Tag: Live

Europe Takes a More durable Line on Chinese language Companies: Stay Updates

Post author By
Post date May 5, 2021

Facebook banned President Donald J. Trump after he used social media accounts to incite a mob of supporters to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

A Facebook-appointed panel of journalists, activists and lawyers ruled on Wednesday to uphold the social network’s ban of former President Donald J. Trump, ending any immediate return by Mr. Trump to mainstream social media and renewing a debate about tech power over online speech.

Facebook’s Oversight Board, which acts as a quasi-court to deliberate the company’s content decisions, said the social network was right to bar Mr. Trump after he used the site to foment an insurrection in Washington in January, Mike Isaac reports for The New York Times. The panel said the ongoing risk of violence “justified” the suspension.

But the board also said that Facebook’s penalty of an indefinite suspension was “not appropriate,” and that the company should apply a “defined penalty.” The board gave Facebook six months to determine its final decision on Mr. Trump’s account status.

The board is a panel of about 20 former political leaders, human rights activists and journalists picked by Facebook to deliberate the company’s content decisions, explains Cecilia Kang of The Times. It began a year ago and is based in London.

The idea for the board was for the public to have a way to appeal decisions by Facebook to remove content that violates its policies against harmful and hateful posts. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s C.E.O., has said neither he nor the company wanted to have the final decision on speech.

The company and paid members of the panel stress that the board is independent. But Facebook funds the board with a $130 million trust and top executives played a big role in its formation.

Credit…Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

General Motors said it made a $3 billion profit in the first three months of the year, but warned that its profit would be significantly smaller in the second quarter because of a global shortage computer chips.

Last year, G.M. made a profit of just $294 million in the first quarter as the coronavirus pandemic took hold and shut down much of the global economy.

The company forecasts net income for the first half of the year would total about $3.5 billion, implying a profit of around $500 million in the second quarter. It said it expected a rebound in the second half and predicted net income for the full year to range from $6.8 billion to $7.6 billion.

“This remains a challenging period for the company as we emerge from 2020, but the team continues to demonstrate its ability to manage complex situations,” G.M.’s chief executive, Mary Barra, said in a letter to shareholders.

Separately, Stellantis, the company formed by the merger of Peugeot SA and Fiat Chrysler, reported revenue of 34 billion euros ($41 billion) since the merger was completed on Jan. 17. Had the merger been completed earlier, the new company’s revenue for the full first quarter would have been 37 billion euros, up 14 percent over the same period a year ago.

Stellantis said its production in the first quarter was 11 percent lower than planned because of the chip shortage, and it also warned that the second quarter would be weaker than the first.

Credit…Pool photo by Yves Herman

The European Union’s administrative arm said Wednesday that it would take action against foreign companies that receive financial support from their governments, a move clearly aimed at China amid signs of deteriorating ties.

The tougher line against China comes only four months after Brussels and Beijing seemed to be moving closer, working out an agreement in December intended to make it easier for European companies to invest in what has become the bloc’s most important trading partner for goods.

But since then relations have gone downhill because of tension over Chinese policy toward minority groups in Xinjiang province.

Legislation proposed by the European Commission Wednesday would give it power to investigate and take measures against foreign companies that use government subsidies to get an unfair advantage over domestic competitors, an accusation often leveled at China. A separate proposal, also announced Wednesday, is intended to make Europe less dependent on China for crucial goods like semiconductors, drugs and batteries.

The proposals came a day after Valdis Dombrovskis, the European commissioner for trade, said that work on finalizing the December investment agreement with Beijing was on hold because of repressive Chinese policies.

In March, the European Commission sanctioned four Communist Party officials after accusing them of being responsible for human rights violations against members of the Muslim Uyghurs and other minority groups in Xinjiang.

China retaliated with sanctions against numerous members of the European Parliament, several scholars, and employees of human rights organizations and think tanks which have been critical of China.

In light of the sanctions war, Mr. Dombrovskis told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday that “it’s clear the environment is not conducive for ratification of the agreement.”

This is what @VDombrovskis told @AFP on the ratification of #CAI with China – not first time he’s said it & not breaking news.

To be clear: this is not a formal suspension decision, just means there’s no political outreach right now to promote the agreement – see end of quote. pic.twitter.com/P1CgzkMu8e

— Vanessa Mock (@vanessamock) May 4, 2021

Europe’s tougher line toward China brings it closer to the stance adopted by the Biden administration, which objected to the investment agreement. But Europe remains divided over how to approach an important trading partner that is also a geopolitical rival.

Markus J. Beyrer, director general of BusinessEurope, a leading business lobby, said in a statement Wednesday that the proposal on subsidies is “a step in the right direction in addressing existing legal loopholes and preventing market distortions.”

But a prominent business group in Germany, which is highly dependent on exports to China, was critical.

“The proposed regulation is very complex and there is a risk that its implementation will lead to considerable additional bureaucracy and legal uncertainty for our member companies,” said Ulrich Ackermann, managing director of foreign trade at V.D.M.A., which represents German makers of industrial equipment.

Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency that started as a joke, is on a tear. A surge in the past day pushed it to another record, sending it some 14,000 percent higher than it started the year.

One theory is that the upcoming appearance of Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive and noted Dogecoin superfan, as the host of “Saturday Night Live” on May 8 could get more people interested in trading the crypto token. It’s as good a reason as any for those who try to rationalize its movements.

The latest bout of Dogecoin mania has somewhat overshadowed what’s going on in Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, which also set records this week and made its 27-year-old co-creator, Vitalik Buterin, a billionaire (in dollars). The price of Ether, the crypto token built on the Ethereum blockchain, is up more than 350 percent for the year to date, outpacing Bitcoin’s relatively pedestrian 90 percent gain — which, for context, outpaces every stock in the S&P 500 over that period.

Stocks rebound

Stocks on Wall Street rose on Wednesday, following European markets higher, and rebounding from a decline the day before.
The S&P 500 rose about half a percent, while the Stoxx Europe 600 index rose 1.5 percent. The FTSE 100 in Britain rose 1.2 percent.
In oil markets, Brent crude gained 1.1 percent, to $69.61 a barrel, and West Texas Intermediate rose 1 percent to $66.32 a barrel.

European economy

New data on the European economy from IHS Markit reflected continued strengthening. The eurozone composite purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for April grew for the second consecutive month. Significantly, the service sector grew after seven months of contraction.
“The updated services PMIs for April confirmed that the worst for the eurozone economy should be over,” said Nicola Nobile, the lead eurozone economist for Oxford Economics, in a note to clients. “The vaccination progress and the gradual reopening of some of the economies point to” an increase in economic output already underway, she added.

More chip worries

Stellantis, the name for the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA, the maker of Peugeot, said the semiconductor shortage caused an 11 percent decline in production of automobiles in the first quarter, representing about 190,000 vehicles.
Dealer inventories were down in all areas, “primarily due to the semiconductor shortage,” the company said. Despite that, Stellantis reported net revenue up 14 percent. Shares gained 3 percent in European trading.

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Four weeks before its scheduled end, the federal government’s signature aid effort for small business ravaged by the pandemic — the Paycheck Protection Program — ran out of funding on Tuesday afternoon and stopped accepting most new applications.

Congress allocated $292 billion to fund the program’s most recent round of loans. Nearly all of that money has now been exhausted, the Small Business Administration, which runs the program, told lenders and their trade groups on Tuesday. (An earlier version of this item misstated that the actions it described occurred Wednesday.)

While many had predicted that the program would run out of funds before its May 31 application deadline, the exact timing came as a surprise to many lenders.

“It is our understanding that lenders are now getting a message through the portal that loans cannot be originated,” the National Association of Government Guaranteed Lenders, a trade group, wrote in an alert to its members Tuesday evening. “The P.P.P. general fund is closed to new applications.”

Some money — around $8 billion — is still available through a set-aside for community financial institutions, which generally focus on lending to businesses run by women, minorities and other underserved communities. Those lenders will be allowed to process applications until that money runs out, according to the trade group’s alert.

Confirming that the program is out of funds, a spokeswoman for the Small Business Administration said that the S.B.A. is “committed to delivering economic aid through the many Covid relief programs it’s currently administering and beyond.”

Some money remains available for lenders to finish processing pending applications that were already submitted to the agency, according to S.B.A. officials and lenders. But people whose applications had not yet been sent in for approval are at risk of being shut out.

Since its creation last year, the Paycheck Protection Program has disbursed $780 billion in forgivable loans to fund 10.7 million applications, according to the latest government data. Congress renewed the program in December’s relief bill, expanding the pool of eligible applicants and allowing the hardest-hit businesses to return for a second loan.

Lawmakers in March extended the program’s deadline to May, but they have shown little enthusiasm for adding significantly more money to its coffers. With vaccination rates increasing and pandemic restrictions easing, Congress’s focus on large-scale relief effort for small businesses has waned.

But Senator Ben Cardin, Democrat of Maryland and the chair of the Senate’s small business and entrepreneurship committee, “remains open to a bipartisan agreement to add funds to the program,” a spokesman for Mr. Cardin said.

Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, a New York Democrat who chairs the House of Representative’s small business committee, is also open to a deal to extend the program, her office said.

The government’s recent efforts have been focused on the most devastated industries. Two new grant programs run by the Small Business Administration — for businesses in the live-events and restaurant industries — began accepting applications in recently, though no grants have yet been awarded.

Credit…Ethan Swope/Getty Images

Last May, Epic Games was making plans to circumvent Apple’s and Google’s app store rules and ultimately sue them in cases that could reshape the entire app economy and have profound ripple effects on antitrust investigations around the world.

Epic’s chief operating officer, Daniel Vogel, sent other executives an email raising a concern: Epic must persuade Apple and Google to give in to its demands for looser rules, he wrote, “without us looking like the baddies.”

Apple and Google, Mr. Vogel warned, “will treat this as an existential threat.” To prepare, Epic formed a public relations and marketing plan to get the public behind its campaign against the tech giants.

Apple seized on that plan in a federal courtroom in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, the second day of what is expected to be a three-week trial stemming from Epic’s claims that Apple relies on its control of its App Store to unfairly squeeze money out of other companies.

Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers of California’s Northern District, who will decide the case, also asked Epic’s chief executive, Tim Sweeney, a series of pointed questions about its potential consequences. She asked whether he had any understanding of the economics of other types of apps, including food, maps, GPS, weather, dating or instant messaging.

“So you don’t have any idea how what you are asking for would impact any of the developers who engage in those other categories of apps, is that right?” the judge asked.

“I personally do not,” Mr. Sweeney said, in his second day on the witness stand.

Apple’s lawyers argued that Epic had attacked App Store fees to shore up a slowing business. Gross revenue on Fortnite, Epic’s flagship video game, shrank in the last three quarters of 2019 compared with 2018, according to an Epic presentation to its board of directors about its plan to fight Apple. The presentation was disclosed in court on Tuesday, along with the executive’s emails.

Under questioning from Apple’s lawyers, Mr. Sweeney said Epic’s own game store was not expected to turn a profit until at least 2024.

Epic’s lawyers said the lawsuit was not just about Epic and Fortnite but about fairness for all apps that must use Apple’s App Store to reach consumers.

“Our contention in this case is that all apps are at issue,” said Katherine Forrest, a lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Epic is not asking for a payout if it wins the trial; it is seeking relief in the form of changes to App Store rules. Epic has asked Apple to allow app developers to use other methods to collect payments and open their own app stores within their apps.

Apple has countered that these demands would raise a world of new issues, including making iPhones less secure.

On Tuesday afternoon, Benjamin Simon, founder of Yoga Buddhi, which makes the Down Dog Yoga app, testified about his company’s problems with Apple’s policies. Mr. Simon said that he had to charge more for subscriptions on the App Store to make up for the 30 percent fee that Apple charged him, and that Apple’s rules prevented him from promoting inside his app a cheaper price that is available on the web.

Mr. Simon said Apple warned app developers against speaking out about its policies in guidelines for getting their apps approved. “‘If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps,’” he said. “That was in the guidelines.”

Credit…David Ryder/Getty Images

When Bill and Melinda Gates announced filed for divorce in Washington State on Monday, grant recipients and staff members alike wondered what would happen to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The message from the headquarters in Seattle was clear: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation isn’t going anywhere.

The foundation’s $50 billion endowment is in a charitable trust that is irrevocable, Nicholas Kulish reports for The New York Times. It cannot be removed or divided up as a marital asset, said Megan Tompkins-Stange, a professor of public policy and scholar of philanthropy at the University of Michigan. She noted, however, that there was no legal mandate that would prevent them from changing course.

“I think there may be changes to come,” she said. “But I don’t see it as a big asteroid landing on the field of philanthropy as some of the hyperbole around this has indicated.”

The foundation, which set a new standard for private philanthropy in the 21st century, has given away nearly $55 billion, giving the couple instant access to heads of state and leaders of industry.

The couple’s prominence has also brought a fair share of scrutiny, throwing a spotlight on Mr. Gates’s robust defense of intellectual property rights — in this case, specific to vaccine patents — even in a time of extreme crisis, as well as the larger question of how unelected wealthy individuals can play such an outsize part on the global stage.

“In a civil society that is democratic, one couple’s personal choices shouldn’t lead university research centers, service providers and nonprofits to really question whether they’ll be able to continue,” said Maribel Morey, founding executive director of the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences.

Tags Chinese, Europe, firms, Line, Live, Takes, tougher, Updates

Business

Tech Shares Pull Markets Off Close to-File Highs: Stay Enterprise Updates

Post author By
Post date May 4, 2021

President Biden signing a law in March to extend the Paycheck Protection Program through May 31, with Vice President Kamala Harris, left, and Isabel Guzman, the administrator of the Small Business Administration.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Four weeks before its scheduled end, the federal government’s signature aid effort for small business ravaged by the pandemic — the Paycheck Protection Program — ran out of funding on Wednesday afternoon and stopped accepting most new applications.

While many had predicted that the program would run out of funds before its May 31 application deadline, the exact timing came as a surprise to many lenders.

“It is our understanding that lenders are now getting a message through the portal that loans cannot be originated,” the National Association of Government Guaranteed Lenders, a trade group, wrote in an alert to its members Wednesday evening. “The P.P.P. general fund is closed to new applications.”

Representatives from the Small Business Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some money also remains available for lenders to finish processing pending applications, according to a lender who was on a call with S.B.A. officials on Wednesday.

Credit…Ethan Swope/Getty Images

“So you don’t have any idea how what you are asking for would impact any of the developers who engage in those other categories of apps, is that right?” the judge asked.

“I personally do not,” Mr. Sweeney said, in his second day on the witness stand.

Under questioning from Apple’s lawyers, Mr. Sweeney said Epic’s own game store was not expected to turn a profit until at least 2024.

Epic’s lawyers said the lawsuit was not just about Epic and Fortnite but about fairness for all apps that must use Apple’s App Store to reach consumers.

“Our contention in this case is that all apps are at issue,” said Katherine Forrest, a lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Apple has countered that these demands would raise a world of new issues, including making iPhones less secure.

By: Ella Koeze·Data delayed at least 15 minutes·Source: FactSet

The S&P 500 retreated from near-record territory on Tuesday, led by a decline in big technology companies, but recovered its worst losses to end the day down 0.7 percent.

Apple, the largest company in the index, fell 3.5 percent, and several other large companies — Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Tesla — dropped by more than 1.5 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite fell 1.9 percent.

Adding to the volatility on Tuesday were comments by Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, who said higher interest rates might be needed to keep the economy from overheating as the Biden administration ramps up spending. Stock investors are wary of higher interest rates that would make equities less attractive and also could dampen corporate profits as the economy recovers from the pandemic.

Although the Treasury secretary has no role in interest rate setting and yields on government bonds, which tend to rise when interest rates are hiked, were little changed on Tuesday, the publication of Ms. Yellen’s comments helped pushed stock indexes lower.

“It may be that interest rates will have to rise somewhat to make sure that our economy doesn’t overheat, even though the additional spending is relatively small relative to the size of the economy,” Ms. Yellen said in prerecorded comments at an event hosted by The Atlantic when asked if the economy could handle the kind of robust spending that the Biden administration is proposing.

Analysts stressed that the market was due for breather. The S&P 500 rose more than 5.2 percent last month, notching a series of record highs, and even after Tuesday’s decline it remained up more than 10 percent in 2021.

The Stoxx Europe 600 fell 1.4 percent, while the FTSE 100 in Britain gave up earlier gains to drop about 0.7 percent.

Oil prices bucked the trend. Brent crude gained 2 percent, to $68.88 a barrel. It has not closed above $70 barrel since late 2018. West Texas Intermediate also rose sharply.

A chip maker’s troubles

Infineon, a big producer of semiconductors in Germany, reported “booming” demand for chips as it posted strong quarterly results. But the company warned of continuing supply chain problems and its shares fell.
“Demand greatly exceeds supply for the majority of applications,” said the chief executive, Reinhard Ploss, in a statement. Even though its plants are running at “full speed,” he continued, the company still faced supply chain bottlenecks. “We are doing everything we can to provide our customers with the best possible support in this situation.”

Saudi Aramco earnings

The world’s largest oil producer, Saudi Aramco, reported a 30 percent rise in net income in the first quarter compared with the same period a year ago.
The company is joining other energy producers that reported strong earnings this quarter as oil prices continued their recovery from last year’s collapse.
“The momentum provided by the global economic recovery has strengthened energy markets,” Aramco’s chief executive, Amin H. Nasser, said in a statement. “Given the positive signs for energy demand in 2021, there are more reasons to be optimistic that better days are coming.”

Credit…Clay Enos/Netflix

In the clearest sign yet that theaters are softening their stance toward Netflix, Cinemark, the country’s third-largest chain, announced on Tuesday that it would show the streaming service’s upcoming zombie flick, “Army of the Dead” from director Zack Snyder, in more than 250 of its theaters on May 14, a week before the film will become available online.

The movie will also open in a smattering of regional chains like Harkins Theatres, Landmark Theatres and Alamo Drafthouse, bringing its total theater count to about 600 — the largest theatrical release yet for a Netflix film.

