Category: World News

Bitcoin mining problem drops after hashrate collapse in China

Post author By
Post date July 3, 2021

A bitcoin mine near Kongyuxiang, Sichuan, China on August 12, 2016.

Paul Ratje | The Washington Post | Getty Images

It just got a lot easier and more profitable to mine for Bitcoin.

The world has known for months that more than half of the world’s bitcoin miners would go dark if China cracked down on mining. Now that it has happened, the Bitcoin algorithm has adjusted accordingly to ensure miners’ productivity doesn’t drop any further from a cliff.

This adjustment – which went into effect early Saturday morning – also means more money will be available to the bitcoin miners who stay online.

“This will be a source of income for miners,” said bitcoin mining engineer Brandon Arvanaghi.

“They suddenly have a significantly larger piece of the pie, which means they are making more Bitcoin every day.”

Mining made easy

A bitcoin miner runs a program on a computer to try to solve a puzzle before someone else does. The solution to this puzzle completes a block, a process that both creates new bitcoins and updates the digital ledger to keep track of all bitcoin transactions.

China has long been the epicenter of bitcoin miners, with previous estimates suggesting 65 to 75% of the world’s bitcoin mining took place there, but government-led crackdown has effectively banned the country’s crypto miners.

“For the first time in the history of the Bitcoin network, we have completely stopped mining in a specific geographic region that affected more than 50% of the network, “said Darin Feinstein, Founder of Blockcap and Core Scientific.

More than 50% of the hashrate – the collective computing power of miners worldwide – has fallen off the network since its market high in May.

Fewer people mining means fewer blocks are being solved every day. It usually takes around 10 minutes to complete a block, but Feinstein told CNBC that the Bitcoin network has slowed to 14 to 19-minute block times.

Precisely for this reason, Bitcoin recalibrates and resets every 2016 blocks or roughly every two weeks about how difficult it is for miners to mine. On Saturday, the Bitcoin code automatically made mining easier by about 28% – a historically unprecedented decline for the network – and thus set the block times back to the optimal 10-minute window.

According to Mike Colyer, CEO of digital currency company Foundry, the Bitcoin algorithm is programmed to deal with an increase or decrease in mining machines. “It’s a self-regulating market that doesn’t need an outside committee to determine what to do. This is a very strong concept, ”he said.

Fewer competitors and fewer difficulties mean that any miner with a machine connected will see a significant increase in profitability and more predictable revenue.

“All bitcoin miners have the same economics and mine on the same network, so both public and private miners will see revenue growth,” said Kevin Zhang, former chief mining officer at Greenridge Generation, the first major US power plant to begin with mining on a grand scale behind the counter.

Assuming a fixed cost of electricity, Zhang estimates sales of $ 29 per day for those using the latest generation Bitmain miner, up from $ 22 per day before the change. Longer-term, although mining income can fluctuate with the price of the coin, Zhang also noted that mining revenues were only 17% lower from the Bitcoin price high in April, while the price of the coin was down about 50%.

Six month increase

It is difficult to predict how long the hashrate deficit will last. Barbour said it was entirely possible that Beijing could simply reverse its policies and this could only be a short-term hiatus.

If not, most mining crypto experts agree that it will take anywhere from six to 15 months for all of the idle and displaced mining hardware to migrate. “It will be a long time before the surplus finds a home,” said Barbour.

Gibbs believes the miners should generate higher revenues for at least the remainder of 2021.

“Every day, the Chinese miners around the world look for places where they can turn their machines on again. Space is very limited right now, ”said Colyer.

Part of the problem, according to Feinstein, is that even before mining stopped in China, there was a lack of infrastructure to accommodate the new-generation miners deployed monthly by Beijing-based manufacturer Bitmain.

Now that the market is inundated with an oversupply of used mining rigs, it’s hard to say how quickly countries can absorb the influx of equipment.

“Some mining companies built everything and were just waiting for these ASICs to plug in, which would only take a few days,” explained Arvanaghi.

“Others may need to build containers, expand warehouses, or increase their electricity capacity. We won’t see the hash rate hit what it used to be overnight, but we’ll see it rise again over the next few months, ”he continued.

Of all the possible destinations for this gear, the U.S. appears particularly well positioned to absorb this stray hashrate. CNBC is told that major U.S. mining operators are already signing contracts to patrol some of these homeless Bitmain miners.

Bitcoin mining in the US is booming and venture capital is flowing so they are ready to take advantage of miner migration, Arvanaghi told CNBC.

“Many US bitcoin miners who were funded when the price of bitcoin began to rise in November and December 2020 meant they were expanding their power capacity when the Chinese mining ban went into effect,” he said. “It’s great timing.”

However, Barbour believes that much smaller players in the US residential areas also have a chance to catch these surplus miners.

“I think this is a signal that bitcoin mining will inevitably be more distributed in the future,” said Barbour. “Fewer mega mines like the 100 megawatts we see in Texas and more small mines in small commercial and ultimately residential areas. It’s much more difficult for a politician to close a mine in a garage. “

Tags bitcoin, China, Collapse, Difficulty, drops, hashrate, Mining

World News

The Relics of America’s Battle in Afghanistan

Post author By
Post date July 3, 2021

BAGRAM, Afghanistan – For nearly 20 years, Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan was the anchor for America’s war, its two sprawling runways serving for bombing, homeward travel, medical evacuations, mail trips and USO shows.

But despite years of preparation for this moment, the departure of the Americans in Bagram last week was marked by little fanfare, apparently as incoherent as the Afghan government’s plan for the next steps.

For weeks the Taliban have been carrying out attacks across the country, killing members of the Afghan security forces and forcing hundreds to surrender. Across the country, warlords – power brokers from the 1990s civil war and new militia commanders – are calling on Afghan civilians to join their makeshift armies in defense of the country.

The clash of government forces, Taliban fighters, warlords and citizen militias signals that the violence will almost certainly worsen. The U.S. military is expected to leave the country entirely by September 11th as President Biden keeps his promise to bring the American forces home from the nation’s longest foreign war.

The new tenants in Bagram are the Afghan security forces, who will inherit the conflict the US built for them, as well as fields of military equipment, vehicles and weapons that will long represent the grim legacy of the war and the country’s uncertain future .

To continue the fight, the United States has left its tan and green pickups and Humvees behind, along with its Hesco barriers, the cube-shaped, dirt-filled boxes that were used to build and protect American, now Afghan, outposts.

But so many US-supplied weapons have been captured, bought, or stolen by the insurgents that it would be difficult to verify the facts if the Taliban said they had more American M16s than Russian Kalashnikovs. Even the U.S. Special Inspector General overseeing the war in Afghanistan isn’t sure how many American firearms have been sent into the country to support the security forces in the past two decades.

The physical objects left behind are reminiscent of decades of losses – appalling numbers of deaths on all sides, especially among Afghan civilians, as well as devastating injuries. Also, the failed strategies cobbled together by a number of American generals are now part of history who said everything was on schedule and everything was going well.

About a mile from the air force base that American forces left behind on Thursday evening is a squat row of brick and steel shops with Afghan vendors, the custodians of the physical relics that were dropped from trucks and recovered from piles of rubbish. A black coffee mug labeled “Been there… done that, Operation Enduring Freedom” is just one of thousands of items that tell a story from what was once considered “the good war”.

Hashmatullah Gulzada was behind the counter in one of those stores, a closet-sized store he opened a year ago after working as a truck driver. The cramped spaces were filled from floor to ceiling with war relics, snacks, bags, and personal care products.

The quiet resignation of shopkeepers like Mr Gulzada has been reverberating for some time in Bagram, a city of vines and an economy that depends on the garbage from an airport that has been used by two superpowers for the past 40 years.

Even with some of the last American cargo planes to depart on that day in late June, Mr. Gulzada was still not entirely sure that the United States would depart in full.

“If they leave, business will be bad,” said Mr Gulzada.

Near the windowsill was a single red rip-it, the sugar- and caffeine-rich energy drink that kept thousands of US and NATO troops awake on patrol or in the cabs of armored vehicles so big the Afghans saw them Call tanks.

Mr Gulzada says Rip It costs 120 afghanis, about $ 1.50, a high price linked to the love of energy drinks that Afghan youth developed after the 2001 US invasion. (A billboard from Rip It in Kabul, the capital, testifies to this devotion).

