SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook announced Wednesday that it banned Myanmar’s militarily and militarily controlled state and media units from its platforms weeks after the military toppled the country’s fragile democratic government.
The move plunged the social network directly into Myanmar’s post-coup politics – and left no question unanswered that it was picking sides in a heated political struggle.
After years of criticism of how the Myanmar military used the website, Facebook acted, among other things, to incite hatred against the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority. Since the coup earlier this month that toppled civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and returned Myanmar to full military rule, the military has repeatedly shut down the internet and blocked access to major social media sites, including Facebook.
The social network went offline a few days ago on the main news site of the Myanmar military and another site on the state television channel. Official reports by high-ranking military leaders in Myanmar linked to the violence in Rohingya in 2018 were also deleted. However, many other sites related to the military were still online.
Now Facebook has taken further measures to make it clear that it is making a political judgment. In a statement, the company said it banned “remaining” accounts related to the military because the coup was “an emergency”.
“Events since the February 1 coup, including deadly violence, have sparked the need for this ban,” the company said. The risk of leaving the Myanmar military on Facebook and Instagram is “too great”. It was said that the military was banned indefinitely.
The action underscores the difficulty Facebook is facing in terms of what it allows on its website. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has long advocated freedom of speech and merely positions the website as a platform and technology service that does not stand in the way of government or social disputes.
But Mr Zuckerberg has been increasingly scrutinized by lawmakers, regulators and users for this attitude and for allowing hate speech, misinformation and content that incites violence on Facebook.
Over time, Facebook has become more active, which is published on its platform, especially last year with the US election. Last year it hit pages and posts on the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. And last month, Facebook banned then-President Donald J. Trump from using the service for at least the remainder of his tenure after urging his supporters to oppose the election results, sparking a riot in the U.S. Capitol. Mr. Trump still cannot post on Facebook.
Critics have said that many of these steps were too little, too late.
Dr. Peter Hotez told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that people in the US shouldn’t get complacent about dropping Covid cases, especially in the face of new reports of a new variant, B.1.526, hitting New York spread.
“We’re all running high because the numbers are falling, and I say we are in the eye of the hurricane and the next big wave is coming,” said Hotez, co-director of the vaccine development center at Texas Children’s Hospital.
According to a CNBC analysis of the Johns Hopkins data, the average daily cases of coronavirus in the United States have decreased by about 57%. However, some states don’t see such a sharp decline. Vermont is only down 22% averaging daily falls, New York is down about 45%, Oregon is down nearly 47%, and Florida is down 48% averaging daily. Hotez recognized Florida for distributing a highly transmissible variant of Covid in the state, which was first found in the UK
“The only state that really intrigues me, not necessarily in a good way, is Florida because we hear that about 10% of Florida-derived virus isolates are the UK-derived B.117 variant.” said Hotez in an interview on Wednesday night.
Hotez urged that now is the time for the US to really take a vaccination boost, especially before more variants of Covid spread. While AstraZeneca reported that it expects its vaccine to be approved in the US in April, Hotez said, “I think sometimes we have to think about making the beep” and should approve it sooner.
Despite the progress, getting appointments for vaccinations has been a huge disappointment for many people. Appointments will be filled within minutes depending on availability. States, local health departments, and pharmacy chains have their own registration websites, which in many cases do not share data with one another. The CDC has its own Vaccine Administration System (VAMS) which some states use to register people for vaccinations and collect important data. However, state officials have complained that this is clunky.
Disgruntled people have taken matters into their own hands, setting up online navigator tools and Facebook groups for “vaccine hunters” in cities like Los Angeles and New Orleans to connect people with available doses.
Updated
Apr. 24, 2021, 8:33 p.m. ET
When the VaccineFinder portal goes live this week, it will include a few drug and grocery stores nationwide, as well as many other locations such as mass vaccination sites in Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, and Tennessee.
Kristen Nordlund, a CDC spokeswoman, said the agency is encouraging vaccination centers to “provide accurate and up-to-date information on the location, hours and availability of vaccines so that Americans can more easily find vaccination sites.”
Dr. Marcus Plescia, Chief Medical Officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said, “I think people are optimistic and are eagerly awaiting it.” big confusion to come, but I think we just have to work it through. “
In the first few weeks of the vaccine’s launch, it was relatively easy to find doses when eligible individuals – healthcare workers, residents and long-term care workers – were mainly vaccinated where they lived or worked.