Last year, when the pandemic was raging and the majority of theater chains were closed, Netflix and Cinemark tested the release strategy in a handful of theaters with three Netflix films: “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Midnight Sky” and “The Christmas Chronicles 2.” The results were encouraging enough for them to try a wider release at a time when the majority of the country’s theaters have reopened.

“Zack Snyder fans will love seeing the action in an immersive, cinematic environment with larger-than-life sight and sound technology,” Justin McDaniel, Cinemark’s senior vice president of global content strategy, said in a statement.

“We are thrilled to offer consumers the opportunity to watch this highly anticipated film in theaters and on Netflix,” Netflix’s head of distribution, Spencer Klein, said in a statement.

“Army of the Dead” stars Dave Bautista (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) and centers on a group of mercenaries who travel to Las Vegas to pull off a casino heist in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

While neither company would say whether this was part of a larger agreement involving more films, the two did say they “anticipate there will be more to come.”

The pandemic forced theaters and studios to re-evaluate how movies are distributed in theaters and on streaming platforms. Traditionally, theaters pushed for an exclusive 72-day window between when a film was released and when it could become available for at-home viewing, whether through streaming or video-on-demand services. But so many movies debuted in the home because of the pandemic, and audiences have become used to having that option, forcing Hollywood to adjust to a new reality.

Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Gap Inc., the retailer that owns its namesake chain, Banana Republic and Old Navy, said on Tuesday that it would sell its high-end Intermix string of stores and website to a private-equity firm as it focuses on its core brands.

Intermix, which has 31 stores, will be purchased by Altamont Capital Partners for an undisclosed price, according to a statement. Gap, which is based in San Francisco, acquired Intermix for $130 million at the end of 2012 with plans to expand it, though the chain stood apart from the rest of the retailer’s chains with its mix of established and emerging designer goods. Intermix had 32 boutiques at the time of the 2012 acquisition.

The exit follows Gap’s sale in April of Janie and Jack, an expensive children’s retailer with more than 100 locations, to Go Global Retail. Gap acquired Janie and Jack in 2019.

Sally Gilligan, head of strategy for Gap, said in the Tuesday release that the sales “demonstrate how we are prioritizing our strategic focus and resources behind the growth and potential of Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic and Athleta.”

Credit…Eric Gay/Associated Press

Two broad coalitions of companies and executives released letters on Tuesday calling for expanded voting access in Texas, wading into the debate over Republican legislators’ proposed new restrictions on balloting after weeks of relative silence.

One letter came from a group of large corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Unilever, Salesforce, Patagonia and Sodexo, as well as local companies and chambers of commerce, and represents the first major coordinated effort among businesses in Texas to take action against the voting proposals.

The letter, under the banner of a new group called Fair Elections Texas, stops short of criticizing the two voting bills that are now advancing through the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, but opposes “any changes that would restrict eligible voters’ access to the ballot.”

A separate letter, organized by a breakway faction of 100 executives from the Greater Houston Partnership, and also released on Tuesday , goes further. It directly criticizes the proposed legislation and equates the efforts with “voter suppression.”

Together, the letters signify a sudden shift in how the business community approaches the voting bills in Texas.

Corporations across the country find themselves at the center of a swirling partisan debate over voting rights. With Republicans in almost every state advancing legislation that would make it harder for some people to vote, companies are under pressure from both sides. Democratic activists, along with many mainstream business leaders, are calling on corporations to oppose the new laws. At the same time, a growing chorus of senior Republicans is telling corporate America to keep quiet.

Credit…Ints Kalnins/Reuters

Pandora, the world’s biggest jeweler by volume, said on Tuesday that it will no longer use mined diamonds for any new designs, and is switching to man-made stones produced in laboratories instead.

The Copenhagen-based company said it would release its first collection to use synthetic stones in Britain this year before turning to other markets in 2022. The range of rings, bangles and earrings will feature stones from 0.15 to 1 carat in size. Pandora’s chief executive, Alexander Lacik, said in a statement Tuesday that diamonds should be affordable as well as sustainable.

Lab-grown diamonds are physically, chemically and optically identical to mined diamonds, and proponents say that their production results in less environmental damage than traditional mining practices, and also doesn’t have the same associations with human rights abuses. Prices of man-made diamonds have fallen over the past two years after the miner De Beers started offering synthetic stones in 2018, and they are now up to 10 times cheaper than mined diamonds, according to a report by Bain & Company.

While mined diamonds went into about 50,000 Pandora pieces of jewelry out of a total of 85 million items made last year, meaning the shift required within the company supply chain will be negligible, the announcement by Pandora is the latest by a major industry player looking to address growing ethical concerns held by consumers about the jewelry business. The jeweler has already said it will only use recycled gold and silver beginning 2025.

Credit…Laura Morton for The New York Times

Twitter plans to acquire the subscription service Scroll, the social media company announced on Tuesday, as it expands its plans for subscription offerings. The two companies declined to disclose the deal terms.

Scroll charges its users a fee to block advertising on participating news websites, then distributes a cut of its earnings to its partner publishers, which include USA Today, Vox and The Atlantic. Publishers can earn up to 50 percent more from the service than they do from advertising, Scroll contends. Twitter plans to integrate the service into its platform, and use its technology to build other subscription services.

“People come to Twitter every day to discover and read about what’s happening,” Mike Park, Twitter’s vice president for product, said in a blog post announcing the deal. “If Twitter is where so much of this conversation lives, it should be easier and simpler to read the content that drives it.”

In recent months, Twitter has begun to add paid subscriptions, and announced plans to introduce other subscriber features in the future.

In January, Twitter acquired Revue, a newsletter provider, and said it would take a 5 percent cut of subscription revenue. In February, the company revealed plans to introduce “Super Follows,” a feature that would allow Twitter users to place some of their content behind a pay wall. And this week, Twitter said it planned to add a ticketing feature to its audio chat, Spaces, so that hosts can charge listeners for entry into their discussions.

Twitter plans to supplement its advertising revenue with revenue from subscriptions, and has raced to add content like newsletters and audio chats that it thinks audiences will pay for. Its acquisition of Scroll will add journalism to that list.

“For every other platform, journalism is dispensable. If journalism were to disappear tomorrow their business would carry on much as before,” Tony Haile, Scroll’s chief executive, wrote in a blog post. “Twitter is the only large platform whose success is deeply intertwined with a sustainable journalism ecosystem.”

Credit…Dado Ruvic/Reuters

On Tuesday, Pfizer announced that its Covid vaccine brought in $3.5 billion in revenue in the first three months of this year, nearly a quarter of its total revenue. The vaccine was, far and away, Pfizer’s biggest source of revenue, report Rebecca Robbins and Peter S. Goodman of The New York Times.

The company did not disclose the profits it derived from the vaccine, but it reiterated its previous prediction that its profit margins on the vaccine would be in the high 20 percent range. That would translate into roughly $900 million in pretax vaccine profits in the first quarter.

Pfizer has been widely credited with developing an unproven technology that has saved an untold number of lives.

But the company’s vaccine is disproportionately reaching the world’s rich — an outcome, so far at least, at odds with its chief executive’s pledge to ensure that poorer countries “have the same access as the rest of the world” to a vaccine that is highly effective at preventing Covid-19.

As of mid-April, wealthy countries had secured more than 87 percent of the more than 700 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines dispensed worldwide, while poor countries had received only 0.2 percent, according to the World Health Organization. In wealthy countries, roughly one in four people has received a vaccine. In poor countries, the figure is one in 500.

VideoCreditCredit…By Irene Suosalo

Today in the On Tech newsletter, Shira Ovide writes that nearly four years after Amazon agreed to a huge deal to buy Whole Foods and a year into a pandemic that played into the tech giant’s strengths, it’s worth asking two questions: Is Amazon losing in groceries? And why has one of the world’s most ambitious and inventive companies mostly been a follower rather than a leader in one of the biggest spending categories for Americans?

Tags business, highs, Live, Markets, NearRecord, Pull, Stocks, Tech, Updates

World News

Covid-19 Information: Dwell Updates on Vaccine, Instances and India

Post author By
Post date May 4, 2021

Darwin Albania received a vaccine dose in Miami last week.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Saul Martinez for The New York Times

President Biden will announce Tuesday afternoon that he is directing tens of thousands of pharmacies to offer walk-in appointments for coronavirus vaccine shots, creating more pop-up and mobile clinics and shipping more doses to rural clinics, all aimed at vaccinating 70 percent of American adults at least partially by July 4.

The efforts reflect a shift in strategy by the administration as the pace of the nation’s vaccination effort slows. The federal government has also decided that if states do not order their full allocation of doses in any given week, that supply can be shifted to other states that want more.

In an afternoon address, the president plans to pledge more funding for outreach campaigns designed to convince those reluctant to get shots of the need to protect their own health and that of others. The number of shots administered daily has slowed by about half since a peak in mid-April, despite a flood of vaccine available.

Senior health officials have decided that herd immunity — the point at which the virus dies out for lack of hosts to transmit it — will likely remain elusive. But if the 70 percent to 85 percent of the population is vaccinated, the infection rate will be low enough so that normal life will be within reach, senior administration officials said.