On the floor of his shop, in a pile of knickknacks and shampoo bottles, lies a weathered black stripe with wide Velcro straps known as a “combat application tourniquet”. Almost every American soldier and contractor traveling through Afghanistan carried one with them as its ease of use has saved many lives.

More than 20,000 US soldiers were wounded in Afghanistan. (Another 1,897 were killed in combat and 415 died of “non-hostile” reasons.) The combat tourniquet was in many cases, a staple in the roadside bomb slaughter or armed attack, fumbled out of a pouch and slipped hastily up some mutilated limb and tightened until the bleeding stopped.

Mr Gulzada sells the tourniquet for about 25 cents less than Rip It. Medical vendors buy it, shopkeepers say, along with the foldable American stretchers that carried the wounded and dead across the battlefield that are now for sale. They merge with a few artificial Christmas trees from the pedestal that found their way into stores.

The Christmas decorations probably adorned the corners of a staff office at the airfield in one place or another. Bagram Air Force Base ballooned from a partially destroyed former Soviet military airfield when the Americans arrived in a mini-town in 2001 at the height of the war in 2011. It had tens of thousands of residents, fast food restaurants, shops, and an infamous military prison that was later turned over to the Afghans.

But Bagram, as it was then, was dismantled, slowly at first, as the U.S. presence waned. As they left, the Americans destroyed things like armored cars and more than 15,000 other pieces of equipment that were considered surplus property, a collective term that allows U.S. forces to destroy items so they won’t be sold for profit by Afghans.

Farid, another shopkeeper on the Strip who uses a name like many Afghans, said most of the material that has left the base in recent weeks has been destroyed and disposed of as trash, which helped the scrappers, but little available posed to fill its shelves.

Not everything was dismantled or ruined. Under a cot in another store lay a pair of used brown combat boots, a trademark of the nearly 800,000 US soldiers who have rotated around Afghanistan in the past two decades.

Their distinctive prints enabled the Taliban to track down American patrols in the desert-covered south. In the inexorable terrain of the east, such as the Korengal Valley, boots quickly broke when soldiers made strenuous climbs and forged ice-cold streams.

To Americans, the boots were what they saw as they stared at the earth one step at a time, one patrol after another, wondering if their weight would set off a roadside bomb buried underneath.

After all these years of fighting, many of the places where US and international troops marched are in the hands of the Taliban. This is especially true now as the insurgent group draws closer and closer to Kabul and districts are falling one by one by military force or other means. The Afghan forces have recaptured some, but not nearly enough to break the momentum of the offensive.

Even today, the Taliban are less than 80 kilometers away from Bagram, which can be clearly felt in the shops near the base. A shopkeeper who refused to give his name pointed to a bulletproof plate used in body armor and said it was no longer for sale.

“This is for us,” he said. “Tomorrow will be war.”

Fatima Faizi contributed to the coverage.

Tags Afghanistan, Americas, Relics, War

World News

Boeing cargo aircraft makes emergency touchdown close to Honolulu

Post author By
Post date July 3, 2021

A Transair Beoing 737 Cargo Jet sits on the tarmac at the Transair Cargo Facility at the Dainel K. Inouye Internaional Airport on July 2, 2021 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Eugene Tanner | AFP | Getty Images

A Boeing 737-200 cargo plane made an emergency landing in the ocean near Honolulu early Friday after pilots reported engine trouble, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Both pilots were rescued from a debris field, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

The FAA said Transair Flight 810 made the emergency landing at around 1:30 a.m. local time on Friday.

“The pilots had reported engine trouble and were attempting to return to Honolulu when they were forced to land the aircraft in the water,” the FAA said. “The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate.”

The Boeing plane was built in 1975 and powered by two Pratt & Whitney engines, according to the FAA. The aircraft was not a 737 Max, the jet that officials had grounded for 20 months through last November after two fatal crashes.

The plane took off from Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport bound for Kahului Airport on Maui, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

“Our situation: We lost number 1 engine and we’re coming straight to the airport,” one of the pilots told an air traffic controller, according to audio from the airport’s tower posted on website LiveATC.net. The pilot said the plane had about two hours worth of fuel. “We’re going to need the fire department.”

“There’s a chance we’re going to lose the other engine,” the pilot said. “It’s running very hot.”

The air traffic controller moments later said: “Low altitude alert. Low altitude alert. Are you able to climb at all?”

“No. Negative,” another pilot said.

The first pilot asked the air traffic controller to “let the Coast Guard know.”

The Coast Guard said it responded to a report of a downed plane south of the island of Oahu at around 1:40 a.m. and that both people on board were rescued, with help from the Honolulu Fire Department.

It said a rescue helicopter located the white-and-orange Transair plane in a debris field at around 2:30 a.m.

One survivor who was seen on the tail of the aircraft was carried out of the water by the rescue helicopter and airlifted to a Honolulu hospital, according to a Coast Guard report. The other person was on top of floating packages and transported to shore by a Honolulu Fire Department rescue boat, it said.

Transair, a Hawaiian cargo carrier, which specializes in flying freight between the islands, didn’t return requests for comment. The airline has been operating since 1982, according to its website.

“We are aware of the reports out of Honolulu, Hawaii and are closely monitoring the situation,” Boeing said. “We are in contact with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and are working to gather more information.”

The NTSB said it is sending 10 investigators to the crash site.

Cargo jets are often decades old, converted to carry freight after years of being used to transport passengers.

Boeing shares recovered some of the losses that occurred after the news of the crash, but ended down 1.3% at $236.68.

Tags Boeing, cargo, emergency, Honolulu, landing, Plane

World News

Covid Reside Updates: Vaccines, Delta Variant and Circumstances

Post author By
Post date July 2, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators on Friday cleared a batch of vaccine that could furnish up to 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot coronavirus vaccine, deciding they can be safely distributed despite production failures at the vaccine-making factory that ruined 75 million other doses.

The move brings the total number of Johnson & Johnson doses made at the Baltimore facility and cleared by the Food and Drug Administration for distribution in the United States to roughly 40 million. But Johnson & Johnson remains far from its goal of delivering 100 million doses to the federal government by the end of June. European Union officials have said the firm is missing its delivery targets there, as well.

The vaccine cleared on Friday is not yet bottled, and the Biden administration’s plans for it remain unclear. But with the pandemic abating and the country awash in vaccines from the two other authorized manufacturers, any new Johnson & Johnson doses produced in the United States are likely destined mostly for export.

Johnson & Johnson has been unable to produce much vaccine since regulators shut down the Baltimore factory, operated by Emergent BioSolutions, nearly three months ago because of major production errors. Johnson & Johnson had been relying on Emergent, its subcontractor, to produce vaccine for use in the United States as well as to meet its commitments overseas while it expanded its own plant in Leiden, the Netherlands.

Even with the newly cleared batch, Johnson & Johnson remains nearly 40 million doses short of its 100-million-dose pledge for U.S. use. The F.D.A. did not disclose the precise number of doses cleared Friday, but multiple people familiar with Emergent’s operation said the batch amounted to as many as 15 million doses.

Also on Friday, European regulators approved the reopening of Johnson & Johnson’s Dutch plant, a piece of good news for the firm amid its supply woes. “Today’s approval represents progress in expanding our global manufacturing network to supply our Covid-19 vaccine worldwide,” the company said in a statement.

And on Thursday, Johnson & Johnson reported that early results of unpublished studies showed that its vaccine is effective against the highly contagious Delta variant, even eight months after inoculation. That was a reassuring finding for the those who have gotten the company’s shot.

The Baltimore factory is expected to remain shuttered for several more weeks while Emergent tries to bring it up to standard, according to people familiar with its operation who spoke on condition of anonymity. The F.D.A. said in a statement Friday that it was not yet ready to certify that the plant was following good manufacturing practices.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The highly contagious Delta variant has gained ground in New York City in recent weeks, though overall case counts remain low, according to a recent analysis by the city’s Health Department.

Since mid-June, there has been a steady daily average of about 200 new Covid-19 cases detected in New York City, the lowest since the early days of the pandemic and an indication that there is relatively little virus circulating there.

