
About 9 percent of the global population works long hours. In 2016, an estimated 488 million people worked more than 55 hours per week. Though the study did not examine data after 2016, “past experience has shown that working hours increased after previous economic recessions; such increases may also be associated with the Covid-19 pandemic,” the authors wrote.
Long hours are more dangerous than other occupational hazards. In all three years that the study examined (2000, 2010 and 2016), working long hours led to more disease than any other occupational risk factor, including exposure to carcinogens and the non-use of seatbelts at work. And the health toll of overwork worsened over time: From 2000 to 2016, the number of deaths from heart disease because of working long hours increased 42 percent, and from stroke 19 percent.

Dr. Maria Neira, a director at the W.H.O., put the conclusion bluntly: “It’s time that we all, governments, employers and employees wake up to the fact that long working hours can lead to premature death.”

Credit…Alec Jacobson for The New York Times

Investment in new oil and natural gas projects must stop from today, and sales of new gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles must halt from 2035. These are some of the milestones that the International Energy Agency said Tuesday must be achieved for the global energy industry to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

These conclusions seem surprisingly stark for the agency, a multilateral group whose main mandate is helping ensure energy security and stability. But it has increasingly embraced a role in combating climate change under its executive director, Fatih Birol.

In a news conference, Mr. Birol said he wanted to address the gap between the ambitious commitments on climate change that government and chief executives have been making and the reality that global emissions are continuing to rise strongly.

Just a year ago, the agency was deeply concerned about the disruptive implications of the collapse of the oil market from the effects of the pandemic. At the time, Mr. Birol referred to April 2020 as “Black April.”

Now Mr. Birol’s analysts are outlining in a report what looks like decades of disruption for the global energy industry. Oil production, for instance, will need to fall from nearly 100 million barrels a day to around 24 million a day by 2050, the report says.

The agency acknowledges that the disruption for the global energy sector, which produces three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions, could threaten five million jobs. “The contraction of oil and natural gas production will have far-reaching implications for all the countries and companies that produce these fuels,” the Paris-based group said in a news release.

Oil-producing countries may see different affects. This report, for instance, is likely to lead to further calls from environmental groups for the British government, which heads the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), to end new oil and gas drilling to set a global example. A halt would threaten jobs in Britain’s declining but still large oil and gas industry.

On the other hand, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are likely to see their share of a much-reduced market rise from about a third to more than 50 percent, the agency said, as nations with less efficient, higher-cost oil industries cut back.

At the same time, Mr. Birol said, there would be major economic benefits from the trillions of dollars in investment in wind, solar and other sources of renewable energy. Doing so could create 30 million jobs,and add 0.4 percent year to world economic growth, he said.

Credit…Erin Scott for The New York Times

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen called on American business leaders on Tuesday to support the Biden administration’s proposals for making robust infrastructure investments that would be paid for by raising taxes on corporations, arguing that the plan would ultimately strengthen U.S. firms.

The comments, made at an event sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, came as the Biden administration is pressing ahead with negotiations with lawmakers over the scope of an infrastructure and jobs package. The White House has been exchanging proposals with Republicans in Congress and is under pressure from Democrats not to scale back its ambitions.

“We are confident that the investments and tax proposals in the jobs plan, taken as a package, will enhance the net profitability of our corporations and improve their global competitiveness,” Ms. Yellen said. “We hope that business leaders will see it this way and support the jobs plan.”

Business leaders have been supportive of government investment in infrastructure but are wary of paying for it with higher taxes. The Biden administration wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent. It has been working on an agreement with other countries to raise their corporate tax rates, believing that a global minimum tax will help countries raise revenue and allow the United States to raise its rate without making its companies less competitive.

“With corporate taxes at a historical low of 1 percent of G.D.P., we believe the corporate sector can contribute to this effort by bearing its fair share: We propose simply to return the corporate tax toward historical norms,” Ms. Yellen said. “At the same time, we want to eliminate incentives that reward corporations for moving their operations overseas and shifting profits to low-tax countries.”

Ms. Yellen’s pitch was met with wariness from the nation’s largest business lobbying group. The Chamber has been arguing against the corporate tax increase and making the case that raising the rate would be bad for small businesses.

Immediately after Ms. Yellen’s remarks, Suzanne Clark, chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce, offered a rebuttal.

“It’s always an honor to hear from the Treasury secretary, including and maybe even especially when we disagree, as we do on taxes,” Ms. Clark said. “The data and the evidence are clear: The proposed tax increases would greatly disadvantage U.S. businesses and harm American workers. And now is certainly not the time to erect new barriers to economic recovery.”

Credit…Yimou Lee/Reuters

Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics heavyweight best known for making Apple’s iPhones, has found a big new partner for its auto-industry ambitions: the European-American car giant Stellantis.

The two companies on Tuesday announced a joint venture for building in-car digital systems and software, which automakers believe will be an increasingly important selling point for consumers in the coming decades.

