Month: August 2021

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Entertainment

When Dance Shut Down, These Administrators Banded Collectively

When Dance Shut Down, These Directors Banded Together

Last summer, Jonathan Stafford, artistic director of the New York City Ballet, felt isolated and fearful. It was a few months after the pandemic and the weirdness of the lockdown and riot and urgency of the protests against Black Lives Matter were on his mind.

City Ballet’s performances, programs, and plans had come to an abrupt halt – as had performing arts organizations across the country. Nobody knew when and how the theaters would reopen. Many dancers had fled to relatives or friends outside the city; most did not have enough space to maintain the vigorous exercise required to keep in shape for performance.

The artistic director of a dance company promotes dancers, designs and plans seasons and tours and maintains close contact with all departments, from fundraising to marketing to costume construction. Now what was the role of an artistic director?

Stafford called Robert Battle, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, for a chat. “That’s great,” said Battle after they had spoken for a while. “I wish we would speak to other art directors.”

Battle named Eduardo Vilaro from the Ballet Hispanico. City Ballet’s assistant director, Stafford and Wendy Whelan, named Virginia Johnson of the Dance Theater of Harlem and Kevin McKenzie of the American Ballet Theater. On August 7th last year, the six directors of some of New York’s most famous dance groups had their first online meeting, and they have met almost every Friday since then.

As new close colleagues and friends, they exchanged ideas, problems, strategies and solutions and will present a series of performances together for the first time – the BAAND Together Dance Festival, free shows starting Tuesday on the open-air stage of Lincoln Center in Damrosch Park.

“There was a light at the end of our tunnel,” Johnson said in a recent video interview with the other directors. “It’s not a marketing initiative. It’s something real that emerged from the time we spent together and want to give something back to the city. “

In a broad discussion, punctuated by laughter and a bit of teasing, the directors spoke about their pandemic concerns and the Black Lives Matter movement, and how they think the dance world has changed. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation and follow-up emails.

When you first started meeting online, a lot was still unknown about Covid-19. What were your worries then?

KEVIN MCKENZIE At first we just tried to take the pulse: is that as bad as I think? Each of us had plans that screeched to a halt, and we were all in a triage state. We asked ourselves: How do you deal with your artists? With instructions from the Center for Disease Control? With reinventing the way we could perform?

JONATHAN STAFFORD Eduardo organized us; he made agendas and gave us homework. We realized early on that the purpose of talking is to evoke action. We asked ourselves what is our goal for this group? How can we use our collective power to make a real change in the whole dance field?

What were some of the strategies or approaches that emerged from the meetings? How did they help you

WENDY WHELAN Learn how to create bubbles so that a group of dancers can work together in isolation and then perform. Kevin did a lot of it because he’s Mr. Kaatsbaan [McKenzie was a founder of the Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in upstate New York, in 1990], and we had no experience with it.

EMPLOYEES That kicked our butts a bit and we thought, OK, we have to do this. We also talked a lot about tests and vaccinations. City Ballet mandates vaccinations for our staff and it has helped us get support from other dance companies and know that we weren’t an outlier. There won’t be a single guideline here, but it was very helpful to share.

EDUARDO VILARO One special thing was that we joined forces during the elections. We have written a message about the importance of choosing and the importance of choice to our community. It was the first time that the five organizations brought something out together, and we left out the word “participation”!

VIRGINIA JOHNSON The biggest concrete result is of course the BAAND Together festival. It was so much fun programming with other Artistic Directors; Usually you are on an island with this assignment!

ROBERT BATTLE As well as specific outcomes like electoral politics or these performances, I feel that the meetings really helped by giving us a space in which to say, “I have no answers”. This can be terrifying when you’re the one who’s supposed to know what to do. It was good to take the pressure off that and discover that if you ask the right questions, you might have answers.

The death of George Floyd and the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement came as their organizations closed and dancers dispersed. What were your conversations about at the time?

VILARO We understand that we are very different organizations and that we need to approach these issues differently. But we were able to talk openly with each other and that was very helpful in deciding which approaches to take.

EMPLOYEES We asked ourselves how do we talk about it? It wasn’t about being colored or not, it was about having the difficult conversations we’ve never had before about becoming an inclusive art form. We have to do better: how are we going to do this?

JOHNSON We could be completely honest with each other. There were a lot of conversations that were very nice.

Have you changed in the way you approached the lockdown and the challenges it posed for you and the dancers?

JOHNSON We are different types of institutions and different sizes. I think Dance Theater of Harlem is the only non-union company in this group so it was interesting for me to hear how the unions approach things.

