Tag: Battle

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Entertainment

Drake’s ‘Licensed Lover Boy’ Arrives, as Chart Battle With Kanye West Continues

Drake's 'Certified Lover Boy' Arrives, as Chart Battle With Kanye West Continues

The digs, in song and on social media, continued a pattern of minor, direct and indirect offenses between the two that had existed for years, with Drake’s musical beef relationship with Pusha-T, a Western subsidiary, seemingly coagulating irrevocably 2018.

In the years that followed, the artists parted ways, even if they occasionally bumped their heads online and on records. West hugged former President Donald J. Trump, went on an ill-fated presidential candidacy, and turned to gospel. In October 2019 he released a Christian album called “Jesus Is King”. He kept his promises on “Donda” and even censored his guests.

Drake, meanwhile, released a steady stream of music, though it made itself less and less common. In spring 2020, the rapper followed the single “Toosie Slide”, which reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, with a surprising mixtape, “Dark Lane Demo Tapes”, with songs that had been leaked online. He promised a studio album in the summer, and the wannabe lead single “Laugh Now Cry Later” reached # 2 in August. But the album never came out; Another holdover, the three-song EP “Scary Hours 2”, followed in March and led to another No. 1 single (“What’s Next”).

After months of only cryptic updates on the album’s status, a collision course with West seemed inevitable as summer ended and the two A-list rappers reappeared. When West toured an ongoing “Donda,” Drake appeared to be claiming a Sept. 3 release late last month with a guerrilla-style lo-fi ad on “SportsCenter” on ESPN.

And on a Trippie Redd track entitled “Betrayal” the rapper indicated that the hustle and bustle around West’s “Donda” would not affect its final release date. This time Drake rapped, “It’s set in stone.”

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Health

Biogen Alzheimer’s drug and the brand new battle over dementia remedy

Biogen Alzheimer’s drug and the new battle over dementia treatment

Aduhelm from Biogen

Source: Biogen

The FDA approval of Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm marked a milestone in Dr. Paul Aisen. The director of the Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute at USC has focused on the treatment of neurodegenerative disease for the past three decades and in recent years has helped guide this particular drug through the various phases of clinical trials.

But as he sat in his sun-drenched San Diego office in early June, he felt slightly puzzled by the way the Food and Drug Administration approved their use in early June on an “accelerated” basis, normally reserved for cancer drugs. This meant that the clinical benefit was considered likely, but approval for long-term use would be the subject of a larger study in a fourth phase of studies.

Aisen, who works as a paid advisor to Biogen, emphasizes the “unusual nature” of the regulator’s green light, as an advisory board of experts voted and publicly opposed the approval, and insists that there were still “many questions the “I have – they still have no answers.”

Three members of the FDA’s panel that oversees the research have resigned since it was approved this week, including Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a medicine professor at Harvard Medical School, who said in a letter the agency’s decision on Biogen was “probably the worst drug approval decision in history.” recent US history. “

Last November, that panel said in an 8-1 vote that Biogen’s late-stage phase did not provide “strong evidence” showing that aducanumab is effective in treating Alzheimer’s; two other panellists said the data was “uncertain”.

While Aisen sees Aduhelm as an “effective treatment” for a disease that affects millions of Americans, he also has concerns about the impact of the FDA’s decision on the range of other potential treatment options that are in the late stages of development.

An immediate challenge facing other teams working on a broader Alzheimer’s drug pipeline, he said in a recent video call, would be to keep participants in ongoing studies, let alone attract new ones.

“In most cases,” he said, many people with Alzheimer’s disease would drop out of other drug trials to begin treatment with the newly approved Aduhelm. Leaving them would make the study data for these alternative drugs less useful, even if the drugs in question might one day prove to be safer, more effective, or more suitable for different stages of the disease. But perhaps pervertedly, he still regards Aduhelm’s approval as “a boost to these efforts – a powerful boost”.

Over 6 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s

In the past few years, some large pharmaceutical companies have abandoned brain disease research efforts, including Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim in 2018 – in fact, Biogen Aduhelm had given up at one point during clinical trials in 2019 before reversing its decision – after decades of failure in search of a breakthrough.

The controversy surrounding the Biogen drug, including its potential cost, is hitting a massive, unmet need for dementia treatment and a disease that costs the US up to $ 259 billion annually. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that more than 6 million Americans have Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia, and by 2050 that number could reach over 12 million people, which costs a trillion dollars a year.

Because of this, some dementia drug experts are focusing on the new attention and funding, rather than the potential downsides of Biogen approval, said Dr. Jeffrey Cummings, a neurologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who does an annual review of. publishes Alzheimer’s drug development pipeline. His research consistently showed that drug failure rates prior to Biogen’s approval were 99.6 percent, a stark contrast to 1 in 5 successful cancer drugs (20%).

Cummings says that any short-term adverse side effect for other drug trials “will be overcome, if at all, by increased interest from companies, venture capital, and biotechnology once they see that there is a way to get approval for a particular drug”. Illness.”

In recent history, the National Institutes of Health spent two to three times more research on heart disease and cancer than they did on dementia, and the lack of qualified participants in clinical trials also slowed progress.

Next in the dementia drug pipeline

For the handful of other Alzheimer’s drugs in development hoping to overcome the same regulatory hurdles and prove their effectiveness – including Eli Lillys Donanemab, Roches Gantenerumab, and Eiseis Lecanemab – there could be a silver lining, the first mover advantage to cede to Aduhelm.

After decades of expensive but largely unsuccessful research attempts, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly’s CEO David Ricks said that after a series of positive phase two results for its Donanemab offering, his company is “getting closer and closer to the goal”.

Speaking at CNBC’s Healthy Returns Summit in May, a month before the FDA approved Aduhelm’s rival Biogen, he said his team felt “good about the probability of success” and said he wanted an “accelerated” route too explore what he called “adaptative avenues for the FDA to consider earlier study of data” that “should be used in a serious and widespread disease like Alzheimer’s”.

However, he conceded that recruiting for the next phase of the studies would require a significantly larger cohort of participants, and since it would take 18 months, he did not expect a new approved product until late 2023 at the earliest.

