Category: Business

Categories
Business

A second Google A.I. researcher says the corporate fired her.

A second Google A.I. researcher says the company fired her.

Two months after the horrific exit of a well-known artificial intelligence researcher at Google, a second AI researcher at the company said she was fired after criticizing the way employees were treated for alleviating bias and toxicity in their artificial intelligence combat systems.

Margaret Mitchell, known as Meg, one of the leaders of Google’s Ethical AI team, posted a tweet Friday afternoon saying, “I’m fired.”

Google confirmed that her employment relationship has ended. “After reviewing the conduct of this manager, we confirmed that there were several violations of our code of conduct,” the company said in a statement.

The statement went on to claim that Dr. Mitchell violated the company’s security guidelines by removing confidential documents and private employee data from the Google network. The company previously said Dr. Mitchell tried to remove such files, Axios news site reported last month.

Dr. Mitchell said Friday night that she would have public comment soon.

Dr. Mitchell’s post on Twitter comes less than two months after Timnit Gebru, the other head of the Ethical AI team at Google, said she was fired from the company after criticizing its approach to minority attitudes as well as its approach to bias AI After the departure of Dr. Gebru from the company criticized Dr. Mitchell emphatically and publicly expressed Google’s stance on the matter.

More than a month ago, Dr. Mitchell that she was banned from her work accounts. On Wednesday, she tweeted that she stayed locked out after trying to get Dr. Gebru who is black to defend.

“Exhausted from the endless deterioration to save the face of the upper crust in tech at the expense of minority minority careers,” she wrote.

Dr. Mitchell’s departure from the company was another example of the mounting tension between the top management of Google and the workforce, who are more open than those of other large companies. The news also highlighted a growing conflict in the tech industry over the bias around AI, linked to issues affecting the recruitment of employees in under-represented communities.

Today’s AI systems can bear human prejudice because they learn their skills by analyzing large amounts of digital data. Because the researchers and engineers who build these systems are often white men, many fear that researchers are not paying this topic the attention it needs.

Google announced in a blog post yesterday that a company executive, Marian Croak, who is Black, will oversee a new group within the company dedicated to responsible AI

Categories
Business

Winter storm delays shipments of 6 million Covid vaccine doses in U.S.: Officers

Winter storm delays shipments of 6 million Covid vaccine doses in U.S.: Officials

On February 18, 2021, vehicles will be idle on Interstate Highway 35 heading south in Killeen, Texas.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Massive winter storms in the Midwest and Texas have delayed the delivery of 6 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, affecting every US state, the nation’s leading health officials said on Friday.

The backlog equates to three days of late deliveries, Andy Slavitt, White House senior advisor on Covid’s response, said during a news conference.

“Many states have been able to cover some of this delay with existing inventory,” said Slavitt.

The late deliveries are due to three major weather-related throttling points in the vaccines distribution chain, he said. Delivery centers at UPS, FedEx and McKesson that have been hired to deliver the cans to the states have reported staff shortages.

Slavitt said her workers were “snowed in and unable to come to work to package the vaccines, administration kits and other supplies.”

Road closures have also held up delivery of the vaccines between manufacturing facilities and shipping centers. In addition, more than 2,000 vaccine distribution points cannot receive doses because they are in places that are hampered by power outages, he said.

Continue reading: Covid live updates: Scientists are pushing for an optimized vaccination process

Because of the strict cold chain requirements for storing the cans in extremely cold temperatures, it is better to withhold the shipments than to send them to places where the shots may expire if they cannot be administered within three days. He said the vaccines are “safe and sound sitting in our factories and hubs and ready to ship.”

“As weather conditions improve, we are already trying to clear that backlog,” Slavitt said, adding that 1.4 million cans will be shipped on Friday. He said the government expected “all residue cans will be delivered within the next week.”

“We assume that we can handle this backlog and the new production that goes online next week,” said Slavitt.

Ahead of Friday’s briefing, US officials raised the alarm that their vaccine shipments were delayed this week. The massive winter storm closed distribution centers, leaving millions of people in states like Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi without power.

The Chief Medical Officer of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned Thursday that the power outages and winter storm in Texas are a “significant” problem for Covid-19 vaccine distribution this week. The Biden government is asking vaccination centers to extend their working hours and offer additional appointments in the coming days and weeks to catch up, Slavitt said on Friday.

“If we all work together, from the factory to the vaccines, we’ll make up for that in the coming week,” he said.

Slavitt announced Friday that the government is working with Florida and Pennsylvania to open five more vaccination centers.

Four of the five vaccination centers will be located in the cities of Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando and Tampa, Florida. The four locations can vaccinate a total of up to 12,000 people per day. The fifth center will be in Philadelphia and vaccinate 6,000 people a day.

Categories
Business

Harm by Lockdowns, California’s Small Companies Push to Recall Newsom

Hurt by Lockdowns, California’s Small Businesses Push to Recall Newsom

Small businesses across the country have suffered from shutdowns that sometimes flare up as suddenly as the coronavirus itself. Restaurants, gyms, mom and pop shops and spas have closed, some after months of trying to stay there.

The pain in California was acute. By September, nearly 40,000 small businesses had closed in the state – more than any other state since the pandemic began, according to a report compiled by Yelp. Half had closed permanently, according to the report, far more than the 6,400 that had permanently closed in New York.

Few of the pandemic decisions Mr. Newsom faced have been easy. California has suffered tremendously from Covid-19 with more than 3.5 million cases and 47,000 deaths. Los Angeles County, one of the hardest hit locations in the recent virus spill, has more than 1.2 million cases and 19,000 deaths.