“The stability in terms of the daily numbers of cases is quite reassuring,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

The city’s daily Covid deaths are usually in the single digits now, and the number of new hospitalizations has been relatively steady for a couple of weeks — about 171 Covid patients were in area hospitals at the start of July.

In England, where the Delta variant now accounts for most cases, epidemiological data released on Thursday showed that it was not driving any surge in the rate of hospitalizations.

Dr. Torian Easterling, the first deputy commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said that “young adults” made up most of the new cases involving the Delta variant.

For now, Delta’s growing presence has not prompted any dramatic shifts in Covid-19 guidance from City Hall, and more and more people are shedding their masks.

The variant was first identified in India and is now causing a new surge of cases in many places around the world, including a handful of places in the United States. It was detected in New York in March. At that point, the city’s vaccination campaign was gaining momentum, but the long second wave that began last fall had yet to recede. Research shows that a full regimen of the vaccines in use in New York offer a high degree of protection against the Delta variant.

By the end of May, the city’s genome sequencing program suggested that the Delta variant made up about 8 percent of overall new cases in the city, even as case counts were plummeting. New data released on Thursday, based on genome sequencing of just 54 case samples, suggested that by mid-June, Delta could have accounted for 44.4 percent of new cases. (The data is reflected in a chart near the bottom of this page on the Department of Health’s website.)

The city’s sequencing program has been robust in recent months, with more than 10 percent of confirmed cases tested for variants in some weeks. The latest sample of cases to be sequenced was unusually small, involving only about 5 percent of confirmed cases.

Public health experts have said Delta’s gains should motivate New Yorkers to get vaccinated. About 49 percent of the city’s population has not been fully vaccinated — about four million people, including children not yet eligible.

And vaccination rates are uneven across the city, leaving pockets at risk. Vaccinations are lagging generally among Black New Yorkers, and, geographically, in northern Manhattan, the Bronx, and parts of Brooklyn and Queens.

“We need to always emphasize the fact that even though the percentage of Delta cases is going up, the total number of people getting Covid continues to go down and the vaccines continue to be very effective,” Dr. Jay Varma, a senior adviser for public health to Mayor Bill de Blasio, said at a news conference earlier this week.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

Credit…Jens Schlueter/Getty Images

In a bid to provide effective coverage against the Delta variant, German health authorities broadened their recommendation that those who received a first shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine get a second dose with either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.

This “is one of the best available vaccine combinations currently available,” Jens Spahn, the country’s health minister, said on Friday, after agreeing to formally adopt a recommendation from the country’s vaccination expert panel with state lawmakers.

Studies have shown that while mixing vaccines may increase the odds of mild and moderate side effects, including fever, fatigue and headache, the protection is at least on par with two jabs of the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.

Germany had already been advising people under 60 to take the mixed regimen after worries about rare but severe side effects were observed in younger women receiving AstraZeneca shots. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 66, was inoculated with a Moderna vaccine last month after receiving an AstraZeneca shot earlier this year.

Now, authorities believe the combination can help protect all vaccine recipients in the fight against the Delta virus, which is currently estimated to make up 50 percent of new cases across the country.

Mr. Spahn also said that doctors and nurses could give the second shot just four weeks after the first, significantly shortening the period between shots that was initially recommended for a full AstraZeneca treatment, when the wait between shots could be as long as 12 weeks.

“The more vaccinations in the summer, the better the autumn,” said Mr. Spahn.

Currently 56 percent of Germans have received at least one dose and 38 percent are fully vaccinated. Nearly 17 percent of all vaccines delivered to Germany come from AstraZeneca, which for a while was the jab of choice for people who were not high on any priority list.

Despite the spread of the Delta variant, the number of new cases is at the lowest level in about a year.

Here’s what’s happening around the world:

Portugal is imposing a curfew from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. in Lisbon, Porto and other popular tourism spots to fight a Delta-driven surge, reversing course after it had reopened its economy to prepare for summer travelers. The measure is designed to discourage gatherings of younger people at night, said Mariana Vieira da Silva, a cabinet minister. The country reported almost 2,500 new cases on Thursday, the highest daily rise since mid-February, although cases have remained far below its January peak of more 16,000 per day.

France warned on Friday that the Delta variant now accounted for a third of all new cases. Olivier Véran, France’s health minister, said that while the virus was under control, the decline in new cases has slowed, and that the variant was a “real threat” that could “ruin” summer holidays. Mr. Véran said authorities would not make vaccination mandatory for the general population but were debating doing so for health workers.
Three guests and one firefighter died in a blaze at a quarantine hotel in Taiwan, and more than 20 people were injured. Some guests had worried that leaving their rooms would violate Covid rules, and the owner at first thought it was a false alarm and urged people to stay in their rooms. The fire renewed debate over the use of hotels as quarantine facilities.

Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

With just a few days to go, there is no longer much doubt that the United States will fall just short of President Biden’s goal to have 70 percent of adults at least partly vaccinated against the coronavirus by Independence Day.

It was always more of a rhetorical deadline than a practical one: It doesn’t make much difference exactly what the national figure will be on July 4 (probably 67 or 68 percent) or which day the national odometer will roll past 70 percent (perhaps around mid-month). The point was to give the public something to shoot for, to keep up the pace of progress.

That progress has hardly been uniform. Some parts of the country have embraced vaccination avidly, others diffidently and some grudgingly — just as happened with precautions like mask-wearing, social distancing, and school and business closures.

Here is a rundown of which states have led the way and which have lagged, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data tracked by The New York Times:

Over the goal line

Twenty states, Washington, D.C., and two territories exceeded the 70 percent threshold by Thursday, three days ahead of Mr. Biden’s target date.

Twelve are in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region, including Vermont, the national leader, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

California, Oregon and Washington have surpassed 70 percent, as has Hawaii.

The other four states that have cleared 70 percent are Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New Mexico, along with the territories of Puerto Rico and Guam.

Close but not quite

Fourteen states, mainly in the Midwest and Southwest, were between 60 and 65 percent on Thursday. Two of the nation’s most populous states are in this group: Florida at 65 percent and Texas at 61 percent.

The remaining 16 states, including nearly the whole South, were below 60 percent, with Mississippi in last at 46 percent.

Credit…Carl Court/Getty Images

Denis McDonough, the secretary of veterans affairs, said this week that he was considering a move to compel workers at V.A. hospitals to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, fearing that centers with low inoculation rates were risking the health of veterans seeking care.

The military is struggling to fully vaccinate more troops across all service branches. While the Army and Navy are outpacing the civilian population in vaccine uptake, the Air Force and the Marine Corps have faced greater challenges. About 68 percent of active-duty members have had at least one dose of a vaccine, officials said.

President Biden could legally require members of the military to get vaccinated, but he has declined to exercise that power even as the highly contagious Delta variant has become an increasing threat to unvaccinated Americans.

The military has worked hard to combat vaccine misinformation in its ranks since the shots first became available. More than 80 percent of active-duty service members are under 35, a group that often views itself as impervious to coronavirus infections. Many worry that the vaccines are unsafe, were developed too quickly or will affect fertility.

A lack of vaccine acceptance among hospital workers who care for veterans could be more worrisome; because of their average age and service-related injuries and illnesses, veterans can be more vulnerable to infection. Nearly 12,500 veterans have died from coronavirus-related complications since the pandemic began.

Credit…Kenny Holston for The New York Times

President Biden’s plan to celebrate “independence from the virus” on the Fourth of July is running into an unpleasant reality: Less than half the country is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, and the highly contagious Delta variant is threatening new outbreaks.

Mr. Biden will visit Traverse City, Mich., on Saturday as part of what the White House calls the “America’s Back Together” celebration. On Sunday, he and Jill Biden, the first lady, have invited 1,000 military personnel and essential workers to an Independence Day bash on the South Lawn of the White House.

But public health experts fear that scenes of celebrations will send the wrong message when wide swaths of the population remain vulnerable and true independence from the worst public health crisis in a century may be a long way off.

On Friday, Mr. Biden urged those who have yet to get vaccinated to “think about their family” and get a shot as the Delta variant spreads. At a news conference mainly focused on the strong jobs report from the Labor Department, he said he wasn’t worried about another major coronavirus outbreak, but instead wanted to make sure next year’s July 4 holiday was even better than this year’s.

