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Health

The Newest Coronavirus Comes From Canines

The Latest Coronavirus Comes From Dogs

It also had an unusual genetic mutation, a deletion in what is known as the N gene, which codes for an important structural protein. This deletion has not been documented in other canine coronaviruses, said Dr. Vlasova, but similar mutations have appeared in the viruses that cause Covid and SARS. “So what does that mean?” Asks Dr. Gray. “Well, you know, we don’t really know.”

Although much more research is needed, one possibility is that the mutation may help animal coronaviruses adapt to human hosts, the researchers said.

It is too early to say whether this virus poses a risk to humans. Researchers have yet to prove that this virus is the cause of the pneumonia that has brought patients to the hospital. And they haven’t yet studied whether people who can get the virus from animals can pass it on to other people.

“We have to be careful because things keep popping up that don’t turn into outbreaks,” said John Lednicky, a University of Florida virologist who was not an author of the study.

Even so, the study was “extremely important,” he said. “The fact that it is a coronavirus again shows us that this is a group of viruses that deserves further investigation.” He added, “We should take this seriously and look for it because if we see more cases the alarm bells should ring.”

Indeed, one possibility is that coronaviruses are spreading between humans and other species, including dogs, far more frequently than before.

“At the moment we have no reason to believe that this virus will cause a pandemic,” said Dr. Vlasova. “What kind of attention we want to bring to this research is that coronavirus transmission from animal sources to humans is likely to be a very, very, very common occurrence. And so far it has been largely ignored. “

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Business

Irish Hospitals Are Newest to Be Hit by Ransomware Assaults

Irish Hospitals Are Latest to Be Hit by Ransomware Attacks

A cyber attack on the Irish health system has crippled the country’s healthcare system for a week, banning access to patient records, delaying Covid-19 tests and forcing medical appointments to be canceled.

Using ransomware, malware that encrypts a victim’s data until they pay a ransom, the people behind the attack have held the data hostage in Ireland’s publicly funded health system, the Health Service Executive. The attack forced the HSE to shut down its entire information technology system.

In a press conference on Thursday, Paul Reid, managing director of HSE, said the attack was “an upset stomach”.

Caroline Kohn, a spokeswoman for a group of hospitals in the east of the country, said the hospitals were forced to keep all of their records on paper. “We’re back to the 1970s,” she said.

Security researchers believe the attack on Ireland’s hospitals was the work of a Russian-speaking cyber criminal group called Wizard Spider. In a ransom note posted online, the criminals threatened to reveal the stolen health network data unless officials pay a ransom of $ 19,999,000.

Ireland’s Prime Minister, Micheál Martin said the government would not pay. “We are very sure that we will not pay a ransom,” he said at a press conference last week.

Mr. Reid said the effects would be felt for many weeks. “This is not a short sprint,” said Mr. Reid. “This will have a lasting effect.”

The attack is the latest in a spate of ransomware attacks targeting hospitals around the world in recent weeks.

In California, Scripps Health, which operates five hospitals and a number of San Diego clinics, is still trying to bring its systems back online two weeks after a ransomware attack crippled its data. In New Zealand, a ransomware attack crippled several hospitals across the country, forced clinicians to use pen and paper, and postponed non-selective surgeries.

Late last year, a ransomware attack on the University of Vermont Medical Center changed the lives of cancer patients whose chemotherapy treatments had to be delayed or restored from memory.

The attacks come on top of a similar ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, the American pipeline operator that supplies nearly half of the gas, diesel and jet fuel to the east coast. This attack caused Colonial Pipeline to cease pipeline operations, causing panic buying at the pump as well as gas and jet fuel shortages along the east coast. Colonial Pipeline agreed to pay its extortionists, another gang of cybercriminals called DarkSide, nearly $ 5 million to decrypt their data.

The attack in Ireland has left residue in emergency rooms from Dublin to Galway and patients have been urged to stay away from hospitals unless they need urgent care.

Appointments for radiation treatments, MRIs, gynecological visits, endoscopies and other health services have been canceled in many Irish countries. Health officials said the attack also caused delays in Covid-19 test results, but a vaccine scheduling system is still working.

Irish health officials said Thursday that HSE was working to build a new network separate from the affected network. Hundreds of experts were recruited to rebuild 2,000 different systems. The effort should cost tens of millions of euros, said Reid.

The HSE announced on Thursday that it had been provided with a key that could be used to decrypt the data held as a ransom. However, it is unclear whether this would work.

Ransomware attacks against hospitals increased after two separate attempts – one by the Pentagon’s Cyber ​​Command and a separate litigation by Microsoft – to shut down a large botnet, a network of infected computers called Trickbot, which is the main channel for ransomware served.

In the weeks following these efforts, cyber criminals said they wanted to attack more than 400 hospitals. The threat prompted the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to warn healthcare operators to step up their protection against ransomware.

Ransomware groups continue to operate with relative immunity in Russia, where government officials rarely prosecute cyber criminals and refuse to extradite them. In response to last week’s Colonial Pipeline episode, President Biden said Russia has some responsibility for ransomware attacks as cyber criminals operate within its borders.

Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm, said members of Wizard Spider, the group responsible for attacking Ireland’s health systems, speak Russian and researchers “have great confidence that they are Eastern European and likely Russian”.

Last month, a Florida school district data was held hostage by Wizard Spider. Broward County Public Schools, the sixth largest school district in the United States, was hacked by cyber criminals demanding $ 40 million in cryptocurrency. The criminals encrypted data and posted thousands of school information online after officials refused payment.

Last December, chip maker Advantech was also hit by Wizard Spider. The data was published on the so-called Dark Web after refusing to pay.

Some cyber insurance companies have taken on the cost of ransom payments and calculated that the ransom payments are still cheaper than the cost of rebuilding systems and data from scratch. Regulators have started pressuring insurance companies to pay ransom demands, arguing that they are only launching more ransom attacks and encouraging cyber criminals to make more lucrative demands.

AXA, the French insurance giant, said last week it would no longer cover ransom payments. Within days of its announcement, AXA was hit by a ransomware attack that paralyzed information technology operations in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Philippines.

“This is just business as usual,” said John Dickson, cybersecurity expert at Denim Group’s San Antonio, in an interview Thursday. “These attacks shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s paying attention.”

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Business

Here is The Newest Information on the Colonial Pipeline Shutdown

Here's The Latest News on the Colonial Pipeline Shutdown

HOUSTON – Drivers scrambled to refuel their vehicles at gas stations in the southeast on Tuesday in a panic frenzy that left thousands of gas stations out of gas because of an important fuel line stretching 5,500 miles from Texas New Jersey stretches largely shut down after last week’s ransomware attack.

The shutdown has also left the airlines vulnerable. Several said they were flying on jet fuel to make sure the service wasn’t disrupted.