Dan Newman, a political strategist for Mr. Newsom, said the governor is focused on coronavirus vaccinations and reopening the state. Mr. Newman accused “state and national GOP partisans” of “assisting this Republican recall program in the hope of creating an expensive, distracting and destructive circus”.

Dee Dee Myers, director of the governor’s office for business and economic development, admitted the pandemic “has hit our small businesses hard,” citing several government programs offering help. These include the California Covid-19 Small Business Aid Program, the California Rebuilding Fund, and the Main Street hiring tax credit.

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement that Mr. Newsom “has proven he is absolutely unqualified to run the state of California.”

Small business anger is particularly strong in places like Los Angeles County, where Mr. Newsom received 72 percent of the vote in 2018, and neighboring Orange County, a more conservative area. A local business owner leading the movement to open up California’s economy is Andrew Gruel, 40, a chef who owns Slapfish, a seafood restaurant chain.

Categories
Business

New York well being chief defends state’s choice to make nursing houses take Covid sufferers

Cuomo administration underreported Covid deaths in nursing homes, report says

New York Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker on Friday defended the state’s decision in March to force nursing homes to admit hospital residents with the coronavirus, blaming staff for spreading the virus.

The guideline, enacted on March 25, banned nursing homes from refusing admission or readmission to residents infected with Covid-19. The policy also banned nursing homes from testing patients prior to entry, NBC News reported. The policy was reversed later in May.

Zucker said Friday that at the time, the coronavirus hospitalization rate in New York was increasing “at an astounding rate” and capacity in the state’s intensive care units was running low. By allowing residents to return to the nursing homes, it helped protect the health system from collapse, he said.

“You can only verify a decision based on the facts you had at the time,” Zucker said during a press conference next to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. “And with the facts we had at the time, it was the right decision from a public health perspective.”

Zucker said the decision was based on recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued at the time, that nursing homes should accept all residents who would normally accept them, including those diagnosed with Covid-19, for as long Precautions have been taken.

A CDC spokesman was not immediately available to comment on Zucker’s remarks.

“What if we hadn’t done it on March 25? Hospital beds, which ultimately saved lives, would not have been available because they would have been occupied by someone who could have been discharged,” Zucker said. “We made the right public health decision then and, given the same facts, we would make the same decisions again.”

The Covid-19 patients who returned to the nursing homes were likely not contagious according to the CDC’s guidelines at the time and were separated from other residents. Zucker added that state law requires nursing homes to refuse residents if they are unable to properly care for them.

“We simply said that you cannot refuse admission because of the Covid status,” he said. “We never said you had to accept, we said you couldn’t deny.”

The state’s top health official comes as the Cuomo government faces bipartisan criticism of the treatment of Covid-19 deaths in the nursing home. An investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James published in late January found that the New York Department of Health signed up to 50% of deaths from Covid-19 in nursing homes.

On Friday, Cuomo and Zucker said most of the spread of the virus was not due to the Covid-positive resident, but from the staff who look after them.

“Covid came from the staff in the nursing homes. They got it at home, they got it at the supermarket, they went to work and they brought Covid with them,” Cuomo said.

However, Cuomo has aggressively defended the state’s census, stating that these deaths were counted as part of hospital deaths rather than nursing homes. The Democratic governor has apologized for “creating a void” by not providing enough information quickly enough and by not fighting against misinformation.

“Twitter, false reports, will eventually become a reality,” said Cuomo. “Social media, 24-hour news network, if you don’t correct it, it’ll repeat … and then people will think it’s true.”

In August, prosecutors under the Trump administration requested information about the deaths in New York nursing homes that Cuomo has criticized as politically motivated. The state legislature also asked for similar information, but the Cuomo government postponed that request to focus on that of the Justice Department, the governor said.

One of Cuomo’s top advisors, Melissa DeRosa, reportedly told Democratic lawmakers that the governor’s administration was “frozen” at their request because they feared the data would be used against them by the Justice Department, Associated Press reported.

DeRosa has since tried to clarify her comments, stating in a statement last week that she was trying to tell lawmakers that they need to focus on the Justice Department’s request first.

“We were comprehensive and transparent in our responses to the DOJ and had to immediately focus our resources on the introduction of the second wave and the vaccine,” DeRosa said in the statement. “As I said when I called the legislature, we weren’t able to respond to your request as quickly as anyone would have liked.”

Categories
Business

Public sale Home Suspends Sale of 19th-Century Jewish Burial Data

Auction House Suspends Sale of 19th-Century Jewish Burial Records

Under National Socialist rule in 1944 around 18,000 Jews were deported in six trains from the city of Cluj-Napoca in what is now Romania to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Almost all of them perished. Jewish homes, offices, archives and synagogues in Cluj have been searched and properties looted, including books and historical records, leaving little traces of a once lively, mainly Hungarian-speaking community.

Today, decades after many of the few Holocaust survivors emigrated, the Jewish community there is only 350 and has little evidence of its history.

But this month a rare relic of Cluj’s Jewish past popped up at a New York auction house. A bound memorial register for Jewish burials in the city between 1836 and 1899 was one of 17 documents that were offered and then withdrawn from sale at Kestenbaum & Company, a Judaica auction house in Brooklyn.

The withdrawal was canceled at the request of the Cluj Jewish community and the World Jewish Restitution Organization, who requested the sale of the funeral register listed in the catalog for the February 18 auction and known as Pinkas Klali D’Chevra Kadisha.

The register, handwritten in Hebrew and Yiddish, with a detailed front page praising the funeral company leaders, was discovered online by a genealogist who alerted Robert Schwartz, president of Cluj’s Jewish community.

