Tag: cancels

Categories
Politics

Pentagon cancels $10 billion JEDI cloud contract

Pentagon cancels $10 billion JEDI cloud contract

The Department of Defense announced Tuesday that it is canceling the $ 10 billion cloud contract that has been the subject of a legal battle between Amazon and Microsoft. But it is also announcing a new contract and soliciting suggestions from both cloud service providers, where both will likely get a reward.

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) deal has become one of the most tangled contracts for the Department of Defense. In a press release on Tuesday, the Pentagon said that “the JEDI cloud contract no longer meets its requirements due to evolving requirements, increased cloud capabilities and advances in the industry.”

Microsoft stocks lost about 0.4% after the news and Amazon stocks rose 3.5% after hitting a 52-week high.

The battle for a cloud computing project doesn’t seem to be over yet. The Pentagon said in the press release that it continues to need enterprise-level cloud capabilities and announced a new multi-vendor contract known as the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability.

The agency said it plans to seek proposals for the contract from both Amazon and Microsoft, adding that they are the only cloud service providers that can meet their needs. But, it added, it will continue to do market research to see if others could meet its specifications as well.

The lucrative JEDI contract was intended to modernize the IT operations of the Pentagon for services provided for up to 10 years. Microsoft received the cloud computing contract in 2019, beating the market leader Amazon Web Services.

A month later, Amazon’s cloud computing unit filed a lawsuit in the US federal court to protest the JEDI decision.

The company argued that President Donald Trump’s bias towards Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos influenced the Pentagon to hand over the contract to Microsoft.

Last year the Pentagon Inspector General released a report that the award did not appear to have been influenced by the White House.

However, the Inspector General noted in the 313-page report released in April 2020 that he had had limited cooperation with White House officials throughout his review and was therefore unable to complete his assessment of the ethical misconduct allegations.

Microsoft said in a blog post it understood the Pentagon’s decision to terminate the JEDI contract, but said the litigation over it was a need for reform.

“The 20 months since the DoD selected Microsoft as a JEDI partner highlight issues that deserve policymakers’ attention: If a company can postpone critical technology upgrades for those who defend our nation for years, the protest process must reformed, “said Toni Townes-Whitley, president of US Regulated Industries at Microsoft, wrote.

Townes-Whitley added that the DoD’s decision “does nothing to change the fact that, after careful review by professional procurement personnel, the DoD decided that Microsoft and our technology best met their needs, not just once, but twice. The Inspector General’s finding that there has been no evidence of interference in the procurement process and does not change the fact that the DoD and other federal agencies – large corporations, in fact, around the world – select Microsoft to meet their cloud computing and digital transformation needs on a regular basis. “

Amazon did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

A Pentagon official said on a call with reporters that the litigation itself is not necessarily the main reason for the change in approach. But since the landscape has changed in the meantime, the agency found that their needs had changed.

“Mission needs were our primary reason for doing this,” said John Sherman, DoD deputy chief information officer.

The DoD said that for the new contract, its cloud provider must meet several criteria, such as working at all three classification levels (i.e. unclassified, secret or top secret), available worldwide, and having top-notch cybersecurity controls.

The agency said it expects the contract to be worth billions, although it is still setting the maximum. The contract should last up to five years, including a three-year performance base period and two one-year option periods.

The Pentagon expects the JWCC “to be a bridge to our longer-term approach,” said Sherman. He said the department expects to see the direct rewards from the contract around April 2022 and open wider competition as early as 2025.

This story will be updated. Check back for updates.

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.

WATCH: How Amazon Web Services is moving massive amounts of data to the cloud

Categories
Health

Biden Cancels Go to to Vaccine Maker After Instances Report on Its Techniques

Biden Cancels Visit to Vaccine Maker After Times Report on Its Tactics

WASHINGTON – President Biden on Monday canceled a visit to a coronavirus vaccine facility operated by Emergent BioSolutions, and his spokeswoman announced that the administration would conduct an audit of the Strategic National Stockpile, the country’s emergency medical reserve.

Both measures came after a New York Times investigation into how the company gained oversized influence on the repository.

Instead of visiting Emergent’s Baltimore facility on Wednesday, the President will call a meeting at the White House with executives from pharmaceutical giants Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson, who should also attend the meeting in Baltimore. Merck and Emergent each work separately with Johnson & Johnson to manufacture the company’s coronavirus vaccine.

“We just felt it was a more suitable place to meet,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.

Emergent has signed more than $ 600 million in contracts with the federal government to manufacture coronavirus vaccines and expand its fill-and-finish capacity to complete the vaccine and therapeutic manufacturing process. A senior administration official said only executives from Merck and Johnson & Johnson would attend the White House meeting on Wednesday.