Gasoline in Georgia and several other states rose 3 to 10 cents a gallon on Tuesday, a price surge normally only seen when hurricanes disrupt refining and pipeline operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline rose 2 cents on Tuesday, with higher prices reported in the southeast, according to the AAA automotive group. A gallon of gasoline rose, on average, nearly 7 cents in South Carolina and 6 cents in North Carolina, while gasoline in Virginia rose about 3 cents per gallon. Gas stations in the southern states were selling two to three times their normal amount of gasoline on Tuesday, according to the Oil Price Information Service, an organization tracking the oil sector. Some stations are running out of fuel while others limit purchases to 10 gallons.

Gas Buddy, a service that tracks gas prices, reported that nearly 8 percent of gas stations in Virginia ran out of gas, due more to panic buying than a lack of gas.

The heads of state responded with measures to keep the flow of fuel stable and to stabilize prices.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed an executive order suspending his state’s gasoline tax by Saturday, which is approximately 20 cents a gallon. He said the move would “help level the price for a while,” and warned of panic buying, which he felt was unnecessary. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam each declared a state of emergency to suspend some regulations governing the transportation of fuel.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced that he was ready to administer the state’s price cut law, making excessive congestion a criminal offense. “I urge everyone to be careful and patient,” said Wilson. “I urge citizens to remain vigilant and notify my office immediately if they think they are witnessing or are aware of price cuts.”

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan on Tuesday issued an emergency air-fuel waiver to alleviate fuel shortages in states whose gasoline supplies are affected by the pipeline shutdown, including the District of Columbia, Maryland , Pennsylvania and Virginia. The waiver will continue until May 18.

Colonial Pipeline, the company that operates the pipeline, hopes to restore most operations by the end of the week. The attack carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation by an organized crime group called DarkSide exposed the vulnerability of the American energy system. The pipeline supplies the eastern United States with nearly half of its transportation fuel.

Industry analysts said the impact would be relatively minor as long as the artery is fully restored soon. “With a solution to the shutdown in sight, the cyberattack is now being treated as a minor disruption by the market and prices are reducing panic gains on Monday,” said Louise Dickson, oil market analyst at Rystad Energy.

Gasoline prices usually go up at this time of year as the summer driving season approaches. Even before the Colonial Pipeline ceased operations, average national gas prices rose nearly a cent per gallon every day.

Higher fuel prices affect workers and people on lower incomes the most, as they spend the highest percentage of their income on gasoline and tend to drive less efficient vehicles. This makes rising gasoline prices a potential political problem after several years of relatively low prices at the pump.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki made a statement Monday evening that President Biden is monitoring fuel shortages in the southeast.

Several airports in the south and in the Washington region could be affected in the next few days as they are connected to the pipeline and usually only have a few days of supply.

The interstate pipeline system for supplying airports with jet fuel had become increasingly vulnerable to costly disruptions in recent years, the industry trading group Airlines for America said in a 2018 report. And if there are disruptions, airlines have few options other than flying on extra fuel, stopping flights or canceling and rerouting flights altogether.

“Pipelines play a vital role in supplying our nation with jet fuel and ensuring air service – for passengers and cargo – for communities large and small,” said the group at the time. “Unfortunately, our national pipeline system is fragile today.”

After the disruption last weekend, American Airlines announced that two daily flights from Charlotte, NC One, to Honolulu, Dallas, where customers will switch planes, have been halted. The other, to London, will stop in Boston to refuel. Flights are expected to return to their original flight schedules on Saturday. Southwest Airlines said it was flying to Nashville on extra fuel and United Airlines said it was flying extra fuel to Baltimore; Nashville; Savannah, Ga .; and Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport in South Carolina. United, Southwest and Delta Air Lines said they had not detected any operational disruptions so far.

Gillian Friedman contributed to the coverage.

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Business

How Apple’s newest iOS replace may assist Amazon’s rising advert enterprise

How Apple's latest iOS update could help Amazon's growing ad business

Ein illustratives Bild der Amazon Shopping App, das auf einem Handybildschirm vor einem alten (L) und einem neuen (R) Amazon Shopping App-Symbol auf einem Bildschirm angezeigt wird. Amazon hat sein neues Amazon Shopping-App-Symbol stillschweigend geändert und das blaue Band oben ersetzt, das einige ungünstige Vergleiche gezogen hat. Am Mittwoch, dem 3. März 2021, in Dublin, Irland.

Artur Widak | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Das Werbegeschäft von Amazon steigt rasant.

Die massive “andere” Geschäftskategorie des Unternehmens, bei der es sich hauptsächlich (aber nicht ausschließlich) um Werbeeinnahmen handelt, stieg im ersten Quartal um 77% auf 6,9 Mrd. USD.

Die jüngsten Datenschutzänderungen von Apple, die es den Nutzern erleichtern, Werbetreibende daran zu hindern, sie zu verfolgen, könnten das Wachstum des Unternehmens beschleunigen.

Amazon verfügt über eine enorme Menge an detaillierten Verbraucherdaten. Bis zum letzten Monat gab das Unternehmen an, mehr als 200 Millionen Mitglieder weltweit in seinem Prime-Programm zu haben. Mit dem Inkrafttreten der Änderungen der App-Tracking-Transparenz von Apple werden die Daten von Amazon wahrscheinlich zu einem selteneren und wertvolleren Gut für Vermarkter.

Durch die Änderungen von Apple an iOS 14.5 können iPhone- und iPad-Benutzer die Art der Nachverfolgung, mit der Werbetreibende Anzeigen gezielt ausrichten oder messen können, ob Anzeigen funktionieren, einfacher deaktivieren. Obwohl Amazon diese Aufforderung auch seinen Kunden zeigen muss, ist dies für den E-Commerce-Riesen weniger wichtig. Wenn Benutzer bei Amazon angemeldet sind, kann das Unternehmen weiterhin nachverfolgen, was sie in der App tun, welche Anzeigen sie gesehen, angeklickt oder gekauft haben, unabhängig davon, ob sich ein Benutzer angemeldet hat oder nicht.

Es ist noch nicht klar, wie sehr oder wie lange andere wichtige Akteure, die sich mehr auf Informationen von Drittanbietern verlassen (wie Facebook), von Apples Änderungen betroffen sein werden. Die Verantwortlichen der Werbeagenturen teilten CNBC mit, dass ihre Kundenbudgets größtenteils stabil bleiben, während sie abwarten, wie sich diese Änderungen auf die Leistung ihrer Kampagnen auswirken.

Viele in der Marketingwelt gaben jedoch an, Amazon und ähnliche datenreiche Anzeigenangebote von Unternehmen wie Walmart oder Target als zuverlässigen Weg zu betrachten, um die Art von Daten zu erhalten, auf die sie sich verlassen, um Anzeigen auszurichten und die Leistung zu messen. Aufgrund der starken Erstanbieterbeziehung von Amazon zu Verbrauchern kann Amazon weiterhin Aktivitäten über seine verschiedenen Immobilien hinweg sammeln. Wenn Käufer beispielsweise eine Anzeige auf Prime Video ansehen und später einen Kauf tätigen, sollte sie in der Lage sein, Marketingfachleuten diese Informationen anzubieten.