“Very little parish membership survived World War II,” says Schwartz. “It’s surprising that the book turned up at auction because nobody knew anything about its existence. We have few documents or books, so this manuscript is an important source of information about the 19th century church. “

Schwartz was one of the Holocaust survivors from Cluj. He was born hidden in a basement after his pregnant mother fled the city’s ghetto. As an eminent chemist, he has headed the Jewish community of Cluj, the fourth largest city in Romania and home to the country’s largest university, since 2010.

Under his leadership, the community has sought to rebuild, celebrate Jewish religious festivals with a wider audience, and hold scientific events in pre-pandemic times. The Neolog Synagogue, the only one of the three synagogues there that is still used as a Jewish place of worship, is currently being renovated and will house a small museum, Schwartz said. “This document could be very valuable as a key exhibit,” he said.

In a letter to the auction house earlier this month, Schwartz described the manuscript – which was estimated to fetch between $ 5,000 and $ 7,000 – as “very valuable to our community’s history” and said it was “illegally appropriated by those who did not were identified. “

He also sought assistance from the World Jewish Restitution Organization, which asked the auction house to stop selling both the Cluj funeral records and a similar register of the births and deaths of Jews from nearby Oradea. In its letter, the restitution organization stated that private institutions such as Kestenbaum were “responsible for ensuring that claims for the recovery of property seized by the Nazis are resolved quickly,” and cited international agreements on the return of cultural property and assets from the Holocaust looted by the Nazis. Time.

“Given the historically sensitive nature of the items we are entrusted with, the title question is of the utmost importance to us,” wrote Daniel Kestenbaum, founding chairman of the Judaica auction house, in an email. “In relation to recently acquired information, manuscripts were withdrawn from our Judaica auction in February.”

The shipper is “a learned businessman who has made enormous efforts for decades to save and preserve historical artifacts that would otherwise have been destroyed,” said Kestenbaum. The seller agreed to further discuss the matter with the refund organization, he said.

Zoltan Tibori Szabo, director of the Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Cluj, said he was counting on the goodwill of the sender. If it is made available to researchers, the name of the newly discovered register will give scholars the names of the ancestors of the deportees, he said.

“When a person dies, they are usually remembered by their community and family,” he said. “But with hundreds of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe, nothing was left of them – even their documents were robbed and disappeared. You cannot restore a community’s history without documents. We don’t even have a list of their names. “

While historical Jewish community registers are occasionally put up for sale, it’s unusual for so many to be auctioned off at once, said Jonathan Fishburn, a London-based Jewish and Hebrew book dealer. The market is generally limited to museums and libraries, although some private collectors with a connection to a particular region would also be potential customers, he said. Kestenbaum said that of the roughly 30,000 auction lots he has worked on in his career, only about 100 related to records he identified as critical to genealogical research.

“It’s about saving history,” said Gideon Taylor, chairman of operations for the World Jewish Restitution Organization. The newly discovered register “is a treasure and a rare window into the past,” he said. “Every name on this list is important.”

The discovery of these documents was “a symbol of a greater challenge,” he said. “How do we make sure that these pieces of history aren’t traded? We want to make sure we have a roadmap for the future. We will approach auction houses more systematically and look for partnerships. “

Categories
Business

Tyson Meals begins vaccinating staff, however struggles to search out doses

Tyson Foods begins vaccinating workers, but struggles to find doses

When looking for access to Covid vaccines, large employers like Tyson Foods are no better off than many individual Americans. Tight supplies usually keep them waiting.

The meat processing company received its largest vaccine allocation this week and is vaccinating workers at its plants in Missouri, Illinois and Virginia. But there are only 1,000 cans in the three states.

Executives say they have received 25 to 50 doses at a time so far this month to vaccinate their occupational health workers and workers over 65

“We are not turning down opportunities to obtain vaccines for our team members,” said Tom Brower, senior vice president of health and safety, Tyson.

However, the options were limited. With 120,000 workers in two dozen states, the company has not been able to get anywhere near enough supplies to keep vaccination clinics on a large scale.

“We’re coming into these jurisdictions and asking for 1,000 or 1,500 doses,” said Dr. Daniel Castillo, chief medical officer of Matrix Medical Network, Tyson’s professional health care provider, who conducted on-site testing of the meat packer.

Even in states that are now providing access to vaccines for key workers, the uncertainty of vaccine supplies is hanging over large employers. The local health authorities cannot give them a schedule of when to get access.

“They don’t know how much they actually have to allocate to us sometimes. That’s part of the challenge of really not having that line of sight,” Castillo said.

Tyson and rival meat packers JBS and Smithfield Foods came under fire at their facilities at the start of the pandemic due to widespread Covid outbreaks. At Tyson’s pork processing plant in Iowa, managers were laid off after a probe found they had bet how many workers would get sick. Congress has launched an investigation into security vulnerabilities in meat packers. Tyson and the other companies are working with the probe.

According to the Food & Environment Reporting Network monitoring group, more than 12,500 Tyson employees have been infected with the coronavirus since the pandemic began. Tyson won’t confirm the numbers, but says the Covid-19 protocols he has been running have kept workers safe.

The company has worked with Matrix Medical on tests to contain potential outbreaks and put in place safety measures such as plastic partitions to reduce potential exposure on production lines. Last year they also expanded the on-site health clinics and launched a pilot program to provide no-copay basic care services as part of a longer-term initiative to improve the general health of workers.

While a number of companies are offering cash rewards to motivate workers to get the vaccine, Tyson has chosen to persuade its mostly Latin American and African American meat packers through an awareness campaign against the hesitation of the vaccine.

“We didn’t want to take the approach of contracting the vaccine. We really want to help team members make informed decisions about their own health care and safety,” said Brower.