Several experts told CNBC that the Biogen drug’s unique threshold for regulatory approval, with the treatment potential appearing to trump uncertain real-world benefits, efforts of competitors like Lilly, who are focused on drug development on relatively based on similar techniques.

Aduhelm’s own clinical study data had shown that the drug successfully attacked and cleared clusters of a certain type of protein that many researchers believe may be responsible for Alzheimer’s disease. But it didn’t offer enough evidence to prove that the drug provided cognitive benefits to patients.

Debate on targeting amyloid beta formations

Known by scientists as aducanumab, it works by offering a set of identical antibodies that are cloned from white blood cells. These antibodies are chosen for their targeting abilities, as they can identify specific proteins called beta-amyloids that have built up certain formations in the body.

There is ample evidence that these beta-amyloid formations, also known as “pathological aggregates” or “plaques,” are a major cause of Alzheimer’s disease, although the exact causal mechanisms are not yet fully understood, according to Christian Pike von USC’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Nonetheless, he says the antibodies can help prevent these plaques from forming before other particles are caused to break them apart, a process that is clearly identifiable in before and after neural imaging.

As an analogy, it may be helpful to think of the amyloid beta proteins as young people walking through a city during the day, where the city is the human body and the day is a human lifespan. In certain cities, when afternoon turns into evening, individual young people gather, and some of these gatherings can become toxic and begin to cause problems. The antibodies supplied by Aduhelm act like police officers arriving at the scene, identifying disruptive gatherings, surrounding them, separating them, and then instructing bystanders to disperse the young people.

“When you say, ‘Well, hey, the FDA is buying in that general concept,'” Pike said on a phone call, “if we can remove beta-amyloid from the brains of people with the disease, even if we can there is limited evidence of cognitive benefits, “he continued,” there could be a variety of different therapies that would qualify under these criteria.

The long string of past failures within the Alzheimer’s pipeline that targeted beta-amyloid will continue to weigh on optimism until conclusive evidence is produced – something this week’s controversy over the first new approved Alzheimer’s drug in decades shows has not yet been done.

“What we’re going to find out by using this drug one way or another is whether or not the amyloid clearing hypothesis is correct,” says USC health economist Darius Lakdawalla, who argues that Biogens will continue to test it Drug will prove useful to this confirmatory experiment.

“If it’s right, then I think it opens the door to a lot of innovation, a lot of drug candidates that will try to remove amyloid in the pursuit of that hypothesis in the future.”

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Business

Asia’s greatest and worst inventory markets in Might battle Covid: India, Vietnam, Taiwan

Asia's best and worst stock markets in May battle Covid: India, Vietnam, Taiwan

Pedestrians wearing protective masks walk past the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) building in Mumbai, India, on Thursday, Jan. 21, 2021.

Dhiraj Singh | Bloomberg | Getty Images

India stocks were among Asia-Pacific’s top-performing markets in May, even as the country continues to grapple with tens of thousands of new cases every day.

For the month, the Nifty 50 rose 6.5% while the BSE Sensex was up 6.47%.

“The old phrase ‘go away and sell in May’ wasn’t true — at least for this month,” said Tuan Huynh, who is chief investment officer for Europe and Asia-Pacific at Deutsche Bank International Private Bank. “In the Indian case, I think it is relatively surprising.”

“The markets seem to like to differentiate between economic and obviously corporate earnings development versus then the rise of the new cases,” he told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Tuesday.

India has registered more than 28 million infections so far and is the second worst-hit country in the world in terms of caseload, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Daily cases have eased from the record high of over 400,000 at the start of May — but continue to hover above 100,000. That’s still quite high compared to other countries in the world.

U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs is “overweight” on India, and expects stocks there to outperform.

“Markets tend to, as they say, live in the future and not in the present,” Timothy Moe, co-head of Asia macro research and chief Asia-Pacific equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC last week.

He pointed out that there’s a “very concerning humanitarian crisis” in terms of a Covid surge in India. However, “the market is basically looking through that and expecting the rate of infections to come down, which indeed has taken place.”

Asia’s best and worst performers

Meanwhile, Vietnam was Asia-Pacific’s best-performing market in May — the VN Index jumping 7.15% for the month.

The gains came despite Vietnam’s Covid situation taking a turn for the worse in recent weeks. State-run media reported that social distancing measures were imposed in the country’s business hub Ho Chi Minh City starting Monday this week.

Elsewhere, stocks in Taiwan took a beating in May as rising cases of domestic infections prompted tighter restrictions.

The Taiex in Taiwan was Asia-Pacific’s worst performing market in May, and fell 2.84% for the month.

Taiwan was once hailed internationally for its initial response to the pandemic, which enabled life in Taiwan to remain largely undisturbed compared to elsewhere. However, a recent spike in infections has resulted in measures such as mandatory mask-wearing and limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings.

Total infections in both Vietnam and Taiwan remain comparatively low globally. Vietnam has reported more than 7,300 cases while Taiwan has seen at least 8,511 infections, according to Hopkins data.

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Business

Exxon Mobil Faces Local weather Change Battle at Annual Assembly: Reside Updates

Exxon Mobil storage tanks in Rotterdam. Shareholders say the oil giant should invest more heavily in renewables like wind and solar energy.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Peter Dejong/Associated Press

Exxon Mobil will face a big challenge over its climate change policies at an annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday as activists contest the election of one-third of the company’s board.

A coalition of investors concerned about the environment has argued that Exxon has not invested enough in cleaner energy, which will hurt its profits in the future.

These investors argue that the company should follow European oil companies like BP and Total that have begun investing heavily in renewables like wind and solar energy.

The hedge fund leading this campaign, Engine No. 1, is seeking to defeat the election of four of the company’s director candidates and has proposed four of its own. A victory for even one of its nominees would be a sharp rebuke to Darren W. Woods, Exxon’s chairman and chief executive. Some big pension funds, including the New York State Common Retirement Fund and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, have joined Engine No. 1, which was started last year.

“We listen, and we hear,” Mr. Woods said in an interview in which he tried to take a conciliatory tone. “We don’t always agree, but we always understand there is an opportunity to improve.”