The president will call for about 160 million adults to be fully vaccinated by Independence Day. As of Monday, more than 105 million Americans were fully vaccinated and at least 56 percent of adults — or 147 million people — had received at least one shot. That has contributed to a steep decline in infections, hospitalization and deaths across all age groups, federal officials said.

To increase availability of shots, the White House informed states that if they choose not to order their full allocation of vaccine each week, the doses will go back into a federal pool so that other states can draw on it, according to state and federal officials.

States that do not claim their full allotment one week will not be penalized because they will still be able to request the full amount the next week, officials said.

The shift, reported earlier Tuesday by The Washington Post, makes little difference to some states like Virginia that have routinely drawn down as many doses as the federal government was willing to ship. But it could help some states that are able to use more doses than the federal government allotted to them based on their population. They will now be allowed to ask for up to 50 percent more doses than the government allotted them.

Until now, White House officials had been unwilling to shift doses to states that were faster to administer them out of concern that rural areas or underserved communities would lose out to urban or richer areas where residents were more willing to get shots.

But with the pace of vaccination slowing nationwide, officials have determined that freeing up unused doses week by week will not exacerbate equity issues Some state officials have been arguing for the change for weeks.

United States ›	United StatesOn May 3	14-day change
New cases	50,058	–26%
New deaths	751	–3%

World ›	WorldOn May 3	14-day change
New cases	682,232	+6%
New deaths	10,714	+12%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Credit…Gabby Jones for The New York Times

Three U.S. states that were once at the center of the pandemic — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — are taking steps to relax nearly all their coronavirus restrictions, raising hopes among many residents that life is returning to normal, but causing angst for others who are still worried about the virus.

Many people who own or work for establishments that have been hard hit by pandemic closures, like restaurants and bars, nightclubs and cultural institutions, expressed optimism.

But for some others, it may be too soon to celebrate.

Felipe Perez, 48, a construction worker who lives in Brooklyn, said that he did not trust Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s move to ease capacity limits for nearly all businesses starting on May 19.

“It’s too fast,” Mr. Perez added.

Mr. Cuomo’s plan says businesses should still abide by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social distancing guidelines requiring six feet of separation between people.

Businesses that monitor whether everyone inside has been vaccinated or has a negative coronavirus test can allow more people inside, as can restaurants that introduce barriers between tables.

Mr. Cuomo said that the New York City subway, which has been closed nightly to allow for thorough cleaning since last May, will resume operating 24 hours a day on May 17.

About 80,000 municipal workers in the city had already returned to the office when the governor announced the reopening plan.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said on NY1 Monday night that it was time for remote municipal workers to return, even though some may still have concerns about the virus.

Mr. de Blasio said that returning to the office was a necessary step “so we can supercharge this recovery,” adding that the city would continue safety precautions like requiring workers to wear masks in the office.

The mayor said last week that he hoped to reopen the city on July 1, more than a month after the timeline Mr. Cuomo laid out on Monday. The accelerated reopening is the latest in a series of conflicting announcements and political squabbles between the mayor and governor.

“I don’t tend to be surprised by his particular choices lately, let’s put it that way,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Some major employers in the city, like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, will require that their employees return to the office this summer.

Other industries were somewhat taken aback by the announcement. New York City’s theaters and arts venues, for instance, will now face pressure to expedite productions and will have to work around the social distancing requirements.

Broadway is not expected to reopen until September, the Broadway League said in a recent statement. Many performing arts organizations are waiting for clarity about seating rules before putting tickets on sale.

Across the Hudson River, Al Pilone, who has owned the Our Hero sandwich shop in Jersey City, N.J., for 40 years, was reluctant to leap back to normal.

Mr. Pilone, 72, said the shop had been operating through most of the pandemic, but that he was wary about resuming indoor dining, which New Jersey establishments have been allowed to do with limitations since last summer.

He said he was waiting until 70 to 80 percent of the population is vaccinated, because “I don’t want to subject the staff to anybody if I don’t know they’ve vaccinated.”

According to a New York Times database, the average number of new cases reported daily has dropped by 44 percent or more in all three states over the past two weeks, as of Monday, and more than one-third of each state’s population has been fully vaccinated.

Still, experts have warned that in New York, and some other major cities, the slowing pace of vaccinations, the prevalence of undervaccinated areas and the spread of worrisome variants mean that the pandemic is far from over, and that reopening might be premature.

“It just seems poorly thought through, and almost a little reckless,” Dr. Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York, said Monday.

In the nation’s other large cities, plans for reopening have been mixed amid shifting case counts as vaccinations roll out.

In Chicago, where Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced on Tuesday that she plans to fully reopen the city by July 4, officials already have relaxed many restrictions on restaurants, churches, bars and other indoor gatherings, and allowed popular street festivals to resume this summer.

In Los Angeles, restrictions on restaurants were loosened early last month, and in Anaheim, Disneyland reopened on Friday. And that other symbol of California life seems to have returned as well: Traffic is back on the highways.

But in Seattle’s King County, where restaurants and other businesses are still under orders to have a maximum capacity of 50 percent, state leaders are considering a plan to restore more restrictions on Tuesday amid a rise in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.

Reporting was contributed by Nate Schweber, Kevin Armstrong, Winnie Hu, Luis Ferré-Sadurní Kate Kelly, Julie Bosman, Manny Fernandez and Mike Baker.

Credit…Atul Loke for The New York Times

India on Tuesday passed the milestone of 20 million reported coronavirus cases, with many more undetected, according to experts, spurring new calls for a national lockdown.

With those reported numbers, India became the second country after the United States to cross 20 million infections. Although aid has begun to pour in from other countries, hospitals are still unable to help many of those who are critically ill, and families have been left to hunt for much-needed oxygen.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been sharply criticized by many for underplaying the virus earlier this year, and on Tuesday the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said a national lockdown was desperately needed, calling it “the only option.”

Mr. Gandhi accused the authorities of helping the virus spread. “A crime has been committed against India,” he wrote on Twitter.

Mr. Modi has been reluctant to impose strict nationwide lockdown measures like the ones last spring, which remained in place for months.

While experts say that the lockdown helped reduce the number of cases in the first wave of the pandemic, it also triggered the biggest internal migration since the partition of the country in 1947. Millions of workers fled the cities, dealing a blow to the economy.

The economy had been recovering in recent months, but the current wave of disease has dampened hopes for a full recovery, and Mr. Modi asked states to consider lockdowns as “a last option.” Many states, including some governed by Mr. Modi’s party and its allies, have issued stay-at-home orders.

The regional authorities in Bihar in eastern India on Tuesday ordered a two-week lockdown. The southern state of Kerala also announced restrictions this week. The states of Maharashtra, Delhi and Karnataka already have lockdowns, and many states have weekend and night curfews.

Amid the scramble to try to contain the virus, the Indian Premier League announced on Tuesday that it was suspending all the remaining matches of the season after several players and staff tested positive. The league had drawn intense criticism for going ahead with its matches in cities that have been among the worst hit.

Made up of eight teams, the Indian Premier League is the biggest cricket league in the world.

Since the league’s season started last month, some of the biggest cricket stars have traveled across the country in so-called bubbles and played in empty stadiums. But even the stringent safety protocols couldn’t stop team members from being infected. At least five people on three teams have tested positive. The competition had been scheduled to finish at the end of the month.

“These are difficult times, especially in India and while we have tried to bring in some positivity and cheer, however, it is imperative that the tournament is now suspended and everyone goes back to their families and loved ones in these trying times,” the league said in a statement.

India reported over 368,000 new cases and 3,417 deaths on Monday. It has reported more than 222,000 Covid-19 deaths, although actual figures are most likely much higher.

With aid being shipped from countries like the United States and Britain, there was hope among weary residents that the situation could start easing.

Eight oxygen generator plants from France, each of which can supply 250 hospital beds, were earmarked for six hospitals in Delhi and one each in Haryana and Telangana, states in northern and southern India. One of the generators was installed at the Narayana hospital in Delhi within hours of being delivered, according to The Times of India. Italy has also donated an oxygen generation plant and 20 ventilators.

As criticism has mounted over the delay in dispatching oxygen concentrators and other equipment, the government announced on Monday that it was waiving all duties and taxes on lifesaving equipment and relief material that had been donated. But the authorities have faced calls for more transparency on the deployment of the international aid shipments.

The Indian Red Cross receives all shipments that arrive by air, then hands them over to a government agency in charge of distributing the supplies based on regional requests. The authorities have released a list of hospitals that received aid shipments, but did not specify which equipment was going where.

Credit…Seth Wenig/Associated Press

Medical experts welcomed the news that the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine could be authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for use in adolescents ages 12 to 15 by early next week, a major step forward in the U.S. vaccination campaign.

Vaccinating children is key to raising the level of immunity in the population, experts say, and to bringing down the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths. And it could put school administrators, teachers and parents at ease if millions of adolescent students soon become eligible for vaccinations before the next academic year begins in September.