Mit diesem Status auf dem Markt scheint Amazon bereit zu sein, seine Rolle im Anzeigen-Ökosystem weiter auszubauen. Es könnte von seiner traditionellen Rolle als Ort, an dem Vermarkter von Konsumgütern bestimmte Produkte vorantreiben, zu einem potenziellen Kraftpaket für Markenwerbung werden.

Vertreter von Amazon lehnten es ab, sich zu den Änderungen an iOS 14.5 und den möglichen Auswirkungen auf die Werbeeinnahmen des Unternehmens zu äußern.

Was die Änderung von Apple für die Anzeigen von Amazon bedeutet

Apple hat letzte Woche iOS 14.5 veröffentlicht, ein regelmäßiges Update seines iPhone- und iPad-Betriebssystems. Das Update enthielt ein neues Framework, das den Benutzern mehr Transparenz und Kontrolle über Apps bietet, die sie für Werbezwecke verfolgen möchten.

Wenn Benutzer unter dem neuen iOS eine App öffnen, wird ein Popup-Fenster angezeigt, in dem sie gefragt werden, ob die App auf ihre eindeutige Geräte-ID für Werbetreibende zugreifen kann. In diesem Popup werden Sie gefragt, ob sie nachverfolgt werden möchten, und es wird angezeigt, warum Sie sich für die App anmelden möchten. Beispielsweise könnte eine App anzeigen, dass Sie Anzeigen erhalten, die für Ihre Interessen relevanter sind, wenn Sie die Nachverfolgung zulassen.

Die Auswirkungen dürften variieren. Im Januar veröffentlichte MKM Partners eine Studie, die auf einem Rahmen basiert, um das IDFA-Risiko für Online-Unternehmen anhand von sieben Faktoren zu bestimmen. Von den untersuchten Unternehmen würde Amazon zu den niedrigsten Risikopositionen gehören, sagten sie.

Experten sehen die “ummauerten Gärten” von Facebook, Google und Amazon größtenteils weniger unter den Veränderungen in der Branche. Obwohl Werbung einen Großteil der Daten verliert, auf die sich die Spieler verlassen haben, haben die großen immer noch Daten darüber, was die Leute auf ihren eigenen Grundstücken tun.

Aber selbst auf der Ebene der ummauerten Gärten hängen die Auswirkungen ab, und soziale Netzwerke verfügen möglicherweise über weniger Daten, die Vermarkter benötigen als ein E-Commerce-Player wie Amazon.

“Nicht alle ummauerten Gärten sind gleich”, sagte Shane McAndrew, Chief Data Strategy Officer von Mindshare.

Wenn es um die Brot-und-Butter-Anzeigenprodukte von Amazon geht – Anzeigen, mit denen Unternehmen Placements auf Amazon-Websites und -Apps kaufen können -, werden Werbetreibende wahrscheinlich nur geringe Auswirkungen haben, sagte Will Tjernlund, Chief Marketing Officer von Goat Consulting, einem Unternehmen, das sich auf Marken konzentriert Verkauf bei Amazon.

“Die traditionellen, älteren Werbeprodukte bei Amazon werden keine Wirkung zeigen. Sie sollten genauso gut wie normal sein”, sagte Tjernlund. “Da sie Amazon-eigene Daten verwenden, ziehen sie Menschen auf Amazon-eigenen Websites oder eigenen Apps an.”

Wenn Benutzer über verschiedene Amazon-Eigenschaften angemeldet sind, sollten diese Daten nicht beeinträchtigt werden. Wenn beispielsweise jemand bei der kommenden IMDb TV-App von Amazon angemeldet war, können diese Daten für Marketingzwecke in der Amazon-App verwendet werden, selbst wenn dieser Benutzer die Freigabe seiner Anzeigenkennung auf seinem Telefon deaktiviert hat.

“All diese Daten sind ein faires Spiel für die Ausrichtung von Anzeigen auf Amazon-Nutzer in Amazon-eigenen Immobilien”, sagte Eric Seufert, Analyst und Inhaber der Website Mobile Dev Memo.

Wenn Werbetreibende in einer Post-IDFA-Welt auf Schwierigkeiten mit Amazon stoßen könnten, handelt es sich um Anzeigenprodukte des Unternehmens, die eine externe Nachverfolgung beinhalten und keinen großen Teil seines Geschäfts ausmachen.

Beispielsweise hat Amazon möglicherweise Probleme mit seiner nachfrageseitigen Plattform, mit der Werbetreibende Verbraucher sowohl auf Amazon-Websites als auch auf Websites von Drittanbietern erreichen können.

Amazon teilt die Einnahmen für seine verschiedenen Produkte nicht öffentlich auf, aber Experten glauben, dass Anzeigen, die außerhalb der Website geschaltet werden, einen relativ kleinen Teil seines Anzeigengeschäfts ausmachen. EMarketer schätzt, dass 89% der Nettoeinnahmen von Amazon in Bezug auf digitale Anzeigen in den USA aus E-Commerce-Kanalanzeigen stammen, was bedeutet, dass Anzeigen vor Ort wahrscheinlich die überwiegende Mehrheit ausmachen.

Nach den Änderungen von Apple und Google, die planen, Tracking-Cookies von Drittanbietern zu verwerfen, wird das Tracking außerhalb der Website nicht so einfach sein.

“Es wird eine Herausforderung für sie sein, Medien außerhalb des Unternehmens mithilfe ihrer Daten von ihrem Grundstück zu kaufen. Wir wissen, dass dies ein Problem auf dem Desktop und auf Mobilgeräten sein wird”, so Forrester senior Analyst Collin Colburn sagte. “Der Gegenwind wird sicherlich außerhalb des Geländes sein, eine Kategorie, die sie zu wachsen versucht haben.”

Die Pandemie und der Aufstieg der “Einzelhandelsmedien”

Amazon steht an der Spitze eines weiteren Marketingtrends.

Da so viele Verbraucher zu Hause waren und zu Beginn der Pandemie nicht in Geschäften einkauften, suchten Marken nach noch mehr Informationen darüber, wer ihre Kunden sind und wie sie einkaufen.

Walmart, Target, CVS, Kroger und eine Reihe anderer Unternehmen bieten Anzeigenangebote im Bereich “Einzelhandelsmedien” an – die Möglichkeit, Anzeigen auf Produkte auszurichten, bei denen Verbraucher sie tatsächlich auf diesen Websites kaufen. Forrester Research schätzt, dass Marken im Jahr 2020 mindestens 5 Milliarden US-Dollar für Einzelhandelsmedien ausgegeben haben. Obwohl einige dieser Angebote seit Jahren bestehen, haben sich Einzelhändler wie Walmart in der Region verdoppelt.

“Es boomt. Ich meine, es ist zu diesem Zeitpunkt absolut riesig”, sagte Colburn. “Wir haben sehr konservativ gesagt, dass Marken im Jahr 2020 mindestens 5 Milliarden US-Dollar für Einzelhandelsmedien ausgegeben haben. Es ist viel mehr als das.”