But there was a lot in common: We were basically all in a situation where our income was being destroyed and we had to ask ourselves how we keep our dancers motivated and in shape, how do we keep our art going, how do we keep ourselves healthy? It was helpful to collect different approaches to hear what is possible.

ROBERT BATTLE When dancers are devastated, as a director you sort of take on that. That kind of situation, when psychologically trying to fly the plane, was a common experience.

Let’s face it, you can talk to other people in your organization, but there’s nothing like sitting in that particular seat. These meetings allowed us to say, okay, we’re a little scared and gave us the space to breathe and do the work we had to do. For me, the mental health part was so important: it was like therapy.

What was your take on streaming appearances? Did any of you have any reservations about publishing free content or were you discussing how to make money from it?

MCKENZIE I would say it was very important for us to develop a digital content strategy when we were still a little shocked by the extent of our situation. At some point we understood that it was the only medium we could rely on for the foreseeable future.

WENDY WHELAN We knew we had no choice and we discussed it a lot. At City Ballet, we’ve been very fortunate that we’ve been capturing ballets on film every year for nearly a decade to get clips for marketing purposes. But we also knew that we had to stay creative and find ways to film our dancers in the current time.

We hope to keep some form of streaming and digital creativity alive; We know how important this year was in developing and building a wider global reach for City Ballet.

JOHNSON Digital was definitely a departure from the live performance focus of our normal lives. I think this group wasn’t about monetizing online content. It was about keeping the dancers dancing, strong, beautiful and challenged, without being in the studio.

There was a moment when everyone in other places was having endless conversations about budgets and payrolls and I thought, wait a minute, we’re artists. That has to move us forward.

Has the dance landscape in New York and beyond changed irrevocably as a result of the pandemic?

MCKENZIE I would say we don’t know yet. What we do know is that each organization will come back as a very different entity. For Ballet Theater, we learned a lot about digital delivery and how important it will be. But the experience also underscored the thirst and gratitude for performing live. So far it has only been outside, we haven’t been with strangers in the dark again. We don’t know how this will feel.

JOHNSON Yes, we cannot assume that this work is possible. You think things are going to go on forever and that made us realize that sometimes they can’t or can’t. We can now measure the sheer joy of doing this work and creating something magical and beautiful.

BATTLE Maybe innocence has been lost. The wonderful thing about being a dancer is creating that magic outside of the realities we have to face. The pandemic has made it clear what can go wrong, what can be lost. Not sure if you can just turn things on again and everyone will be fine all of a sudden.

WHELAN With our group it feels like a hardened shell has been cracked by our organizations and a new flexibility and energy has emerged. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve looked at ballet culture – so many dusty, old habits and outdated traditions that held us back. Bad habits and unhealthy power dynamics built into the system and passed down from generation to generation have not been effectively addressed until recently.

We still have a lot to do, but we’ve made progress over that time. Most importantly, we are mutually committed to moving forward and advancing our art form – together.

VILARO The gift of this group was the alliance that has developed between us and will help bring about change in our field. We have broken down silos that were hierarchical structures in the past. We don’t hoard information, we share.

So are you planning to continue meeting?

JOHNSON Naturally. It is so much fun.

WHELAN And we do that on Fridays and talk about cocktails.

Have you already met in person with cocktails?

WHELAN Eduardo is working on it.

EMPLOYEES It’s been a year. We really need these cocktails.

Categories
Politics

Garland Meets With State Supreme Courtroom Justices on Evictions Freeze

Garland Meets With State Supreme Court Justices on Evictions Freeze

Biden administration officials, worried that a new freeze on evictions might be struck down in federal court — and racing to prevent a national crisis — are increasingly turning to state courts to help deliver billions in federal housing aid.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland held a virtual meeting with 35 state Supreme Court justices in an effort to encourage them to use every tool at their disposal to avert or delay evictions by ensuring landlords and tenants have access to a $47 billion fund allocated by Congress.

Only about $3 billion of that cash — roughly 7 percent — had been allocated by June 30, according to the Treasury Department, which oversees the program.

“State courts are on the front lines of this crisis,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who has been overseeing the department’s efforts on evictions.

The effort to pay off back rent accrued during the pandemic has been hampered by resistance among some owners, who would rather evict nonpaying tenants than wait for federal payments, and sluggish efforts by states to create an infrastructure to distribute the largest allocation of housing funding in generations.

White House officials cited the need to buy more time for the aid program, along with public health concerns stemming from the Delta variant of the coronavirus, in drafting the new moratorium after the old one expired on July 31.

During Wednesday’s meeting, Mr. Garland cited several state initiatives as models for localities to follow, including an order by Michigan’s State Supreme Court requiring courts to stay eviction proceedings for up to 45 days to allow tenants to complete applications for rental assistance, according to Justice Department officials.