Pfizer’s trial in adolescents showed that its vaccine was at least as effective in them as it was in adults. The F.D.A. is preparing to add an amendment covering that age group to the vaccine’s existing emergency use authorization by early next week, according to federal officials familiar with the agency’s plans who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and the father of two adolescent daughters, said the approval would be a big moment for families like his.

“It just ends all concerns about being able to have a pretty normal fall for high schoolers,” he said. “It’s great for them, it’s great for schools, for families who have kids in this age range.”

This is big. FDA set to authorize Pfizer for 12-15 year-olds. Soon

About 16 million humans in this age group in US

Getting them vaccinated will help US effort to get high levels of population immunity

I have 2 such humans at home ready to get the shothttps://t.co/aXjYxE8ddL

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) May 3, 2021

But with demand for vaccines falling among adult Americans — and much of the world clamoring for the surplus of American-made vaccines — some experts said the United States should donate excess shots to India and other countries that have had severe outbreaks.

“From an ethical perspective, we should not be prioritizing people like them over people in countries like India,” Dr. Rupali J. Limaye, a Johns Hopkins University researcher who studies vaccine use, said of adolescents.

Dr. Jha said that the United States now had a big enough vaccine supply to both inoculate younger Americans and aid the rest of the world. As of Monday, the United States had about 65 million doses delivered but not administered, including 31 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to figures collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 105 million adults in the United States have been fully vaccinated. But the United States is in the middle of a delicate and complex push to reach the 44 percent of adults who have not yet received even one shot.

While adolescents so far appear to be mostly spared from severe Covid-19, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden administration’s top Covid adviser, has repeatedly stressed the importance of expanding vaccination efforts to include them and even younger children. In March, Dr. Fauci said that he expected that high schoolers could be vaccinated by fall and elementary school students by early 2022.

Dr. Richard Malley, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital, said that immunizing adolescents was worthwhile because they can spread the virus, even if they transmit it at a lower rate than adults.

Credit…Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock

New York State lawmakers on Monday passed legislation that would extend a statewide moratorium on residential and commercial evictions through Aug. 31.

The extension would provide additional relief for tenants, who have had broad protection from being taken to housing court since the start of the pandemic, just as New York is expected to start distributing $2.4 billion in rental assistance to struggling renters.

That financial aid will provide up to a year’s worth of unpaid rent and utilities, a financial lifesaver for not just tenants but also their landlords, many of whom have endured more than a year of little income.

Together, the moratorium extension and rental assistance comes just as New York State, along with New Jersey and Connecticut, announced plans to lift almost all their pandemic restrictions later this month, offering a chance to boost the economy a year after the region became a center of the pandemic.

The state’s eviction moratorium would extend the state’s previous protections, which expired on May 1, and goes further than the nationwide moratorium, which expires on June 30 and were imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new state eviction order would go into effect once Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signs it into law.

Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 49,000 eviction cases have been filed in New York City Housing Court, the highest number among any American city, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. While most evictions are on pause, cases can still be filed with the courts.

An analysis of court data shows that the areas in New York City hit hardest by the virus — largely Black and Latino neighborhoods in the Bronx and Queens — have had the highest number of eviction cases. On average, renters owe $8,150 in unpaid rent, the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, a coalition of housing nonprofits.

Tenants cannot be evicted if they can show a financial or health hardship because of the pandemic. Lawmakers said that without an eviction moratorium, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, if not more, could be at risk of losing their homes.

In addition to protections for renters, the new legislation in New York would also safeguard smaller landlords who have been unable to pay their mortgages, protecting them from tax lien sales or foreclosures. Commercial tenants with fewer than 50 employees can also file a hardship declaration to receive eviction protections.

global roundup

Credit…Joel Carrett/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Australian authorities have faced a growing backlash from human rights groups and opposition politicians after they barred Australian citizens stranded in India from coming home, prompted by India’s record-breaking Covid-19 outbreak.

It is a travel ban with no equivalent in other democratic countries. Introduced on Monday and in place until May 15, it wields a possible punishment of up to five years in prison and a fine equivalent to about $50,000 for anyone trying to return from India. It is believed to be the first time that Australia has made it a criminal offense for its citizens and permanent residents to enter.

Michael Slater, an Australian cricket commentator who was in India covering the sport, said in a tweet on Monday that the ban was a “disgrace” and a form of government neglect. “Blood on your hands PM,” Mr. Slater wrote, referring to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

After the policy was announced, the Australian Human Rights Commission said it raised “serious human rights concerns,” and Tim Soutphommasane, Australia’s former race discrimination commissioner, wrote in The Guardian that the measure “undermines the very status of citizenship.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Morrison said that it was “highly unlikely” that anyone would be fined or go to jail for breaching the ban.

In an interview with the Australian broadcaster 9News, he said that the likelihood of imprisonment under the rule was “pretty much zero” and defended it as a necessary safety measure.

“I’m not going to fail Australia,” Mr. Morrison said. “I’m going to protect our borders at this time.”

In other news from around the world:

The European Union’s drug regulator has begun a rolling review of China’s Sinovac vaccine for Covid-19. The European Medicines Agency said on Tuesday that it would review laboratory and clinical-trial data provided by the company until it could determine that the vaccine’s benefits outweighed its risks and if it was fit to receive authorization. The World Health Organization has also been reviewing Sinovac’s vaccine and one manufactured by the Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm, with decisions expected this month.
Tourists traveling to Italy won’t need to quarantine starting after mid-May, Prime Minister Mario Draghi announced on Tuesday, anticipating the introduction of a European Digital Green Pass for travelers. Visitors will be able to enter and travel through the country only if they are fully vaccinated or can show a negative PCR test taken in the 72 hours before traveling to Italy. They will still need to respect restrictions like wearing masks and keeping social distance. “We look forward to welcoming you again soon,” Mr. Draghi said at a news conference.
After a major dairy product manufacturer in South Korea was accused of deliberately spreading misinformation that one of its drinks could fend off the coronavirus, the chairman and chief executive tendered their resignations this week. Local news media reported that sales of the Bulgaris yogurt drink and stocks for Namyang Dairy Products both soared after a research director claimed at a conference last month that the drink reduced the chances of contracting the coronavirus by more than 70 percent. Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety accused the company of illegally spreading misleading information, and the police raided Namyang’s headquarters and factory last week.

Credit…Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Even in China, where propaganda has become increasingly pugnacious, the display was jarring: A photograph of a Chinese rocket poised to blast into space juxtaposed with a cremation pyre in India, which has been overwhelmed by a wave of coronavirus infections.

“Chinese ignition versus Indian ignition,” the title read.

The image drew a backlash from internet users who called it callous, and it was taken down on the same day by the Communist Party-run news service that posted it. But it has lingered as a provocative example of a broader theme running through China’s state-run media, which often celebrates the country’s success in curbing coronavirus infections while highlighting the failings of others.

Chinese leaders have expressed sympathy and offered medical help to India, and the controversy may soon pass. But it has exposed how swaggering Chinese propaganda can collide with Beijing’s efforts to make friends abroad.

“You’ve had this growing tension between internal and external messaging,” said Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow in the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin who studies Chinese propaganda. Ms. Ohlberg said of the Chinese authorities, “They have an increasing number of interests internationally, but ultimately what it boils down to is that your primary target audience still lives at home.”

Credit…Adnan Abidi/Reuters

Savita Mullapudi, an international development consultant in Pittsburgh, heard the ping of a WhatsApp message on her phone around 4 p.m. on Thursday. The sender was a former colleague who, like her, was an Indian immigrant who had lived in the United States for years. He had an urgent favor to ask.

With India’s health care system overwhelmed by the nation’s unprecedented Covid-19 surge and hospitals running out of lifesaving oxygen, an Indian charity was scrambling to find oxygen concentrators, which filter oxygen from the air. One manufacturer was based in Pittsburgh. Could Ms. Mullapudi visit the site to vet the equipment?

Like many members of the Indian diaspora who have watched and mobilized from afar as a deadly second wave of the coronavirus has swept across India in recent weeks, Ms. Mullapudi, whose parents and in-laws live there, leapt at the opportunity to help. She called the company a few minutes later but was told the earliest date for a visit was May 8 — far too late.

So Ms. Mullapudi, 44, said she did “the next-best thing.” She asked a few local doctor friends to tap their networks in Pittsburgh and across Pennsylvania for their opinions of the company and the quality of its products.

By 9 a.m. the next day, she had received texts and long emails from medical professionals and hospital executives with “rave reviews” of the manufacturer, she recalled, as well as detailed descriptions of the machines’ electricity costs and how long they lasted.

Credit…Aria M. Narasimhan

“The minute I said ‘India Covid,’ I was inundated with responses,” Ms. Mullapudi said. “These networks of people that we all work with or know as friends just churned it around, and that’s what really gave the organization confidence to go ahead.”

Before noon on Friday, the foundation ordered more than 400 oxygen concentrators to be flown to India. Though Ms. Mullapudi described her role as just “one drop in an ocean,” she acknowledged the profound impact of so many small acts of human kindness in the face of such dire challenges.

“Eventually it’s just people helping people,” she said. “That’s the story of hope.”

