Tag: action

Categories
Health

White Home says Ebola outbreaks in Africa want swift motion

White House says Ebola outbreaks in Africa need swift action

The two burgeoning Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea require swift action “to avoid catastrophic consequences,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.

It is the first official White House statement on the recurrence of Ebola in the two African countries. Psaki said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the situation in Central and West Africa.

“While the world is plagued by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Ebola has re-emerged in both Central and West Africa at the same time. The world cannot afford to go the other way,” Psaki wrote in the statement. “We must do everything in our power to respond quickly, effectively and by reasonable means to stop these outbreaks before they turn into large-scale epidemics.”

The World Health Organization announced last week that it had confirmed new cases of Ebola in Butembo, a city in North Kivu Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The city was an epicenter of the world’s second largest Ebola outbreak, which was declared over in June. WHO officials said Friday they would transport vaccines to the hard-to-reach city and try to contain the highly deadly disease before it spreads widely.

Regardless, Guinea officials confirmed the reappearance of Ebola in N’Zerekore in southern Guinea over the weekend. The West African nation declared an Ebola epidemic on Sunday after at least three people died and four more were infected with the disease. The neighboring countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia have put their citizens on alert.

In contrast to the highly infectious coronavirus, which can be transmitted by people without symptoms, it is believed that Ebola spreads mainly through people who are already visibly ill. The virus spreads through direct contact with the blood or body fluids of people who are sick or have died of the disease, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ebola has an average death rate of 50% which, according to the WHO, can vary depending on the outbreak.

Psaki said US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke with ambassadors from Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone and Liberia on Tuesday “to convey the United States’ readiness to work closely with these countries”.

“Mr. Sullivan highlighted President Biden’s commitment to lead the United States to strengthen health security and create better systems to prevent, detect and respond to health emergencies,” said Psaki. “Outbreaks require a quick and overwhelming response to avoid disastrous consequences.”

The recurrence of Ebola in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has hit global health specialists particularly hard, as these countries have the two worst Ebola outbreaks in history. The outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, declared in June, lasted nearly two years. At the time of the end, there were a total of 3,481 cases and 2,299 deaths, according to WHO.

The infamous Ebola outbreak in West Africa began in Guinea in 2014 before spreading across land borders to Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to WHO. By the end of 2016, there were more than 28,000 cases, including over 11,000 deaths, according to the WHO.

“Since the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the United States has sought to increase and prioritize health security support with partners under the global health security agenda and with strong support from Congress,” Psaki added Tuesday. “We cannot afford to take our foot off the gas – even in the fight against COVID, we must ensure the capacity and funding of health security worldwide.”

During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the US CDC confirmed 11 cases of Ebola in the US, mostly among medical professionals who had traveled to Africa to help with the response. Dr. Syra Madad, senior director of the system-wide program for specific pathogens at New York City Health + Hospitals, told CNBC on Tuesday that the city was working to ensure that its outbreak response protocols are up to date.

“Every time an epidemic is reported, at least in New York City – we know we are a travel center – we need to make sure our people are up to date on skills [personal protective equipment] and identify these patients, “she said in a telephone interview.” There’s a big mess just to make sure the concept of the operation plan is dusted off. “

Categories
Business

Biden Seizes on Weak Job Good points to Name for Fast Stimulus Motion

Biden Seizes on Weak Job Gains to Call for Quick Stimulus Action

Others, like Texas Republican Michael C. Burgess, have emphasized the nation’s growing debt. Mr Burgess argued that Mr Biden’s plan would “add nearly $ 2 trillion to the deficit” before listing a number of complaints about the package, including the fact that it will send money to states he accuses of having poorly managed their budgets.

The main argument Republicans have made against the effort so far is that by failing to find Republican support, Mr Biden is cutting off his own campaign call to bring people together across party lines.

“After all the talk about unity,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chief on the Finance Committee, “President Biden and the Democrats have taken the partisan route straight out of the gate.”

Mr. Biden and his staff opposed this criticism, claiming that “unity” refers to bringing together the voting public, not members of Congress.