Another effort Mr. Garland singled for praise was a directive by the Republican-controlled Supreme Court in Texas, which modified notices sent to tenants who are sued for eviction to make sure they are aware of the benefits.

The state’s judicial training center also created instructions for local justices of the peace to divert landlords to the federal aid program whenever possible. That move, coupled with a joint federal-state effort to simplify application forms, is already showing some results, said Chief Justice Nathan Hecht.

“I’ve been on the bench for 40 years, and to tell the truth, judges historically did not see these kinds of programs as having anything to do with them, but that is changing,” Chief Justice Hecht said in an interview.

“The key to the whole thing is that the application process has got to be easy, it’s got to be simple,” he added. “Landlords are frustrated, and tenants are facing the streets, and overall it’s a very tense time. So, we can’t be telling people it’s going to take six weeks to get your money.”

In addition to pressuring Mr. Garland to help speed the checks, the justices asked federal officials to prioritize the role of the judiciary in all aid programs — to allow state courts to more easily tap into relief money to hire landlord-tenant mediators and navigators to assist tenants who cannot afford counsel to understand their rights in court.

Categories
Health

U.S. well being division mandates Covid vaccine pictures for its 25,000 workers

U.S. health department mandates Covid vaccine shots for its 25,000 employees

Xavier Becerra, the Health and Human Services (HHS) candidate, attends his Senate Finance Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on February 24, 2021.

Michael Reynolds | Swimming pool | Reuters

The Department of Health and Human Services is ordering Covid-19 vaccine syringes for the agency’s 25,000-plus employees, making it the latest government agency to require vaccinations in response to the global surge in the Delta variant.

The mandate announced Thursday by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra covers the Indian Health Service, the National Institutes of Health, and the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps – three agencies overseen by the department – and staff working with patients in medical or clinical research facilities of the federal government work together.

“Our ultimate goal is the health and safety of the American public, including our federal employees, and vaccines are the best tool we have to protect people from COVID-19, prevent the spread of the Delta variant, and save lives” Becerra said in a statement from HHS.

Members of the commanded corps must also be vaccinated against the virus if they are called to active duty as emergency services. The new mandate follows the agency’s existing religious and medical exemptions for vaccinations against influenza and other diseases.

The decision is made just days after the Pentagon issued a Covid vaccination mandate for all service members to be vaccinated by mid-September. The Department of Veterans Affairs became the first major federal agency to issue a Covid vaccination mandate for health workers last month.

President Joe Biden also announced mandatory vaccination for all federal employees on July 29, giving them the alternative of having weekly coronavirus tests instead of showing proof of vaccination. HHS did not state whether employees could choose to get tested for the coronavirus regularly instead of getting vaccinated.

Company executives are also increasingly exercising vaccine mandates. Companies including Google, Facebook, United Airlines and Tyson Foods are now demanding that some or all of their employees be vaccinated as the number of coronavirus cases in the US has risen recently.

Categories
Health

A Return to Freedom, After Almost a 12 months Trapped Indoors Underneath Lockdown

A Return to Freedom, After Nearly a Year Trapped Indoors Under Lockdown

TORONTO — Ted Freeman-Atwood, 90, rolled out of his tall brick nursing home in his wheelchair, wearing a blue tweed jacket with a white handkerchief peaking from its breast pocket. “This is the farthest I’ve traveled since last year,” he told the manager of his favorite restaurant two blocks away, who greeted him by name.

It was a beautiful day in June. The sky clear, the sun generous and Toronto’s streets alive. After eight months of near-constant, government-enforced closures, small storefronts flung open their doors to customers and restaurant patrons spilled out from sidewalk patios onto the road.

It was Mr. Freeman-Atwood’s first real outing since August 2020; his second since the coronavirus pandemic began.

He ordered a glass of pinot grigio, explaining how he hadn’t tasted that pleasure in almost a year because “the joint I live in doesn’t want drunk old men pawing girls after 5 p.m.”

Toronto — the city labeled “the lockdown capital of North America” by the national federation of small businesses — was giddy with liberty and freedoms that many had considered chores back in February 2020.

Since December, gatherings in the city — even outdoors — had been banned, filling the city with a sense of loneliness. No one felt this more acutely than residents of Toronto’s nursing homes. Ground zero for the pandemic’s cruel ravages, they account for 59 percent of the country’s Covid-19 deaths. As a result, they also became the most fortified. Locked down since last March, most facilities refused all visitors for months.