“I am concerned that people who have not gotten vaccinated have the capacity to catch the variant and spread the variant to other people who have not been vaccinated,” he said. “To those of you who haven’t been vaccinated, it doesn’t hurt. It’s accessible. It is free. Don’t just think about yourself. Think about your family.”

Dr. Thomas Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other experts said they feared that if the Delta variant continued to circulate, it would mutate in a way that left even the vaccinated vulnerable. That already seems to be happening elsewhere in the world; South Korea and Israel, where the virus seemed to be in check, have new clusters of disease.

“Compared to many other countries, we are in a much more secure situation,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. But, she added, “I really do worry that as America enjoys its freedoms, we forget about the rest of the world, and that could come back to bite us.”

Credit…Joel Carrett/EPA, via Shutterstock

SYDNEY, Australia — Three days after the emergence of a rare Covid case in Sydney, around 40 friends gathered for a birthday party. Along with cake and laughter, there was a hidden threat: One of the guests had unknowingly crossed paths with that single Covid case.

Two weeks later, 27 people from the party have tested positive, along with 14 close contacts. And the seven people at the gathering who were not infected? They were all vaccinated.

For Australia and every other nation pursuing a so-called “Covid zero” approach, including China and New Zealand, the gathering in western Sydney amounts to a warning: Absent blanket vaccinations, the fortress cannot hold without ever more painful restrictions.

The Delta mutation has already raced from Sydney across Australia. Half of the country’s 25 million people have been ordered to stay home as the caseload, now at around 200, grows every day. State borders are closed, and exasperation is intensifying.

It’s a sudden turn in a country that has spent most of the past year celebrating a remarkable achievement. With closed borders, widespread testing and efficient tracing, Australia has quashed every previous outbreak, even as almost every other country has lived with the virus’s unceasing presence, often catastrophically.

In Australia, no one has died from Covid-19 in all of 2021. While New York and London sheltered last year from a viral onslaught, Sydney and most of the country enjoyed full stadiums, restaurants, classrooms and theaters with “Hamilton.”

That experience of normalcy — diminished only by a lack of overseas travel, occasional mask mandates and snap lockdowns — is what Australian politicians are so desperate to defend. To them, keeping Covid out, whatever it takes, remains a winning policy.

On Friday, Australia doubled down on this approach, announcing that the trickle of a few thousand international arrivals allowed each week (and quarantined) would be cut by half.

Tags cases, Covid, Delta, Live, Updates, vaccines, Variant

World News

Jobs report June 2021:

Post author By
Post date July 2, 2021

Job growth leaped higher in June as businesses looked to keep up with a rapidly recovering U.S. economy, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Nonfarm payrolls increased 850,000 for the month, compared to the Dow Jones estimate of 706,000 and better than the upwardly revised 583,000 in May. The unemployment rate, however, rose to 5.9% against the 5.6% expectation.

The jobless rate increase came even though the labor force participation rate was unchanged at 61.6%. A separate figure that accounts for discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons fell sharply to 9.8%, with the 0.4 percentage point decline putting the so-called real unemployment rate below 10% for the first time since March 2020.

Hiring accelerated as the second quarter morphed into a summer that will see a closer to return to normal for Americans held captive for the past year due to the pandemic-related restrictions.

As the data continues to point higher, economists are looking for GDP growth in the second quarter to approach 10%, a stunning continuation of a rebound helped by vaccines that have sharply reduced Covid-19 case rates along with hospitalizations and deaths.

Hospitality continued to be the prime beneficiary of the reopening as workers returned to jobs at bars, restaurants, hotels and the like.

The industry notched a gain of 340,000 amid easing restrictions across the country. That total included 194,000 in bars and restaurants, but still left the sector 2.2 million shy of where it was in February 2020 before the pandemic began.

Other notable gains came in education, which totaled 269,000 across state, local and private hiring, while professional and business services increased by 72,000 and retail added 67,000.

The other services industry added 56,000 jobs, including a gain of 29,000 in personal and laundry services, a subsector that has been seen as a proxy for the resumption of normal business activity. Social assistance added 32,000, while wholesale trade contributed 21,000 to the total and mining grew by 10,000.

Manufacturing edged up 15,000 for the month, though construction lost 7,000 positions despite a sizzling housing industry where new building has been held back by suppl shortages and what had been soaring lumber prices before the recent plunge.

This is breaking news. Please check back here for updates.

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Tags jobs, June, report

World News

Your Friday Briefing – The New York Occasions

Post author By
Post date July 2, 2021

Trump Organization charged with tax crimes

The Trump Organization, the family real estate business that catapulted Donald Trump to prominence, was charged Thursday with running a 15-year tax fraud scheme. The charges open up an aggressive new phase in a long-running criminal investigation into the former president and his company.

While the former president himself was not charged, his long-serving and trusted chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, surrendered to the authorities. He is accused of avoiding taxes on $1.7 million in income and faces grand larceny, tax fraud and other charges.

The charges stem from the Manhattan district attorney’s ongoing inquiry into the business practices of Trump and his company. Prosecutors have been looking into whether Trump and the Trump Organization manipulated property values to obtain loans and tax benefits, among other potential financial crimes.

Test of loyalty: Weisselberg is coming under increasing pressure to turn on the Trump family.

Analysis: The charges may hurt Trump’s finances, because indictments can jeopardize relationships with banks and Trump has large outstanding loans.

The E.U.’s vaccine certificates

Digital vaccine cards went into effect in the E.U. to allow residents of member states to travel more freely. But there has been friction over which vaccines qualify — only those made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca — and how the certificates are used.

There are already discrepancies in how member states are using the system, with some countries denying airlines access to the vaccine cards because of privacy concerns.

A month after Greece reopened to tourists, coronavirus cases in the country reached a record low while the numbers of visitors, especially from the U.S., continued to climb. But in Portugal, the government is set to reintroduce nighttime curfews in certain cities — including some tourism hubs — as it struggles to cope with the spread of the Delta variant.

Other travel news: The top executive of the airline holding company Air France-KLM has called on the U.S. to relax restrictions on visitors from the E.U. The Biden administration is considering lifting its ban, the press secretary said.

Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

In other developments:

Global support for a minimum corporate tax

A total of 130 nations have agreed to a blueprint in which multinational corporations would pay tax rates of at least 15 percent wherever they operated. The plan would generate $150 billion in additional tax revenue each year, the O.E.C.D. said.

The conceptual framework also includes rules that would force Big Tech companies and other global businesses to pay taxes in countries where their goods or services are sold, even if they have no physical presence there.

Despite earlier wariness, China, Russia and India are among the signatories. But some major tax havens, including Ireland and some Caribbean nations, still have not signed on to the deal, which could weaken its effectiveness.

Details: The Irish government has said that a deal would need to allow small countries to continue to compete with large ones to make up for the loss of any tax advantage.

Statement: “Today marks an important step in moving the global economy forward to be more equitable for workers and middle-class families in the U.S. and around the world,” President Biden said in a statement.

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Activists slammed the TV show “In the Dark” for casting a sighted actress in a blind lead role. The protests invite the question: Is there a right way to act blind?

The most authentic performance of blindness is by turns precise and fumbling, writes Andrew Leland, who has been steadily losing his sight. “For most of the day, blind people are simply people, until they encounter an obstacle or someone says something that returns them to awareness of their difference.”

From the Annals

In the 1950s, the hamlet of Cherry Grove, on New York’s Fire Island, was a refuge for gay men and lesbians. See dozens of enlarged photos from the era.

100 years of China’s Communist Party

China yesterday celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of its ruling Communist Party. Xi Jinping, the country’s leader, delivered a defiant speech in which he declared China’s rise unstoppable, as a crowd of 70,000 people waved flags, sang and cheered in unison.

The event was staged to convey a powerful nation at ease while the rest of the world struggled with the pandemic. “The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us,” Xi said, clad in a Mao suit. “Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the Great Wall of steel built from the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

The party’s longevity has baffled its critics, and as The Economist reports, no other dictatorship has transformed so much — from a famine crisis in the Mao Zedong era to the world’s second-largest economy. Economic growth and a sharp decline in rural poverty in many places, more than ideology, have won the hearts of many citizens.