However, since then states have expanded their eligibility criteria to include the elderly, people with certain medical conditions, and certain frontline workers. Additional locations for vaccine dispensing have been added, including stadiums and local pharmacies.
Freelance contractor Upwork had its best year of growth as a public company last year, and CEO Hayden Brown sees no signs of momentum that set in before the coronavirus pandemic slowed as the economy resumed.
Younger workers, marked by a labor market that has suffered two recessions in just over a decade, are increasingly seeking more control and flexibility in their careers. The trends have only been fueled by the remote working world, giving companies the opportunity to adapt and tap into a global talent pool of independent professionals, she told CNBC on Wednesday.
“The paradigm has completely changed,” Brown said in Mad Money, that recessions in 2007 and 2020 dampened worker confidence and loyalty. “We’ve seen this again in years. This isn’t a new trend, but it’s certainly accelerated today with more than half of the Gen Z freelance and 59 million American freelance professionals.”
Gen Z, short for Generation Z, consists of young people who are currently in adulthood or who are entering adulthood and are now moving through a pandemic-shaped economy. The age group is also known as the zoomer.
Millennials, its older counterpart, came of age during the Great Recession.
Upwork, a job market that went public in 2018, is helping companies leverage the gig economy for both short-term and long-term projects. The independent economy has disrupted various industries, giving rise to household names like Uber and DoorDash.
Brown said that over 70% of the freelancers on the platform have college degrees and many earn high wages.
Unlike ride-hail apps like Uber, which saw pandemic sales down 21% after years of multi-digit growth, the small-cap Upwork business accelerated in 2020. Revenue for the Santa Clara, California-based company last rose 24% year-on-year to $ 373.63 million.
Stocks are up 522% over the past 12 months, hitting a 52-week high on Wednesday before closing at $ 53.36.
“This is a long-term trend in the workforce, and companies recognize that if they want to work with the best talent, they must tap into the independent economy,” said Brown. “You can’t limit yourself to full-time employees.”
Upwork expects business growth of at least 23% in 2021. The $ 6.5 billion company announced a full year revenue forecast of $ 460 million to $ 470 million.
Workhorse, a start-up that aims to become a major electric vehicle maker, received bad news Tuesday: it lost a $ 482 million deal to make tens of thousands of vehicles for the United States Postal Service . And now investors are punishing his stocks.
The company’s shares fell nearly 50 percent on Tuesday following the postal service’s announcement and fell another 10 percent in afternoon trading on Wednesday.
Workhorse, an Ohio-based company with a factory in Indiana, relied on the postal contract to drive sales. By early February, stocks had gone from under $ 2 to over $ 40 in less than a year, mostly in hopes of winning all or part of the postal deal. Instead, the Postal Service outsourced the work to Oshkosh Defense, a subsidiary of Oshkosh Corporation in Wisconsin that makes military vehicles and mobility systems.
As part of an initial contract for what the postal service calls the next generation delivery vehicle, Oshkosh will complete the design and then assemble 50,000 to 165,000 vehicles over a 10-year period.
Oshkosh vehicles will be fitted with either fuel-efficient gasoline engines or electric batteries and will be upgraded to keep up with advances in electric vehicle technology, the postal service said. Workhorse suggested delivering an all-electric contract.
The Workhorse Group, which employs approximately 130 people and had sales of less than $ 1 million for the first nine months of last year, was for the Goliath of Oshkosh, which had corporate sales of $ 8.4 billion in fiscal 2019 , a David.
On Wednesday, Workhorse said in a statement that it “has asked the postal service for more information in accordance with the rules of the tender process” and that it “intends to explore all the options available to an unsuccessful finalist in a state tender process”.
A shipment of Covid-19 vaccines from the global COVAX vaccination program will arrive at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana on February 24, 2021.
Nipah Dennis | AFP | Getty Images
The first shipment of Covid-19 vaccines, delivered under the World Health Organization’s COVAX program, arrived in Ghana on Wednesday. This is a hopeful turning point for developing countries, who may be lagging behind in the global race to vaccinate a virus that has killed nearly 2.5 million people worldwide.
The flight brought 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is believed to be far easier to distribute in developing countries because it does not require extremely cold storage temperatures like the Pfizer-GenTech and Moderna vaccines.
The vaccines delivered on Wednesday will be prioritized for frontline medical professionals, those over 60 and those with pre-existing health conditions, according to the Ghanaian Ministry of Information.
“Today is the historic moment for which we have planned and worked so hard,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore in a joint statement from her agency and WHO Ghana.