Exxon has argued that its investments in carbon capture and storage, including a proposal to capture the emissions from industrial plants along the Houston Ship Channel, demonstrate that the company is changing in its approach to climate change. This week, it announced that it would add two new directors to the board, including a climate expert, but it has not committed to investing in renewable energy.

Engine No. 1 dismissed the move, saying, “This vote is too important to be influenced by this type of cynical, last-minute maneuvering.”

The final shareholder meeting for Jeff Bezos as Amazon’s chief executive could be eventful.Credit…Michael Nelson/EPA, via Shutterstock

Amazon’s investors are gathering virtually on Wednesday for the company’s annual shareholder meeting. There is much to discuss, according to the DealBook newsletter: good, bad and ugly (from the perspective of Amazon’s management).

The e-commerce giant’s bumper profits are likely to be overshadowed by three major developments: Reports that the company is about to make an expensive bet on the Hollywood studio MGM, a series of shareholder proposals that company directors don’t want to pass and an antitrust suit filed against the company that landed on Tuesday.

Amazon is said to be considering spending $9 billion to acquire MGM, which would buy classic films like “Rocky” and “Singin’ in the Rain,” as well as the James Bond franchise. If a deal is reached, approval from regulators would rest on Amazon’s argument that it’s a small player in entertainment. (Lina Khan, a nominee for the F.T.C. who is awaiting Senate confirmation, made her name with a paper about Amazon’s alleged antitrust abuses.)

The backers of several shareholder proposals, all opposed by Amazon’s management, say their aim is to make the company a better corporate citizen, reacting to accusations of labor and environmental abuses. New York State’s pension fund is calling on Amazon to conduct an independent racial equity audit of its practices related to civil rights, equity, diversity and inclusion. (Calls for racial audits have been a feature at many shareholder meetings recently.)

Another proposal would bar Jeff Bezos from leading Amazon’s board after he steps down as chief executive this year.

The District of Columbia sued Amazon on Tuesday, accusing the company of effectively prohibited sellers on its site from charging lower prices for the same products elsewhere, which raised prices on Amazon and beyond. “Amazon has used its dominant position in the online retail market to win at all costs,” said Karl Racine, the district’s attorney general.

It is believed to be the first antitrust suit against Amazon by an American government authority, but because it is based on local rather than federal law, its effect could be limited even if successful. Nonetheless, Mr. Racine’s argument “is both old-school and novel, and it might become a blueprint for crimping Big Tech power,” wrote Shira Ovide, The Times’s On Tech columnist.

Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.Credit…Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

The chief executives of the six biggest American lenders will testify before the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday, the first time the committee has summoned all the top bankers since the financial crisis of 2008. (They will also appear at the House Committee on Financial Services on Thursday, for the first time since 2019.)

At the Senate hearing, Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio and the committee’s chairman, has promised to press the bank chiefs on a range of subjects, sending them a list of questions on topics including the riskiness of their assets, the diversity of their work forces, actions on climate change, pledges on racial equity and more. It could make for a disjointed hearing as senators veer from issue to issue, trying to catch the chief executives off guard or unprepared.

Their prepared testimonies address the committee’s questions in varying depth and detail, while all make the case that their institutions are healthier, safer and more law-abiding since 2008.

  • Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase turned in a nine-page paper urging business, government and society to address inequities and “unleash the extraordinary vibrancy of the American economy.”

  • Jane Fraser of Citigroup prepared 11 pages (and a three-page addendum with data and tables) that note her bank’s approach to cryptocurrencies, saying that it is “focusing resources and efforts to understand changes in the digital asset space.”

  • James Gorman of Morgan Stanley assembled a 20-page report with few frills that includes a short introduction and responses to each question in order.

  • Charles Scharf of Wells Fargo and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs each submitted 15 pages heavy on environmental, social and governance issues.

  • Brian Moynihan of Bank of America had the most to say, with 32 pages that devote a lot of space to the bank’s “responsible growth” principles. “We embrace our dual responsibility to drive both profits and purpose,” he wrote.

A supermarket in Essen, Germany. Price increases in the eurozone are expected to be mild over the next two years, a member of the European Central Bank’s executive board said.Credit…Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters

U.S. stocks were expected to rise on Wednesday and a benchmark European index climbed to a record high and then fell.

The S&P 500 was set to open 0.4 percent higher when Wall Street starts trading.

Oil prices fell. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, dropped 0.3 percent to $65.86 a barrel.

  • The Stoxx Europe 600 slipped 0.1 percent after hitting a fresh record earlier on Wednesday. The euro fell 0.1 percent against the U.S. dollar to $1.22.

  • Fabio Panetta, a member of the executive board of the European Central Bank, said on Wednesday that “‘we are currently seeing a transitory increase in inflation,” adding his voice to the chorus of central bankers arguing that price increases are temporary and there is no current need to pull back monetary stimulus. Mr. Panetta said that the central bank did not need to reduce the pace of its bond-buying program.

  • Over the next two years, the European Central Bank forecasts the annual inflation rate to be no more than 1.4 percent, below the bank’s 2 percent target.

  • “We should not extrapolate from what is happening in the United States,” Mr. Panetta said in the interview published by the central bank. “We don’t expect the same kind of surging demand and tight labor markets that would generate stronger lasting price pressures.”

  • The chief executives of six major American banks, including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, will appear before a Senate congressional committee on Wednesday and then a House committee on Thursday. They are expected to answer questions on everything from the riskiness of their banks’ assets to work force diversity. They have already submitted written testimonies.

  • Shares at British Land, a major landowner and property developer, dropped 1.8 percent after the company said its profit dropped by more than a third in the year to March as its portfolio value fell nearly 11 percent because of drop in the value of retail properties. British Land said it also sold 1.2 billion pounds ($1.7 billion) of retail and office spaces over the year.

  • Marks & Spencer shares rose 6.7 percent as the retailer said it expected to generate a profit of as much as £350 million this fiscal year, swinging back from a loss of more than £200 million. The company, which sells food, clothing and housewares, has benefited from a recent partnership with Ocado, the online groceries retailer.