“The president went on to unite the country and come up with ideas that would help address the crisis we are facing,” said Jen Psaki, White House press secretary, citing polls showing both parties’ support for demonstrate the plan by both parties. “He did not promise to unite the Democratic and Republican parties in one party in Washington.”

“This package is largely supported by the American public,” said Psaki. “That’s what people want. They want to see it’s over. They want those checks to get into the communities. They want these funds to go to schools. They want more money to distribute vaccines. “

Still, Mr Biden took the chance that Republicans would come aboard and allowed the possibility that his plans could be changed slightly to appease the moderates in both parties. This included recognition for advocating a restriction on who receives the $ 1,400 direct payments included in the proposal to ensure that those who earn more than $ 300,000 do not benefit. He did not specify what threshold he would accept to start the checks expiring, but made it clear that the starting amount would not change.

Categories
Politics

California asks Federal Maritime Fee to take motion on delivery delays

California asks Federal Maritime Commission to take action on shipping delays

A container ship enters the port of Los Angeles on February 1, 2021 in San Pedro, California.

Mario Tama | Getty Images

Just a week after CNBC’s two-month investigation into shipping companies’ rejection of US agricultural exports, California is urging the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) to take immediate action. A letter to the FMC was signed by several state officials requesting immediate action to review the airlines’ export policies.

Shipping companies turned down hundreds of millions of dollars in US agricultural export containers in October and November and instead sent empty containers to China to fill with more profitable Chinese exports, according to the CNBC investigation.

In the letter received from CNBC, state officials said, “We seek your assistance in addressing the current delays and ongoing shipping problems in California ports, which are having a significant impact on the business of companies across the state. In particular, the business of our The Agriculture Sector, who is heavily dependent on the export markets is badly affected. “

California, the letter reads, is the country’s largest agricultural exporter and producer, with more than $ 21 billion in annual agricultural exports requiring and supporting an estimated 157,800 full-time jobs. These exports benefit the economy directly by generating $ 25 billion in additional economic activity.

The call for proposals letter comes after FMC announced in November an investigation into trade with key ports in California, New York, and New Jersey to determine whether airlines’ refusal to ship US exports was a violation against the Shipping Act.

The law makes it unlawful for air carriers to “improperly refuse to do business or negotiate,” “boycott or take other concerted action that will result in an improper refusal” or “engage in behavior that involves the use of intermodal services inappropriately restrict “.

The FMC declined to comment.

The World Shipping Council (WSC), whose members control approximately 90 percent of the global container fleet, and the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association (PMSA) responded to California officials and urged better communication between them compared to the involvement of the FMC.

In a two-page letter to CNBC, the two groups accused the record surge in imports from China as a catalyst for the port’s efficiency and the associated fees that importers and exporters pay.

The WSC and PMSA listed the export sales of the various farms exported from the Port of Los Angeles, saying they were “up significantly” year over year. The group then called it a “false impression that California’s agricultural exports are being excluded from access to the international supply chain”.

CNBC previously reported that while agricultural export volumes for 2020 were larger than 2019 due to the U.S. Phase One trade agreement with China, purchases fell short of targets. According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, China imported $ 100 billion of the U.S. goods agreed under the deal – roughly 58% of the targeted $ 173.1 billion. Exports are only official once they have been transported and processed in the country of destination. However, the increase in agricultural exports pales in comparison to the increased ration of empty export containers.

CNBC launched its own review of import and export data, and concluded that the airlines rejected an estimated 177,938 containers, called TEUs (20-foot equivalents), in October and November. This was the result of an analysis of the data compiled by the Census Bureau and the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, California and New York and New Jersey. The total value of lost export trade from these ports is $ 632 million.

Prioritize empty export containers

The data showing the increase in empty containers being shipped back to China corresponds to the timing of the carriers who informed agricultural exporters in mid-October that they would prioritize empty export containers over agricultural exports.

The air carriers also said they would raise prices on US agricultural exports if the goods were moved. The rise in agricultural export fees continues. Last week, ZIM Integrated Shipping Services announced agricultural exporters that they would be introducing surcharges for all cargo from the US to China and other Asian countries between $ 150 and $ 500 per container starting Feb.17.