“With the first shipment of cans, we can deliver on the promise of the COVAX Facility to ensure that people from less affluent countries are not left behind in the race for life-saving vaccines.”
Airport workers transport a shipment of Covid-19 vaccines from Covax’s global Covid-19 vaccination program onto dolls at Kotoka International Airport in Accra on February 24, 2021.
Nipah Dennis | AFP | Getty Images
COVAX is a global plan jointly led by WHO, an international vaccine alliance called Gavi, and the Coalition for Innovation in Epidemic Preparation.
While wealthier nations drive costly vaccine development and procurement, poorer countries suffer the consequences of inequality. Mark Suzman, executive director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in December that it may be too late for the vaccines to be distributed fairly as rich countries have already closed massive deals.
Wealthy nations, making up just 14% of the world’s population, had secured 53% of the world’s top performing coronavirus vaccines by December, according to a group of human rights activists called the People’s Vaccine Alliance.
COVAX was founded to ensure fair access to vaccines worldwide. By the end of 2021, 20% of people in the 92 poorest countries in the world are to be vaccinated through donations. Several other middle-income countries will purchase vaccines through COVAX on a self-funded basis. The plan this year is to deliver 2 billion doses of vaccines that have been recognized by WHO as safe and effective.
The recordings shipped to Ghana were produced by the Indian Serum Institute, which has been granted access to the intellectual property that enables it to manufacture vaccines based on the Oxford-AstraZeneca formula. The African Union has secured around 670 million doses of the Serum Institute’s vaccine for its member countries. The goal is for 60% of the 1.3 billion people in Africa to be vaccinated in the next two to three years.
“By far the fastest of all time”
“This is amazingly important. We want the gap between vaccinating the rich and the poor to be narrowed to zero,” said Hassan Damluji, assistant director of global politics and advocacy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in an interview with Wednesday CNBC.
“We know that it usually takes decades for a vaccine to be developed and used for the first time in rich countries and then to reach the poorest people in the world. So Ghana receives its first shipment, just three months after the first vaccine rollouts World are more than extraordinary, “he said. “It is by far the fastest ever.”
A health worker applies a Sinovac CoronaVac Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) vaccine to an elderly Citzen on February 18, 2021 in Sao Goncalo, near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Ricardo Moraes | Reuters
The Gates Foundation has spent $ 1.75 billion fighting the coronavirus and has focused on vaccine development within COVAX.
Damluji noted that the program’s vaccine sourcing for poor countries was funded entirely by donors at a time when every developed world economy is in recession. “So it’s pretty remarkable,” he said.
Vaccine inequality will plunge countries into deeper poverty
The exclusion of poor countries from vaccination programs launched in wealthier countries will have devastating and lasting consequences, warn economists and public health experts that dramatically increase inequalities, hinder social and economic development and leave dozens of countries in significantly higher debt.
These inequalities, according to Oxford Economics, mean that the long-term economic damage of the pandemic will be twice as severe in emerging markets as it is in developed countries. A study by the RAND Corporation predicts the global economy will lose $ 153 billion in production annually if emerging economies do not get access to vaccines.
The countries of the COVAX donation plan are to receive doses that are appropriate for their populations: Afghanistan, for example, will receive 3 million doses, while Namibia will receive almost 130,000.
The Palestinian Territories expect to receive vaccines through COVAX in March. Iran and Iraq are part of COVAX, as are many lower-income countries in the Middle East. The wealthier Gulf States have sourced their own vaccine supplies directly from the manufacturers, while some, despite their own recessions, also contribute to the COVAX fundraising pool: Saudi Arabia donated $ 300 million and Qatar donated $ 10 million.
The U.S. hadn’t made a contribution to the COVAX facility under the Trump administration, but the Biden administration has pledged the largest donation to date – $ 4 billion.
Damluji pointed out the challenges of COVAX’s goals by running extensive vaccination campaigns in countries with faulty infrastructure, limited logistics and transportation, remote populations, and in some cases violence and war.
“This stuff is a moving target. Rightly the world’s attention is on it and wants to make sure it goes well,” he said. “But a few months ago we didn’t even know which vaccines would work. And now people need them on their doorstep.”
“There will be some complications as well,” he added. “It’s the biggest health procurement effort ever.”
WASHINGTON – Negotiations lasted late into the evening and some members of Congress shouted and slapped the table in frustration as they argued over what would be included in the revised North American Free Trade Agreement.