It’s not the only big employer standing empty of competition to track down the vaccine doses. Amazon, Walmart, and others are calling on federal and state officials to provide access to on-site vaccinations and even contact vaccine manufacturers to secure supplies, which has had little success so far.

“If every road leads to the same place, which is a rare vaccine, it’ll be a challenge no matter which road,” Castillo said.

Companies don’t want to be seen as an attempt to cross the line – they argue that they can unburden the system for individuals by vaccinating their large employee populations. In the meantime, Tyson is giving employees four hours of paid time off to get a vaccine elsewhere if they can get an appointment.

Categories
Business

Fb, Google and Twitter C.E.O.s to Face Lawmakers Once more: Dwell Updates

Jack Dorsey, left, the chief executive of Twitter; Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google; and Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 25.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Lm Otero Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

The chief executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter will face skeptical lawmakers again next month when a congressional committee questions them about the ways disinformation spreads across their platforms.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee said Thursday that it would hold a hearing on March 25 with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google and Jack Dorsey of Twitter.

The committee has been examining the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that shields the platforms from lawsuits over much of the content posted by their users. The attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, which included participants with ties to QAnon and other conspiracy theories that have spread widely online, has renewed concerns that the law allows the platforms to take a hands-off approach to extremist content.

“For far too long, Big Tech has failed to acknowledge the role they’ve played in fomenting and elevating blatantly false information to its online audiences,” a group of the committee’s top Democrats said in a statement. “Industry self-regulation has failed.”

Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook, said the company “believes it’s time to update the rules of the internet, and this hearing should be another important step in the process.”

The House Judiciary Committee announced its own set of hearings on the tech industry on Thursday. It said it would hold multiple hearings on how to update antitrust laws to address the power of the tech giants. The committee questioned chief executives before concluding a lengthy investigation into the companies last year.

The Judiciary Committee’s first hearing will take place on Wednesday.

An all-electric Renault Zoe. Renault’s chief executive, Luca de Meo, last month presented a plan to return the automaker to profitability.Credit…Samuel Zeller for The New York Times

Renault, the French carmaker, reported a loss of 8 billion euros, or $9.7 billion, in 2020 as the pandemic gutted sales, but the company said that was profitable in the later part of the year.

Most of the annual loss stemmed from Renault’s stake in its troubled partner, Nissan. Losses at the Japanese carmaker drained €5 billion from the bottom line, Renault said. In addition, Renault car sales plunged 20 percent for the year, to just short of three million vehicles.

“After a first half impacted by Covid-19, the group has significantly turned around its performance in the second half,” Luca de Meo, Renault’s chief executive, said in a statement, without giving a figure. He said that 2021 was “set to be difficult given the unknowns regarding the health crisis as well as electronic components supply shortages.”

In 2021, shortages of semiconductors, a problem for almost all carmakers, could cut production by as much as 100,000 vehicles, Renault said.

Mr. de Meo, who became Renault’s chief executive in July, last month announced a plan to return to profitability that includes cuts in production capacity, sales of fewer models and increased parts sharing among vehicles to simplify manufacturing.

A tractor trailer is stuck in the ice and snow in Killeen, Texas. The winter storms that wreaked havoc across the South and Midwest have affected futures for oil and natural gas prices.Credit…Joe Raedle/Getty Images

  • Oil futures are trending downward after jumping earlier in the week, while natural gas gyrated through the day. Both were affected by the fierce winter storms that caused millions of people to go without power across Texas this week.

  • West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark crude, was down 2 percent on Friday, to about $59.35 a barrel. It had jumped 6 percent between Friday and Wednesday, as oil production was hindered by the weather.

  • Natural gas futures, which rose as a result of the storms, have moved up and down in recent days. On Friday they initially fell 3 percent before rebounding and eventually gaining nearly 1 percent from Thursday’s close. They still remain elevated from last week.

  • Word that the Biden administration was offering to restart talks to restore an accord limiting Iran’s nuclear program was seen as weighing on oil prices. Lifting sanctions against Iran could allow it sell more oil on the global market. Brent crude, the international benchmark, was down 1.2 percent on Friday, to just over $63 a barrel.

  • Wall Street had an upbeat start of trading on Friday. The S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent after falling 0.4 percent on Thursday, halting four consecutive days of gains.

  • Shares of Uber rose 0.5 percent after Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that the company’s drivers must be classified as workers entitled to a minimum wage and vacation time. The case had been closely watched because of its ramifications for the gig economy.

  • European markets were broadly higher, with the Stoxx Europe 600 up 0.5 percent and FTSE 100 in Britain gaining 0.2 percent. Asian markets closed mixed, with the Nikkei in Japan down 0.7 percent while the Shanghai composite in China rose 0.6 percent.

  • Purchasing managers index data for February, from Markit, showed a range of trends across Europe. The France composite output index hit a three-month low, reflecting the restrictions on business activity imposed by the latest lockdown. The Germany composite index rose, helped by an export-led manufacturing upturn.

  • In Britain, retail sales fell 8.2 percent in January compared with the preceding month, government data said, a downturn that was sharpened by a lockdown that started in the new year. But the decline was less than expected, and also not as bad as the 22 percent drop seen in April, when Britain went into an earlier lockdown. The Office of National Statistics said some of the improvement probably came from businesses learning to adapt to lockdowns, with more online and click-and-collect sales.

Manessa Grady and her sons Zechariah, 8, left, and Noah, 9, were among the millions of Texas residents who lost power this week.Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

In California, wildfires and heat waves in recent years forced utilities to shut off power to millions of homes and businesses. Now, Texas is learning that deadly winter storms and intense cold can do the same.

Bill Magness, the president and chief executive of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator, said on Thursday that Texas was “seconds and minutes” from a catastrophic blackout this week as rotating outages were used to control the flow of electricity.