For this week’s event, officials are rewriting parts of history and clamping down on criticism in order to glorify the party’s contributions to Chinese citizens. But some party members wonder if Xi is doing enough to move the country forward. They also worry that he has done away with the checks and balances, introduced under Deng Xiaoping, that helped the party avoid embarrassing mistakes and left the economy to flourish.

Related: We compiled pictures showing the improbable rise of a party born in the rubble of dynasty. The anniversary has also inspired a wave of state-approved art.

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Virgin Galactic to launch Richard Branson on July 11, aiming to beat Jeff Bezos to house

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Post date July 1, 2021

The founder of Virgin, Sir Richard Branson, in Sydney, Australia.

James D. Morgan | Getty Images

Virgin Galactic announced Thursday that the space tourism company will attempt to launch its next test space flight with founder Sir Richard Branson on July 11th.

Branson wants to knock his billionaire Jeff Bezos into space, because he wants to start his own company Blue Origin on July 20th.

“After more than 16 years of research, development and testing, Virgin Galactic is at the forefront of a new commercial space industry that will open space to mankind and change the world forever,” Branson said in a statement. “I am honored to confirm the journey of our future astronauts and make sure we deliver the unique customer experience that people have come to expect from Virgin.”

This will be Virgin Galactic’s fourth test space flight to date and its first mission with a crew of four on board as the company launched its final space flight on May 22 with just two pilots.

Virgin Galactic’s shares rose 20% during after-hours trading, from $ 43.19 on Thursday’s closing.

In addition to Branson, three Virgin Galactic mission specialists will be present: Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses, Senior Operations Engineer Colin Bennett, and VP of Government Affairs Sirisha Bandla. Virgin Galactic pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci will fly the company’s VSS Unity spacecraft.

Virgin Galactic says it will live stream the space flight for the first time, a feed that will be available on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

On June 25, the company announced that the Federal Aviation Administration had granted a license to fly passengers on future space flights and Virgin plans to begin flying paying passengers in early 2022.

Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 to build a space tourism company. The company’s spacecraft takes off from a carrier aircraft before accelerating to more than three times the speed of sound.

The Virgin Galactic spacecraft then spends a few minutes in weightlessness over 50 miles (80 kilometers) – the limit the US officially recognizes as space – before slowly turning around and sliding back to Earth to land on a runway.

Virgin Galactic only competes with Bezos’ Blue Origin in suborbital space tourism, as Elon Musk’s SpaceX puts passengers into orbit on longer journeys, such as to the International Space Station.

In June, Bezos announced that it would be flying Blue Origin’s first passenger flight on the New Shepard rocket. Bezos is slated to hit the market on July 20 and will fly with his brother Mark, winner of a $ 28 million public auction, and legendary aerospace pioneer Wally Funk.

This is the latest news. Please check again for updates.

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Covid-19 and Delta Variant Information: Dwell Updates

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Post date July 1, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Jaime Reina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Digital Covid-19 certificates aimed at facilitating free movement in the European Union came into force across the bloc on Thursday, a long-awaited milestone for countries hoping to boost their ailing tourism industries.

Free movement is a key pillar of European integration, and E.U. officials said last month that the certificates would “again enable citizens to enjoy this most tangible and cherished of E.U. rights.”

Through a Q.R. code issued by their country of residence, certificate holders will be able to show that they have been either fully vaccinated, tested negative or have immunity after a recent recovery. That will exempt them from most travel or quarantine restrictions.

Many European governments have already eased such rules, and each member nation can still revive protective measures if a country’s health situation deteriorates. Germany, for instance, has imposed restrictions on travelers coming from Portugal, which has faced a surge of new cases driven by the spread of the Delta variant.

While countries have agreed that national health authorities will issue the certificates — most E.U. countries have already been doing so — they are divided over who should check them, where and when.

Credit…Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Citing privacy concerns, Germany and Austria have not given airlines access to verification devices that they would need to scan the Q.R. codes. France has distributed such tools in airports, and Spain has built a system whereby Q.R. codes can be checked before passengers travel to the airport.

And one country, Ireland, has yet to set up a verification system for the digital certificates, after its national health system was recently targeted by cyberattacks, according to E.U. officials.

The divergences have highlighted the challenges that the E.U. faces in allowing free movement across the bloc.

This week, a group of airlines and airport representatives urged member states to set up verification systems before departure — alongside online check-ins, for instance — to avoid chaotic situations at airports upon arrival.

Echoing some concerns shared by the travel industry, the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, noted that the 27 E.U. member states had planned more than 10 verification processes.

“The digital Covid-19 certificate is an important tool that ideally will give people confidence in the easing of travel restrictions,” said Thomas Reynaert, the managing director of Airlines for Europe, an organization based in Brussels that represents the bloc’s largest carriers. “But this can only work for travelers if member states implement it in a harmonized way.”

Credit…Tatan Syuflana/Associated Press

In Indonesia, grave diggers are working into the night, as oxygen and vaccines are in short supply. In Bangladesh, urban garment workers fleeing an impending lockdown are almost assuredly seeding another coronavirus surge in their impoverished home villages.

And in countries like South Korea and Israel that seemed to have largely vanquished the virus, new clusters of disease have proliferated. Chinese health officials said on Monday that they would build a giant quarantine center with up to 5,000 rooms to hold international travelers. Australia has ordered millions to stay at home.

A year and a half since it began racing across the globe with exponential efficiency, the pandemic is on the rise again in vast stretches of the world, driven largely by the new variants, particularly the highly contagious Delta variant first identified in India. From Africa to Asia, countries are suffering from record caseloads and deaths, even as wealthier nations with high vaccination rates have let their guard down, dispensing with mask mandates and reveling in life edging back toward normalcy.

Scientists believe the Delta variant may be twice as transmissible as the original coronavirus, and its potential to infect some partially vaccinated people has alarmed public health officials. Unvaccinated populations, whether in India or Indiana, may serve as incubators of new variants that could evolve in surprising and dangerous ways, with Delta giving rise to what Indian researchers are calling Delta Plus. There are also the Gamma and Lambda variants.

“We’re in a race against the spread of the virus variants,” said Professor Kim Woo-joo, an infectious disease specialist at Korea University Guro Hospital in Seoul.

Credit…Carl Recine/Associated Press

Crowds gathering in stadiums, pubs and bars to watch the European Championship soccer games have driven a rise in coronavirus cases across Europe, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, raising concerns about another wave of infections even though vaccination campaigns have made progress.

“We need to look much beyond just the stadiums themselves,” said Catherine Smallwood, the W.H.O.’s senior emergency officer. “We need to look at how people get there: Are they traveling in large, crowded convoys of buses? And when they leave the stadiums, are they going into crowded bars and pubs to watch the matches?”

In Scotland, more than 2,000 people tested positive after watching a Euro 2020 game either at a stadium, a fan zone or at a pub, according to National Health Scotland. (Nearly two-thirds of those cases were linked to a Euro 2020 game in London in mid-June.) Around 120 fans from Finland were infected after traveling to St. Petersburg, Russia, to watch their team play.

After months of virus restrictions, and with the European Championships postponed for a year, soccer fans have been eager to travel across borders to watch the games in person. Finnish tourists attended games in Russia, French fans traveled to Romania, and Welsh ones supported their team in the Netherlands. In countries like Belgium, Britain and France, bars had reopened just weeks before the tournament began.

But given that most European countries have fully vaccinated less than a third of their populations, the risks are high. Experts say that the lax restrictions imposed on travel for the soccer championship may have serious consequences later in the summer or in the fall.

The rise in cases linked to the tournament comes more than a year after soccer games hosted early last year led to some of the first outbreaks in Europe.

Germany’s interior minister, Horst Seehofer, called the decision by European’s soccer governing body, UEFA, which runs the tournament, to allow large crowds in stadiums “utterly irresponsible.”

Despite the warnings by the W.H.O., British officials are allowing 60,000 fans to attend each of the tournament’s three final games in London next week.

Credit…Novrian Arbi/Antara Foto, via Reuters

Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, announced new restrictions on Thursday for parts of Java and Bali islands to contain the rapidly spreading Delta variant, including closing mosques, schools, shopping malls and sports facilities.