Katherine Tai, chief trade adviser to the powerful Ways and Means Committee of Congress, appeared unwavering to attendees as she helped work out compromises that would ultimately bring the Democrats on board in late 2019 to support the 2,082-page trade pact, that of the Trump Administration, the agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada.
In negotiations during 2019, Ms. Tai calmly helped assemble an unlikely coalition in support of the trade deal, ultimately all of a sudden to allay concerns from business lobbyists and unions, forge Democratic-Republican ties, and convince Mexican officials to accept strict new oversight about their factories, say their former colleagues.
“Katherine was the glue that held us together,” said Representative Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat who played a leading role in the negotiations. “When you end up with a product that is endorsed by the AFL-CIO to the Chamber of Commerce, that’s an unusual accomplishment.”
The Biden administration now hopes that Ms. Tai, its candidate for the United States Trade Representation, will act as consensus-builder and help bridge the Democratic Party’s divergent views on trade. Ms. Tai is expected to appear before the Senate Finance Committee Thursday morning for her confirmation hearing.
Ms. Tai has strong connections with Congress and supporters expect her nomination to go smoothly. However, if this is confirmed, it will face greater challenges, including working out the details of what the Biden government has called its “workers-oriented” approach to trade.
As a trade agent, Ms. Tai will play a key role in re-establishing alliances that have been strained under former President Donald J. Trump, as well as in formulating the government’s policy on China, which she is expected to draw on previous experience to help trade in the world Raise cases against China organization.
She will also take responsibility for making decisions on matters that divide the Democratic Party, such as: For example, whether the tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump on foreign products should be maintained or abolished, and whether new foreign trade deals will help the United States compete globally or ultimately sell American workers in short.
Both the Biden administration and members of Congress see it as a priority to find consensus on trade issues, given the deep divisions that have haunted Democrats in the past.
During the Obama administration, the United States sales representative argued with trade unions and many Democratic lawmakers over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact between countries along the Pacific Rim.
Mr. Obama and his supporters saw the deal as key to fighting China. But progressive Democrats believed the pact would create more US jobs off the coast and fought the Obama administration on its way. Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement, and the rest of the pact countries signed it without the United States.
Democrats “spent a lot of time catching up on what happened,” said Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon who backed the deal.
“I really felt that after the TPP, it was important to make sure that the trade talk starts and ends with how the typical American worker and consumer are affected,” he said.
The new Washington
Updated
Apr. 24, 2021 at 12:25 AM ET
The result is the approach of the revised North American trade agreement USMCA – higher labor standards, stricter environmental regulations, and new mechanisms to ensure that the rules of trade agreements can be enforced – which the Democrats now refer to as the foundation of their new approach to trade.
“Katherine was very much involved in all of these discussions,” said Wyden. “She is a real coalition builder. And that was particularly important to me because of the entire TPP time. “
Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator who spoke out against the TPP and then worked with Mr. Wyden on the USMCA’s rules for workers, said the Democratic Party had come together on this new policy of strict and enforceable trade rules.
“That is certainly a new policy for a democratic government,” he said. “But because the Democratic Party is en masse, we’re there.”
Mr Brown said he had argued with presidents of his own party about trading in the past, “including some not-very-nice exchanges. I’ve fought with their sales reps, and this is an entirely different era. “
“They will have trade policies that actually work for the workers,” he said.
The Biden administration has gone to great lengths to cement its ties with Congressional Democrats who influence trade. In addition to Ms. Tai’s nomination, key USTR employees were hired from the offices of Mr. Wyden and Mr. Brown, as well as former Democratic lawmakers such as Suzan DelBene of Washington, Jimmy Gomez of California, and John Lewis of Georgia.
However, that does not mean that Mr Biden’s trade policy will be uncontested. Despite the government’s strong ties to Congressional Democrats and unions, it has to offset the concerns of other factions such as big tech companies that are major donors or foreign policy experts who view free trade as a means of propping up America’s position in the multilateral system. These positions could be difficult to reconcile, trade experts say.
Some have also questioned what influence Ms. Tai could have on matters like China and tariffs since she is relatively new to the administration. Mr Biden has added several old contacts to his foreign policy team who have worked closely with him for years, including Antony J. Blinken, the Secretary of State; Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor; and Kurt Campbell, the best US diplomat for Asia.
But Ms. Tai’s supporters say that because of her deep knowledge and understanding of trade policy, she is likely to be an influential voice in trade. If confirmed, Ms. Tai would be the first Asian American woman of color to serve as a U.S. sales representative. Ms. Tai’s parents were born in China and moved to Taiwan before immigrating to the United States to work as government scholars.