The country’s two largest states have taken very different approaches to managing their energy needs — Texas deregulated aggressively, letting the free market flourish, while California embraced environmental regulations. Yet the two states are confronting the same ominous reality: They may be woefully unprepared for the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters caused by climate change.

Blackouts in Texas and California have revealed that power plants can be strained and knocked offline by the kind of extreme cold and hot weather that climate scientists have said will become more common as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere.

The problems in Texas and California highlight the challenge the Biden administration will face in modernizing the electricity system to run entirely on wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and other zero-emission technologies by 2035 — a goal that President Biden set during the 2020 campaign.

The federal government and energy businesses may have to spend trillions of dollars to harden electricity grids against the threat posed by climate change and to move away from the fossil fuels responsible for the warming of the planet in the first place. These are not new ideas. Scholars have long warned that American electricity grids, which are run regionally, will come under increasing strain and needed major upgrades.

“We really need to change our paradigm, particularly utilities, because they are becoming much more vulnerable to disaster,” Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, said about blackouts in Texas and California. “They need to always think about literally the worst-case scenario because the worst-case scenario is going to happen.”

Video

transcript

Back

transcript

Congressman Calls Robinhood’s Help Line and Gets Voicemail

After telling the House Financial Services Committee about the suicide of Robinhood user Alex Kearns, who died believing he had lost $730,000 on the brokerage app, Representative Sean Casten called its help line.

June 2020, Alex Kearns, who was 20 years old at the time, from Naperville, Illinois, killed himself, largely thanks to a bug in the Robinhood system. The bug was that he turned on the app, it said he owed $730,000 that he did not have, because of options positions that he thought canceled out but didn’t appear to. He called the help line. The help line, of course, was not manned, as we’ve discussed. He sent several panicked emails — three, to be precise — did not receive a response. Ultimately there was a response from the emails saying that, in fact, his positions were covered. But by that point, it was too late, because he had taken his own life. The — this is a gentleman who is 20 years old. Under Illinois law, he was not allowed to buy a beer, but he was allowed to take on $730,000 in positions and exposure that he did not have the liquidity to cover. Your mission, Mr. Tenev, is to democratize finance. But the history of financial regulation is to protect people like Alex Kearns from the system. As the old joke goes, if you’re playing poker and you can’t figure out who the fish is at the table, you should leave the table because you’re probably the fish. And there is an innate tension in your business model between democratizing finance, which is a noble calling, and being a conduit to feed fish to sharks. So I’m nervous. I think I got an exposure. And I call your help line now. Let’s call and let’s listen in the time we have remaining to what I’m going to hear on the other end of the phone. Voicemail: “Thank you for calling Robinhood. Please visit us at robinhood.com or on our app for support. If you have an urgent trading need, please make sure to include details of it when reaching out. Thanks have a great day.”

Video player loadingAfter telling the House Financial Services Committee about the suicide of Robinhood user Alex Kearns, who died believing he had lost $730,000 on the brokerage app, Representative Sean Casten called its help line.CreditCredit…via C-Span

The chief executives of Robinhood, Reddit, Citadel and Melvin Capital Management were among the witnesses at a hearing on the GameStop trading frenzy held by the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday.

  • Vlad Tenev, the chief executive of Robinhood, was the target for both Democrats and Republicans, fielding more than half of the lawmakers’ questions. “I love your company because it does, when correctly managed, provide investment opportunities for individuals who are currently frozen out of the markets for one reason or another,” said Representative Anthony Gonzalez, Republican of Ohio. He added: “At the same time, though, I believe a vulnerability was clearly exposed in your business model.”

  • Representative Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat, capped his sharp questioning of Mr. Tenev, in which he relayed the story of a 20-year-old college student who killed himself last summer believing that he’d lost more than $700,000, by dialing the Robinhood help line and letting everyone listen in as a short message was played and the call was terminated. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said Robinhood’s decisions had “harmed customers,” and accused it of passing on hidden costs to its customers.

  • Keith Gill — known on YouTube as Roaring Kitty — testified that his interest in the company was based on his belief that the market was underestimating the brick-and-mortar retailer’s value. His testimony included winking references — such as dangling what appeared to be his oft-worn red headband off a picture of a kitten visible over his shoulder and the statement “I am not a cat” — to internet meme culture.

  • Several harsh questions were directed at Kenneth C. Griffin, the chief of Citadel. Members of Congress asked skeptical questions about Citadel’s practice of paying to trade against customers at online brokers like Robinhood. Mr. Griffin tried to explain the intricacies of the business but was often cut off. “Our folks are tired of bailing you all out when you screw up and gamble with the retirement fund. And that’s exactly what happens every single moment,” Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, said to him.

Categories
Business

The best way to give to a charity crowdfunding drive with out getting scammed

How to give to a charity crowdfunding drive without getting scammed

According to the latest data from the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Americans have opened their wallets in response to crises like Covid-19 and racial injustice.

The organization reports a 7.6% increase in the amount donated in the first nine months of 2020. Leading the increase: lower contributions of $ 250 or less.

At the same time, non-traditional fundraising campaigns through crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe had unprecedented success over the past year. According to the site’s 2020 Giving Report, the year was the largest fundraiser in the site’s history – $ 44 million to fight hunger in an action led by Leonardo DiCaprio and Laurene Powell Jobs.

GoFundMe also announced that it held various $ 625 million fundraising drives in support of Covid between March and June. 500,000 donors have contributed to the official George Floyd Memorial Fund, the most individual donor ever won for a GoFundMe campaign.

Add to this thousands of tiny drives for everything from people’s medical expenses to their tuition fees, and charity experts agree that crowdfunding is and will likely stay a great alternative to traditional charity fundraising.