Credit…Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Pfizer has been widely credited with developing an unproven technology that has saved an untold number of lives.

Credit…Jerome Favre/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Hong Kong government on Tuesday backpedaled from a plan to require coronavirus vaccinations for all foreign domestic workers after several days of sharp criticism from foreign diplomatic missions and some residents, who called the requirement discriminatory.

Officials had announced on Friday that the domestic workers — largely low-paid, female migrants from Southeast Asia who clean, cook and perform other household tasks — would have to be vaccinated in order to renew their employment contracts. The government has not issued vaccination requirements for any other group in the city, including other foreign workers.

But officials said it was necessary after two domestic workers recently tested positive for variant strains of the coronavirus. Sophia Chan, the secretary for food and health, said that because domestic workers had a habit of “mingling” with each other during their time off — which, under Hong Kong law, is only one day a week — the entire group of roughly 370,000 workers was considered high-risk.

Hong Kong’s vaccine uptake has been slow, and none of its major outbreaks of the coronavirus have been attributed to domestic workers gathering on their days off.

The announcement provoked an immediate backlash, with critics alleging that the government was making scapegoats of the domestic workers, who make up about 5 percent of Hong Kong’s population of 7.5 million and have long endured poor treatment.

The consuls general of the Philippines and Indonesia — the two main sources of Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workers — said that if there were vaccination requirements, they should be applied to all foreign workers. The Philippines’ outspoken foreign secretary tweeted that the move “smacks of discrimination.”

The government denied that it was discriminating against the workers, but on Tuesday, Carrie Lam, the city’s chief executive, said that in light of the “discussion and attention” that the plan had elicited, she would ask the labor department to “study the specific situation again” and consult foreign consulates. A decision on the plan would be announced later, she said.

Still, the government has said that all foreign domestic workers who have not been fully vaccinated must be tested for the coronavirus by May 9.

Credit…Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times

These days, visitors to the website of one of Italy’s most renowned contemporary art museums are met with a twofold invitation: “Book your visit in advance” and “Book your vaccination.”

The Castello di Rivoli, once a palace owned by the Savoy dynasty, recently became one of several Italian museums to join the country’s vaccine drive, following in the footsteps of cultural institutions throughout Europe.

With the rallying cry of “Art Helps,” the museum near Turin has set aside its third-floor galleries for a vaccination center run by the local health authorities. During their shots, patients can enjoy the wall paintings by Claudia Comte, a Swiss artist.

Comte worked with the composer Egon Elliut to create a soundscape that evokes “a dreamlike feeling,” the artist said, and lulls vaccine recipients as they move from room to room before and after the shot.

“Art has an extraordinarily important effect on well-being,” said Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the museum’s director. She said that she couldn’t have commissioned “a more perfect” backdrop than Comte’s works for a “space to merge the art of healing the body and the art of healing the soul and the mind,” noting that in Italian the words for “to heal” and “curator” came from the same Latin word, “curo.” In history, she said, some of the first museums were former hospitals.

Credit…Associated Press

Less than two months after Tanzania’s first female president took office, the government on Monday announced new steps to tackle the pandemic, in what could be the start of a shift for the East African nation, whose former leader had denied the seriousness of the virus before he died in March. His political opponents said he had died from Covid, but his government denied it.

Beginning Tuesday, all travelers arriving in Tanzania are required to present proof of a negative coronavirus test taken in the previous 72 hours and must pay for a rapid test after they land, the health ministry said.

The new president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, who was sworn into office in March, formed a committee in her first weeks in office to advise her on the status of pandemic in the country, and the steps needed to keep people safe.

Ms. Hassan, however, has not spoken publicly about whether she supports vaccinations or whether vaccines are even available in the country. She has also drawn criticism at times for not wearing a mask, including at her own swearing-in ceremony, and for addressing large gatherings of unmasked supporters. But she has worn one during foreign trips.

Under the previous president, John Magufuli, Tanzania stopped sharing data about coronavirus cases or deaths with the World Health Organization in April 2020. Ms. Hassan’s government also has not submitted any data to the World Health Organization on new cases and deaths, and has not said if, or when, Tanzania would change course.

Ms. Hassan has stated, nevertheless, that Tanzania could not ignore the virus.

“We cannot isolate ourselves as an island,” she said in a speech last month.

The new measures announced on Monday appear to be focused on stopping coronavirus at the country’s borders. The health ministry said that foreigners arriving from countries with new Covid-19 variants would be placed in a mandatory 14-day quarantine at a government-designated facility, while returning residents would be permitted to isolate themselves in their homes.

Truck drivers crossing borders will be permitted to stop only at designated locations and could be tested for the coronavirus at random while in Tanzania.

The moves signal a departure from the blithe approach taken by Mr. Magufuli, the former president. He long opposed masks and social distancing measures, promoted unproven treatments as cures, argued that vaccines didn’t work and declared that God had helped Tanzania eradicate the virus.

Two weeks before he died, Mr. Magufuli changed course and told citizens to take precautions against the virus, including wearing masks and observing social distancing.

Credit…Petros Giannakouris/Associated Press

Greece has reopened to many overseas visitors, including from the United States, jumping ahead of most of its European neighbors in restarting tourism, even as the country’s hospitals remain full and more than three-quarters of Greeks are still unvaccinated.

It’s a big bet, but given the importance of tourism to the Greek economy — the sector accounts for one quarter of the country’s work force and more than 20 percent of gross domestic product — the country’s leaders are eager to roll out the welcome mat.

In doing so, Greece has jumped ahead of other European countries. On Monday, the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, said it would recommend its member states to allow visitors who have been vaccinated. But it remains up to individual countries to set up their own rules.

“We welcome a common position” on restarting tourism in the European Union, Greece’s tourism minister, Harry Theoharis, said in an interview. “All we’re saying is that this has to be forthcoming now. We cannot wait until June.”

Credit…Oscar Durand for The New York Times

At a moment when the pandemic has unleashed demand for open space, plans could transform the medians of Park Avenue in Manhattan and restore them to their original splendor.

Among the options New York City is considering: bringing back chairs and benches, expanding the median, eliminating traffic lanes and carving out room for bike and walking paths.

The revamping of Park Avenue is being driven by a major transit project below ground. A cavernous shed used by Metro-North commuter trains that travel in and out of Grand Central Terminal is over a century old and in need of major repairs.

The work requires ripping up nearly a dozen streets along Park Avenue, from East 46th to East 57th Streets, making possible a new vision.

Removal of traffic lanes is likely to elicit backlash from drivers who complain that pedestrian plazas and bike lanes across the city have made it difficult to get around.

But others say the city would be more livable with fewer cars, making streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists as well as polluting less.

Tags cases, Covid19, India, Live, News, Updates, Vaccine

Business

Verizon Will Promote Yahoo and AOL to Apollo: Dwell Updates

Post author By
Post date May 3, 2021

Verizon Will Sell Yahoo and AOL to Apollo: Live Updates

Folgendes müssen Sie wissen:

Anerkennung…Richard Drew / Associated Press

Verizon Communications gab am Montag bekannt, dass es sich bereit erklärt hat, Yahoo und AOL für 5 Milliarden US-Dollar an die Private-Equity-Gesellschaft Apollo Global Management zu verkaufen.

Der Verkauf umfasst auch das Werbetechnologie-Geschäft von Verizon. Verizon wird einen Anteil von 10 Prozent am Gesamtgeschäft behalten, heißt es in einer Erklärung.

“Diese nächste Entwicklung von Yahoo wird die bisher aufregendste sein”, sagte Guru Gowrappan, Geschäftsführer von Verizon Media, in einem Memo an die Mitarbeiter am Montag, das von der New York Times erhalten wurde.

Herr Gowrappan wird Verizon Media nach dem Deal weiterhin leiten.

Die Transaktion ist die letzte Wende in der Geschichte zweier der frühesten Pioniere des Internets. Yahoo war früher die Titelseite des Internets und katalogisierte das rasante Tempo neuer Websites, die Ende der neunziger Jahre entstanden. AOL war einst der Dienst, mit dem die meisten Menschen online gingen.

Aber beide wurden letztendlich von flinkeren Start-ups wie Google und Facebook abgelöst, obwohl Yahoo und AOL immer noch stark frequentierte Websites wie Yahoo Sports und TechCrunch veröffentlichen.

Der Verkauf signalisiert die Auflösung einer Strategie, die Verizon 2015 ankündigte, als es den verblassten Internetgiganten AOL für 4,4 Milliarden US-Dollar erwarb. Der Kauf sollte Verizon einen Weg ins Handy ermöglichen, mit dem Ziel, mithilfe der Werbetechnologie von AOL Anzeigen gegen digitale Inhalte zu verkaufen. Verizon hat diese Strategie 2017 durch die Übernahme von Yahoo im Wert von 4,48 Milliarden US-Dollar verdoppelt, die es mit AOL unter dem Dach von Oath kombiniert hat.

Google und Facebook haben sich jedoch als hervorragende Wettbewerber auf dem Markt für digitale Werbung erwiesen. Verizon erkannte seine Macht im Jahr 2018 an, als es den Wert von Oath um 4,6 Milliarden US-Dollar abschrieb, was teilweise auf den „erhöhten Wettbewerbs- und Marktdruck“ zurückzuführen war, der zu „unerwartet niedrigen Umsätzen und Erträgen“ geführt hatte.