CNBC asked ZIM for a comment.

According to the CNBC investigation, the total export container deficit for the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles was 136,392 TEU. An estimated 41,546 TEU were denied from the ports of New York and New Jersey.

To calculate the value of the potential trade loss resulting from the rejection of agricultural exports, CNBC used the containerized agricultural export price for soybeans / oilseeds / grain in the Port of Los Angeles, which can be found on the US Census website, USA Trade Online.

The value of this export is USD 3,552 per TEU. The value of the lost trade is likely to be higher as the value of the Ag’s raw materials fluctuates widely. Soybeans are at the lower end of the commercial value spectrum.

This balance was calculated using the difference between the actual empty exports in 2020 and the share of export empty in 2019.

However, CNBC analysis shows that the pattern of the growing US export container deficit extends beyond October and November.

Based on the trade data, empty container exports began to rise as early as June for Los Angeles, July for Long Beach, and August for New York and New Jersey. From July to November a total of 297,997 TEU from the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach as well as New York and New Jersey were denied a container deficit of USD 1.1 billion.

“The core problem is that a rapidly recovering China has revived its export economy and pays huge premiums for containers, which makes it more profitable to send them back empty than to refill them,” said Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition. “In the Port of Los Angeles, three out of four boxes returning to Asia are empty, compared to the normal rate of 50%. Food is piling up in the wrong places.”

Read the full letter:

Categories
Business

Systemic change and local weather motion are key to reaching inexperienced objectives

Systemic change and climate action are key to achieving green goals

From geopolitical tensions to the coronavirus pandemic to trade disputes, modern life can often feel confusing, unsafe, and disjointed.

One area where there seems to be a new sense of oneness is the environment. Just last week, US President Joe Biden signed an ordinance resuming the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, undoing the Trump administration’s decision to exit the agreement.

The Paris Agreement marks a milestone at the COP21 summit in December 2015 and aims to keep global warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels and “make efforts” to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In a statement on Biden’s decision, the European Commission stressed the need for future cooperation and consensus. “The climate crisis is the crucial challenge of our time,” said the EU executive, “and it can only be tackled by uniting all of our forces.”

The role of finance

Politicians aren’t the only ones focusing on the environment. A panel discussion moderated by CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick discussed at length the role of the financial sector in efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.

“Compared to 2015, there is exactly this undeniable and accelerating dynamic in the financial sector,” said Rhian-Mari Thomas, Managing Director of the Green Finance Institute.

“We are seeing huge inflows into … environmental, social and governance funds,” she said, adding that the magnitude of change is widespread.

“Aside from the exciting innovation we’re seeing and the pledges and commitments of individual financial firms and providers, we’re really seeing change on a systemic level,” she said.

UK investment manager trading organization, the Investment Association (IA), invested £ 7.8 billion (US $ 10.72 billion) in so-called “responsible mutual funds” between January and October 2020.

This, according to the Impact Assessment, represented 47.5% of total net money poured into funds and was four times higher than in the same period in 2019.

In October 2020 alone, more than £ 1 billion was invested in these funds, a figure the Impact Assessment dubbed the “highest monthly total on record”. Still, work remains to be done: the IA said the “total share of responsible mutual funds in managed industrial funds” was only 3.0% at the end of October.

Thomas reaffirmed her position on systemic change and referred to the network of central banks and supervisory authorities for greening the financial system (NGFS). The NGFS, launched in 2017, consists of central banks and supervisory authorities.

It consists of 83 members and 13 observers. The latter include institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the OECD, while members range from the Bank of England and the European Central Bank to the US Federal Reserve.

Thomas does not lose the presence of such great thugs. “All systemically important banks in the world and many other financial institutions are now overseen by members of the NGFS who are committed to ensuring that the financial services system is in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement,” she said.

The business challenge

While the bigger picture can change thanks to global initiatives and collaborations, how individual companies approach issues related to sustainability and the environment is also important.