Boston-based marketing consultant Julia Campbell, who works with nonprofits, attributes the shift to what she believes is an unjustified distrust of nonprofits, especially younger donors.

“They don’t want to give money that they think is institutionalized,” Campbell told CNBC’s American Greed. “I think that has hit the nonprofit sector even more as trust wanes.”

A donation to an online fundraising campaign – whether via GoFundMe, Facebook or other websites – can, however, involve its own risks, despite the extensive security precautions that the platforms have taken.

Crowd scamming

In one of the most notorious cases of fundraiser trying to suppress a scam, New Jersey’s Mark D’Amico and Katelyn McClure raised more than $ 400,000 to help Johnny Bobbitt – a homeless man who McClure ran into after a petrol shortage met Philadelphia in 2017.

When the three of them told the story, Bobbitt was a veteran who had lost his luck. He saw McClure stranded on the side of the road and came to her aid. He went to a gas station, spent his last $ 20 to buy her gasoline, and helped her on her way.

A picture of Katelyn McClure (right), Mark D’Amico (center), and Johnny Bobbitt Jr. is displayed during a press conference in Mt. Holly, NJ, Thursday, November 15, 2018.

Seth Little | AP

McClure and D’Amico launched a GoFundMe campaign that went viral. But the story began to unravel when Bobbitt later claimed he hadn’t received any of the crowdsourcing funds and even filed a lawsuit against the couple.

Prosecutors said D’Amico and McClure spent and gambled away most of the money. And it turned out that Bobbitt was also involved in the fraud in exchange for some of the money. The story of McClure running out of gas and Bobbitt coming to her aid was fiction.

Adrienne Gonzalez, founder of the watchdog website GoFraudMe.com, said the three were dangerously close to getting away with their cheating until Bobbitt suspected that his criminal partners had cheated on him.

“Had they split it up three ways and given the homeless man his cut, would we ever have heard of it? No, I don’t think we would,” she said.

Bobbitt and McClure pleaded guilty to the fraud. Bobbitt was sentenced to one year probation for conspiracy to steal by fraud. He is convicted of a single federal conspiracy on money laundering in October.

McClure has yet to be convicted of second degree theft through deception and conspiracy to launder money. She has agreed to testify against D’Amico, her former boyfriend.

D’Amico has pleaded guilty to a single state charge of misuse of entrusted property and has been sentenced to five years in prison. But he has pleaded not guilty of 16 point charges of fraud and conspiracy. His trial is suspended because of the pandemic.

GoFundMe said it honored its guarantee and returned all of the money raised in the fraudulent campaign, adding to the 14,000 people who donated in total.

CEO Rob Solomon told NBC News in 2019 that the site had tightened its anti-fraud measures following the attempted fraud. The website relies heavily on the user community to report suspicious activity. He said the 2017 scam couldn’t happen today.

“Abuse on the platform is very rare. Less than a tenth of 1 percent of all campaigns lead to abuse,” he said.

Sniff test

If an online fundraiser appeals to you and you believe that an established charity cannot meet the need, Campbell suggests stepping back and doing additional due diligence before donating.

“There’s a sniff test,” she said. “What is the purpose? How are the funds used? Does that sound suspicious in any way?”

Look for details about the intended recipient of the money. Look for their social media profiles.

“See if you just opened your account like you just got on Facebook this month,” said Campbell. “Do you have less than 40 friends? And look at the photos and pictures they are using. If they only have one photo, it is most likely a scam account and you should be clear about control.”

Also, take a close look at the photos on the fundraiser website to make sure they are real. You can do a google reverse image search by dragging the photo into the site’s search window. This can tell you if the fundraiser uses a photo or an image that was used by someone else.

Be especially careful when it comes to someone raising money for third parties, like D’Amico and McClure, who are raising funds for Bobbitt. What’s the connection? Is it real

“Look for specific details for the victim, for the family, and then find your own connections,” Campbell said. “Have your friends and family donated? Are they in any way connected to this person?”

Charity begins at home

GoFundMe has raised 65 million donations over the past 10 years, including many to charities. The organization says 110,000 charities benefited from their fundraising drives.

Campbell believes the platform has caught on with people who want a more hands-on approach to giving rather than donating money to a large, impersonal, national charity.

“They want to go and actually give coats to the homeless. They want to make sandwiches and serve them,” she said. However, a more effective approach could be to contribute to local organizations.

“I believe in national charities, but it’s the best way to donate locally, and only donate to causes you care about, helping nonprofits, and building the capacity of your local library, food bank, and animal shelter help the community, “she said.

Experts agree that despite last year’s fundraising records, challenges in fighting the pandemic have forced many charities to lay off employees or curtail services.

That makes it important to pass on, regardless of the platform and the amount.

“I think the perception is that $ 10 is going to go into a deep, dark hole,” said Campbell. “Trust me when I say $ 10, especially if you do it monthly, it can make such a big difference to these organizations.”

Just do some homework before you give.

See how crowdfunding scammers try to corrupt the system and steal from the really needy. Catch a brand new episode of “American Greed” on Monday, February 22nd at 10pm ET / PT on CNBC.

Categories
Business

Airways Nonetheless Don’t Know When Passengers Will Return

Airlines Still Don’t Know When Passengers Will Return

For United Airlines it was “a year of hell”. Delta Air Lines had the “toughest year” in its history. And for American Airlines it was “the most challenging year”. This is how the executives who run these companies have described 2020 in recent weeks.

The aviation industry is eager to keep going, but hasn’t figured out how.