For all but five weeks between March 2020 and June 2021, care home residents in Toronto were not permitted to leave their buildings for nonmedical reasons, not even a stroll. Many compared themselves to caged animals or prisoners. The lucky ones lived in residences with attached courtyards, where they could at least feel the sun on their faces.

Mr. Freeman-Atwood was not among the lucky ones.

“I’m bored to tears,” he said in January, two weeks after he’d received his first dose of the Moderna vaccine. “I do virtually nothing. Today, nothing awful happened, noting half-awful happened, nothing brilliant happened, nothing half-brilliant happened.”

He added, “I’m in my room all day.”

The child of a British army general and a mother from Newfoundland, Mr. Freeman-Atwood had lived a large, roaming life. He traveled around the world as a child and spent most of his adulthood in Rio de Janeiro, where he eventually became president of Brascan, a large Canadian firm that owned the biggest hydroelectric utility in the Southern Hemisphere, until he negotiated its sale to the Brazilian government.

In 2012, Mr. Freeman-Atwood moved into the Nisbet Lodge, a Christian nonprofit long-term care home in Toronto’s busy Greektown neighborhood. He’d suffered five aneurysms in 10 years, and had one leg removed because of bad circulation. After gangrene eventually set into the remaining leg, the doctors amputated that one, too.

His second wife had died from cancer, and he’d stubbornly refused an offer from his only child, Samantha, to take him in.

“I’m too much of a bloody nuisance,” he explained. “I’m in a wheelchair. I can’t get up or downstairs. Why should I inflict that on her?”

Before the pandemic, Mr. Freeman-Atwood regularly met Samantha, his son-in-law and two grandsons for lunch at nearby restaurants; he visited the bank and local cheese shop; and once a week, he wheeled his way to the liquor store for some wine, which he would smuggle back to his room.

Then, in March 2020, he lost what was left of his relatively independent lifestyle. He survived an outbreak in the home, during which 35 staff members and 53 residents tested positive. Four residents died. Mr. Freeman-Atwood tested positive, but experienced no symptoms.

He could no longer see his daughter, who found the trips to the building to drop off cookies and supplies for him heartbreaking.

On regular phone calls throughout the winter and spring, Mr. Freeman-Atwood’s only complaint was boredom. Sometimes, the sound of his neighbor moaning in pain echoed hauntingly in the background.

“I know it could be a hell of a lot worse,” he said. “I’d love to go out. What if I picked it up and then came back?”

During the pandemic, Canadian geriatricians sounded an alarm about “confinement syndrome.” Residents in nursing homes were losing weight, as well as cognitive and physical abilities because of social isolation — concerning given that even in nonpandemic times most residents die within two years of arriving at a care home.

Mr. Freeman-Atwood tried to stay busy. He had three newspapers delivered on Saturdays, tabulated the tax returns for four people in the spring and completed 300 exercise repetitions each morning before getting out of bed.

A big day for him was a rare trip to the building’s dining room on the top floor, where he could speak to one young waitress in German, a language he had perfected in 1956 in Austria, when he worked doing the accounts of an aid group tending to Hungarian refugees.

He met his first wife, who was also working with refugees, in Vienna. “We were young enough to think we were doing good,” he said.

As the pandemic dragged on, Mr. Freeman-Atwood also revealed some vulnerable moments.

In late March, he was presiding over a second-floor meeting of the residents’ council, which he has led since moving in. Outside, the city was in early bloom, the forsythia bushes glowing an electric yellow of promise. In an instant, the sun spilled through the windows.

“It was drawing us out, calling, ‘Come out, come out, come out and play,’” said Mr. Freeman-Atwood. “‘You’ve had your two Moderna jabs, why can’t you come out?’ The answer is, ‘No, the rest of the world hasn’t. And when will that be, nobody knows.”

Canada’s nursing homes were the first places to receive the country’s vaccines and by February, every resident of these homes in Ontario had been offered a first dose. Still, the restrictions did not change.

Government officials were “so burned by poor performance, the last thing they wanted is to be that minister who allows more bad things to happen,” said Dr. Samir Sinha, the director of geriatrics at Sinai Health System and University Health Network in Toronto. He was among those lobbying the government this past spring to relax its restrictions.

“At this point,” he said, “the risks of loneliness and social isolation are far greater than dying from Covid in these homes.”

Though the Delta variant has reached Ontario in recent months, it has not caused the damage — or shutdowns — as seen in other parts of the world, in part because of the high rate of vaccinations. Eighty-two percent of the province’s eligible population has received at least one vaccine dose, as of Aug. 11.

When Mr. Freeman-Atwood finally emerged in June, it wasn’t to go on a grand voyage. His dream outing was much simpler. He rolled into a dollar store a block from his building to peruse the cheap watches, since his had broken. “Do you remember me?” he asked the man behind the counter. He was like a shipwreck survivor, giddy from the joys of basic social interaction.