“This is core to the future of Stellantis,” the automaker’s chief executive, Carlos Tavares, said during a conference call with reporters. The new partnership, he said, “is about putting software at the core of the company.”

Stellantis was created in January from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA, the French maker of Peugeot, Citroën and Opel cars. The tie-up was motivated in part to put the companies in a stronger position to develop electric cars as fossil fuel-burning vehicles become history.

The 50-50 venture with Foxconn, which is called Mobile Drive, will supply so-called digital cockpits not only to Stellantis brands like Jeep and Maserati, but to other automakers as well, the two companies said on Tuesday. Mobile Drive will make digital systems for gas-powered cars in addition to electric ones.

Foxconn is moving rapidly to claim a bigger role in the car business, betting that its expertise in gadgets will give it a leg up as auto making fuses with electronics.

In October, the company unveiled a kit of technology and tools aimed at helping automakers develop electric vehicles. Last week, it finalized an agreement with the California-based automaker Fisker to develop a new electric car that the companies aim to begin manufacturing in the United States in 2023.

During Tuesday’s call, Stellantis and Foxconn executives declined to say whether the two companies would also explore contract car manufacturing as part of their cooperation.

The S&P 500 was unchanged on Tuesday, after the benchmark index slumped 0.3 percent on Monday. European indexes were higher, with FTSE 100 in Britain gaining 0.2 percent and the Stoxx Europe 600 up 0.3 percent.
In Asia, the Nikkei in Japan gained 2.1 percent the same day the government reported the economy contracted in the first quarter, after two consecutive quarters of growth.
In Taiwan, the stock market jumped more than 5 percent following a slump after the government recently imposed restrictions to control an outbreak of Covid infections. Reuters reported that Taipei’s top official in Washington was in talks with President Biden about securing doses of vaccine from the United States.
Shares in AT&T, which fell 2.6 percent Monday after it announced it was spinning off its WarnerMedia division and becoming more of a strictly telecommunication company, continued their slide, down a further 5.5 percent.
In Britain, the latest reading on unemployment showed “some early signs of recovery,” the Office for National Statistics said. The jobless rate for January through March was 4.8 percent, 0.3 percentage points lower than the previous quarter. At the same time, the number of payroll employees increased in April for the fifth consecutive month, but remains 772,000 less than it was prepandemic.

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden will fly to Michigan on Tuesday to visit the factory where Ford will produce the first electric version of its signature F-150 pickup truck, seeking to harness the horsepower of an American icon as he continues to make the case for his $4 trillion economic agenda.

Mr. Biden’s remarks at the Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center are expected to center on the hundreds of billions of dollars for domestic manufacturing, electric vehicle deployment and research into emerging technologies like advanced batteries that are included in the first half of his two-part economic agenda.

In a state that helped deliver the White House to Mr. Biden last year, after going for former President Donald J. Trump in 2016, the president will pitch the idea that a transition to electric vehicles can position the United States to beat out China in the global automotive market, while creating high-paying union jobs. He will do so flanked by trucks from the best-selling vehicle line in the country.

The $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan, as Mr. Biden calls it, focuses heavily on physical infrastructure and federal spending meant to drive the transition to an economy that relies less on fossil fuels, in order to combat climate change. The plan includes tax incentives to purchase low-emission vehicles, an effort to convert one-fifth of the nation’s school bus fleet to electric power, money to build 500,000 electric charging stations across the country and a wide range of other spending meant to encourage research, production and deployment of electric vehicles and their component parts.

The arrival of an electric F-150 is an important milestone in the auto industry’s transition to EVs. So far, only Tesla has sold electric models in high volume, but Ford’s F-Series trucks make up the top-selling vehicle line in the United States. Ford typically sells about 900,000 F-Series vehicles a year.

Earlier this year, Ford began selling the Mustang Mach E, a battery-powered sport-utility vehicle styled to resemble the company’s famous sports car.

“We’re not just electrifying fringe vehicles,” the company’s chairman, William C. Ford Jr., said. “The Mustang and the F-150 are the heart of what Ford is, so this is a signal about how serious we are about electrification. This really showcases where the industry can go and should go.”

Details about the full capability, battery range and price of the F-150 Lightning will be released Wednesday evening.

Autoworkers have expressed concerns over the electric transition, which American automakers are increasingly embracing, because the production of an electric vehicle requires about one-third less human labor than the making of a vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine.

Mike Ramsey, a Gartner analyst, said electrifying the top-selling vehicle in the U.S. market could help accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. “If this truck is successful, it means you can sell an electric version of any vehicle,” he said. “It could be the domino that tumbles over the rest of the market for E.V.s.”

Even if the F-150 Lightning accounts for only a small percentage of total F-Series sales, it would likely become one of the top-selling electric vehicles in the United States. Last year, for example, sales of the Chevrolet Bolt, made by General Motors, totaled just over 20,000 cars.

Credit…Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times

Turn on the news, scroll through Facebook, or listen to a White House briefing these days and there’s a good chance you’ll catch the Federal Reserve’s least-favorite word: Inflation. If that bubbling popular concern about prices gets too ingrained in America’s psyche, it could spell trouble for the nation’s central bank.