An emergent spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions about the cancellation on Monday. The spokeswoman, Nina DeLorenzo, had previously defended the company’s dealings with the government in written responses to questions, saying, “If almost no one else invested in preparation to protect the American public from serious threats, Emergent has done so, and the country is better prepared for it today. “

The Times investigation focused on the supply, which became notorious during the coronavirus pandemic for its lack of critical supplies such as N95 masks and other personal protective equipment.

When asked about the Times article during the White House press briefing on Monday, Ms. Psaki said, “The administration will conduct a comprehensive review and review of national inventory levels.”

Decisions about how to spend the repository’s limited budget should be based on careful assessments by government officials on how best to save lives. The Times noted, however, that it was largely driven by the needs and financial interests of a handful of biotech companies specializing in products that target terrorist threats rather than infectious diseases.

Chief among them is Emergent. For most of the past decade, the government has spent nearly half of the annual half-billion dollar inventory budget on Emergent’s anthrax vaccines, The Times noted.

In the competition for funding, pandemic preparation products – including N95 – have repeatedly been lost, according to the Times research, which was based on more than 40,000 pages of documents and interviews with more than 60 people with inside knowledge of inventory levels.

The image of some healthcare workers carrying garbage bags for personal protection has become an enduring symbol of the government’s failed response. Still, the Emergent government paid $ 626 million in 2020 for products containing anthrax vaccines to protect against a terrorist attack.

For much of Emergent’s two-decade history, the lead product was an anthrax vaccine, first approved in 1970 and purchased by the Michigan company in 1998. Over time, the price per dose that the government agreed to pay for Emergent has increased almost sixfold, reflecting inflation.

Ms. DeLorenzo previously defended the company’s pricing as fair. “You can’t protect people from anthrax for less than the cost of a latte,” she wrote in an email.

Emergent’s 2020 sales to the government included a new anthrax vaccine that has not yet been approved as safe and requires special authorization to be stocked. In the months leading up to the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration awarded the company long-term contracts worth around $ 3 billion. Last year, the government agreed to pay the company more than $ 600 million to manufacture coronavirus vaccines from other companies at its Baltimore facility. Emergent now manufactures coronavirus vaccines for AstraZeneca as well as Johnson & Johnson.

Emergent, whose board of directors is staffed with former federal officials, has allocated a lobbying budget that is more typical of some large drug companies, according to The Times. Tactics were sometimes resorted to that were considered underhanded even in Washington. For example, competing efforts to develop a better and cheaper anthrax vaccine failed after Emergent outmaneuvered its rivals, documents and interviews show.

Ms. DeLorenzo described the company’s lobbying as “educational” and “appropriate and necessary”.

Categories
Business

Frontier Cancels Flight, Citing Maskless Passengers

Frontier Cancels Flight, Citing Maskless Passengers

A Frontier Airlines flight from Miami to New York’s La Guardia Airport was canceled Sunday evening after a large group of passengers, including several adults, refused to wear masks.

On Monday morning, the airline was charged with anti-Semitism for the treatment of passengers who are Hasidic Jews, as well as demands for investigations by the Anti-Defamation League of New York and other groups. Frontier held firm to its position that passengers had refused to comply with federal regulations requiring them to wear masks.

Some cell phone videos that have surfaced do not show the confrontation between the passengers and Frontier crew members, only the aftermath. The footage from the plane appeared to show members of the group wearing masks. Some passengers said the episode escalated because only one member of the group, a 15-month-old child, was not carrying a child.

Videos of passengers exiting the plane amid the chaos and taped by others on the flight have been posted on Twitter by the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council. In one video, a passenger says, “This is an anti-Semitic act.”

Another video showed a couple holding a maskless baby in a car seat when children heard crying, and one woman explained that the young children in her group, sitting in the back of the plane, had removed their masks to eat.

In a third video, a passenger says “This is Nazi Germany” as the couple and the small child walk up the aisle of the plane to the exit.

A Frontier Airlines spokeswoman said in a statement that “a large group of passengers have repeatedly refused to comply with the US government’s mask mandate.”

“Several people, including several adults, have been repeatedly asked to wear their masks and refused to do so,” said Jennifer de la Cruz, the spokeswoman. “Due to the continued refusal to comply with the federal mask mandate, refusal to disembark, and aggression against the flight crew, local law enforcement agencies were engaged. The flight was eventually canceled. “

But members of the group said they wore masks.

“We are law abiding citizens, law abiding people,” said Martin Joseph, who traveled with 21 members of his family, including his children and grandchildren. “We have young children. We understand that the mask must be worn and everyone must wear a mask and that is the law. We keep a million percent. “

Mr. Joseph said his daughter and her husband were sitting in the back row with their 15-month-old child and two other couples and their children. All are Hasidic Jews, said Mr. Joseph, although he added that one of the couples was not related to him.