Air travel has bounced back a bit in the past few months but is still deeply depressed compared to 2019 and no one knows when business will return to more normal levels. Two major airline money-makers – business travel and international travel – are likely to be on hold for another year and possibly much longer.

At least now and for the next few months, airlines fly wherever they can, wherever they can. That often means catering for a small group of vacationers who won’t be deterred by the pandemic to travel to ski slopes or beaches.

“Fly where people are as a quick strategy,” said Ben Baldanza, former managing director of Spirit Airlines, the low-cost airline. “It was a really smart strategy, but it’s not a long-term money making opportunity for these airlines.”

But vacation travel offers limited convenience to an industry so thoroughly overcrowded. Tourists and people visiting family and friends typically occupy most of the seats on airplanes, but airlines rely disproportionately on business travelers’ income in front of the cabin. Before the pandemic, business travel made up about 30 percent of travel but 40 to 50 percent of passenger revenue, according to Airlines for America, an industry association. And these customers are not expected to return in large numbers anytime soon.

The four largest US airlines – American, Delta, United, and Southwest Airlines – lost more than $ 31 billion last year, and the industry is still losing more than $ 150 million a day, according to an estimate by Airlines for America .

The losses are even bigger when you consider airlines received $ 40 billion federal grants to pay employees and tens of billions more in low-cost government loans. The problem is, airlines these days can’t fly planes with enough people high enough to break even.

The industry spent much of the past year removing older, less efficient aircraft from their fleets and saving. Renegotiation of contracts; and encourage tens of thousands of workers to adopt takeovers or early retirement packages.

However, it has not been enough to offset a nearly two-thirds decline in air travel as public health experts and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to discourage travel. Airlines for America does not expect passenger numbers to recover to 2019 levels until at least 2023. And airlines may have to wait even longer if the economic recovery falters due to the spread of coronavirus variants or a delay in vaccinations.

Still, airlines say they are hopeful for the year ahead.

Sales this month were better than expected, according to Southwest. Alaska Airlines was hoping to fly around 80 percent as many flights this summer as it did in 2019, while Hawaiian Airlines came up with a similarly positive forecast. Delta chief executive Ed Bastian said in a message to customers last week that he expected a “tipping point in spring” as consumer confidence increased, travel restrictions eased and vaccine distribution expanded. Last week, JetBlue launched daily flights from New York, Boston and Los Angeles to Miami, and added seasonal flights to Key West, which serves either city for the first time.

Updated

Apr. 19, 2021 at 5:58 pm ET

“The discussion is shifting from being a survivor to being more involved in recovery,” said Sheila Kahyaoglu, an aerospace and defense analyst at Jefferies, an investment bank. “It will be about who can best access certain markets.”

The airlines have a few things ahead of them. Washington lawmakers appear poised to provide industry with a third major aid package since the pandemic erupted last spring. A House committee last week backed $ 14 billion in grants that airlines could use to pay workers through September and added it to the coronavirus aid package under consideration in Congress.

The airlines are also doing everything they can to stimulate demand.

Delta recently extended its middle seat booking ban to April and hired a chief health officer. The steps are part of Delta’s efforts to distinguish itself as a world-class, health-conscious carrier. To mark its 50th anniversary, Southwest has offers including a sale that promises one-way prices starting at $ 50. The airline usually has big sales in the fall and sometimes in the summer.

“I don’t think either of us can remember making a wild sale in January, but here we are,” Southwest chief executive Gary Kelly told investors and reporters last month. “The goal is simple: we need to encourage travel. We need to make more bookings. “

Most industry experts expect travelers to return in greater numbers this spring or summer as the weather improves and more people are vaccinated.

But planning that is not easy. Passengers used to book flights months in advance, but now plans are often confirmed just weeks later. And booking trends were often fleeting.

“Every time the demand shows signs of life, it takes another step backwards,” said Hunter Keay, senior airline analyst at Wolfe Research. “So it is very difficult for airlines to bring airplanes to market because if you get this wrong, you will only exacerbate the problem of burning money.”

Perhaps the toughest question for airlines and other tour operators is when will executives, middle managers, and other business travelers be comfortable flying. In the final three months of 2020, business travel in the US, Delta and Southwest fell 85 percent or more, according to airlines.

The American Hotel and Lodging Association, a trade group, has announced that business travel will not fully recover until 2024. Other groups believe this could take longer. By comparison, international business travel declined only 13 percent during the financial crisis a decade ago, but it took five years for it to return to its previous peak, according to McKinsey.

Some experts argue that business travel may never fully recover as many face-to-face meetings are permanently replaced by video conferencing and phone calls. Travel for sales meetings, conventions, and trade shows are the least likely to be permanently affected, IdeaWorks, an industry consulting firm, said in a December report. But shorter trips to meet up with colleagues for a few hours – say from New York to Washington – could be hit harder, it concluded.

Airlines are more hopeful, perhaps because they rely heavily on business travel.

Around 40 percent of Delta’s large corporate customers expect their own business travel to be fully restored by 2022 and another 11 percent by 2023, Bastian said on a conference call in January, citing the airline’s internal investigations. Only 7 percent said business travel may never fully recover, while the rest said they weren’t sure when things would return to normal.

American is “very optimistic” that business travel will return with vaccine distribution, Vasu Raja, the airline’s chief revenue officer, told investors and reporters last month. But, he added, “the rate of this is unclear at best.”

Categories
Business

Finest islands within the Philippines? What to see and do in Batanes

Best islands in the Philippines? What to see and do in Batanes

A group of islands in the northernmost region of the Philippines is so far away that it is actually closer to Taiwan than most parts of the Philippines.

The islands are 100 miles north of Luzon, the largest and most populous island in the country and home to the capital, Manila. However, you couldn’t be further from the stereotypical tropical scene of swaying palm trees and white sand beaches associated with the Philippine archipelago.