In einer Welt, in der es Werbetreibenden schwerer fällt, Verbraucher über Websites hinweg zu verfolgen, bieten Einzelhandelsmedienlösungen eine Möglichkeit, am Kaufort mehr Einblicke zu erhalten.

“Das Problem ist, wenn Sie auf eine Google-Anzeige oder eine Facebook-Anzeige klicken und nicht wissen, ob diese konvertiert wird oder nicht”, sagte der ehemalige Amazon-Mitarbeiter und CEO von CommerceIQ Guru Hariharan. CommerceIQ berät Marken in ihrem Amazon-Geschäft. “Sie wissen, dass es angeklickt wurde, aber Sie wissen nicht, wer darauf geklickt hat. Wir sehen also, wie sich ein Haufen dieser Dollars bewegt.”

Nach den Änderungen von Apple “wird die Fähigkeit für mich, Sie als Profil oder Verbraucher anzusprechen, verringert, was bedeutet, dass es noch weniger messbar wird, während Amazon und Walmart immer messbarer werden”, sagte Hariharan. “Wenn Sie General Mills sind, wird Walmart für Sie viel interessanter, weil der Einkauf von Lebensmitteln immer noch mehr bei Walmart als bei Amazon stattfindet.”

Den Trichter nach oben bewegen

Werbetreibende möchten wissen, dass sie auf ihre Kosten kommen. Selbst wenn sie große Branding-Anstrengungen unternehmen, die einen Verbraucher nicht unbedingt dazu drängen, ein Paar Shorts zu kaufen oder sofort eine App herunterzuladen, möchten sie wissen, dass die Werbung etwas bewirkt hat. Marken suchen möglicherweise nach Werbeumgebungen, die ihnen diese Antworten geben, sobald diese Fähigkeit schwieriger wird und sie sich nicht mehr auf so viele Daten von Drittanbietern verlassen können. Amazon positioniert sich mit seinen umfangreichen Datenbeziehungen von Erstanbietern zu so vielen Verbrauchern zunehmend als eine Lösung.

Das boomende Werbegeschäft von Amazon wird derzeit hauptsächlich von kauforientierter Werbung angetrieben. Dies schließt “niedrig hängende Früchte” wie gesponserte Anzeigen bei der Suche oder an anderer Stelle auf der Website ein, sagte Aaron Goldman, Chief Marketing Officer von Mediaocean. Aber Amazon setzt sich zunehmend auch für markenorientiertere Werbung ein, was das Wachstum erheblich beschleunigen könnte.

Amazon hat bereits signalisiert, dass es seine Markenwerbeinitiativen vertieft. Während seiner Eröffnungspräsentation von NewFronts am Montag hob das Unternehmen die Möglichkeiten für Vermarkter hervor, seine Videoeigenschaften zu nutzen, darunter die Streaming-Plattformen Prime Video, IMDb TV und Twitch sowie Veranstaltungen mit großen Eintrittskarten wie “Thursday Night Football”. Zu diesem Zweck erreicht der werbefinanzierte Videoinhalt von Amazon mittlerweile mehr als 120 Millionen Zuschauer pro Monat.

Vermarkter und Branchenanalysten sagten gegenüber CNBC, dass es nicht lange dauern wird, bis Amazon auch die Audiowerbung hochfährt. Das sagte das Unternehmen letzten Monat auf dem jährlichen Führungstreffen des Interactive Advertising Bureau, bei dem es über die bevorstehenden Schritte im Podcast-Werbebereich sprach. Das Unternehmen kann den kürzlich erfolgten Kauf des Podcasting-Start-ups Wondery und des werbefinanzierten Amazon Music-Dienstes nutzen, um zusätzliche Werbeeinnahmen zu erzielen, indem Marken neben Audioinhalten auch Anzeigen kaufen können.

Amazon baut auch Markenwerbung auf seiner zentralen E-Commerce-Plattform aus, indem gesponserte Videoanzeigen in der Suche geschaltet werden. Dies ist ein wertvolles Tool für kleine und große Unternehmen, die Produkte bei Amazon verkaufen.

“Ich denke, dies ist eine enorme Chance”, sagte McAndrew von Mindshare. “Sie werden sehen, wie sie gezielt in den Bereich der Markenwerbung vordringen, wie sie es noch nie zuvor getan haben. Sie haben alle Zutaten”, um in diesem Bereich zu gewinnen, sagte er.

Aber in diesem Bereich gibt es noch viel zu tun, sagte Nicholas Seo, Markteinführungsdirektor von MightyHive.

“Für einige dieser kreativeren Formate, bei denen es sich mehr um Ausführungen und Integrationen handelt, muss im Backend viel Arbeit geleistet werden”, sagte er. “Ich denke, das Interesse ist definitiv da, zumindest von unseren Kunden, aber mehr noch, Amazon hat Prioritäten zu setzen, wo sie sich konzentrieren möchten. Aber wir sehen definitiv eine Menge Dinge auf dieser Seite.”

Und es könnte ein noch höheres Wachstum fördern.

“Ich denke immer noch, dass sie aufgrund der direkten Reaktion um 70% weiter wachsen können. Ich denke, dass sie nördlich von 100% wachsen können, sobald sie die Markenchance vollständig monetarisieren”, sagte Goldman und wies auf Möglichkeiten wie Video- und Audio-Anzeigen hin.

Categories
Health

AstraZeneca’s Newest Stumble Once more Clouds European Vaccinations

AstraZeneca’s Latest Stumble Again Clouds European Vaccinations

LONDON – This week’s announcement that the AstraZeneca shot, the workhorse of global vaccine adoption, was nearly 80 percent effective in a gold-standard American study was facilitated by the many countries that rely on it.

“If you get the call, get the bump,” urged UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock, part of a campaign by European lawmakers to calm people’s nerves with the shot after a recent security crisis.

But by Tuesday that campaign was off course, at least for the moment. For AstraZeneca, it appeared to be yet another episode of public relations whiplash, part of a string of recent mistakes and communications errors by the company that scientists said undermined efforts to sell people with one of the most effective and essential coronavirus vaccines.

In a highly unusual move, American health officials said Tuesday that the company’s report on the results of its US studies was not entirely accurate, suggesting that AstraZeneca used only the most favorable data to produce what appeared to be spectacular efficacy results.

These comments sparked new tensions between AstraZeneca and American officials, despite the company battling for coveted Food and Drug Administration approval. More urgently, however, she wrench the efforts of elected leaders around the world to restore confidence in a shot that, due to its low price and simple storage requirements, has rebuilt the backbone of many countries’ campaigns to end the pandemic have provided.

“It weakens confidence,” said Simon Clarke, associate professor of cell microbiology at the University of Reading. “If you pump things up and people don’t question it inappropriately, it undermines trust.”

Confidence in the vaccine had already fallen across Europe after it was recently reported that a very small number of recipients had developed unusual blood clots.