Ms. Tai was born in the United States, but is fluent in Mandarin and lived and worked as a teacher in China in the late 1990s. She received a BA from Yale University and a law degree from Harvard Law School, then worked as an associate for several Washington law firms and as an assistant to two district judges.
From 2007 to 2014, Ms. Tai worked for the United States Trade Representative’s Office, where she successfully prosecuted several cases of Chinese trade practices at the World Trade Organization, including a challenge to China’s restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals.
When she was hired, the USTR’s office was trying to analyze a particular Chinese legal measure and gave it to Ms. Tai to translate for her interview, said Claire Reade, a former USTR China affairs assistant, is now a senior Counsel at Arnold & Porter. “We received a second expert opinion for free,” she said.
In the Obama administration and in her work to reach consensus on the North American trade deal, Ms. Tai demonstrated a number of skills that will help her thrive as a trade agent, Ms. Reade said – leadership and initiative, political and diplomatic skills to guide the government process, a good instinct for reading people and a broad understanding of complex trade issues.
“She really went through hellfire in her work and came out on the other side – which means, as I say, she shouldn’t be underestimated,” said Ms. Reade.
The New York Stock Exchange welcomes Fisker Inc. (NYSE: FSR) to celebrate its recent IPO today, Monday, November 9, 2020.
Source: NYSE
Electric vehicle startup Fisker’s shares rose more than 20% on Wednesday morning after the company announced a manufacturing deal with Foxconn Technology Group.
The two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding for the Taiwan-based electronics contract maker, best known for assembling Apple iPhones and producing more than 250,000 unitsElectric vehicles per year for Fisker, according to a joint announcement by the companies on Wednesday.
Fisker, which went public through a reverse merger last year, has a market capitalization of $ 5.26 billion.
Assembly of the vehicleis expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the company. The officials gave few more details about the planned electric vehicle, except for a “new segment vehicle”.
“We will create a vehicle that transcends social boundaries, offers a combination of advanced technology, desirable design, innovation and value, while fulfilling our commitment to creating the most sustainable vehicles in the world,” said Henrik Fisker, CEO of Fisker. in a statement.
The companies announced that the deal, code-named Project PEAR (Personal Electric Automotive Revolution), is expected to close in the second quarter of this year. It would be Fisker’s second big deal in the past few months. The company has already signed a contract with auto supplier Magna to produce the Fisker Ocean, its first expected vehicle.
Magna and Fisker are expected to start production on the ocean in the fourth quarter of 2022. The ocean will initially be produced exclusively by Magna in Europe.
A GameStop store in the Koreatown area of Los Angeles. Jim Bell, the company’s chief financial officer, who joined the company in mid-2019, is leaving.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times
GameStop’s chief financial officer, Jim Bell, is leaving the company in late March, following a stock-trading frenzy that briefly sent shares in the video game retailer surging.
The company gave no reason for Mr. Bell’s departure in its announcement on Tuesday, but noted it would look for a successor “with the capabilities and qualifications to help accelerate GameStop’s transformation.” Mr. Bell joined GameStop less than two years ago.
GameStop jumped into the headlines in late January when amateur investors used trading apps to buy options and pump up its share price, defying hedge funds that had bet the price would fall. The chaotic trading led to congressional hearings last week, but executives from GameStop, which was essentially caught in the middle, were not called to testify.
GameStop’s share price closed at about $45 on Tuesday. It reached $483 on Jan. 28 after starting the year at $19.
The wild swings in share price were detached from what was happening at the company, where a major stockholder has been trying to force a turnaround. In early January, Ryan Cohen, the manager of RC Ventures and a large stockholder, joined the GameStop board. He has been pressuring the company’s executive team to overhaul GameStop’s strategy and focus on digital growth. The company has more than 5,000 stores, many in American malls and shopping strips, but has steadily lost sales to major online retailers like Amazon.
Mr. Bell joined the company in June 2019 at the age of 51 from Wok Holdings, which owns the restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s. In a short statement, GameStop thanked Mr. Bell “for his significant contributions and leadership, including his efforts over the past year during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said the central bank would keep buying bonds until it saw “substantial further progress” toward full employment and stable inflation.Credit…Pool photo by Susan Walsh
Stocks on Wall Street were set to open slightly higher on Wednesday, and most commodities prices were rising, after the Federal Reserve chief on Tuesday reiterated the need to provide plenty of support for the economic recovery from the pandemic.