The measures will take effect on Saturday and last until July 20, encompassing the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, a major event in Indonesia that falls on July 19 and is usually celebrated with large gatherings and the sacrifice of goats and cows.

“As we all know, the Covid-19 pandemic has been growing rapidly in the last few days because of the new variant, which is also a serious problem in many countries,” Mr. Joko said in an address to the nation. “This situation requires us to take more resolute steps so that together we can curb the spread of Covid-19.”

The number of reported cases has been rising daily, reaching a record 24,836 on Thursday, along with 504 deaths, another high. Just six weeks ago, it appeared that the vast Southeast Asian archipelago was making progress against the virus, with fewer than 2,500 daily cases reported.

The Delta variant, first detected in India, is driving a surge of the coronavirus in many parts of the world. In Indonesia, health experts say that the variant has led to the recent rise in cases, which has swamped hospitals and cemeteries, especially in the capital, Jakarta.

The Delta variant makes up 87 percent of the cases in Jakarta, the governor, Anies Baswedan, said earlier this week.

“Hospitals are overflowing, around one in five tests in Indonesia are reportedly coming back positive, and we’re experiencing more deaths now than at any point of the pandemic so far,” said Ade Soekadis, Mercy Corps’ country director for Indonesia.

The new measures stop short of the complete lockdown urged by some health experts.

All places of worship will be closed, workers in nonessential jobs must work from home, restaurants can provide only takeout food, local transit will operate with reduced capacity and public parks will be closed. Weddings with up to 30 attendees will still be allowed.

The measures will apply to nearly all of Java, which includes Jakarta and has a population of about 140 million, and to the most heavily populated parts of Bali, where tourism officials had been hoping to reopen to foreign tourists.

Most hospitals on Java are already over capacity and some are turning away patients, said Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University in Australia. According to his projections, the current surge would not peak until at least the end of July and could reach 500,000 cases and 2,000 deaths a day if tougher measures are not adopted.

“The government should do a lockdown,” he said. “Now we are facing our most serious and critical time. If we don’t respond to this situation in a serious way, then we will lose many lives.”

Credit…Robert Ghement/EPA, via Shutterstock

While many countries are desperately trying to get their hands on coronavirus vaccines, others are now finding their supply outstripping demand because of low uptake — to the extent that they are seeking ways to reduce their stockpiles.

Romania is a case in point.

On Tuesday, the Danish government said it had bought more than a million doses of the Pfizer vaccine from Romania. “We can do this deal because Romania is experiencing low vaccination backing and therefore wants to sell excess vaccines which they won’t be able to use,” Denmark’s health minister, Magnus Heunicke, said in a statement. The vaccines were sold at cost.

Last week, Valeriu Gheorghita, the head of Romania’s national coronavirus vaccination campaign, said that 35,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine would probably need to be destroyed because they were set to expire at the end of June. In a news conference on Thursday, he said he had asked AstraZeneca whether the doses’ shelf life could be extended.

Despite a promising start this year to its vaccine rollout, Romania has seen a considerable decline in recent months in the number of people getting vaccinated.

In early May, the country was administering more than 100,000 doses a day, but the number has since dropped significantly. In a 24-hour period ending Wednesday, 20,800 doses were administered, and most of those were the second of the two doses that many vaccines require.

Overall, 4.7 million people in Romania, which has a population of about 19 million, have received one or both doses.

“We had a fraction of the population, maybe 30 percent, who were eager to get the vaccine, and that was very clear from December when they ran the first opinion polls,” said Sorin Ionita, a policy analyst at the Expert Forum, a Bucharest-based research group. “You absorb this fraction of the population, and then everything stops because there was no proper campaign to inform, to change the profound attitudes in the population.”

Romania is one of the most rural countries in the European Union, he said, and that adds to the challenge.

“Even if you get to the village and you organize a vaccine center in the town hall,” Mr. Ionita said, “it doesn’t necessarily mean that people who are 85 can get there easily from the margins of the village.”

The drop in vaccination uptake in Romania also comes as infection rates have fallen sharply: Sunday was the first day in more than a year that the capital, Bucharest, did not record a single new case. But there are concerns about a potential new wave later in the year, especially if vaccination rates remain sluggish.

To date, there have been more than a million confirmed cases in Romania and more than 33,000 related deaths.

Credit…Carla Carniel/Reuters

When a commercial plane carrying 2.5 million doses of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine took off on Wednesday from Dallas for Islamabad, Pakistan, U.S. officials had just finished a dizzying bureaucratic back-and-forth to get them there.

The United States had arranged a donation agreement with Moderna and Covax, the year-old vaccine-sharing initiative. Covax had previously worked out indemnity agreements with Moderna, which shield the company from liability for potential harm from the vaccine. U.S. Embassy officials in Islamabad had worked with regulators there to evaluate the Food and Drug Administration’s review of the vaccine. And Pakistani regulators had to pore over reams of materials on the vaccine lots and the factory where they were made before authorizing the shots for use.

The result was a so-called tripartite agreement, a type of deal that has increasingly come to consume the Biden administration’s pandemic response efforts.

Amid criticism from some public health experts that President Biden’s vaccine diplomacy efforts have been slow and insufficient, the White House plans to announce on Thursday that it has fulfilled the president’s pledge to share an initial 80 million doses by June 30.

More than 80 million have been formally offered to about 50 countries, the African Union and the 20-nation Caribbean consortium, with around half already shipped and the rest to be scheduled in the coming weeks, said Natalie Quillian, the Biden administration’s deputy Covid-19 response coordinator.

Researchers have estimated that 11 billion doses of Covid vaccines are needed worldwide to try to stamp out the pandemic. To date, more than three billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, equal to 40 doses for every 100 people. Some countries have yet to report a single dose, even as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads around the world, further exposing vaccine inequities.

“If this is the pace at which it will continue, then unfortunately, it’s much slower than what is needed,” Dr. Saad B. Omer, the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, said of the U.S. effort.

Credit…Saul Martinez for The New York Times

A new poll has found that Americans are sharply divided by household over vaccination status, with 77 percent of vaccinated adults saying everyone in their household is vaccinated and a similar share (75 percent) of unvaccinated adults saying no one they live with is vaccinated.

Sixty-seven percent of Democrats reported living in households where everyone had been vaccinated, compared with 39 percent of Republicans. Ten percent of Democrats said they lived in homes where no one had been vaccinated, compared with 37 percent of Republicans, according to the poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has been tracking the public’s attitudes toward and experiences with vaccinations.

Overall, half of U.S. adults live in a fully vaccinated household and one in four lives in a completely unvaccinated household. The remainder, about one in five adults, lives in a household occupied by both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, including children under 12 who are not currently eligible to receive a vaccine.

The telephone survey of 1,888 adults 18 and older living in the United States was conducted from June 8 to June 21 and had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

As policymakers continue to experiment with lotteries, free beers and other incentives, the poll found that workers were more likely to get the shot when their employers encouraged them to and provided paid time off to make it easier. Two-thirds of the employed adults surveyed said their employer had encouraged workers to get vaccinated, and half said their employer had provided them paid time off to get the vaccine and to recover from side effects.

The workers who said their employer had taken either one of those steps were more likely to report having been vaccinated, even after the poll controlled for other demographic variables. The finding suggested that more employers’ encouraging vaccination and offering paid time off could lead to higher vaccination rates among workers.

As virus cases fall across much of the United States, the poll found that optimism over the idea that the pandemic may be ending could hamper vaccination efforts, with half of unvaccinated adults polled saying that the number of cases is now so low there is no need for more people to be vaccinated.

If adult vaccinations continue their current seven-day average rate, about 67 percent of U.S. adults will have received at least one shot by July 4, just shy of President Biden’s target of having 70 percent of adults at least partly vaccinated by that date, according to a New York Times analysis.

Lazaro Gamio contributed reporting.

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Nio shakes off chip scarcity with greater than 8,000 deliveries in June

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Post date July 1, 2021

Chinese electric car makers target Europe as competition heats up

Nio plans to begin deliveries of its ET7 electric sedan in 2022.

Evelyn Cheng | CNBC

BEIJING — Chinese electric car start-up Nio said Thursday it delivered more than 8,000 cars in one month for the first time.