In France, Germany, Italy and Spain today, more people believe the vaccine is unsafe than it is safe. Polls have shown that this is a blow to a shot that remains the continent’s best hope of saving people’s lives amid a growing number of new infections. Millions of cans are used unused in refrigerators across the continent. Doctors report that some people stop injections because of concerns about side effects.

Despite the much worrying news about the vaccine, European and global regulators have found it safe and effective. In the UK alone, more than 11 million doses have been administered, almost all of which have no serious side effects. This led to hospital admissions and helped the country get out of a terrible wave of infections over the winter.

Even so, AstraZeneca’s US trial was eagerly awaited. It had been expected to be the largest of its kind for the shot and to give the cleanest, most complete picture of the vaccine’s effectiveness. American officials saw it as an irrefutable test of the vaccine’s performance.

And health officials around the world saw this as a crucial guide for their own rollouts: it would provide vital data on the elderly who weren’t as well represented in previous studies and a more accurate reading of the vaccine’s overall effectiveness. which from previous attempts had appeared lower than that of other leading shots.

As soon as AstraZeneca announced its results on Monday, stating that the vaccine had 79 percent effectiveness in preventing symptomatic Covid-19, lawmakers cited it as part of their fledgling efforts to build public confidence in the vaccine.

By Tuesday, scientists said, it appeared AstraZeneca had punched a hole in those efforts. Rather than clarifying questions about the shot, it had recalled communication issues that have haunted the company since last year, delaying the regulatory process in some regions, and causing hesitation among some recipients.

Updated

March 25, 2021, 8:30 a.m. ET

So far, according to the block, only 55 percent of the AstraZeneca doses shipped to the European Union have been placed in people’s arms, which is well below the rate of use for other vaccines. Around seven million cans are still in the fridge.

While some countries have given more than 70 percent of their doses, others are struggling to get them off the shelves: Germany and France have given about half of their AstraZeneca shipments, and Luxembourg has only given a third.

Scientists said such public dusting was extremely unusual between the American medical experts overseeing a study and the company sponsoring it.

“It’s usually done privately,” said Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, of any disagreement. “That is unprecedented in my opinion.”

In its first public comments, AstraZeneca said the results released on Monday mirrored US testing data through February 17. The preliminary assessment of more complete trial data found that “results are in line with interim analysis” said it would share more timely efficacy results within 48 hours.

Scientists said the problem might still turn out to be a technical matter that didn’t change their assessment of the vaccine. American officials did not suggest that security issues had been withheld, which was of great concern given concerns in Europe.

Even so, it quickly took the wind out of the sails of the European legislature’s public campaign to restore confidence in the shot developed with Oxford University. In the past few days, a number of political leaders, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French Prime Minister Jean Castex, have received the vaccine itself to show people it is safe.

“I literally felt nothing,” Mr Johnson told reporters. “I don’t recommend it too much.”

Tuesday’s stumble was the latest in a series of mistakes that have created a troubled relationship between AstraZeneca and American and European regulators – and which scientists say has created unnecessary public confusion over a vaccine that appears to be highly effective.

In early September, the company silently halted its worldwide trials after a participant in the UK fell ill. But American regulators didn’t find out until the story became public. The company’s slowness in providing the FDA with evidence that its vaccine has not been linked to disease kept it on the ground for nearly seven weeks. AstraZeneca has announced that data will be exchanged in a timely manner.

By the end of November, the company was back at a high level: it published results of early clinical studies, including in the UK, that showed the vaccine was either 62 percent or 90 percent effective, depending on the type of dosage.

But even these results were quickly clouded by uncertainty. AstraZeneca later admitted that there was initially confusion about the dose of vaccine some study participants received, making the results difficult to interpret.

The UK, which has long advocated the home-grown vaccine, approved the shot in late December, citing earlier results from clinical trials. The European Union Medicines Agency did the same, but a month later.

EU officials said the delay was partly due to a back and forth between regulators and AstraZeneca over the quality of the data.

And even after the vaccine was approved, some European countries initially restricted it to younger people due to insufficient data on its effectiveness in the elderly. This problem was to be solved through the American process, in which the elderly were better represented.

Neither the European nor the UK regulators gave any indication on Tuesday that the problems with AstraZeneca’s American data would affect its launch there. These agencies relied on a separate dataset from non-American studies to approve the vaccine.

“We are in contact with the company regarding this additional information,” the European Medicines Agency said in a statement on Tuesday, “and the EMA will evaluate the relevant data as soon as the company provides it to us.”

Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed to reporting from Brussels.

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Gasoline demand rebounds to almost regular March ranges, in accordance with newest GasBuddy knowledge

Gasoline demand rebounds to nearly normal March levels, according to latest GasBuddy data

A customer refuels a vehicle at a gas station in Peoria, Illinois.

Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images

U.S. gasoline demand is nearing normal levels as Americans took to the streets again amid the economic recovery and the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Demand is almost at the normal March level and continues to rise according to the latest data from GasBuddy. Thursday demand was 17.5% higher than the average for the four previous Thursdays.

“There has been an impressive rebound in demand over the past few weeks and I continue to be surprised every day,” noted Patrick De Haan, Head of Petroleum Analysis at GasBuddy.

Except for one Sunday, every day since February 20th has seen positive percentage growth. There are, of course, many factors that drive gas demand. One of them could be people driving long distances for Covid-19 vaccines. The spring break could also be a driving force.

Nevertheless, the trend shows an upward trend.

“It’s still March, which means the economy is recovering and we’re approaching summer. All the signs point to higher demand than I think almost everyone expected just a few months ago,” added De Haan.

Source: GasBuddy

The graph above shows the recovery in demand. It compares daily gas mileage to February 2020, which was just before the US stalled.

The data showed that demand last Thursday was 1.8% higher than last Thursday before the Covid lockdown took effect in 2020. However, the data is not seasonally adjusted and February tends to be the weakest month for gas demand .

More consumers on the street combined with a decline in gasoline supplies have pushed prices up.

“On average, Americans pay 14% more to refuel than in February,” said Jeanette McGee, AAA spokeswoman, in a statement on Monday. “Given the increased demand and the tighter gasoline supply, we expect more expensive pump prices with little relief in the coming weeks.”

On Friday, the national average for a gallon of gasoline, according to the AAA, was $ 2.886, up 69 cents or 31.4% year over year.

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Business

Satellite tv for pc imagery specialist BlackSky newest house SPAC going public

Satellite imagery specialist BlackSky latest space SPAC going public

An artist rendering of the company’s global satellites in orbit.

Black sky

Seattle-based satellite imagery specialist BlackSky is the newest space company to be publicly traded soon. The company announced a SPAC deal on Thursday.

BlackSky merges with the special purpose vehicle company Osprey Technology. BlackSky will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BKSY when the deal closes, which is expected in July.

“This transaction fully funds our growth plans and accelerates our vision of delivering a ‘first-to-know’ advantage to our customers. This is a major turning point for our industry as commercial and government users need access to real-time information on the changes that is most important to them, ”said Brian O’Toole, CEO of BlackSky, in a statement.