Another member of the CNBC board, Markus Steilemann, CEO of Covestro, wanted to highlight the challenge facing his company, a major player in polymers.

“We have to master two transitions,” he said. “Number one is that our massive energy intake needs to become carbon neutral and carbon emissions neutral,” he added.

“And secondly, we have to master the transition to raw materials, that is, completely away from raw materials that come from coal, oil and gas towards renewable sources.”

Steilemann also emphasized the importance of operating a circular economy rather than a linear one, an idea that has become increasingly important in recent years.

“The materials that we bring out there do not have to end up in landfills – nor may they end up in the oceans … they have to be recycled,” said Steilemann.

“Second, we have to ensure that the raw material we use does not come from a linear business model and is not extracted from the ground.”

Categories
Politics

Biden plans blitz of govt motion in first 10 days

Biden plans blitz of executive action in first 10 days

President-elect Joe Biden plans to take immediate executive action after his inaugural address this week to turn the page on the Trump era, Chief of Staff Ron Klain said Sunday after setting out Biden’s plan for his first few days in the office.

Biden plans a 10-day blitz of executive action on what his administration has dubbed the country’s “four crises” problems – Covid-19, economic downturn, racial injustice and climate change.

“He will return to the White House after this speech in the Capitol and take immediate action to move this country forward,” Klain told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

Biden will officially take office on Wednesday at 12:00 PM ET. Klain said Biden’s inaugural address was “a message to move this country forward, a message of unity, a message to get things done”.

Klain outlined Biden’s plans for his first few days in a memorandum to White House staff sent to NBC News on Saturday entitled “A Review of the First Ten Days.”

“We are facing four overlapping and worsening crises: the COVID-19 crisis, the resulting economic crisis, the climate crisis and a racist stock crisis,” Klain wrote in the memo.

“In his first ten days in office, President-elect Biden will act decisively to address these four crises, prevent other urgent and irreversible harm, and restore America’s place in the world,” added Klain.

The executive actions take a variety of forms, including executive orders, presidential memoranda, and instructions to cabinet agencies.

The first steps Biden will take on Wednesday include re-entering the Paris Climate Agreement and lifting President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which applies to several Muslim-majority countries. Biden will also require masks for federal estates and interstate travel, and will take steps to expand eviction and foreclosure restrictions.

On Thursday, Biden will sign executive measures related to reopening schools and businesses, and on Friday he will “instruct his cabinet agencies to take immediate action to provide economic aid to working families who are bearing the brunt of this crisis,” it said in the memo.

The following week, according to the memo, Biden will “take significant early action to promote justice and support communities of color and other underserved communities.”

Biden will also take action this week to address climate change, expand access to health care, and “restore the dignity of our immigration system and border policies.”

The memorandum contains few details and states that Biden splits up executive action to highlight the activity.

It is also noted that the objectives behind executive action, while “bold”, are backed by “sound” legal theory and are “a restoration of an adequate constitutional role for the President”.

Klain wrote in the memo that legislation will be required for the administration’s more ambitious agenda items, including immigration reform and the increase in the federal minimum wage.

Biden on Thursday unveiled his $ 1.9 billion Covid-19 relief agenda, which calls for action to combat the public health crisis and new cash injections to stimulate the economy. The plan would also raise the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour.

Democrats control the House of Representatives and will soon take control of the Senate after two Republicans were defeated in Georgia’s Senate runoff earlier this month. But Klain said Sunday that, given the small Democratic majority, the Biden team would push for GOP support for its plans.

Democrats have 222 seats in the House of Representatives compared to the GOP’s 212, and the parties will split the Senate equally between 50 and 50, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris able to break votes that break the votes.

“We’re going to try to work hard with people in both parties,” Klain said on CNN.

“The American people voted in November and they voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden, no question about it, but they elected an evenly divided Senate, they elected a tightly divided Congress, we have to find ways that Democrats and Republicans do Get things done. ” ,” he added.