“The economic recovery remains uneven and far from complete, and the path ahead is highly uncertain,” Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, told the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday. He will speak to lawmakers in the House later on Wednesday.
The S&P 500 index reached record highs earlier in the month as traders bet on the recovery and a successful vaccine rollout. Easy-money policies has also helped push asset prices higher. But fears that stronger economic growth and higher inflation would prompt the Fed to withdraw some monetary support have caused bond prices to fall, pushing up yields. This temporarily unsettled stock markets.
On Wednesday, yields on U.S. bonds resumed their march higher, after falling the previous day. The yield on 10-year notes was at about 1.38 percent.
On Tuesday, Mr. Powell tried to reassure investors. He said that the central bank planned to keep buying bonds until it saw “substantial further progress” toward its twin goals of full employment and stable inflation. The United States can “expect us to move carefully, and patiently, and with a lot of advance warning” when it comes to slowing that support, Mr. Powell said.
Futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude oil benchmark, rose more than 1 percent to $62 a barrel, the highest in 13 months. This week, for the first time since 2011, copper prices climbed above $9,000 a metric ton in London.
Elsewhere in markets
Bitcoin prices rose on Wednesday, helping lift the share price of Tesla, which recently invested $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency, and the shares of other blockchain-based companies, such as Riot Blockchain and Marathon Patent Group, in premarket trading.
Most European stocks indexes gained and the Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.3 percent. The fourth quarter growth of Germany’s economy was revised higher to 0.3 percent, from 0.1 percent.
Most Asian indexes fell. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong dropped 3 percent with financial and consumer stocks falling the most after the government announced a plan to increase a tax on stock trading. Shares in Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing fell by nearly 9 percent, the most in the index.
A line at a San Antonio food distribution center on Sunday after a winter storm left millions without power.Credit…Christopher Lee for The New York Times
A winter storm in Texas that pushed its power grid to the brink of collapse and left millions without electricity during a brutal cold snap has led to the resignations of five officials who oversaw the state’s electric grid.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which governs the flow of power for more than 26 million Texans, has been blamed for the widespread failures. The governor, lawmakers and federal officials quickly began inquiries into the system’s failures, particularly its preparation for cold weather, reports Rick Rojas for The New York Times.
The five board members, who announced on Tuesday that they intended to resign after a meeting set for Wednesday morning, were all from outside of Texas, a point of contention for critics who questioned the wisdom of outsiders playing such an influential role in the state’s infrastructure. In a statement filed with the Public Utility Commission, four board members said they were stepping down “to allow state leaders a free hand with future direction and to eliminate distractions.” In a footnote, the filing added that a fifth member was also resigning.
Those departing are the chairwoman, Sally Talberg, a former state utility regulator who lives in Michigan; Peter Cramton, the vice chairman and an economics professor at the University of Cologne in Germany and the University of Maryland; Terry Bulger, a retired banking executive who lives in Illinois; and Raymond Hepper, who is a former official with the agency overseeing the power grid in New England. Another person who was supposed to fill a vacant seat, Craig S. Ivey, has withdrawn from the 16-member board.
The board became the target of blame and scrutiny after the winter storm last week brought the state’s electric grid precariously close to a complete blackout that could have taken months to recover from. In a last-minute effort to avert that, the council, known as ERCOT, ordered rolling outages that plunged much of the state into darkness and caused electricity prices to skyrocket. Some customers had bills well over $10,000.
The second and final day of the DealBook DC Policy Project featured discussions on the prospects of bipartisan deal-making in Washington, overhauling of the financial markets and corporate America’s role in fighting the pandemic.
Here are the highlights from the sessions on Tuesday:
“We’ll lose 1.3 million jobs.”
Elements of Democrats’ stimulus proposals, including raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, attracted criticism from Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah. But he mentioned potential common ground with the Biden administration, including on climate change. Mr. Romney defended his traditional conservatism amid the G.O.P.’s embrace of right-wing populism, but noted that if former President Donald J. Trump ran for re-election in 2024, “I’m pretty sure he will win the nomination.”
“I think it’s pathological that you could have greater than 100 percent short interest.”
Lessons from meme-stock mania were among the topics discussed by Vlad Tenev, the chief executive of the online brokerage firm Robinhood. He defended the practice of directing trades to market makers for a fee, which allows Robinhood to offer commission-free trading. Also on the panel, Jay Clayton, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said that the markets were functioning the way they should in many ways, including by promoting competition among brokers and market makers.