Ospreys SPAC is currently trading under the ticker SFTW. Osprey is led by investors Edward Cohen and Jonathan Cohen together with David DiDomenico from JANA Partners. Shares rose up to 37% on the Thursday before trading.

BlackSky expects to generate around $ 450 million in cash income from the deal, including $ 180 million in a PIPE round with investors like Tiger Global, Mithril Capital (Ajay Royan and Peter Thiel’s investment firm) and Hedosophia ( British investor Ian) Osborne) and Senator Investment Group.

The merger is expected to be worth $ 1.5 billion, based on the value of the PIPE, according to the press release.

The company plans to use the funds to further achieve its goal of having a network of 30 imaging satellites taking pictures every 30 minutes from anywhere on the planet. To date, BlackSky has five satellites in operation, and plans to launch nine more satellites into orbit later this year. The company’s vertically integrated LeoStella joint venture with the Franco-Italian manufacturer Thales Alenia Space is building the BlackSky satellites.

A pair of BlackSky Global satellites in the LeoStella manufacturing facility.

Black sky

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Business

The Newest Enterprise Information: Stay Updates

A closed banquet room in San Francisco. Pandemic restrictions have cost many employees in the hotel industry their jobs.

Here’s what you need to know:

Recognition…Jim Wilson / The New York Times

A new snapshot of the labor market and the state of economic recovery will be available on Thursday when the Department of Labor releases its weekly unemployment claims report.

With coronavirus cases continuing to decline, economists expect new government entitlements to decline again over the past week, despite staying extraordinarily high. While the economic crisis is likely to have peaked, the permanent damage to the labor market is uncertain. That could become clearer in the coming months.

Unemployment claims “really have been elevated for a long time,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton. “What will be crucial in the future is that they eventually sink or that there are longer-term problems?”

One indicator that economists observe is the number of people requesting extended benefits. This is an indication that they have reached their regular unemployment benefits, which in many states last 26 weeks.

“What worries us is that more and more people who drop out of regular claims are making extended claims,” ​​said Gregory Daco, chief US economist at Oxford Economics. “That’s not a good sign.”

Congress continues to work on a $ 1.9 trillion aid package proposed by President Biden. However, the urgency will be heightened by the expiry of the additional unemployment benefit in mid-March. The Biden proposal would extend it until September.

There have been some positive signs on the job market in the past few days. Retail sales rose 5.3 percent in January, a bigger-than-expected increase, most likely due to the recent round of stimulus checks.

AnnElizabeth Konkel, Careers Economist Indeed, said retail job postings on Indeed were 2.6 percent higher than they were in February 2020. Overall, job postings on the site were up 3.9 percent.

But the economy is still weak. The Labor Department’s January employment report, which saw only 49,000 jobs created, confirmed the devastation of the pandemic. Of the 22 million jobs that have disappeared, around 10 million will be lost.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described Robinhood's decision to restrict trading with GameStop as Recognition…Anna Moneymaker for the New York Times

Thursday’s hearing on the recent GameStop trading frenzy held by the House Committee on Financial Services at noon is likely to spark populist anger from both parties, targeting both popular trading app Robinhood and the short sellers who are opposing direct the video game dealer.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat and a member of the financial services panel that holds the hearing, said Robinhood’s decision to close some business with GameStop was “unacceptable” amid the frenzy. Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat who is also on the committee, called the decision “beyond the absurd” and accused the app of “blocking the ability to trade to protect hedge funds.”

The frustration with Robinhood and the hedge funds reflects a national backlash against the power of the country’s largest corporations. Over the past decade, more and more lawmakers from both parties have accused the American economy of failing their voters and initiating a political reckoning from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

The anger against Robinhood is non-partisan. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, approved Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s comments in January. “Free the traders on @RobinhoodApp,” Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee said in a tweet of her own.

Return at noon for video and live coverage of the hearing.

Recognition…via Youtube

Keith Gill, the former director of wellness education at MassMutual, who campaigned for GameStop stock in his spare time, is ready to tell a House committee on Thursday that he has never offered any investment advice for a fee and “has no one to buy or sell the stock has prompted for my own benefit. “

The statement made no mention of Mr. Gill being a registered broker and licensed financial analyst while posting online through GameStop under the pseudonym Roaring Kitty and another pseudonym that contained a vulgarity.

In the five-page statement, Gill described himself as a true believer in the fate of GameStop, a video game retailer, and said his online posts about the company had nothing to do with his work at MassMutual. He portrayed itself as a one-person company struggling with wealthy hedge funds, some of which were short selling GameStop stock and betting on its collapse.

“The idea that I used social media to promote GameStop shares to ignorant investors is absurd,” said Gill in a statement his attorney gave to the House Committee on Financial Services prior to the hearing on speculative and aggressive trading Thursday had submitted month in shares of GameStop. “It was very clear to me that my channel was for educational purposes only and that my aggressive investment style probably wasn’t appropriate for most of the people who check out the channel.”

He said he shared his investment ideas online because he “had reached a level where I thought public sharing could help others”.

Mr Gill described himself as the average man on a modest income and practically unemployed for two years before joining MassMutual in April 2019. The statement went beyond how much money he made trading GameStop stock – though he said so, his family once said “we were millionaires”. Nor did he mention that the Massachusetts securities regulators are investigating whether his social media posts violated securities industry rules and regulations.

On Tuesday, Mr Gill and his former employer were named as defendants in a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that he misled retail investors who bought GameStop shares during their rally of 1,700 percent shares in order to incur losses when the stock quickly returned most of its gains. The lawsuit alleges that MassMutual and its brokerage arm failed to properly supervise Mr. Gill, who was an employee until a few weeks ago.

Mr Gill’s attorney, William Taylor, declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for MassMutual said the company is looking into the matter with Mr. Gill.

Mr Gill is one of half a dozen witnesses due to testify at the hearing, which will focus on the impact of short selling, social media and hedge funds on retail investors and market speculation.

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Politics

Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin unveil newest immigration reform invoice

Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin unveil latest immigration reform bill

Protesters hold illuminated signs during a rally supporting the DACA or the Dream Act outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on January 18, 2018.

Zach Gibson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., And Lindsey Graham, RS.C., unveiled the latest version of the Dream Act Thursday, which is part of a new push to reform immigration.

The proposed legislation, first introduced in 2001, would give some young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children the opportunity to pursue an avenue of American citizenship.

The reintroduction comes as President Joe Biden begins rolling out his immigration reform agenda, aiming to reverse many of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

In 2012, President Barack Obama created the Deferred Action on the Arrivals of Children program after the Dream Bill was not passed in Congress on several occasions.

DACA protects young undocumented immigrants who would be affected by the dream law from deportation. Politics does not offer a route to citizenship.

Trump tried to end the DACA during his presidency, but the Supreme Court blocked his administration’s attempt in June. On January 20, Biden signed an ordinance to maintain the DACA.