  • Australians will have some of the best views of the “super blood moon” this week, but passengers on a one-time flight departing from Sydney had an even better one. The Australian airline Qantas operated a three-hour flight on Wednesday (Tuesday evening in the United States) for about 100 passengers to see the moon enter the Earth’s shadow and turn a blood red color during a total lunar eclipse. Tickets went on sale this month for 499 Australian dollars (about $386) for economy class and 1,499 Australian dollars (about $1,162) for business class. The tickets sold out in less than half an hour.

Episodes of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” will be available the next day on Fox Nation, along with other prime-time Fox News shows.Credit…Richard Drew/Associated Press

Fox News entered the streaming video market in November 2018 with Fox Nation, a digital subscription service that now encompasses hundreds of hours of original programming including political commentary, documentaries and travel specials like “Castles USA,” in which the host Jeanine Pirro tours castles around the country.

Until now, the network had resisted rebroadcasting its marquee prime-time shows on the streaming service. That is set to change next week, in a significant shift in digital strategy for the Rupert Murdoch-owned channel.

Starting June 2, episodes of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” “Hannity” and “The Ingraham Angle” will be available on demand on Fox Nation the day after they are shown live on cable. The shift “will add incredible value for subscribers,” Fox Nation’s president, Jason Klarman, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Fox News had reasons to initially avoid duplicating its traditional TV programming on Fox Nation. The channel earns significant revenue from cable distributors that pay to carry Fox News. And the network has the largest total weeknight audience in cable news; viewers who switch over to watch the programs on Fox Nation will not be counted by Nielsen.

Other networks, though, have seen benefits from making their cable programs available in digital venues. The shows can attract new subscribers and widen their viewership to the younger audiences that prefer streaming services.

A monthly subscription to Fox Nation costs $6. The network has declined to share its total number of subscribers. Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman of the Fox Corporation, said on a recent earnings call that the first quarter of 2021 had generated Fox Nation’s “highest number of customer acquisitions since launch.”

The District of Columbia said in a lawsuit that Amazon had stopped merchants that use its platform from charging lower prices for the same products elsewhere online.Credit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The District of Columbia claimed in a complaint on Tuesday that the giant online marketplace is artificially raising prices for products by abusing its monopoly power.

The legal action is believed to be the first government antitrust suit against Amazon in the United States, report The New York Times’s David McCabe, Karen Weise and Cecilia Kang.

Here’s what you need to know:

“Amazon has used its dominant position in the online retail market to win at all costs,” said Karl Racine, the attorney general for the District of Columbia. “It maximizes its profits at the expense of third-party sellers and consumers, while harming competition, stifling innovation and illegally tilting the playing field in its favor.”

Mr. Racine “has it exactly backwards — sellers set their own prices for the products they offer in our store,” Jodi Seth, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said in a statement. She added that Amazon reserved the right “not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively.”

Amazon has attracted attention from critics because of the sweeping nature of its business. It operates a dominant web hosting operation and a streaming platform that competes with Netflix and Hulu, and it expanded into brick-and-mortar grocery stores with the 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods. But the lawsuit filed by Mr. Racine, a Democrat, concerns the core of its business: the online marketplace for outside merchants that accounts for more than half of the products it sells.

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Business

Australian Leather-based Loses Ugg Trademark Battle

Australian Leather Loses Ugg Trademark Battle

MELBOURNE, Australia – A long-term offer by an Australian company to scrap a US brand bearing the word “Ugg” has suffered another blow after an American appeals court dismissed its case in Sheepskin Boots.

This is the final step in a five-year legal battle between US trademark owner Deckers Outdoor Corporation and a company called Australian Leather. They argued over ownership of the name of a shoe that has been derided as unfashionable and downright ugly, but which has still found its way onto the feet of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Tom Brady.

The Australian news media called the lawsuit a battle between David and Goliath, and the case hit many Australians who consider footwear a national, if out-of-fashion, symbol. The case also showed how global access to products on the Internet can lead to conflicts between local legal systems.

Australian Leather owner Eddie Oygur said following the court ruling on Friday that he would take the case to the US Supreme Court.

“This is not just about me; It’s about Australia taking ugg back, ”said Oygur. “The brand should never have been given to the US in the first place.”

In Australia, the word is used as a collective term for sheepskin boots that have been lined with fleece since the 1930s. They were popularized by surfers in the 1960s. The term is not registered as a trademark there and anyone can sell Ugg boots. It was registered as a trademark in the United States in the 1980s by Australian entrepreneur Brian Smith.

Deckers said it bought the name fairly from Mr. Smith, that it was branded “UGG Australia” in the US in 1995, and that American consumers knew it as a brand name rather than a generic term. Deckers holds the trademark in more than 130 countries, which means that Australians are largely prevented from selling their boots internationally.

Deckers sued Australian Leather in 2016, alleging trademark infringement for selling 13 pairs of Ugg boots in the United States through its website. Mr. Oygur did not deny the sale of boots, but argued that Deckers should not have used the term “ugg” at all.

Recognition…Deckers outdoors via PR Newswire

“We should be able to sell our Ugg boots worldwide,” said Oygur. “It’s generic here and it’s an Australian product.”

He also argued that Uggs were generic in the US, being sold by numerous entrepreneurs across the country before being registered as trademarks, and that the term warranted similar protection in Australia to French “Champagne” and Greek “Feta” .

In business today

Updated

May 7, 2021 at 1:12 p.m. ET

In 2019 the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled in favor of Deckers that, while ugg was an umbrella term in Australia, it had no such meaning in the U.S. It was also determined that the term was not subject to the “Foreign Equivalents Doctrine,” a legal guideline in the United States that foreign words for categories of items cannot be trademarked and that Mr. Oygur willfully violated the trademark of Deckers has violated. Mr. Oygur was fined $ 450,000.

Mr. Oygur appealed the decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In court documents filed prior to the appeal, his attorneys argued that the U.S. District Court used the wrong standards to judge whether something was generic. In his own documents, Deckers countered that the judge used the correct test, citing survey results that most US consumers recognize Ugg as a brand.