Categories
Politics

Supreme Court docket refuses fast motion on last-ditch Trump election lawsuits

Supreme Court refuses quick action on last-ditch Trump election lawsuits

People listen to the speakers during a Stop the Steal rally outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday, January 5, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Kent Nishimura | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to get the court to quickly review the challenges to President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory in the November election. The move effectively closed the door on the president’s final legal strategy to undo his defeat.

The court released an order in the morning denying expedited examination of lawsuits filed by Trump’s campaign against election process in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Similarly, it denied motions by conservative conspiracy theorists L. Lin Wood and Sidney Powell to expedite the contest of the Michigan and Georgia elections, as well as other lawsuits filed by Trump supporters.

The court’s action was widely awaited and was not accompanied by any statement or opinion, as is typical of such denials. No dissenting views were found by any of the court’s nine judges.

The court could theoretically still agree to accept cases related to the election, but would likely not hear arguments until October, well into Biden’s first year in office.

The judges returned from their winter break to meet for a private conference on Friday. The order list released on Monday is the first since the DC uprising last week, in which a crowd of Trump supporters tried to delay the confirmation of Biden’s victory over Trump in the electoral college.

The court had made it clear that it would not process the cases on the schedule Trump requested, even before the order was given.

In Trump v Boockvar, one of the cases that challenged the Pennsylvania election process, President’s attorney John Eastman wrote a December letter urging the court to open the case before January 6, when Congress met to complete the election college record.

Eastman wrote that if the court does not act before January 20, when Biden is inaugurated, “it will be impossible to fix the election results,” including the alleged ballots that were illegally cast under rules approved by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court were.

Trump has furiously denied his loss to Biden in a way unprecedented in modern US history.

On Monday, the Democrats unveiled an impeachment article in the House of Representatives based on his actions at a rally prior to the siege of the Capitol. He urged supporters to “fight” and his attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, called for “trial” by fight. “

Among the legal challenges the Supreme Court did not want to hasten to include was a challenge to the Electoral Count Act by Kelli Ward, leader of the Republican Party of Arizona; a challenge from Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., to apologize without an apology for the mail-in vote in his state; and two conspiracy theoretic complaints from ex-Trump attorney Powell about the elections in Michigan and Georgia.

Powell, who has falsely claimed, among other things, that the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez was involved in a conspiracy to rig the 2020 competition, was presented with a 1.3 defamation suit on Friday by Dominion Voting Systems, a supplier of voting machines Billions of dollars occupied. The attorney, whom Trump reportedly cited as a potential special adviser to investigate electoral fraud, has not returned CNBC’s requests for comment.

Wood and Powell suspended their Twitter accounts last week while cracking down on the spread of lies related to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

The court also declined to expedite three cases filed by the Trump campaign – two contesting mail-in voting rules in Wisconsin and one contesting easing rules in Pennsylvania. These lawsuits argued that the changed rules increased the likelihood of election fraud.

While Trump has made an unfounded argument that there was widespread electoral fraud in the 2020 election, his Justice Department has stated that there is no evidence to support such claims. The Department of Homeland Security also denied claims that the elections were infiltrated by foreign governments.

The Supreme Court previously dismissed a number of election challenges, including earlier versions of some of the lawsuits it had dismissed for a quick review on Monday. In one of its most famous cases, the court dismissed a Texas state lawsuit in December aimed at undoing Biden’s victories in swing states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

More than a dozen states and 120 GOP congressmen backed the Texas advance at the time. House spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Called the lawsuit “electoral subversion that threatens our democracy”.

The Supreme Court rejection marks a coda for Trump’s long-standing hope that he can play the elections through the courts.

Ahead of Election Day, Trump predicted the Supreme Court would rule the competition and urged the Senate to bank his third candidate, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, in time.

During Barrett’s confirmation process, Democrats warned that the Conservative former federal appeals judge would side with the president who appointed them. Barrett refused to apologize on election cases but said she would take the concerns seriously as she weighed whether to do so.

Trump and his allies have lost more than 60 election lawsuits in court, according to a record by Democratic electoral lawyer Marc Elias.

The Trump campaign and the Biden transition team did not immediately return requests for comment.