“There will continue to be vaccinations required for Covid.”
The chief executive of CVS Health, Karen S. Lynch, spoke about the fight against the pandemic, saying that people would probably need booster shots and might need to keep wearing masks next year. But whether businesses should require employees to be inoculated was a “company-by-company response,” she said.
Natasha Van Duser has war stories from bartending during the pandemic. She has since left service work.Credit…Desiree Rios for The New York Times
During two enormous crises — a public health emergency and an economic crash — restaurant service workers have found themselves double-exposed.
Many say their average tips have declined, while they’ve been saddled with the added work of policing patrons who aren’t social distancing, or as one service worker put it, “babysitting for the greater good,” Emma Goldberg reports for The New York Times.
On top of this, women, who make up more than two-thirds of servers, say they are facing “maskual harassment” — a term coined by the nonprofit organization One Fair Wage to describe demands that servers remove their masks to receive a tip.
The economic challenges have raised existential questions: Could this crisis herald the end of tipping, or a raise in the minimum wage for tipped workers? Depending on subjective gratuities has long been a fraught issue, but rarely has it had the safety consequences that it does now, when workers are struggling to enforce public health compliance from the customers whose tips they depend on.
Natasha Van Duser, 27, who tended bar in Manhattan, had never thought to show up to work with pepper spray. That was before last spring, when, she said, a customer dining outside spat on her and threatened to kill her when she asked him to put on a mask before walking to the bathroom; there were others who shouted expletives at her or suggested she take the temperature of their behinds instead of their foreheads.
In a recent national study of more than 1,600 workers, conducted by One Fair Wage and the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, over three-quarters of workers reported “witnessing hostile behavior” from customers who were asked to comply with coronavirus protocols, more than 40 percent reported a change in the frequency of unwanted sexual comments during the pandemic and more than 80 percent reported that their tips had declined.
Credit…Matt Chase
Boredom’s impact on the economy is under-researched, experts say, possibly because there has been no modern situation like this one, but many agree that it’s an important one, Sydney Ember reports for The New York Times.
Feeling bored may result in different kinds of behaviors, like increasing novelty seeking and increasing reward sensitivity, said Erin Westgate, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida, who studies boredom.
This swirl of reactions to boredom can help explain the GameStop phenomenon, Ms. Westgate said. Investing in the stock was not just an act that felt engaging, powered by a propensity for taking risks and the excitement of reward, but also something that felt meaningful: For many traders, it was a form of protest.
Early in the pandemic, bread-making fervor prompted stores across the country to sell out of yeast. Puzzle sales have skyrocketed. Gardening has taken off as a hobby. Home improvement, too, has boomed. Sherwin-Williams said it had record sales in the fourth quarter and for the year, in part because of strong performances in its do-it-yourself and residential repaint businesses. Pandemic boredom evidently has nothing on watching paint dry.
There has also been an increase in sales of things like video games to keep us occupied, as well as things to help relieve the stress of the pandemic (and, perhaps, boredom from being at home), including self-help books, candles and messaging appliances.
It is possible that not being bored during certain periods of the day is also making people less productive, said Bec Weeks, who worked as a senior adviser for the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian government and is a co-founder of a behavioral science app called Pique.
Research has shown that mind-wandering, an activity that can happen during periods of boredom, can result in greater productivity. But during the pandemic, some of the best opportunities for mind-wandering, like the daily commute to work, have been lost for the millions of people now working from home.
“Even in those moments when we used to be bored, there were often a lot of things going on that we didn’t realize,” Ms. Weeks said.
Credit…Andrea Chronopoulos
Last month, Laurence D. Fink, BlackRock’s chief executive, wrote that the company wanted businesses it invests in to remove as much carbon dioxide from the environment as they emit by 2050 at the latest.
But crucial details were missing from the pledge, including what proportion of the companies BlackRock invests in will be zero-emission businesses in 2050. On Saturday, in response to questions from The New York Times, a BlackRock spokesman said that the company’s “ambition” was to have “net zero emissions across our entire assets under management by 2050,” The New York Times’s Peter Eavis and Clifford Krauss report.
As the biggest companies strive to trumpet their environmental activism, the need to match words with deeds is becoming increasingly important.
Household names like Costco and Netflix have not provided emissions reduction targets. Others, like the agricultural giant Cargill and the clothing company Levi Strauss, have struggled to cut emissions. Technology companies like Google and Microsoft, which run power-hungry data centers, have slashed emissions, but are finding that the technology often doesn’t exist to carry out their “moonshot” objectives.