Trotzdem generiert das Geschäft viel Umsatz. Im ersten Quartal wurde ein Umsatz von 1,9 Milliarden US-Dollar erzielt, ein Plus von 10 Prozent gegenüber dem Vorjahr.

Für Apollo ist dies eine Gelegenheit, weiter in den Bereich der digitalen Medien zu investieren – eine Branche, die bereits mit Deals für Shutterfly, Rackspace und Cox Media Geld hinter sich gelassen hat. Und es hat viel Erfahrung mit Corporate Carve-Outs wie dem Mediengeschäft von Verizon.

Apollo ist bestrebt, das Umsatzwachstum voranzutreiben, indem es sich verstärkt auf die einzelnen Marken konzentriert, von denen es glaubt, dass sie in einem großen Unternehmensimperium verloren gehen. Dies könnte mehr Premium-Abonnements für Yahoo Finance oder mehr beinhalten Sportwetten und Fantasy-Ligen als Teil von In seinem Yahoo Sports-Geschäft sagten zwei Apollo-Manager der New York Times in einem Interview.

Apollo ist auch in Bezug auf die Aussicht auf digitale Werbung besonders optimistisch, da diese Bemühungen mehr Geld in die behördliche Kontrolle einiger der größten Akteure wie Google stecken. Und da Anzeigen nach der Pandemie von offline zu online wechseln, erwartet Apollo ein Wachstum der gesamten Branche.

„Geht das meiste davon an Google und Facebook sowie an Snap und Twitter? Natürlich “, sagte Reed Rayman, ein Private-Equity-Partner bei Apollo. „Aber gibt es noch eine Rolle für andere im Bereich der digitalen Medien, um von der steigenden Flut zu profitieren, wie Yahoo und die anderen Immobilien? Absolut.”

Anerkennung…Yahoo Finance / Via Reuters

Die vielleicht größte Frage, mit der Warren E. Buffett seit Jahren konfrontiert ist, ist, wer ihn als Geschäftsführer von Berkshire Hathaway ersetzen soll, dem Konglomerat, das er in mehr als 50 Jahren in einen 631-Milliarden-Dollar-Koloss eingebaut hat.

Die Antwort ist endlich aufgetaucht: Gregory Abel, der 59-jährige Leutnant, der Berkshires Nichtversicherungsgeschäfte überwacht.

“Die Direktoren sind sich einig, dass Greg heute Morgen die Kontrolle übernehmen würde, wenn mir heute Abend etwas passieren würde”, sagte der 90-jährige Buffett am Montag gegenüber CNBC.

Die Aufnahme bestätigt, was viele vermutet hatten. Mr. Abels Stern stieg 2008 auf, als er zum Geschäftsführer des damaligen MidAmerican Energy ernannt wurde, einem Energieunternehmen, das Berkshire acht Jahre zuvor gekauft hatte. Herr Abel war an der Spitze einer Reihe von Akquisitionen beteiligt, die die Division – seitdem in Berkshire Hathaway Energy umbenannt – zu einem der größten amerikanischen Versorgungsunternehmen machten.

Herr Abel wurde 2018 neben Ajit Jain, dem langjährigen Leiter der umfangreichen Versicherungsgeschäfte von Herrn Buffett, zum stellvertretenden Vorsitzenden von Berkshire ernannt. Analysten und Investoren interpretierten den Schritt weithin als Signal dafür, dass beide Männer eines Tages als Nachfolger von Mr. Buffett als Chief Executive kandidierten.

Charles T. Munger, der langjährige Geschäftspartner von Mr. Buffett, deutete auf der jährlichen Hauptversammlung von Berkshire am Samstag an, dass Mr. Abel der nächste Chef von Berkshire sein könnte. Auf die Frage, ob das Unternehmen zu komplex für die Verwaltung werden könnte, antwortete Herr Munger: „Greg wird die Kultur bewahren“ – eine Aufgabe, die Herr Buffett seit langem betont hat, wäre für Berkshires zukünftigen Führer wichtig.

Apple und Epic Games, Hersteller des beliebten Spiels Fortnite, werden am Montag in einem Test gegeneinander antreten, der entscheiden könnte, wie viel Kontrolle Apple über die App-Wirtschaft ausüben kann. Der Prozess soll mit Aussagen von Tim Sweeney, dem Chef von Epic, eröffnet werden, warum er glaubt, dass Apple ein Monopol ist, das seine Macht missbraucht.

Der Prozess, der voraussichtlich drei Wochen dauern wird, hat erhebliche Auswirkungen, berichten Jack Nicas und Erin Griffith in der New York Times. Wenn Epic gewinnt, wird dies die Wirtschaftlichkeit des 100-Milliarden-Dollar-App-Marktes verbessern und einen Weg für Millionen von Unternehmen und Entwicklern schaffen, um zu vermeiden, dass bis zu 30 Prozent ihrer App-Verkäufe an Apple gesendet werden.

Ein epischer Sieg würde auch den Kartellkampf gegen Apple beleben. Die Aufsichtsbehörden von Bund und Ländern prüfen die Kontrolle von Apple über den App Store. Am Freitag beschuldigte die Europäische Union Apple, gegen die Kartellgesetze bezüglich der App-Regeln und Gebühren verstoßen zu haben. Apple sieht sich zwei weiteren Bundesklagen wegen seiner App Store-Gebühren gegenüber – einer von Entwicklern und einer von iPhone-Besitzern -, die den Status einer Sammelklage anstreben.

Apple zu schlagen, wäre auch ein gutes Zeichen für den bevorstehenden Test von Epic gegen Google wegen der gleichen Probleme im App Store für Android-Geräte. Dieser Fall wird voraussichtlich in diesem Jahr vor Gericht gestellt und von derselben Bundesrichterin, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers vom Northern District of California, entschieden.

Wenn Apple jedoch gewinnt, wird es seinen Einfluss auf mobile Apps stärken und seinen wachsenden Kritikerkreis unterdrücken, wodurch ein Unternehmen weiter gestärkt wird, das bereits das wertvollste Unternehmen der Welt ist und in den letzten sechs Monaten einen Umsatz von über 200 Milliarden US-Dollar erzielt hat.

Anerkennung…Flavio Lo Scalzo / Reuters

Der S & P 500 stieg am Montag im frühen Handel um etwa ein halbes Prozent, während der Stoxx Europe 600 Index um 0,2 Prozent höher lag. In Asien endeten die Indizes am Tag niedriger.
Der S & P 500 schloss den April mit einem Plus von 5,2 Prozent ab, dem größten monatlichen Gewinn seit November.
Der Ölpreis sank ebenso wie die Renditen für 10-jährige Schatzanweisungen. Die Märkte in London waren wegen eines Bankfeiertags geschlossen, und der Handel war insgesamt verhalten, da einige Länder den Feiertag des Ersten Mais markierten.

Inflationsdruck

Investoren könnten eine Inflation im Kopf haben, nachdem der Investor Warren E. Buffett auf der Hauptversammlung von Berkshire Hathaway am Samstag gesprochen hat
Die Kosten für Baumaterialien stiegen.
In der Tat führen Rohstoffknappheit in mehreren Branchen, einschließlich des Baugewerbes, zu Preiserhöhungen, berichten Alan Rappeport und Thomas Kaplan in der New York Times. Die Belastungen sind das Ergebnis einer steigenden Nachfrage, die auf Unterbrechungen der Lieferkette und Tarife aus der Trump-Ära stößt.
Obwohl die Federal Reserve die Preiserhöhungen als vorübergehend beschrieben hat und wahrscheinlich nicht außer Kontrolle geraten wird, könnte der Druck auf die Biden-Regierung, einzugreifen, zunehmen, da sie ein Infrastrukturinvestitionspaket in Höhe von 2 Billionen US-Dollar anstrebt, ein Preis, der mit den Kosten für den Bau von Straßen steigen könnte , Brücken und Ladestationen für Elektrofahrzeuge nehmen zu.

Europäische Hersteller werden gesünder

Europäische produzierende Unternehmen signalisieren laut dem Indexbericht des Einkaufsmanagers von IHS Markit für April „erhebliche Produktionssteigerungen und Auftragseingänge“.
Der saisonbereinigte Index erreichte 62,9 Punkte, den höchsten Stand seit Verfügbarkeit der Umfragedaten im Jahr 1997, sagte IHS Markit am Montag.

Während die wirtschaftliche Erholung nach der Pandemie zunimmt, steigen die Preise für Waren wie Toilettenpapier, Windeln und Holzböden – und der Anstieg könnte sich bald in den Geldbörsen der Verbraucher bemerkbar machen.

Procter & Gamble erhöht im September die Preise für Artikel wie Pampers und Tampax. Kimberly-Clark sagte im März, dass es die Preise für Scott-Toilettenpapier, Huggies und Pull-Ups im Juni erhöhen werde, ein Schritt, der “notwendig ist, um die signifikante Inflation der Rohstoffkosten auszugleichen”.