“This is my first time outside in a year,” he exclaimed.

The restaurant patio bubbled with noises, like an awakening orchestra. The music from speakers threaded with boisterous conversation. A toddler at a neighboring table screamed; her parents explained this was her first time at a patio.

Meals were savored, checks slow to arrive. Mr. Freeman-Atwood ordered two more glasses of wine.

“This is more fun than I’ve had in a year,” he said.

On the way back to his building, he pushed past storefronts that hadn’t survived the pandemic; “For Sale” signs posted in their dusty windows. The sky was turning a bruising purple; storm clouds were gathering.

Mr. Freeman-Atwood said he didn’t know how long these freedoms would last, or whether we’d pay for them. But he was already planning another outing.

Vjosa Isai contributed research.

Categories
World News

Hacker behind $600 million crypto heist did it ‘for enjoyable’

Hacker behind $600 million crypto heist did it 'for fun'

Digital cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethernum, Dash, Monero and Litecoin.

Chesnot | Getty Images

One person who claims to be the hacker behind one of the biggest cryptocurrency heists of all time says they stole the money “for fun”.

More than $ 600 million worth of crypto was stolen in the cyber attack that targeted a decentralized financial platform called Poly Network.

Decentralized finance – DeFi for short – is a rapidly growing area within the crypto industry that aims to reproduce traditional financial products such as loans and trading without the involvement of middlemen.

While it has attracted billions of dollars in investment, the DeFi space has also spawned new hacks and scams. For example, a token supported by billionaire investor Mark Cuban recently fell from 60 to several thousandths of a cent in an apparent “bank run”.

Poly Network is a platform that aims to connect different blockchains so that they can work together. A blockchain is a digital transaction book that is managed by a distributed network of computers and not by a central authority.

On Tuesday, a hacker took advantage of a bug in Poly Network’s code that allowed them to steal the funds. According to researchers at the blockchain security firm SlowMist, Poly Network lost more than $ 610 million in the attack.

Poly Network then begged the hacker to return the money, and in fact, almost half of the crypto fetch had been returned by Wednesday.

In a question and answer embedded in a digital currency transaction on Wednesday, a person who claimed to be the anonymous hacker explained their reasons for the hack – “for fun”.

“When I discovered the mistake, I had mixed feelings,” said the person. “Ask yourself what to do when you are so lucky. Politely ask the project team so they can fix it?

“I can’t trust anyone!” They continued. “The only solution I can think of is to save it on a _trusted_ account while I’m _anonymous_ and _safe_.”

The person also gave a reason for returning the funds, claiming, “That’s always the plan! I’m _not_ very interested in money! I know it hurts when people are attacked, but they shouldn’t get caught up in these hacks to learn?”

Tom Robinson, chief scientist at blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, said the person who wrote the questions and answers was “definitely” the hacker behind the Poly Network attack.

“The messages are embedded in transactions sent from the hacker’s account,” Robinson told CNBC. “Only the owner of the stolen assets could have sent them.”

CNBC was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the message and the hacker or hackers were not identified. SlowMist said its researchers found information about the attacker’s IP and email information. In the questions and answers, the hacker claimed that he made sure that his identity was “undetectable”.

Categories
Politics

These lobbyists are speaking to subsequent NY governor

These lobbyists are talking to next NY governor

New York Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul speaks during a press conference the day after Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation on August 11, 2021 at the New York State Capitol in Albany, New York.

Cindy Schultz | Reuters

Kathy Hochul won’t become New York’s governor for about two weeks, but some lobbyists have already had a leg in the race to influence her.

Hochul, who was elected Vice Governor of the state in 2014, has already dealt with several lobbyists from various industries this year.

She will replace Governor Andrew Cuomo after he announced on Tuesday that he would resign in two weeks after the attorney general presented a report saying he sexually molested 11 women. Cuomo, who continues to deny wrongdoing, was investigated for several months before quitting.

“I’m sure you have sought Kathy Hochul’s favor in the Albany lobbying world, starting with the cascade of allegations earlier this year,” a longtime Democratic insider with ties to the government told CNBC. “I bet that was when your phone went down because Albany lobbyists know when a major change is imminent.” This person declined to be called to speak freely.

On Wednesday, Hochul said that she had already been in contact with the heads of state of the legislature as well as the heads of companies and trade unions. She also vowed to clean up the toxic work environment that Cuomo was accused of overseeing.

Hochul, who will be the state’s first female governor, had heard from some of the state’s top funders prior to Cuomo’s resignation.