On Friday, the court upheld the court’s original decision. There were no reasons.

Tom Garcia, Deckers’ chief administrative officer, said in a statement prior to the verdict that the company believes the appeal has no merit.

“Deckers welcomes fair competition,” he said. “This case, however, was about protecting American consumers from being deceived into buying counterfeit products that were on sale and sold online in the US.”

Dean Wilkie, Lecturer in Branding and Marketing at the University of Adelaide, said, “In the Australian market there is a normal person on the street if you go up to them and say you think it’s right for this American brand to stop folks, who use ‘ugg’ for sheepskin boots, most of us would be outraged because it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel moral. “

On the other hand, he admitted, Decker’s years spent building Uggs into a sophisticated lifestyle brand – a far cry from the situation in Australia where they are relegated to souvenir shop windows and people use them for grocery stores and they carry around the house.

“The internet has given us access to a global market. We can distribute products all over the world. But the legal systems are not global. They are in countries, ”said Dr. Wilkie.

In its heyday, Australian Leather produced around 50,000 to 60,000 pairs of boots a year and had a few dozen employees. Last year, Deckers had sales of $ 2 billion, three quarters of which came from the Ugg brand, according to the 2020 annual report.

The stakes for both companies were high. Prior to the ruling, Nicole Murdoch, an intellectual property attorney with Eaglegate Lawyers in Brisbane, Australia, said that legal success for Mr. Oygur would have “a disastrous effect for Deckers” that would cost the company the trademark on which it was branded had built up.

Mr Oygur said before the verdict, “All ugg boot manufacturers in Australia will turn to imports because of prices and Australia will lose what has been Australian since the 1930s.”

Personally, he’d gotten to the heart of the matter: the business he’d run for nearly 40 years and a house he’d mortgaged to pay for his legal fees. He said he spent over a million dollars on the case, lost the majority of his employees, and saw the legal challenge put off many of his clients.

“God help me, I won’t back down,” he said. “You didn’t give me a choice. Absolutely no choice. “

Categories
Politics

Curiosity teams prepare for battle

Interest groups get ready for battle

President Joe Biden joins Air Force One as he leaves Wilmington to return to Washington on March 17, 2021 at New Castle Airport in New Castle, Delaware, United States.

Kevin Lemarque | Reuters

Stakeholders from across the political spectrum are preparing for an all-out war over President Joe Biden’s upcoming tax reform proposal, which is expected to include tax increases for wealthier families and businesses as part of his massive infrastructure plan.

It will become the “Super Bowl of Tax Reform,” according to one person planning to join the fight. This person, who refused to be called to speak freely, is in for a “protracted battle”.

These are some of the groups that, according to interviews with their leaders and representatives, will be involved in the struggle:

  • Americans for Prosperity, which is part of the Koch network
  • Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group
  • Our Revolution, a progressive group that emerged from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign
  • Americans for tax justice
  • Progressive Change Campaign Committee
  • Patriotic Millionaires, a liberal group that aims to raise taxes for the rich

Biden has said since his campaign that he wants to increase taxes for those who earn more than $ 400,000 a year and that he wants to increase the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. The president also wants to tax long-term capital gains at the same tax rate as wages for households making more than $ 1 million a year.

Several reports indicate that Biden is considering using these tax increases to at least partially pay for the infrastructure package, which is expected to cost over $ 2 trillion.

Conservative and libertarian groups made the adoption of former President Donald Trump’s tax plan a top priority at the start of this administration. With the exception of then-Sen, all Senate Republican lawmakers voted yes to the 2017 bill. John McCain, R-Ariz., Who was absent from his battle with cancer.

Now such groups, including those backed by billionaire Charles Koch, are preparing to crack down on Biden’s tax reform proposal.

The plan on the right

The Koch network, through its political advocacy group “Americans for Prosperity”, has made maintaining Trump’s tax cuts part of its agenda under the new administration and the new Congress. Democrats also control the House and Senate, albeit with a narrow margin.

The group warns that a tax hike will weigh on a recovering economy that has taken a heavy blow from the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Tax Cut and Jobs Bill has been a tremendous asset to the American people and has helped them keep more of what it deserves for their families, businesses and communities,” AFP President Tim Phillips told CNBC. “Reclaiming those cuts or adding new taxes would worsen our already shattered economy, affect workers’ wages, smash small businesses, and ultimately go nowhere near the partisan wish list proposed by President Biden and the leaders of Congress.”

Trump’s tax cuts lowered the company’s rate from 35% to 21%.

A person familiar with the matter said AFP had already taken tax and other economic policies with the offices of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. This person would not specify which offices.

In one of the group’s digital advertisements, only “no tax increase” is requested.

Americans for Tax Reform, founded by anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, has for years pushed back all attempts to raise taxes. The group was a strong advocate of Trump’s tax cuts and is already promoting some ways to attack Biden’s plan on its website.

Norquist, the group’s president, told CNBC that Americans for Tax Reform plans to use national and regional options to convince voters that the Biden tax plan will affect their 401 (k) s, utility bills and other personal Data would have article.

He hopes that such an approach will put pressure on moderate Democrats to oppose or water down the tax proposals. Democrats have a slim majority in the Senate due to Vice President Kamala Harris being tied.

“Our plans are full court press to make it the most expensive vote,” said Norquist. “They want to make it so politically expensive that people reduce the size and scope of the legislation.”

The campaign, he added, will “move forward in the hope that you will make it so successful that they say we will not do it until next year, not this year”.

Norquist suggested that Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., And Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., Who are up for re-election in 2022, might feel pressure from his group’s efforts. Cortez Masto and Kelly representatives have not returned requests for comment.

Senator Joe Manchin, DW.Va., who is not standing for re-election next year, said he supported a large-scale infrastructure move that he believes should include increasing the corporate tax rate to around 25%.

How the left will play it

Across the aisle, progressive organizations see an opportunity to meet one of their top priorities: raising taxes for the rich. The struggles of working and middle-class families during the pandemic show that the time has come to pass comprehensive tax reform targeting the rich, they argue.