Updated

March 1, 2021, 9:49 p.m. ET

He said a flight attendant asked his daughter to put a mask on her baby. She argued that her son did not have to wear a mask because of his age. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires masks only for passengers who are at least 2 years old.

“Then they announced that all three couples would have to get off the plane in the back of the plane before they could take off,” said Mr. Joseph. “The babies were crying, the people were crying, the mothers were crying.”

Another passenger on the plane, Temima Stark, said she was sitting with her husband and child when the commotion started. She said she saw airline employees approaching passengers in the background. Everyone seemed to be wearing masks, she said, except for the baby who was eating.

As the passengers got off the plane, Ms. Stark, who was not traveling with the group, said she saw airline employees pulling each other up. Several other passengers interviewed on video reiterated the claim. Frontier Airlines did not comment directly on the allegation.

“The whole plane just went crazy,” she said.

A few minutes after disembarking, Ms. Stark said, the remaining passengers were ordered off the plane.

On Monday, the New York Anti-Defamation League called for a “full and transparent investigation” on Twitter, citing “obvious # anti-Semitic comments from the occupation or others”.

When asked about the allegations of anti-Semitism, Ms. de la Cruz, a spokeswoman for Frontier, said the airline is looking into “any situation that requires a passenger to be removed from a flight.”

“Like many other airlines,” she said, “Frontier has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to masks on our flights.” This becomes clear at the time of purchase, before and during the check-in process at the gate and on board the aircraft. “

Wearing masks and other public health measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus became a hotspot in the New York area during the summer as Covid-19 spread rapidly in parts of Brooklyn and Queens. The city’s health authorities said at the time they were particularly concerned about a significant increase in transmission between some of the city’s Hasidic communities. Similar tensions simmered in Israel.

When asked about the confrontation aboard the Frontier flight, Yossi Gestetner, founder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, said: “Regardless of what started this whole mess, people certainly blame airline staff for doing so unacceptable and needs to be addressed. “

“The airline wants the public to believe that 12 people, some of whom are unrelated other than belonging to the same ethnic group, decided to go to the airport and on the plane wearing masks and leave with masks on, as seen on videos however, to act together remove all masks while seated, ”he said. “It’s contrary to logic.”

Categories
Business

Fox Enterprise Cancels ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’

Fox Business Cancels ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’

Lou Dobbs, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s most loyal media fans, abruptly lost his pulpit on Friday when Fox Business canceled its weekday television show that had become a frequent clearinghouse for unsubstantiated theories about election fraud in the weeks following Mr. Trump lost the 2020 presidential race.

Mr Dobbs’ decade-long tenure on the network ended just a day after election technology company Smartmatic filed a defamation lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation and Fox News.

In the lawsuit, which seeks damages of at least $ 2.7 billion, Mr. Dobbs was named as a single defendant along with two other Fox anchors, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. Smartmatic specifically cited Mr Dobbs’ program, which was so full of falsehoods about Mr Trump’s defeat late last year that Fox Business was forced to run a fact-checking segment that exposed some of its own anchor’s claims.

Fox executives failed to elaborate on Friday as to why they canceled Mr. Dobbs’ program, which was the top-rated show on Fox Business and attracted a larger audience than its competitors on CNBC. The network said in a statement that it regularly reviews its program schedule.

“There were plans to launch new formats as suitable by-elections, including at Fox Business,” the network said. “This is part of these planned changes.”

One person familiar with Fox’s decision said the network’s concern about Mr. Dobbs arose prior to filing the Smartmatic lawsuit earlier this week. But the person who asked for anonymity to describe personal personnel matters conceded that Mr. Dobbs’ extreme and unrepentant advocacy of Mr. Trump’s false electoral claims had put his position at risk, as had other moments. For example, on the day of the siege of the US Capitol, Mr. Dobbs described protesters as “walking between the rope lines”.

The cancellation came as lawsuits and legal threats rippled the landscape of media organizations popular with right-wing viewers. Dominion Voting Systems has sued two lawyers representing Mr. Trump, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, over false claims made in Fox News and other outlets that the company supported President Biden’s victory and is considering additional litigation.

75-year-old Dobbs became known as a CNN host and became a mainstay of business news on television. He began hosting his Fox program in 2011, lured by the network’s co-founder, Roger Ailes, and was watched by a soon-to-be-very influential fan: Mr. Trump, who shared the right-wing values ​​of Mr. Dobbs, particularly the Anchors tough stance against uncontrolled immigration.

The men also shared an interest in questioning President Barack Obama’s birthplace, a canard that contributed to Mr Dobbs’ departure from CNN in 2009.

At the White House, Mr. Trump came to watch Mr. Dobbs’ program as needed. His allies learned that an appearance on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” would guarantee attention in the west wing. The president even patched the TV host during some political discussions with his White House staff.