Some of the lobbyists who were in contact with her had ties to Cuomo’s late father, former Governor Mario Cuomo; former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Governor David Paterson.

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

Andrew Cuomo’s connections with lobbyists include Giorgio DeRosa, the father of Cuomo’s longtime associate Melissa DeRosa. DeRosa and his team temporarily deployed Hochul employees for a large number of customers.

A spokesman for DeRosa’s company Bolton-St. Johns said her team looks forward to working with Hochul and the next New York City Mayor, who is slated to be Democratic nominee Eric Adams.

Here are the lobbying shops that were in contact with Hochul this year.

Kasirer

A lobbying disclosure report shows that the Kasirer law firm, together with state lawmakers, spoke directly to Hochul between May and June. The effort went to Columbia Care Inc., a cannabis product pharmacy with locations in New York.

According to the report, the focus for Kasirer was on “building relationships with regard to cannabis legislation”. Cuomo signed a bill in March that would legalize recreational marijuana use in the Empire State. Hochul will now be responsible for the future implementation of the directive.

One of the lobbyists listed in the report who campaigned for Hochul is Suri Kasirer, the company’s founder and president. Kasirer was part of the senior staff of Governor Mario Cuomo. Crain’s has named Kasirer “New York City’s Most Successful Lobbyist”.

Kasirer’s website lists numerous corporate clients, including Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley; Real estate giants like RXR, Brookfield, Tishman and Brodsky, and media companies like Comcast and NBCUniversal, parent companies of CNBC.

The company did not respond to requests for comment.

Sheridan Hohman & Associates

Sheridan Hohman & Associates, a lobbying shop run by Tim Sheridan and Katie Hohman, reached out to Hochul this summer.

Sheridan was the director of government affairs under Mario Cuomo. Between May and June, they campaigned on behalf of Hochul and other state officials for the New York Association of Training & Employment Professionals, a nonprofit that focuses on human resource development in the state.

According to the lobbying report, their efforts focused on “government funding” for a “human resource development initiative”.

The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Shenker Russo & Clark

Shenker Russo & Clark, an Albany company that represented the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association, championed Hochul, according to a disclosure report.

Theresa Russo is the company’s CEO. Russo, co-managing director Doug Clark, and other office executives are featured in the lobbying report showing their recent collaboration with Hochul. Russo once worked for Giuliani and Paterson.

Russo and Clark emailed CNBC to say they have known Hochul since their time in Congress and look forward to working on behalf of their clients with the new government.

“She has always been a person of great integrity and intelligence – qualities that will serve her well at the beginning of this new chapter,” said Russo and Clark in a joint statement. “We have spoken to her as lieutenant governor on behalf of clients and have always appreciated her willingness to listen to all sides of a problem.”

Dickinson & Avella

Dickinson & Avella, another Albany store that has a number of corporate clients, also championed Hochul.

The lobbying took place between May and June for Silvercup Services, which shares the same address as Silvercup Studios, one of the largest film and television production studios in New York City. Projects filmed at Silvercup Studios include Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and the hit HBO series “Succession” and “The Sopranos”.

Michael Avella and Christina Dickinson, both partners in the firm, are featured in the lobbying report. It is said that they agreed directly with Hochul on a government bill on a film tax credit.

The company’s officials did not respond to requests for comments.

A Hochul representative did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.

Categories
Health

Alaska Airways is contemplating Covid vaccine mandates for workers

Alaska Airlines is considering Covid vaccine mandates for staff

Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 taking off from LAX.

PG | Getty Images

Alaska Airlines announced Wednesday that it is considering making Covid-19 vaccines mandatory for employees, according to a company memo that CNBC viewed.

The policy change would make the Seattle-based airline the newest airline to require vaccines for its employees. On Friday, United Airlines became the first major US airline to require vaccines for its employees. Frontier Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines have since issued similar requirements.

Alaska, which has about 20,000 employees, said if it did make vaccines mandatory it would after the Food and Drug Administration fully approved one of the vaccines currently available under emergency approval.

Airline executives recently raised concerns about the rapidly spreading Delta variant of Covid. Southwest Airlines lowered its revenue and profit forecasts on Wednesday and made the spread of the variant due to weaker bookings and increased cancellations.

Delta, Southwest, and American have encouraged, but not mandated, employee vaccination.

“As an employer with a duty to protect you, and given the contagion and health risks of the COVID-19 virus and its variants, we have the right to make that decision and ask you for information about your vaccine status,” Alaska employees said . It was said that there would be exemptions for religious or medical reasons, similar to other companies.

Categories
Entertainment

Is Taylor Zakhar Perez in a Relationship?