Interest in inflation has jumped this year for both political and practical reasons. Republicans, and even some Democrats, have been warning that the government’s hefty pandemic spending could push inflation higher. And as the economy gains steam, demand is coming back faster than supply, The New York Times’s Jeanna Smialek reports.

The Fed has big reasons to avoid overreacting: Inflation been a feature of the economic landscape since the 1980s.

But prices have stayed in control for so long partly because of muted inflation expectations. After decades of Consumers and businesses have learned to expect slow, steady gains year after year. Shoppers who don’t anticipate price increases may be reluctant to accept them, curbing a business’s power to raise them.

If consumers begin to anticipate faster gains, companies could regain their ability to charge more, locking in today’s temporary price bumps and calling into question the Fed’s plan to support the economy for months and even years to come.

Already, there are early signs that expectations could move higher as the economic backdrop changes dramatically. Were they to shoot up more than the Fed finds acceptable, it could force the Fed to react by dialing back support sooner rather than later.

Japan’s economy shrank in the first three months of 2021, continuing a swing between growth and contraction as its plodding vaccination campaign threatened to stall its recovery from the pandemic even as other major economies appeared primed for rapid growth. Japan is suffering a resurgence in virus cases, with much of the country under a state of emergency and deaths climbing, especially in Osaka. The yo-yoing economic pattern, analysts said, is unlikely to stop until the country has vaccinated a significant portion of its population, an effort that has just begun and seems unlikely to speed up significantly in the coming months.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has been in talks to sell itself to Amazon, according to three people briefed on the matter. It was unclear how much Amazon might be willing to spend, and a timeline for a potential deal was unclear, according to the people briefed on the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the sale process is private. If completed, a deal would turbocharge Amazon’s streaming ambitions by bringing James Bond, Rocky, RoboCop and other film and television properties into the e-commerce giant’s fold. In total, MGM has about 4,000 films in its library.
Bob Garfield, a longtime co-host of WNYC’s popular program “On the Media,” has been fired after two separate investigations found he had violated an anti-bullying policy, New York Public Radio, which owns WNYC, said on Monday. Mr. Garfield’s employment was terminated “as a result of a pattern of behavior that violated N.Y.P.R.’s anti-bullying policy,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. In an email on Monday, Mr. Garfield said he was not yet able to speak fully about the circumstances surrounding his firing but defended his behavior as yelling.

Credit…Till Lauer

Homes are selling quickly. About half sell in less than a week, usually after multiple offers, said Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist for the Redfin online brokerage.

The usual tips — like getting preapproved for a mortgage — apply more than ever, Ann Carrns reports for The New York Times. But competition in many cities is leading potential buyers to take steps they may not have considered even a few months ago, including offering tens of thousands of dollars above the asking price; agreeing to let the seller live, rent-free, in the house for several months after the closing; and waiving certain contingencies, like the right to inspect the house before buying.

Here are other measures buyers are going to to close the deal:

Buyers will sometimes send personal notes to sellers to distinguish themselves. “It never hurts,” said Mark Strüb, a real estate agent in Austin, Texas, though some Realtors discourage the practice. Mr. Strüb once had a seller with a strong sentimental attachment to the house pass over the highest offer because the potential buyer failed to write a letter, while the others vying for the home had all done so.
In some states, buyers may offer direct incentives to sellers outside of the purchase price, sometimes called “option” money, said Maura Neill, an agent with Re/Max Around Atlanta. “It works like a bonus,” she said. She cautioned that buyers and their agents should clarify their state’s laws, but “if you can make it work,” she said, “it’s a very strong tactic.”
Shoppers need patience, plus a willingness to move fast. To snag a condo near Piedmont Park, Ga., one client Ms. Neill worked with offered a quick closing, which was important to the sellers, and agreed to waive the appraisal — also an increasingly common practice in competitive markets. That means that if a buyer is financing the purchase with a mortgage and offers more than the property appraises for, the buyer agrees to pay the difference in cash at closing.

Credit…Benoit Tessier/Reuters

Eurostar, the high-speed train service between London and cities on the continent that has been financially crippled by the pandemic, said on Tuesday it had received a refinancing package of 250 million pounds, or $355 million, from a group of banks and its shareholders.

The package includes £150 million in loans guaranteed by its shareholders, including SNCF, the French national rail service, which owns 55 percent. The financing notably did not include the British government, which in 2015 sold its stake in the rail company and last month declined to back a bailout package.

“Everyone at Eurostar is encouraged by this strong show of support from our shareholders and banks,” said Jacques Damas, chief executive of Eurostar International. The company said the backing would help it meet its financial obligations “in the short to mid term.”

The Eurostar once ran at least 17 trains a day linking Britain and France. The pandemic and lockdowns forced it down to one train a day between London and Paris, and one a day between London and Brussels and Amsterdam. But next week, it is scheduled to expand to two daily trains between Paris and London, and then three a day beginning the end of June.

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