Democratic lawmakers and liberal organizations pushing for higher taxes on the corporate and wealthy often cite opinion polls that have many voters in favor.

A 2020 Reuters / Ipsos poll found that 64% strongly or reasonably believed that “the very rich should contribute an additional percentage of their total wealth to support public programs each year”.

Our Revolution, a progressive organization led by Sanders, is planning a full grassroots effort to convince lawmakers of both parties to support the tax hike for the rich. Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, has urged the rich to pay more taxes for years. The Vermont Senator, along with Democrats including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, recently proposed a 3% total annual tax on assets over $ 1 billion.

Paco Fabian, campaign leader at Our Revolution, said the teams will be doing phone banking as part of this effort.

“Businesses and the rich have to pay their fair share. We made an incredible amount of pandemic profit while people lost their jobs and health care,” said Fabian, describing the message the group will convey to lawmakers during public relations.

The Progressive Change Campaigns Committee, coordinated with Warren, said it would be active behind the scenes on the issue.

“For the ‘Better Back Down’ debate, we’ll be doing things like polls, communicating behind the scenes with Democratic lawmakers, and making sure our national membership and the general public are fully buoyed,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the group on the name gave Biden his infrastructure plan.

He said the organization plans to liaise with the White House and members of the House and Senate.

Green said his group wanted the White House to focus on raising taxes for the richest Americans – but avoiding a gas tax.

“The best way for the White House to be brave and keep the peace in the country on the tax front is to focus on progressive taxes, namely the rich and corporations, rather than regressive measures like a gas tax,” he said.

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World News

Uber grants U.Ok. drivers employee standing after dropping main labor battle

Uber grants U.K. drivers worker status after losing major labor battle

A smartphone displaying the Uber app in London.

Oli Scarff | Getty Images

Shortly after losing a major labor dispute in the UK, Uber will classify all UK based drivers as workers.

Under the new designation, more than 70,000 drivers will receive some benefits, including minimum wage, vacation time and pension contributions, but will not receive full employee benefits.

Uber announced the change to an SEC filing, adding that UK ridesharing accounted for 6.4% of all gross bookings for mobility in the fourth quarter of 2020.

While the move will increase Uber’s costs in the UK, the company continues to aim for adjusted EBITDA profitability through the year-end.

Earlier this year, Uber lost a major legal battle in the UK over the issue. The country’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling that a group of drivers were workers and not independent contractors. While the decision was made with a small group of drivers, thousands more have taken action against the company.

In a comment in The Evening Standard, Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, wrote that following the Supreme Court ruling, “we could continue to challenge drivers’ rights to any of these protections in court. Instead, we decided to turn the page.” “”

Khosrowshahi admits, “I know many observers will not pat us on the back if we take this step, which comes after a five-year legal battle. They are right, although I hope the path we have chosen will change our willingness to change shows. “”

Meanwhile, Uber and the gig economy as a whole are facing regulatory challenges around the world. Uber has spent millions addressing these challenges in other regions.

In California, Uber pushed back against Assembly Bill 5, a gig economy bill passed by law in 2019 that tightened the rules for classifying workers as independent contractors.

After a widespread campaign that cost over $ 200 million – the most expensive election campaign in the state’s history – Uber and a handful of other gig economy companies used Uber to convince voters to support an election campaign called Proposition 22 and other gig economy platforms have been exempted from state labor law.

In return, gig workers received some benefits without full employment status. Some of the additional cost of providing benefits has been passed on to carpooling.

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Business

SpaceX subpoena battle with the DOJ set for March court docket listening to

SpaceX subpoena battle with the DOJ set for March court hearing

A Falcon 9 rocket will be launched in Hawthorne, California on January 28, 2021 in front of the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. headquarters. (SpaceX) issued.

Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

The Justice Department’s efforts to get SpaceX to comply with a subpoena for corporate hiring documents will be heard by a federal judge on March 18.

That date for the hearing was set on Monday after attorneys from SpaceX, fighting the subpoena, and the DOJ videoconference with Judge Michael Wilner for a planning session. Wilner gave SpaceX attorneys until February 26 to file a response to the subpoena requested by the DOJ. The government then had until March 12th to respond to SpaceX.

The DOJ has been investigating for months whether Elon Musk’s space company discriminates against foreigners when it is hired, court records show.

The investigation was launched by the department’s Immigration and Workers Rights division after a candidate, Fabian Hutter, complained that SpaceX discriminated against him when he asked for a technical strategy position during an interview last March his citizenship status was asked.

Hutter told CNBC that he believes SpaceX decided not to hire him after answering a question about his citizenship. Hutter has dual citizenship in Austria and Canada, but is legally permanent resident of the United States according to court records filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California.

The DOJ unit is not only investigating Hutter’s complaint, but “can also investigate whether [SpaceX] engages in a pattern or practice of discrimination “that is prohibited by federal law, as records show.

As part of that investigation, investigators issued a subpoena in October requesting SpaceX to provide information and documents related to recruitment and employability review procedures.

However, SpaceX did not fully comply with the subpoena after the DOJ received a table of employee information.

That’s why DOJ attorney Lisa Sandoval asked Wilner in a lawsuit last month to order SpaceX to comply with the request for documents.

Wilner hinted in an earlier filing that SpaceX might have a hard time blocking the subpoena, referring to an earlier decision he had made on an unrelated case.

In this other case, Wilner flatly dismissed a company’s arguments against complying with a subpoena to discontinue information.

The DOJ has declined CNBC’s request for comment on its investigation, while SpaceX has failed to respond to multiple requests for comment.

SpaceX may hire non-US citizens who hold a green card under the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

Known as ITAR, these rules state that only Americans or foreigners with a US green card can have physical or digital access to items on the US ammunition list, which consists of defense-related equipment, software, and other materials.

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World News

Navalny Arrested on Return to Moscow in Battle of Wills With Putin

Navalny Arrested on Return to Moscow in Battle of Wills With Putin

MOSCOW – Aleksei A. Navalny returned to his home country on Sunday, five months after a near-fatal nerve agent attack and was arrested at the border. This is a sign of the fearlessness of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader and the concern of President Vladimir V. Putin.