Mr Trump, who was banned from Twitter last month, has been cautious on the topics he commented on since leaving the White House. But about an hour after news of Mr. Dobbs’ departure was announced, the former president made a statement to the New York Times.

“Lou Dobbs is and was great,” said Mr. Trump. “Nobody loves America more than Lou. He had a large and loyal following who will pay close attention to his next move, and that following includes me. “

Loyalty went both ways. On Thursday, his last day at Fox Business, Mr Dobbs spoke disparagingly about the leaders of the Republican Party because, in his opinion, he had shown insufficient loyalty to Mr Trump. He described Senator Mitch McConnell and Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Republican leaders in Congress, as “toads for the Democratic Party”.

Mr Dobbs remains on contract with Fox, but the network has no plans to get him back on the air, according to one person who has been briefed on his plans. Right now, a rotating group of hosts will be replacing Mr Dobbs in his 5pm slot. Anchors Jackie DeAngelis and David Asman will sit for him next week. (“Lou Dobbs Tonight” repeated at 7pm) The cancellation was previously reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Smartmatic’s lawsuit filed Thursday cited a false claim from a November episode of Lou Dobbs Tonight that Hugo Chávez, the former president of Venezuela, was involved in the development of Smartmatic technology and designed it to be the voices processed by it can be changed undetected. (Mr. Chávez, who died in 2013, had nothing to do with Smartmatic.)

The Chavez claim was made by Ms. Powell, who worked as an attorney for Mr. Trump and was a frequent guest on Mr. Dobbs’ program. She was also sued by Smartmatic along with Mr Giuliani on Thursday. Mr. Dobbs was also cited in the lawsuit for using the term “Cyber ​​Pearl Harbor” to describe an alleged election fraud conspiracy, borrowed from the language used by Ms. Powell.

There are indications that the other hosts named in the lawsuit, Ms. Bartiromo and Ms. Pirro, are in a more favorable position in Fox management than Mr. Dobbs.

Weeks ago it was clear that defamation suits from Smartmatic and Dominion could be imminent. Since then, Ms. Bartiromo has been selected to audition for a new 7pm program on Fox News, and Ms. Pirro debuted a new travel program, “Castles USA”, on Fox Nation’s streaming service visiting castles across the country.

Fox is committed to tackling the Smartmatic litigation, saying in a statement, “We are proud of our coverage of the 2020 elections and will vigorously defend this unsubstantiated lawsuit in court.”

Don Herzog, who teaches First Amendment and defamation law at the University of Michigan, said it was possible that Mr. Dobbs’s rejection could help Fox defend the lawsuit. If Mr Dobbs had continued to discuss Smartmatic or promoted electoral fraud in his program, the network could have been liable for any new claims, Mr Herzog said.

Fox officials could also argue that the lawsuit alerted them to falsehoods that Mr. Dobbs helped spread. In a test atmosphere, Mr Dobbs’ cancellation of the program could help convince the judges that the network is acting in good faith.

Mr. Herzog said a responsible judge would counter that feeling: “A judge should instruct a jury that what Fox does later to show that they are acting in good faith, not whether they are acting in good faith, is not regulates a little earlier. “

Mr Dobbs’ sudden exit was so sudden that even the anchor who stood in for him on Friday, Mr Asman, did not appear to have been informed of the news.

At the end of the show at 5 p.m., Mr. Asman smiled at the camera, wishing his viewers a good weekend and adding a goodbye note:

“Lou will be back on Monday.”

John Koblin and Jonah E. Bromwich contributed to the coverage.

Categories
Health

California governor cancels Covid briefing over security considerations

California governor cancels Covid briefing over safety concerns

Gavin Newsom, California Governor, speaks during a press conference in Sacramento, California

Rich Pedroncelli | Bloomberg | Getty Images

California Governor Gavin Newsom canceled his planned coronavirus update on Wednesday out of “caution” after a crowd of protesters who supported President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol.

“We are concerned for the safety of the California Congress delegation and US Capitol staff and we endeavor to provide assistance in any way we can,” the Democratic governor said in a statement, adding that he was concerned about the safety of his own office staff California too.

“Peaceful protest is an important mechanism of our democracy, but what we are seeing in our nation’s Capitol is reprehensible and an outright attack on our democracy and democratic institutions,” Newsom said.

The news comes as California faces the deadliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the state reports around 354 Covid deaths daily, a record average per week and an increase of nearly 49% compared to a week ago.

A governor’s spokesman told CNBC that the capital’s staff had been asked to work from home for the rest of the day. People who gathered to protest on the Capitol grounds have since left and there have been no major incidents, the spokesman said.

The Sacramento Police Department said in a tweet that 11 people were arrested for illegally possessing pepper spray and that there were some physical fights. However, the protesters have broken up and a large police presence will remain in the area all night.