The company delivered 8,083 vehicles in June, bringing the second-quarter total to 21,896 cars, according to a release. That quarterly figure came in on the high end of Nio’s forecast for deliveries of between 21,000 and 22,000 vehicles in the three months ended June.

Nio’s U.S.-listed shares are up 9% so far this year. The company has typically delivered more electric cars a month than two other U.S.-listed electric car start-ups, Xpeng and Li Auto. Their shares are up about 3.7% and 21%, respectively, so far this year.

The strong second-quarter performance came despite a decline in monthly deliveries in May from April — which the company had attributed to the global semiconductor shortage.

Nio’s June figures also brought deliveries for the first half of the year to more than 41,900, close to surpassing the total for all of last year of 43,728 cars.

However, the start-up’s deliveries still fall far short of industry giant Tesla, which delivered 184,800 vehicles worldwide in the first quarter alone.

Tesla’s shares are down more than 3.5% for the year so far.

Dwell Updates: On Communist Celebration’s Centenary, Xi Jinping Warns In opposition to International Interference

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Post date July 1, 2021

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Credit…Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

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China’s leader, Xi Jinping, struck a confident posture on Thursday as he hailed the Communist Party’s role in leading his country toward greater prosperity, while warning foreign aggressors against attempts to undermine Beijing’s rise.

“For one hundred years, the Communist Party of China has united and led the Chinese people, writing the most magnificent epic in the history of the Chinese nation for thousands of years,” Mr. Xi said.

The centenary comes as China faces mounting international criticism over the Communist Party’s crackdown in Hong Kong and on Muslim minorities in the far western region of Xinjiang. Mr. Xi struck a nationalistic note as he described the party’s resolve to protect its interests.

“The Chinese people have never bullied, oppressed, or enslaved the people of other countries. They have not in the past, not now, nor ever will in the future,” he said.

“At the same time, the Chinese people will never allow any foreign forces to bully, oppress, or enslave us,” he added. “Whoever deliberately wants to do this will surely face bloodshed at the Great Wall of steel built by the flesh and blood of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

The crowd of performers gathered on the square responded with loud cheers and thunderous applause.

Since becoming general secretary of the Communist Party in late 2012, Mr. Xi, 68, has made it increasingly clear that he sees himself as a transformative leader — in the footsteps of Mao and Deng — guiding China into a new era of global strength and rejuvenated one-party rule. And by many measures he is already the most powerful leader since Deng or even Mao, and presides over an economy and a military much stronger than in their times.

Few Chinese leaders from recent decades are more steeped in the Communist Party’s heritage than Mr. Xi.

He was born into a revolutionary family, endured the upheavals of Mao Zedong’s era, and began his career as a party official when Deng Xiaoping and other leaders opened up market reforms.

Before Mr. Xi came to power, many in China thought that he would be a milder figure, because his father, Xi Zhongxun, was a revolutionary veteran who in the early 1980s oversaw the beginnings of market reforms in Guangdong Province.

Xi Zhongxun had suffered decades of confinement and persecution after Mao turned against him, and his family was torn apart during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Like millions of other youths at that time, the younger Mr. Xi was sent to labor in the countryside, and he spent seven years in a dusty village in northwest China.

But after coming to power, he pursued scorching crackdowns against official corruption and domestic dissent, and applied harsh measures to bring areas like Xinjiang and Hong Kong firmly under Chinese control.

Mr. Xi appears driven by the conviction that for China to secure lasting stability and prosperity, the Communist Party must reassert its control, and he must remain in command of the party.

In 2018, he abolished the two-term limit on the Chinese presidency, opening the way to remain in office — as president, party leader and chairman of the Chinese military — for many years to come. His next big step in that journey will be next year, when a Communist Party congress appears likely to acclaim him for a third term as party leader.

Credit…Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

China’s Communist Party on Thursday is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding, an event at which it is expected to argue that the country can keep ascending only if the party remains firmly in power.

The centenary is symbolically important for Xi Jinping, China’s leader, who is almost certain to claim a third five-year term as party leader next year.

In a speech, he asserted that China would never have achieved its present-day prosperity and power without the party’s struggles against foreign oppression and domestic exploitation.

The celebrations made virtually no mention of China’s setbacks over the past decades of Communist Party rule — such as Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the deadly crackdown against protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Instead, the day’s stagecraft was focused on conveying an image of China as confident and secure while much of the world struggles to shake off the pandemic.

There was no military parade, unlike the enormous show of force that marked the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in 2019. But it featured a military flyover at Tiananmen at the opening, together with a 100-gun salute.

Organizers assembled a carefully picked crowd at Tiananmen Square — of party members, workers, students and others — to listen to Mr. Xi’s speech.

Credit…Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock

BEIJING — China’s ruling Communist Party kicked off a tightly choreographed ceremony celebrating its 100th anniversary on Thursday with a 100-gun salute, as thousands of performers assembled on Tiananmen Square.

“For 100 years the Chinese Communist Party has led in the Chinese people in every struggle, every sacrifice, every innovation,” Mr. Xi said near the start of his speech from a deck on the Gate of Heavenly Peace. “In sum, around one theme — achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

In a rousing opening, the performers chanted slogans celebrating the party’s leadership, as Mr. Xi Jinping and other leaders watched.

“Listen to the party, be grateful to the party, and follow the party,” they shouted. “Let the party rest assured, I’m with the strong country!”

The streams of Communist Party youth groups in color-coordinated uniforms had filed on to the square from all directions at the beginning of ceremony as dawn rose.

They mostly wore polo shirts in lime green, pale orange or bright red. Most wore black or white trousers, but some of the young women were in matching poodle skirts that would not have looked out of place in the 1950s. A military brass band in dress blues filed into the back of the Great Hall of the People.

Thursday’s festivities did not include a military parade like the one in 2019 that celebrated the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, but the military still provided a backdrop. Squadrons of helicopters flew over carrying red banners and forming the figure 100, followed by fighter jets, including the country’s most advanced fighter jet, the J-20.

A few police officers stood on sidewalks in the downtown area around the square, which was closed to traffic. But the security was mostly unobtrusive, with numerous surveillance cameras perched like overweight pigeons on almost every pole.

Coronavirus precautions were understated for an outdoor event drawing many thousands of people to Tiananmen Square. The folding yellow and orange chairs in the main area of the square were not quite socially distanced, but still separated: 15 inches in between each chair.

The seated crowd extended only about three-quarters of the distance from the Forbidden City’s entrance gate, with Mao’s portrait back to the monolith in the heart of the square. But for the Communist Party’s elite, red chairs were mounted on viewing stands at the front of the square..

A military brass band played and a youth choir sang as a military honor guard brandished the national flag. Youths and rows of attendees behind them waved small, red Communist Party flags in a careful choreography.

Rain was expected later in the day, but for now, the sun was shining and the temperature rising through the low 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

Toni Li, a local professor who has been coming to July 1 anniversaries since she was a girl, said that the chair arrangement had reduced the density of the crowd from previous years. But since Beijing has not had any virus cases for months, she was unconcerned about any risk of infection at the gathering.

“I don’t worry about that; it’s safe here,” she said.

Credit…Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

As the Communist Party of China celebrates the country’s rise, its international reputation continues to plummet, according to a new survey.

Large majorities in countries in North America, Europe and Asia have unfavorable views of China, the survey, by the Pew Research Service, found. They included 88 percent in Japan, 80 percent in Sweden and 76 percent in the United States.

Of 17 major countries and territories surveyed, a majority of respondents held favorable views of China in only two: Greece, at 52 percent, and Singapore, at 64 percent. Even in those two countries, majorities overwhelmingly agreed that China does not respect the personal freedoms of its own people.

Negative views of China are now at or near historic highs, even though perceptions of how China has handled the coronavirus pandemic have improved since last year. That appears to reflect its successes in containing the crisis, even as some of the nations in the survey bungled their efforts, including the United States and Britain.

The findings suggest that China’s economic and diplomatic behavior in recent years has played a bigger role in hardening views. China’s crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang have, for example, drawn widespread condemnation.

Countries like Australia have also faced economic coercion after criticizing China’s actions. As a result, 78 percent of Australians now have an unfavorable view, compared with only 32 percent who did in 2017.

Only a few weeks ago, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, urged party leaders to “strive to create a credible, lovable and respectable image of China.”