“It is clear that only laws passed by Congress can give dreamers the chance to earn their way to American citizenship,” Durbin said in a statement Thursday.

The Dream Act would give some young undocumented immigrants legal permanent residence and eventually American citizenship if they meet certain criteria, including completing high school or earning a GED. Higher education, work or military service, and passing background checks.

The 2021 Dream Act is identical to the versions Durbin and Graham introduced in the last two sessions of Congress, the Senators say.

Graham said in a statement Thursday that he would like to pass the Dream Bill as part of a comprehensive immigration package rather than as a standalone bill.

“I believe it will be a starting point for us to find bipartisan breakthroughs that will bring relief to dreamers and also fix a broken immigration system,” said Graham.

In the last 15 years, Congress has not passed a comprehensive immigration law.

According to a survey by the June Pew Research Center, about three-quarters of Americans support the granting of permanent legal status to undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.

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Business

Reside Updates on Inventory Market At the moment: The Newest

“The past year presented the most challenging market conditions Exxon Mobil has ever experienced,” said Darren W. Woods, the company’s chairman and chief executive.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

Exxon Mobil on Tuesday reported its fourth consecutive quarterly loss on Tuesday as the pandemic continued to weigh on energy demand and oil and natural gas prices.

In the worst year for the company in four decades, Exxon said it lost $22.4 billion in 2020, compared with a profit of $14.3 billion in 2019. A big chunk of the company’s losses came from $19.3 billion in write-downs in the last three months of the year as the company marked down the value of U.S. natural gas fields acquired when gas prices were far higher before fracking flooded the market a decade ago.

Exxon sharply cut spending on exploration and production by $21.4 billion, or 35 percent, last year because of the pandemic.

“The past year presented the most challenging market conditions Exxon Mobil has ever experienced,” said Darren W. Woods, the company’s chairman and chief executive. He added that the company ended the year as “a stronger company” with a “flexible capital program that is robust to a range of market scenarios and focused on our highest-return opportunities.”

There were some signs of recovery in the fourth quarter. Excluding its write-downs, Exxon made a small profit of $110 million in the quarter as commodity prices began to recover.

Exxon’s large chemical business earned $691 million, its best quarterly result since 2018. Oil production in the Permian basin straddling Texas and New Mexico increased by 42 percent in the quarter compared with the fourth quarter of 2019. After a slow start in 2019, oil production in the deep waters off the coast of Guyana ramped up to 120,000 barrels a day and is expected to increase significantly over the next five years.

Early in 2020, there were persistent concern among investors that the company would cut its dividend, but as oil prices surged above $50 a barrel in recent weeks, those fears have subsided. The company’s stock price has recovered by roughly 40 percent since November. Exxon was up about 2 percent in early trading on Tuesday.

Under pressure to show progress on curbing emissions, the company said on Monday that it was creating a new business called Low Carbon Solutions to develop carbon capture and sequestration projects around the world.

The company is expected to reorganize its board in the coming months and on Tuesday announced the election of a new member, Tan Sri Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin, a former president of the Malaysian oil company Petronas.

The price of silver futures reached an eight-year high on Monday, but has fallen since then.Credit…Peter Andrews/Reuters

  • Stocks on Wall Street rose on Tuesday, following gains in Asian and European stock markets, as the retail trading frenzy that gripped market watchers for the past week appeared to die down.

  • The S&P 500 rose 1 percent, adding to a gain of 1.6 percent from the day before, ahead of earnings reports from Amazon and Alphabet.

  • GameStop shares plunged 40 percent, after dropping 31 percent on Monday. Still, the shares of the video game retailer were up sharply for the year after they rallied 1,600 percent in January. There were signs that efforts to squeeze funds that had bet against the stock were working. Short interest in the stock has fallen by more than half, and some hedge funds have reported losses.

  • Shares in AMC Entertainment declined 35 percent.

  • Robinhood loosened its limits on the buying of securities of GameStop, AMC and six other companies. Trading volumes for both companies were lower on Monday than any day in the previous week.

  • Futures in silver fell 5 percent on Tuesday to $27.90 an ounce, pulling back from an eight-year high reached on Monday.

  • Over the weekend, online chatter encouraged retail investors to buy silver in an effort to create a “silver squeeze” as attention seemed to move away from the meme stocks of last week. After websites that sold silver coins and bars reported a surge in demand and the largest exchange-traded product tracking the metal reported record inflows, silver futures rose 9 percent on Monday.

  • In equity markets, the Stoxx Europe 600 rose 1 percent, the biggest single-day increase in nearly four weeks.

  • The eurozone economy contracted 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter, data published Tuesday showed, putting the region on track for a double-dip recession as it struggles to ramp up its vaccination program. That said, the economic decline at the end of last year was slightly smaller than economists forecast.

A 2021 Tesla Model X sport-utility vehicle. The company said it would recall Model S vehicles from 2012 to 2018 and Model X vehicles from 2016 to 2018.Credit…David Zalubowski/Associated Press

Tesla has agreed to recall nearly 135,000 vehicles after a federal regulator raised concerns about problems with the touch-screen displays in some of the company’s most expensive cars.

The company disagreed with a request made in January by the regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, that it recall the cars, but it said that it would proceed “in the interests of efficiently resolving this matter and providing a better experience for the customer,” a Tesla executive said in a letter to the agency that was made public on Tuesday.

The recall affects Model S vehicles from 2012 to 2018 and Model X vehicles from 2016 to 2018. Those are the company’s flagship cars and can cost up to $100,000 or more.

At issue is a memory chip in the center display of the vehicles, which drivers use to control many aspects of their Teslas. The safety agency said when the chip wears out, it can cause the loss of certain functions, including turn signal lighting and the rearview camera display.

“As stated in our letter, the agency tentatively concluded that these vehicles contain a defect related to motor vehicle safety,” the regulator said in a statement. “Safety is NHTSA’s top priority, and timely recalls are crucial to ensuring the safety of drivers, passengers, and other road users.”

Tesla plans to notify owners of the affected vehicles and will replace the component for free, the regulator said. The recall is expected to begin on March 30.

BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, said that he welcomed the environmentally friendly approach of the Biden administration.Credit…Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BP on Tuesday reported its first loss in at least a decade, taking a $5.7 billion loss for the year compared with a $10 billion profit for 2019. The company said it eked out a $115 million profit for the fourth quarter of 2020, representing a year-on-year decline of about 95 percent.

Oswald Clint, an analyst at Bernstein, a market research firm, called the quarterly results “terrible” in a note to clients.

BP blamed a host of factors including low demand for its refined products because of the economic slowdown brought on by the pandemic, as well as low prices for oil and natural gas.

Last year, BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, announced a shift away from oil and gas toward clean energy like wind, solar and hydrogen. On a call with analysts, though, Mr. Looney acknowledged that the payoff from some of these investments would not come until the 2030s and that the company would remain reliant on oil and gas for profit for the next few years.

BP, based in London, is a major oil and gas producer in the United States, but Mr. Looney said in an interview that he welcomed the environmentally friendly approach of the Biden administration.