Determining how hard companies are really trying can be very difficult when there are no regulatory standards that require uniform disclosures of important information like emissions.
Institutional Shareholder Services, a firm that advises investors on how to vote on corporate matters, analyzed what corporations are doing to reduce emissions. Just over a third of the 500 companies in the S&P 500 stock index have set ambitious targets, it found, while 215 had no target at all. The rest had weak targets.
“To realize the necessary emission reductions, more ambitious targets urgently need to be set,” said Viola Lutz, deputy head of ISS ESG Climate Solutions, an arm of Institutional Shareholder Services. “Otherwise, we project emissions for S&P 500 companies will end up being triple of what they should be in 2050.”
The U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday chose Oshkosh Defense, a manufacturer of military vehicles, to build the next generation of postal delivery trucks, shunning an all-electric vehicle maker that had been in the running for the multibillion-dollar, 10-year contract.
Under an initial $482 million deal, Oshkosh will complete the design and then assemble 50,000 to 165,000 vehicles over 10 years, the Postal Service said.
Oshkosh was awarded the contract over two other bidders. One, the Workhorse Group, a small producer of electric delivery trucks based in Loveland, Ohio, was counting on the postal contract to provide a surge in revenue. At its height this month, the company’s stock was up more than tenfold in a year, in part on hopes it would win all or part of the postal contract. On Tuesday, after the Postal Service announced its decision, Workhorse shares lost nearly half their value. The other final bidder was Karsan, a Turkish maker of trucks and buses that was considered a long shot for the contract.
The choice of Oshkosh, which has no track record in producing electric vehicles, over Workhorse raised questions among some environmentalists over President Biden’s promised push to electrify the federal fleet. But some critics had also raised concerns that too swift a transition to plug-in trucks made by a fledgling company — and the buildup of charging infrastructure that would require — could burden a Postal Service already struggling with delivery delays.
Oshkosh has promised to shift to battery-powered vehicles if necessary, reflecting a wider push by automakers to bolster their offerings of electric vehicles to cut down on the industry’s carbon footprint. The new vehicles will be equipped with either fuel-efficient gasoline engines or electric batteries, and they will be retrofitted to keep pace with advances in electric vehicle technology, the Postal Service said.
The Post Office operates almost 230,000 vehicles and has one of the world’s largest civilian vehicle fleets, but its aging fleet — which federal data shows gets only about 10 miles a gallon — had also long been due for an upgrade.
Shoppers wearing protective masks wait in line to pick up a store from Lowe’s Cos on Wednesday, May 20, 2020. To be entered in San Bruno, California, USA.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Lowe’s said Wednesday that sales in the same store rose 28.1% in the fourth quarter as consumers continued to spend money on home projects during the pandemic.
This is higher than the 22% growth forecast by analysts, according to StreetAccount.
The company’s shares rose less than 1% in premarket trading.
The company reported for the quarter ended Jan. 29, relative to Wall Street expectations, based on an analyst survey conducted by Refinitiv:
Earnings per share: $ 1.33, adjusted versus expected $ 1.21
Revenue: $ 20.31 billion versus $ 19.48 billion expected
Lowe reported net income of $ 978 million, or $ 1.32 per share, for the fourth quarter compared to $ 509 million, or 66 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding items, the company earned $ 1.33 per share, beating the analysts polled by Refinitiv, which was forecasting $ 1.21 per share.
Net sales rose to $ 20.31 billion, beating analysts’ expectations of $ 19.48 billion.
Sales in its US stores were open for at least a year and online sales were up 28.6% for the quarter.
Marvin Ellison, CEO of Lowe, said in a press release that the company was seeing high demand across the board. Sales growth was 16% in all merchandising departments and more than 19% in all regions of the country. Online sales rose 121% in the quarter.
Lowe’s repeated his previous prediction. On an investor’s day in December, CFO David Denton said home improvement sales are likely to decline in 2021 as more people get Covid-19 vaccines and spend more time outside their homes. He said the retailer’s outlook for 2021 is for a mix-adjusted decline in home improvement demand of between 5% and 7%.
The company said it spent over $ 100 million and more than $ 900 million on additional Covid-related compensation and benefits for employees in the fourth quarter. It said it spent nearly $ 1.3 billion on pandemic-related spending, including higher wages and business security measures during the fiscal year.
At the close of trading on Tuesday, Lowe’s shares were up nearly 35% over the past year. The company’s market value is $ 123.53 billion.