Is Taylor Zakhar Perez in a Relationship?

If you passed out while watching Netflix about Taylor Zakhar Perez The kissing booth 3, you were definitely not alone. The 29-year-old heartthrob plays Marco, and yes, that was really his beautiful singing voice that you heard in the second film. Although he has made appearances scandal, Young & Hungry, and iCarly, The kissing booth 2 marked his first leading role.

Now let’s get to the important things, okay? Taylor single? Although fans are mailing Taylor and Joey King (sorry, she’s already taken), Taylor appears to be single. In an interview with shine In 2020, the actor stated that he wasn’t dating anyone at the moment. He also revealed what he is looking for in a partner. “I love adventurous people, someone who says yes all the time. I paddle and hike and surf so I feel like my friends are my type – hearts with me before you get intimate. Emotional intimacy is much more important to me than sexual intimacy, “he explained.” I think self-esteem is great. And not filtering your mind to make me feel better Respect. Also, the willingness to leave your comfort zone or at least just talk about it. I’ll try everything twice. “OK noted!

Categories
Health

W.H.O. Testing three Medicine in Broad Seek for Covid Remedies

W.H.O. Testing 3 Drugs in Broad Search for Covid Treatments

The World Health Organization is testing three more drugs as part of a huge global study to find effective treatments for Covid-19, the agency said on Wednesday.

The study, which will involve researchers in more than 600 hospitals in 52 countries, will evaluate whether the drugs already approved for other uses – one for malaria, one for cancer and one for autoimmune diseases – can reduce the risk of death for patients with Covid to be hospitalized.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, said Wednesday he hoped “one or more of the drugs” would prove effective in treating the virus.

Although there are already some treatments out there for people with Covid-19, including steroids and monoclonal antibodies, Dr. Tedros: “We need more for patients at all ends of the clinical spectrum.”

The first phase of the WHO’s trials of new drugs, which it called Solidarity, yielded disappointing results. The researchers found that four different drugs, including hydroxychloroquine and the antiviral drug remdesivir, had little or no benefit for hospitalized Covid patients.

The three drugs in the new study, named Solidarity Plus, were selected by an independent panel of experts and are donated by their manufacturers Ipca, Novartis and Johnson & Johnson. The drugs are artesunate, an antimalarial drug that may have anti-inflammatory effects; Imatinib, a cancer drug that could reverse damage to the lungs; and infliximab, an autoimmune disease drug that may help curb an overly aggressive immune response to the virus.

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Politics

Taliban Advances in Afghanistan Might Deliver Political Peril for Biden

Taliban Advances in Afghanistan Could Bring Political Peril for Biden

When President Biden announced his plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the politics seemed relatively simple: Many polls showed that Americans supported ending the country’s nearly 20-year involvement in a war whose goals had become obscure.

But four months later, with the Taliban storming across the country much faster and more ruthlessly than expected, new political risks are coming into view for Mr. Biden, who had hoped to win credit for ending what he has called one of America’s “forever wars.”

Now U.S. officials are racing to evacuate Afghans who assisted the American military and may be targets of Taliban reprisals, and are contemplating the prospect of hastily evacuating the 4,000 Americans at the U.S. Embassy in the capital city of Kabul.

The threat of a Taliban conquest and new risks to U.S. personnel and allies in the country could cause Americans who had been paying little attention to Afghanistan for the past several years to reconsider their views, particularly if Republicans amplify a message of American failure and capitulation.

“Everybody’s worried about a repeat of the Saigon images,” said Brian Katulis, a foreign policy expert at the liberal Center for American Progress, referring to the chaotic April 1975 evacuation of the American Embassy in South Vietnam’s capital. Desperate Vietnamese clung to the struts of departing helicopters as the city was being conquered by Communist forces.

Americans remain focused on domestic matters like the coronavirus and the economy, and are unlikely to care much that the Taliban have captured unfamiliar cities like Kunduz, said Mr. Katulis, who has studied public opinion about foreign policy.

“But this could change,” he added. “If you have a parade of horribles continue to unfold in Afghanistan, it could seep into the public consciousness the way Iraq did in 2013 and 2014” when the Islamic State stormed across that country after American troops withdrew.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Biden said he did “not regret” his decision, noting that the United States continued to support Afghanistan’s government and security forces but adding, “They’ve got to fight for themselves.”

Officials in the Biden administration have repeatedly expressed hope that negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government might produce a peaceful resolution short of a Kabul-based Taliban emirate, but prospects for successful talks are swiftly fading.

Fortunately for Mr. Biden, many Republicans in Congress have turned against foreign military adventures and supported a full exit from Afghanistan, to which President Donald J. Trump first committed last year when he struck a deal with the Taliban. Under the agreement, the group halted its attacks on U.S. forces and began peace talks with the Afghan government.