President Biden’s new policies had raised questions about the impact on BP’s drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. Looney said, but the administration’s interest in clean energy was likely to aid BP’s recent investment in offshore wind projects off the east coast of the United States.

“That is one of the good things about being a company in transition,” he said.

Alibaba also said sales rose 37 percent n the latest quarter as China’s economy bounced back.Credit…Thomas Peter/Reuters

The Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba said on Tuesday that it was conducting internal reviews of its business in response to an antitrust investigation by the Chinese government, which in recent months has begun scrutinizing the country’s big internet companies like never before.

For many years, the growth of giants like Alibaba was celebrated in China as the fruit of a thriving private sector. Now, regulators in Beijing are more concerned about how the companies’ size and influence are affecting the interests of their customers and competitors, echoing the scrutiny that Western tech giants like Google face in the United States and Europe.

“We approach this antimonopoly investigation with a cooperative, receptive and open mind set,” Alibaba’s chief executive, Daniel Zhang, said on a conference call announcing the company’s latest financial results. “We have a deep appreciation of the significant social and public responsibilities of operating our platform. Beyond complying with regulatory requirements, we will continue to do our best to fulfill our responsibilities to society.”

Mr. Zhang said Alibaba would say more when the investigation was complete. He gave no indication when that might be.

China’s market watchdog announced the inquiry in late December, amid a series of actions by the authorities to rein in tech giants. The month before, officials had abruptly halted plans by Ant Group, Alibaba’s financial-technology affiliate, to go public in Shanghai and Hong Kong, citing the need for new supervision of internet finance. Regulators later ordered Ant to revamp its business, a process that Mr. Zhang said was still ongoing.

Ant’s business prospects and fund-raising plans remain “subject to substantial uncertainties,” Mr. Zhang said.

Like other tech giants such as Amazon, Alibaba has enjoyed strong growth during the pandemic, as lockdowns lead people to depend more on digital services.

China’s resilient economy helped drive a 37 percent increase in Alibaba’s sales in the latest quarter, the company also said on Tuesday. Profits for the quarter were $12.2 billion and revenue was $33.9 billion, beating analysts’ forecasts. Cloud computing revenue grew 50 percent from a year ago, to $2.5 billion. Alibaba said that part of its business was profitable for the first time in the December quarter.

The city center in Milan during a lockdown in December. The eurozone economy fell in the October-December period, reflecting an economic malaise as European leaders struggle to vaccinate their citizens.Credit…Matteo Corner/EPA, via Shutterstock

The eurozone economy shrank in the last three months of 2020 as European countries closed shops and restaurants and restricted travel to try to contain the coronavirus.

Economic output in the 19 countries that belong to the eurozone fell 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the previous quarter, according to a preliminary estimate by the European Union’s official statistics agency said.

For the full year, overall output fell 5.1 percent.

Economists expect the economy to shrink again in the first quarter of 2021, leading to a double-dip recession. The bloc’s economy also shrank during the first half of 2020.

The decline capped a roller coaster year for the eurozone economy. In the second quarter, gross domestic product fell 11.7 percent as the pandemic took hold, then rebounded 12.4 percent in the third quarter as lockdowns eased and firms adjusted to the crisis.

The latest data reflects the malaise that has taken hold as European leaders struggle to vaccinate their citizens, a project that has moved more slowly on the continent than in Britain or the United States.

“The short-term prospects for the European economy remain clouded by a challenging health situation in several countries and an underwhelming start of the vaccination rollout,” Nicola Nobile, lead eurozone economist at Oxford Economics, said in a note to clients.

European factories have largely adapted to the pandemic and are operating almost normally, but stores, restaurants and hotels continue to suffer. More than half of Germans who work in hotels or restaurants, about 600,000 people, are on government-subsidized furloughs and effectively unemployed, according to the Ifo Institute in Munich, a research organization.

Growth figures for all the eurozone members are not yet available, but among the countries that have reported so far, Austria, Italy and France suffered declines in output in the quarter while Germany, Spain and most other countries managed modest growth.

Including countries like Poland, Hungary and Sweden that are members of the European Union but not the eurozone, output in the bloc fell 0.5 percent in the October-December period.

UPS has put in place a strategy aimed at improving profit over package volume.Credit…John Sommers Ii/Reuters

United Parcel Service reported a 21 percent increase in sales, to nearly $24.9 billion, in the final three months of last year, driven in part by a supercharged online holiday shopping season.

“Our financial performance in the fourth quarter exceeded our expectations, and I thank all UPS-ers for their extraordinary efforts to deliver industry-leading service through the holidays,” Carol Tomé, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Ms. Tomé, who took the helm at the company just after the pandemic began, has been putting in place a “better, not bigger” strategy, aimed at improving profit over package volume. Excluding pension costs and a tax charge related to the sale of UPS Freight, the company’s profit per share rose to $2.66 in the fourth quarter from $1.94 a year earlier, far surpassing analyst estimates. The company’s share price was up more than 3.5 percent in premarket trading, but dipped after the market opened.

Despite causing early disruptions, the pandemic accelerated a shift to online shopping, helping to raise the company’s average daily package volume for the year to 24.6 million, a 13 percent increase from 2019. Excluding one-time costs, profit also rose 9.5 percent for 2020, to nearly $7.2 billion.

The company declined to provide a forecast for this year, citing uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

Robinhood decreased the number of companies with trading restrictions to eight from 50.Credit…Ian C. Bates for The New York Times

  • Silver briefly replaced GameStop as the breakout focus. Over the weekend, the precious metal experienced a surge of interest along with an uptick in online chatter about the chances for generating the kind of price increases that grabbed the world’s attention last week. On Monday, the price of silver jumped as much as 11.5 percent in early trading — to the highest level in eight years — but gave up some of its early gains, and ended the day at about $29 per ounce, a 7 percent increase. That was still around its highest level since early 2013. It fell on Tuesday.

  • Shares of GameStop fell about 31 percent on Monday, and was set to fall further on Tuesday. Short interest in GameStop, a measure of the volume of bets against the stock, fell by more than half last week, according to the market-data firm S3 Partners, suggesting that the gambit to inflict financial pain on Wall Street institutions by creating a so-called short squeeze may have worked. Robinhood decreased the number of companies with trading restrictions to eight from 50, according to an update on its website.

  • Robinhood raised an additional $2.4 billion over the weekend, adding to the $1 billion it had to seek from its investors earlier last week. On Thursday, an arm of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, Wall Street’s main clearinghouse for stock trades, demanded $3 billion in additional collateral from Robinhood, to cover risky trades by its customers, according to Vladimir Tenev, the brokerage firm’s chief executive. That demand was later reduced to about $700 million.

  • Melvin Capital Management, one of the hedge funds pilloried on social media message boards for its short-selling bets that GameStop shares would fall, lost 53 percent on its portfolio in January, a person familiar with the matter said. A principal reason was the huge losses the firm suffered when small investors bid up the stock of GameStop.