The survey shows the scale of the challenge: In all the countries except Singapore, overwhelming majorities had little or no confidence in Mr. Xi’s handling of world affairs.

Credit…Keith Bradsher/The New York Times

BEIJING — To cover the Communist Party’s anniversary celebration on Thursday, I have had to take three coronavirus tests in four days. I’ve been confined to a government-approved hotel. Officials have repeatedly checked my vaccination record, as well as my cellphone, for signs of a problematic travel history.

In China, major political events routinely feature suffocating security measures. But the pandemic has added a new dimension to the party’s preparations. China’s approach to virus outbreaks has been largely successful, though often draconian. And in the weeks leading up to the party’s centennial celebrations, the authorities have taken no chances.

Reporters invited to cover the event at Tiananmen Square in Beijing were told that we must stay at a hotel in the city’s northeast starting on Wednesday morning.

I could enter the hotel only after I had scanned two QR codes with my cellphone, indicating that I had not been anywhere with a recent Covid outbreak. At check-in, in addition to my passport, the clerk took copies of my vaccination certificate — two jabs in Shanghai of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine — and the negative result of my most recent coronavirus test, on Tuesday.

I was directed to a conference room, where another official handed me a knapsack made for the centenary in the same hue of light-blue canvas worn by Mao’s soldiers during World War II. It contained a seat cushion, a fan, a souvenir notebook, a folding umbrella and a light- blue raincoat.

A nurse in a white protective suit with a face shield swabbed the back of my throat for yet another coronavirus test. Then a hotel employee took me up the elevator and told me that I would not be allowed to leave my floor on my own until after the centenary. I had to call the hotel operator to ask to be escorted down in the elevator for my meals. Lunch on Wednesday included beef, green peppers and broccoli served buffet style in the cafeteria.

The event starts at 8 a.m. on Thursday at Tiananmen Square, only a 20-minute drive away. Reporters had to gather in the hotel lobby at 2:45 a.m. for a 3 a.m. departure, and were warned that nobody would be allowed to go to a bathroom at the site from 7:30 a.m. onward.

Credit…Anthony Kwan/Getty Images

Hong Kong was wrapped in an extensive security bubble on Thursday as the city marked three political anniversaries that have helped transform it from a freewheeling international center of trade and finance to an increasingly constrained Chinese city.

Police officers fanned across the city to clamp down on any unauthorized gatherings and prevent people from gathering in Victoria Park, where the annual July 1 march traditionally begins.

July 1 is both the 24th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese control and the 100th anniversary of the founding of China’s ruling Communist Party. And just over one year ago, late on June 30, 2020, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong.

With Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, in Beijing to participate in the party anniversary celebration, her chief deputy, John Lee, led a morning flag-raising ceremony in the same spot along Victoria Harbor where the 1997 handover was conducted after more than 150 years of British colonial rule.

Opera singers performed the national anthem as helicopters flew overhead and a flotilla of boats performed a water salute. Officers marched in goose-step, a distinctive style used by the Chinese army that replaced British style marching in the city this year.

Mr. Lee, a former police officer who was promoted last week to chief secretary, the city’s second most powerful leader, hailed Beijing’s leadership. “The central government’s original aspirations for Hong Kong remains unmoved and solved problems for Hong Kong,” he added.

Outside the convention center where Mr. Lee spoke, police surrounded four protesters who tried to march with a banner that read, “Free all political prisoners.”

“We just want to speak up, encouraging people to not give up and keep speaking up for justice in Hong Kong,” said Raphael Wong Ho-ming, the head of the leftist group League of Social Democrats, which organized the protest.

“At the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, we urge the CCP to keep its promises to give its power to the people.”

In the year since the security law came into effect, many of the city’s most prominent opposition politicians have been arrested, with dozens still held in jail. The electoral system was transformed, with directly elected seats cut and security agencies given vast power to vet candidates. Apple Daily, the city’s largest pro-democracy newspaper, was forced to close last week, and RTHK, the once proudly independent public broadcaster, has been gutted.

The law also authorized Chinese security agencies to openly operate in Hong Kong. In a rare interview this week, Zheng Yanxiong, director of the national security office in Hong Kong, issued a stern warning to the city’s judges, whose reputation for independence has come under pressure since the security law took effect.

The power of the independent judiciary is authorized by China’s legislature, Mr. Zheng told East Week, a pro-Beijing magazine. “It must implement the nation’s will and the nation’s interest, otherwise it will lose the premise of that authorization,” he said.

The Communist Party’s grip has grown increasingly visible in Hong Kong, where it was once outlawed. Mrs. Lam’s trip to Beijing for the anniversary is the first by a Hong Kong chief executive for the event. And the anniversary has been publicized on buses, trams and a set of commemorative stamps in Hong Kong.

Credit…Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

In addition to the centenary of the party’s founding, July 1 also marks the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China in 1997.

The passage of a contentious national security law in 2020 ushered in one of the most transformative years in the city’s history since the end of British colonial rule.

With each day, the boundary between Hong Kong and the rest of China fades faster.

The Chinese Communist Party is remaking this city, permeating its once vibrant, irreverent character with ever more overt signs of its authoritarian will. The very texture of daily life is under assault as Beijing molds Hong Kong into something more familiar, more docile.

Now, neighbors are urged to report on one another. Children are taught to look for traitors. Officials are pressed to pledge their loyalty.

Hong Kong had always been an improbability. It was a thriving metropolis on a spit of inhospitable land, an oasis of civil liberties under iron-fisted rule. After its return to China in 1997, the city was promised freedoms of speech, assembly and the press unimaginable in the mainland, in an arrangement Beijing called “one country, two systems.”

Hong Kong had always been an improbability. It was a thriving metropolis on a spit of inhospitable land, an oasis of civil liberties under iron-fisted rule. A former British colony that returned to China in 1997, the city was promised freedoms of speech, assembly and the press unimaginable in the mainland, in an arrangement Beijing called “one country, two systems.”

Freedoms once at the core of Hong Kong’s identity are disappearing. The government announced that it would censor films deemed a danger to national security. Some officials have demanded that artwork by dissidents such as Ai Weiwei be barred from museums.

China’s new might has also declared itself in Hong Kong’s business world. For decades the mainland’s economy had raced to catch up with that of Hong Kong, the financial hub so proud of its global identity that its government billed it as “Asia’s world city.”

Now, China’s economy is the booming one and officials are bending Hong Kong’s global identity increasingly toward that one country.

Credit…Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

The anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party has given the country’s leaders an opportune moment to encourage citizens to visit sites central to the party’s founding.

At these sites, schoolchildren are told how the Red Army, later renamed the People’s Liberation Army, was created. Tourists gaze at an ensemble of chairs used by Xi Jinping, China’s leader, and other guests when they visited Mao’s home. Retirees take selfies with flower-adorned statues of Mao and Zhu De, the Red Army commander.

The centennial has also prompted China’s biggest property developers to cash in as they jazz up typically staid “red tourist” attractions, like dull exhibition halls and cave dwellings, and make them friendlier for the era of Instagram and TikTok.

This month, Dalian Wanda, a property developer, unveiled a Communist Party theme park in Yan’an. In it, mascots dressed in Red Army costumes parade down “Red Street,” a long shopping boulevard where visitors can take pictures and buy snacks and souvenirs.

The pilgrimages are in keeping with Mr. Xi’s call for Chinese citizens to learn from the party’s history. Even before he came to power in 2012, Mr. Xi said every “red tourist” attraction was equivalent to a “lively classroom that contains rich political wisdom and moral nourishment.”

With international borders still shut because of the coronavirus, Trip.com, a travel website that is popular in China, said this month that the number of bookings for “red tourism” attractions had more than doubled in the first half of the year from a year earlier. The company said it expected the numbers to climb ahead of the centennial celebration next week.

Beyond fueling party devotion and lore, “red tourism” has been good for business. In 2023, the industry’s revenues are expected to reach $153 billion, according to the Qianzhan Research Institute, a data consultancy. That represents an average annual compound growth rate of 14.1 percent from 2019 to 2023. Wanda said it was planning a second “red” attraction.

Tags Centenary, Communist, foreign, interference, Jinping, Live, Partys, Updates, warns

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