In hours of live streaming drama that took place in Berlin, in the air and at two Moscow airports, Mr Navalny fell headlong into near-safe custody after deciding to leave the relative security of Germany, where he fell from the last Summer had recovered from poisoning.

Hundreds of people brave the bitter cold outside Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport to greet Mr Navalny, but the cheap Russian airline he was flying was diverted to another Moscow airport just before landing. There, Mr. Navalny was confronted with uniformed police officers in black masks during passport control.

He hugged his wife Yulia Navalnaya before being led away.

“I’m not afraid,” Navalny told reporters shortly before his arrest, standing in front of a neon sign at the airport depicting the Kremlin. “I know that I am right and that all criminal proceedings against me are fabricated.”

The arrest of Mr Navalny had been expected, but the day presented some of the most dramatic images of the past few years, underscoring both Russia’s growing domestic dissatisfaction and the Kremlin’s unrest over it.

Countless riot police in camouflage uniforms and shiny black helmets swarmed the arrival halls of Vnukovo and detained dozens. Other officials, some in plain clothes, came across some of Mr. Navalny’s finest employees while they were dining at an airport cafe and leading them away.

Russia’s independent media offered uninterrupted live coverage, which was freely available on Russia’s mostly uncensored Internet, from the moment German police officers escorted Mr. Navalny onto the asphalt in Berlin. Dozhd, an online television station, reported that its live feed was viewed six million times on Sunday night.

Always aware of the social media look at home, Mr Navalny responded in Russian to questions he was asked in English when he boarded the plane in Berlin. Shortly before the start, he published a video on Instagram in which his wife delivered a line from a popular Russian crime thriller: “Bring us vodka, boy. We’re going home. “

His style – tough, populist and humorous at the same time – contributed to the 44-year-old Navalny becoming Russia’s most famous opposition leader. An online audience of millions watches his YouTube videos showing corruption rife among the ruling elite.

But his followers aren’t the only ones watching.

In August, Mr. Navalny was poisoned in Siberia by a military grade nerve agent. He and Western officials said it was an assassination attempt by the Russian state.

In December, after an investigation by the Bellingcat research group, Mr Navalny pretended to be a Russian officer and called a security agent who was part of the unit that tried to kill him and extracted what sounded like a confession.

However, last Wednesday, Mr Navalny said he was coming home despite the threat of arrest. “Russia is my country,” he said. “Moscow is my city. And I miss her. “

The question now is whether Mr Navalny will only be detained for a few days or weeks – as has happened to him repeatedly in recent years – or for much longer.

Shortly after his arrest on Sunday evening, the Russian State Prison Service announced that Mr. Navalny would remain behind bars pending a trial for violating the terms of a suspended sentence he originally received in 2014. The sentence arose from a financial crime case brought against him and his brother, which the European Court of Human Rights later found unjustified.

According to the prison service, Mr Navalny did not report twice a month during his recovery in Germany last year, as requested by the court. In the days leading up to his return home, the service warned that he would be arrested for these reasons.

Mr Navalny’s fate may depend in part on the intensity of the backlash to his arrest at home and abroad. In Russia, his supporters called for protests in the coming days and found that his lawyer had not been given access to the opposition leader.

“Aleksei Navalny was kidnapped, he is in danger,” a senior adviser to Mr. Navalny, Leonid Volkov, posted on the telegram a few hours after his arrest. “He’s in the hands of people who have tried to kill him.”

In the United States, Jake Sullivan, national security adviser-designate to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., posted a Twitter request for the immediate release of Mr. Navalny: “The Kremlin’s attacks on Mr. Navalny are not just a violation of human rights, but an affront to the Russian people who want their voices to be heard. “

Outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also condemned the arrest. “Aleksei Navalny is not the problem,” he said in a statement. “We demand his immediate and unconditional release.”

Mr Putin, who has ruled for 21 years, retains tight control over television waves, domestic politics and an extensive security apparatus. But its popularity with the Russian public has waned in recent years amid stagnant incomes and widespread aversion to official corruption.

Mr Navalny has taken advantage of the discontent, built a nationwide network of local offices, and used social media to highlight the hidden wealth of the elite and the struggles of regular Russians.

Vladimir Murzin, a 50-year-old legal advisor, was among the supporters who wanted to greet him at Vnukovo Airport on Sunday. Mr Murzin said he and several others had come from Tambov – a 300 mile drive – to be there. The poisoning of the opposition leader only intensified his “years of anger over the injustice of what is happening in our country under the Putin regime”.

“This is a man the masses will follow,” said Mr Murzin of Mr Navalny. “Any citizen who does not agree with the current regime needs mutual support.”

But Mr Navalny’s flight on the Russian state airline Pobeda – which means “victory” – never made it to Vnukovo.

As the Boeing 737 approached Moscow, air traffic controllers radioed the flight’s pilots and said the plane could not land because of a blocked runway. The flight – and three others – was diverted to another Moscow airport, Sheremetyevo.

An official statement later blamed a stuck snowplow for the diversions. But it seemed like a transparent ploy by the Russian authorities to defuse the protests of the Navalny supporters gathered in Vnukovo.

“This shows once again what is happening in Russia,” said Navalny after his flight was rerouted and apologized to his fellow passengers for the inconvenience. “The rulers are not only disgusting thieves, but also totally pathetic people who spend their time with utter nonsense.”

The scale of the operation to cope with the opposition leader’s return contradicted Putin’s insistence that Mr Navalny is of minor importance. In December, Putin denied that the state had anything to do with the poisoning of Mr. Navalny, saying, “Who needs him?”

Mr Navalny – who was banned from running for the presidency in 2018 – has warned Russians to use elections to lose Putin’s power by voting for the best-positioned opposition candidate, even though the votes are not free and fair. The next test of this strategy will take place in September, when national parliamentary elections are scheduled.

Last year, Putin gave himself the opportunity to rule until 2036 by making constitutional changes that allowed him to run for two more terms. At the Moscow airports where the drama took place on Sunday, some of his opponents admitted that achieving political change in their country seemed increasingly to be a long, dangerous and potentially bloody road.