Imagine windswept emerald hills dotted with cattle, quaint stone towns with flower-lined paths, rugged cliffs plunging into a deep sea of ​​crashing white-tipped waves, and lighthouses steadfast and strong, much like that Locals themselves.

This is Batanes – a fascinating and magical place that feels more like the historical drama “Outlander” than “The Beach”.

Pastoral landscapes, peaceful people

Batanes is made up of three main islands – Batan, Sabtang, and Itbayat – that lie between the North Pacific and the South China Seas. Often times, Batanes is hit by implacable typhoons that form on both waters.

It is also located on the Circum-Pacific Belt, better known as the Ring of Fire, and is prone to the frequent earthquakes that damaged Itbayat Island in July 2019.

The pastoral landscape of Naidi Hills near the Basco Lighthouse.

Scott A. Woodward

Here the land is forged by the elements and, in many ways, by the people too.

There is a mysterious atmosphere that shrouds the indigenous people of Batanes, the Ivatans. Due to their isolation, challenging climate and difficult landscape, the locals have built a society that values ​​trust and real connection.

In contrast to the exuberant and charmingly chaotic landscapes of the Philippines, which feel more like karaoke than an idyllic paradise, Batanes and its residents are calm, thoughtful, orderly and peaceful. The Ivatans are warm and sincere and strive to be honest with visitors who want to learn more about their culture.

A fisherman in the village of Diura.

Scott A. Woodward

The Ivatans live in symbiosis with nature and maintain their natural heritage with an almost spiritual passion. They recognize the country as a source of their wellbeing and wellbeing and are committed to sustainability.

The best example would be the lack of markets in the province; Agricultural practices aim to produce just enough food for the population, with very little excess.

Here Christian faith and spirituality permeate everyday life. The word “Dius” or God is used in many expressions: “Dius mamajes!” – or God will repay you, is their way of saying thank you; “Dius machivan!” – May God go with you, is their parting; or just “Dius?” asking if anyone is home. There the visitors often hear “Dius mavidin!” or may God be with you, they greet guests.

Where to sleep

Unlike most of the Philippines, Batanes is sparsely populated.

The 2015 census counted only 17,246 people, which is roughly 205 people per mile.

Strict measures are being taken to prevent overtourism, such as limiting the number of flights to the islands. The area is also subject to the Batanes Responsible Tourism Act, according to which the Philippine government declared the province a “Responsible, Community-Based Cultural Heritage and Ecotourism Zone” in 2016.

As a result, travelers can expect to find host families and small inns rather than branded hotels.

The Bed & Breakfast Fundacion Pacita.

Scott A. Woodward

One facility really stands out.

Fundacion Pacita, the former residence of the late artist Pacita Abad, is a charming bed and breakfast on a lush grass slope overlooking the sea.

Built in traditional stone fashion paired with whitewashed adobe walls, it’s quirky decorated with brightly colored tiles, repurposed furniture, and Abad’s vibrant artwork.

Food from the Cafe du Tukon; Patsy, the niece of the late artist Pacita Abad.

Scott A. Woodward

Her niece Patsy, who often walks through the premises with a happy smile and a glass of wine, now runs the inn. She recently opened the fabulous Café du Tukon, which serves delicious contemporary interpretations of local delicacies like carbonara pasta with salted dolphin fish called arayu instead of bacon or guanciale.

What should I do

Batan is the main island of Batanes. Due to the choppy water and unpredictable weather, it can be difficult to cross the Batanes Islands. Fortunately, Batan has a lot to offer and is easy to get to via commercial flights.

It is imperative to work with an accredited travel agency such as IBS Tours and Travels before organizing any trip. The agency can coordinate a car and guide to navigate the stunning coastal road that circles the island.

The Tayid Lighthouse on Batan Island.

Scott A. Woodward

Agencies can also arrange stops at notable locations like the famous Basco Lighthouse and Tayid Lighthouse, the sloping hills of Rakuh a Payaman, and the colorful waters of the Homoron Blue Lagoon.

It’s also worth stopping at small, peaceful towns like Mahatao and Ivana, known for their churches and Spanish bridges, as well as Diura, home of the Mataw caste of mystical fishermen.

A woman in Chavayan wears a hand-sewn palm frond vakul.

Scott A. Woodward

If the weather is nice, Sabtang Island can be reached by a 40-minute ferry ride. The breathtaking views from the cliffs of Chamantad Tiñan are well worth it, as is the stone village of Chavayan, where vakul are made. These are traditional headgear made from stripped palm fronds that protect field workers from the elements.

Arrival to Batanes

The only real way to get there is by flying. Flights can take anywhere from 80 to 100 minutes and can be booked with Skyjet, Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines before the pandemic.

Homoron Blue Lagoon.

Scott A. Woodward

A trip to Batanes must be planned in advance and booked through accredited tour operators. The local government is very focused on sustainable tourism and the preservation of the province’s natural and cultural heritage. There are a number of rules and guidelines – such as no bikinis on the beach – that tourists must understand and adhere to while traveling.

When should i go

While the Philippines is currently closed to international tourism, officials last month expressed an interest in establishing “international travel bubbles” or travel corridors with strict health protocols with neighboring countries.

Basco lighthouse.

Scott A. Woodward

Batanes, which registered its third Covid-19 case in December 2020, is currently even closed to local tourists. Local authorities are looking for ways to safely reopen with 14-day quarantines and meet other health requirements.

Batanes’ “good season” runs from November to May. June to October is typhoon time and should be avoided. Travelers are advised to bring a light rain jacket for spontaneous downpours and a light sweater for cool nights on the cool mountain tops.