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Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden were in sync with public opinion. Polls have shown for years that a plurality of Americans support withdrawing from Afghanistan, with a majority supporting either a full exit or a smaller U.S. presence.

But as the U.S.-backed Afghan government in Kabul appears more imperiled, some prominent Republicans are increasing their criticism of Mr. Biden.

“Reality was clear to everyone but the very top of the Biden administration,” Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, said in remarks on Monday on the Senate floor, as he noted prior warnings that the Taliban might quickly overwhelm the Afghan government’s security forces. “From their bizarre choice of a symbolic Sept. 11th deadline to the absence of any concrete plan, the administration’s decision appears to have rested on wishful thinking and not much else.”

“No one should pretend they’re surprised the Taliban is winning now that we abandoned our Afghan partners,” Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said in a statement on Tuesday.

But Mr. Sasse also nodded to the complicated political dynamic in which Mr. Biden is delivering on a promise made by Mr. Trump.

“Our troops served America and our allies admirably, but the last administration and the present administration chose to give up the fight,” Mr. Sasse said.

Updated 

Aug. 11, 2021, 9:06 p.m. ET

It may be a consolation to Biden administration officials that Mr. Trump is unlikely to join in the attacks. The former president, who made U.S. troop withdrawals a key campaign theme in the 2020 election, pressed his generals in vain to accelerate the American exit.

And Mr. Trump reiterated his support for leaving Afghanistan as recently as April, when he attacked Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, in a statement as a “warmongering fool” who “wants to stay in the Middle East and Afghanistan for another 19 years, but doesn’t consider the big picture — Russia and China!”

“If Trump is the Republican nominee again, I think it would be hard for him to criticize Biden for executing a plan that Trump put into motion,” said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security and a former foreign policy adviser to the hawkish Republican senator John McCain.

“Trump didn’t just open the door” to a withdrawal, Mr. Fontaine added. “What he did was force the issue in a way that it hadn’t been forced before.”

But Mr. Fontaine, who opposes the American troop withdrawal, said that major political and security risks remained for Mr. Biden. He argued that domestic support for leaving Afghanistan had never been intense, coming nowhere near the mass demonstrations opposing the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

And he said that the possibility of a Taliban takeover followed by a return to the country of the group’s longtime Qaeda allies would be a huge liability for Mr. Biden.

“Polls show that a majority of Americans want to leave Afghanistan,” Mr. Fontaine said. “But they also show that if you ask Americans about their foreign policy or national security objectives, they will almost always rank preventing terrorist attacks on the United States as No. 1 or 2, and they will rank extracting America from military operations overseas far below that.”

Mr. Trump’s top lieutenants, who frequently lead political attacks on Mr. Biden, are similarly constrained in their ability to turn events in Afghanistan against him.

Mike Pompeo, who as secretary of state attended the signing ceremony in Qatar of Mr. Trump’s deal with Taliban leaders, has repeatedly attacked the Biden administration as weak on foreign policy.

In an appearance this week on Fox News, however, Mr. Pompeo — who is contemplating a 2024 presidential bid — called the troop withdrawal “the right thing to do.”

In language that closely echoed Mr. Biden’s recent remarks, he added: “This is now the Afghans’ fight.”

Some prominent supporters of a military withdrawal from Afghanistan say that Mr. Biden has little to worry about in political terms, noting that his decision enjoyed broad bipartisan support, including from politically diverse veterans’ groups.

“I think that the American public is much more likely to see what’s happening right now, as tragic and worrisome as it is, as ultimately the failure of two decades of war and occupation in Afghanistan,” said Kate Kizer, the policy director of the anti-interventionist group Win Without War.

“It’s important to remember that the reason the public supports a military withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as from Iraq, is that they think these wars themselves are a mistake and failure,” she added.

Ms. Kizer said she worried that some “members of the foreign policy establishment in Washington took the lesson from Iraq that chaos ensues when the U.S. withdraws” and would be quick to press for renewed American intervention.

Mr. Katulis said he could imagine pressure for an American return to Afghanistan, years after President Barack Obama reluctantly sent troops back to Iraq after the Islamic State began to capture and execute American hostages.

Such a scenario would likely require worst-case outcomes, he said, like the killings of Americans or senior Afghan government officials. (After the Taliban first conquered Kabul in 1996, militants captured the country’s president, Mohammad Najibullah, shot him in the head and hung his beaten body from a tower.)

For now, Mr. Katulis said, “people care more about their bridges and roads getting fixed. Afghanistan right now is out of sight, out of mind.”