“It will be necessary to sacrifice many lives,” said Svetlana A. Utkina, a 52-year-old Russian teacher and supporter of Navalny, in an interview in Sheremetyevo shortly after the opposition leader was arrested there.

“I’m a pessimist and an idealist,” she said. “Because if you keep squeezing people for a long time, people’s fear will eventually be suppressed.”

Mr. Navalny’s wife was not arrested, and the arrival hall burst into chants of “Yu-li-a!” when she got out of customs without her husband.

A crush of journalists followed her into the Moscow night outside the airport. Shortly before getting into a car, she said, according to video footage from the scene, “The most important thing Aleksei said today is that he is not afraid. I am also not afraid and I urge you all not to be afraid. “

Oleg Matsnev and Sophia Kishkovsky contributed to the research.

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Health

‘Every Day Is Vital’: South Korea’s 11th-Hour Battle with Covid

‘Each Day Is Critical’: South Korea’s 11th-Hour Battle with Covid

SEOUL, South Korea – Intensive care beds are unavailable in several provinces in South Korea to treat the rapidly increasing number of Covid-19 patients. As of Monday, the government confirmed that only 42 beds were available nationwide. There were just six in the Seoul metropolitan area, which is home to half the country’s population and the majority of recent infections. If you

The recent explosion of coronavirus cases in South Korea has put the country at risk in ways it has not seen since the pandemic began. When cases cannot be brought under control and the burden on hospitals continues to worsen, the government can, for the first time, impose Level 3 restrictions, which are the highest level of socially distant rules before a lockdown in South Korea.

In a country that was a role model for the rest of the world for most of the year, a silent fear has spread. The streets of Seoul are getting emptier every day. Supermarkets have reported brisk sales of instant noodles and meal sets. Restaurant owners are concerned that they will be forced to close their doors to customers who only order takeout.

And now the virus is even harder to contain.

“Unlike in the past, this time around, the virus seems to be popping up everywhere and no place is safe,” said Myeong Hae-kyung, a head nurse at Yeungnam University Medical Center in Daegu who served on the front lines when the city was the epicenter of the city first coronavirus outbreak in the country earlier this year.

“In the last few days my life has only switched between hospital and home. I’m scared of going anywhere, ”she said.

This wave focuses on hospitals in South Korea. The country’s goal is to have hospital beds available to patients within one day of being diagnosed with the disease.

However, as of Sunday, 368 patients were waiting at home in the Seoul metropolitan area to be assigned to beds. Last week, a patient died at home in Seoul while waiting for a hospital bed. Another died at home in Seoul on Sunday.

The number of intensive care patients tripled this month to 274 on Monday. At the weekend, South Korea reported more than 1,000 new Covid-19 patients for five consecutive days, a record.

“We must secure hospital beds for seriously ill patients as if we were waging a war,” Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on Sunday. “Every day is critical.”

The rise in infections has created a bottleneck as health officials struggle to allocate a limited number of beds to patients. The government has ordered state and private general hospitals to convert at least one percent of their licensed beds to treat critically ill Covid patients.

Updated

Dec. Dec. 22, 2020 at 5:18 am ET

Health officials expect the bottleneck to decrease significantly in the coming week as more beds become available. The success of the effort will help determine whether the government increases social distancing restrictions to level 3, below which more than 2 million additional businesses would close or dramatically curtail their operations.

“As you can see, people don’t come in,” said Lee Jeong-ae, a restaurant owner in north Seoul, as she pointed to empty tables in her restaurant. “People who suffer most from social distancing are small business owners like us.”

Ms. Lee sells fish soups, fried pork, and other Korean dishes. She recently began preparing for new restrictions by addressing bulk orders for plastic containers, as restaurants like hers are only allowed to sell take-away under Level 3 guidelines.

The Seoul metropolitan area is still below level 2.5, schools, gyms, karaoke rooms, bars and other high risk facilities are closed. Restaurants, cinemas, hairdressing salons and many other shops remain open but must close before 9 p.m.

As of Monday, South Korea has reported 698 deaths in 50,591 cases. The aggressive campaign to “test, track and treat” patients has kept death rates comparatively low. But epidemiologists have urged the government to put level 3 restrictions in place before it’s too late.

Unlike previous waves of the virus with large clusters that officials could target and track, the most recent wave has spread across numerous small clusters in nursing homes, churches, prisons, saunas, and small private gatherings, making it difficult to contain.

Dr. Eom Joong-sik, who treats Covid-19 patients at Gachon University’s Gil Hospital in Incheon, a populous port city west of Seoul, said the current problems were due to the government, despite its reputation as a leader in being the EU could not plan ahead pandemic.

“Experts had already warned that if there was a wave in the Seoul metropolitan area, which is home to half the country’s population, hospital beds could become scarce and the government would have to develop a plan for this scenario,” said Dr. Eom. “Right now, not only are we struggling to secure hospital beds in the metropolitan area, but we’re also struggling to move patients to hospitals as we see hundreds of new patients every day.”

President Moon Jae-in, proud of his administration’s strategy of keeping as much of the economy going while fighting the pandemic, was reluctant to approve Level 3. Instead, the government has stepped up its testing and isolation campaigns and gradually introduced new social distancing rules.

67,000 people were tested for the virus every day over the past week, ten times more than in October. In Seoul and the surrounding cities, the government has added 134 temporary test stations to encourage people to get free tests even when they have no symptoms, in hopes of “preventively” isolating asymptomatic cases.

As part of the government’s efforts to stop people from spreading the disease over Christmas and New Years, birthday parties and other private gatherings of five or more people will be banned in the Seoul metropolitan area from Wednesday.

An annual Christmas Eve gathering around a Christmas tree in Seoul City Hall Square has been canceled. Large churches have put up their usual Christmas decorations but appear abandoned as prayer services with more than 20 people have been banned. The United Christian Churches of Korea have urged believers to celebrate the holidays at home by sharing Christmas carols with friends on social media.

“We will prepare carefully to introduce Level 3 if necessary,” said Son Young-rae, a health ministry spokesman. “But we hope the government and the people can work together to control the wave without going there.”