Und General Mills, Hersteller von Getreidemarken wie Cheerios, sieht sich “in diesem Umfeld mit höherer Nachfrage” mit erhöhten Kosten für Lieferkette und Fracht konfrontiert, sagte der Finanzvorstand des Unternehmens, Kofi Bruce, kürzlich.

Diese Preiserhöhungen spiegeln wider, was einige Ökonomen als eine wesentliche Veränderung in der Art und Weise bezeichnen, wie Unternehmen während der Pandemie auf die Nachfrage reagiert haben, berichtet Gillian Friedman in der New York Times.

Bevor das Virus auftrat, übernahmen die Einzelhändler häufig die Kosten, wenn die Lieferanten die Preise für Waren erhöhten, weil der harte Wettbewerb die Einzelhändler zwang, die Preise stabil zu halten. Die Pandemie hat das geändert.

Anerkennung…Gabby Jones für die New York Times

Die Leute, die von der Nutzung von Büros durch Corporate America profitieren, versuchen, Corporate America zurück ins Büro zu locken.

Sie haben ihre Verkaufsgespräche verfeinert, um Luftfiltersysteme, flexible Mietbedingungen und Schaukelflächen zu verbessern, und Makler sind wieder an ihren eigenen Arbeitsplätzen in Kraft. Sie erkennen an, dass sich einige Dinge geändert haben, und versuchen gleichzeitig, ihren Kunden und sich selbst zu beweisen, dass das Büro bald zu etwas zurückkehren wird, das dem nahe kommt, was es war, berichtet Rebecca R. Ruiz in der New York Times.

Da New York City im Juli wieder vollständig eröffnet werden soll und viele Unternehmen damit rechnen, in diesem Sommer und Herbst Arbeiter zurückzurufen, hoffen die gewerblichen Immobilienmakler, dass die Wiedergeburt, die sie zu beschleunigen versucht haben, endlich eintreten wird.

“Wir haben unsere Büros eröffnet, sobald wir im ganzen Land zugelassen wurden”, sagte David Lipson, stellvertretender Vorsitzender von Savills, einem globalen Maklerunternehmen. “Wenn Sie im Büroimmobiliengeschäft tätig sind, sollten Sie es sich bequem machen, von zu Hause aus zu bequem zu arbeiten?”

In der Branche, die einen kontinuierlichen Wachstumsboom verzeichnete, sind die Provisionen gesunken, da die Leerstandsquoten auf den höchsten Stand seit Jahrzehnten gestiegen sind. Immobilienmanager, die in Bezug auf ihre Aussichten charakteristisch optimistisch sind, stehen vor existenziellen Fragen.

Mit 1,3 Milliarden Quadratfuß Bürofläche in den Top-Märkten Amerikas – und nach Angaben des Forschungsunternehmens CoStar derzeit in Manhattan mehr auf dem Markt als in ganz Nashville, Orlando oder San Antonio – zeigen sich Belastungen in rosigen Projektionen.

Tags AOL, Apollo, Live, Sell, Updates, Verizon, Yahoo

Business

What to anticipate as reside music concert events begin to reemerge put up Covid-19

Post author By
Post date May 1, 2021

What to expect as live music concerts start to reemerge post Covid-19

A concert in Red Rocks Park and the Amphitheater outside of Denver.

John P Kelly | The Image Bank unpublished | Getty Images

When 31-year-old Riley Cash from Denver received his second vaccine earlier this month, the next thing on the agenda was a concert at nearby Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater.

The outdoor venue reopened this month with limited capacity and four night shows by a band called Lotus.

The fact that concerts were already coming back came as a surprise, Cash said. But after working from home for a year, he was dying to see one of his favorite acts live.

Tickets cost about $ 91 per person, more than Cash expected. But he said he considered himself and his friend lucky to be able to get tickets within days of the sale.

More from Personal Finance:
Hotel prices are rising as the demand for travel increases
When it comes to finding love, so much debt is a deal breaker
This is what travel could look like after a pandemic

“I just want to do something,” he said.

Some smaller outdoor and outdoor concerts are starting to open up, offering shows of limited capacity in hopes of finding attendees who feel the same way.

Anecdotally, these venues say they find it easy to fill the spots they can offer.

“We haven’t put a single show up for sale that didn’t blow up right away,” said spokesman Brian Kitts of Red Rocks, near Morrison, Colorado.

The outdoor yoga series that Red Rocks is selling is also selling out quickly, he said.

While it still feels a long way off for other indoor forms of entertainment such as opera and ballet to reopen, the first sales of the available events have gotten off to a stronger start than expected, Kitts said.

That’s a big deal for the urban venue, which lost roughly $ 52 million over the past year.

“Nobody saw this coming,” said Kitts.

“There are 400 people working at the venue every night, and all of those jobs were only gone overnight,” he said.

Dixie Strange, 30, during a morning yoga session at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado on August 22, 2020.

Mark Makela | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Ticket prices haven’t generally gone up at the start of the show season thanks to the bands and promoters, Kitts said.

However, there are new Covid-19 protocols.

There are no temperature checks on the door or requirements to prove a vaccine or a negative Covid-19 test.

However, other precautions were taken. There is a distance of two meters between groups of ticket holders, who now only occupy every second row. Masks are required in interiors such as bathrooms or in the visitor center.

The venue has also implemented touchless payment systems for all transactions.

We haven’t put a single show up for sale that wasn’t immediately blown out. “

Brian Kitts

Red Rocks spokesperson

Some of the concert dates that were canceled in 2020 have been postponed to 2021. Still, new acts are pushing not to be added to the calendar until October or even November, Kitts said.

“We will never again take for granted the ability to gather together and see a concert or go to a sporting event,” said Kitts.

While some venues report strong initial ticket sales, a recent Bankrate.com survey found that only 16% of adults bought tickets to a live event.

Concerts or music festivals were the most popular with 8% of those surveyed. Live theater or comedy followed, 6%; Professional sports or college games, 5%; or other live events that require tickets, 2%.

One reason for the lackluster poll results, which came in late March, could be that consumers are still smart about the money they lost in last year’s events, said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.com.

“We found last year that basically half of the people who had tickets to these events last year lost money,” said Rossman. “And I think a lot of people are shy about it.”

Buying tickets now presents a “calculated risk” that you may get your money or credit back if the events don’t go ahead as planned.

However, Bankrate.com found that people spend an average of $ 227 on concerts and music festivals, $ 191 on comedy or live theater, and $ 387 on games and sporting events when buying tickets.

Some of these costs may include additional security protocols.

For some venues, implementing these processes was key to getting attendees back in the door.

Rhett Miller will perform at City Winery NYC in New York City on April 3, 2021.

Taylor Hill | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

At the City Winery in New York City, the seating capacity will be expanded from the current 100 participants per show to 150 from May 1st.

This date will also usher in a new vaccination-only policy for concert-goers who can use the CLEAR app to provide evidence and fill out a questionnaire in advance. Those who have not received the vaccination can bypass the rule by having a Covid-19 test in advance or on-site on the day of the event.

“We are excited to be driving this forward, so it is psychological comfort to be in a bubble knowing that everyone around you has been vaccinated too,” said Michael Dorf, CEO and Chairman of City Winery.

Even so, the venue has no plans to relax protocols, particularly with regard to wearing masks, until the government gives the OK, Dorf said.

The City Winery has dealt with varying capacity rules and restrictions at its other locations in cities like Nashville, Tennessee. Atlanta and Chicago.

Seeing the live music ecosystem reappear was deeply powerful and very moving.

Michael Dorf

CEO and Chairman of City Winery

One constant, however, remains the same: the fans’ appetite to see live music again.

“Everything we can offer for sale now … is sold out very quickly, enthusiastically,” said Dorf.

Like many other venues, City Winery struggled to close last year as it faced ongoing rents, utility bills, and payrolls.

But it has tried to keep its ticket prices in check, which largely depend on how much the artists paid. Several night shows have helped offset limited ticket sales due to lower capacity.

As the pandemic continues to subside, Dorf also hopes these restrictions come with it.

The introductory joke he tells the audience before each show is always the same, he said.

“Please don’t get used to so much space out there,” said Dorf. “We’ll rush you and get you in here as soon as we can safely.”

The biggest win was seeing the joy the performers feel when they get back on stage and the audience when they see it.

“Seeing the live music ecosystem reappear was deeply powerful and very moving,” said Dorf.

Tags Concerts, Covid19, expect, Live, Music, Post, reemerge, start

Health

How Lengthy Can We Stay?

Post author By
Post date May 1, 2021

Given these statistics, you can expect the record for the longest lifespan to also increase. Yet almost a quarter of a century after Calment’s death, no one is known to have reached or exceeded her 122 years. The next was an American named Sarah Knauss, who died two years after Calment at the age of 119. The oldest living person is Kane Tanaka (118), who lives in Fukuoka, Japan. Very few people make it past 115. (Some researchers have even questioned whether Calment really lived as long as she claimed, though most accept her records as legitimate based on the weight of the biographical evidence.)

As the world population approaches eight billion and science increasingly discovers promising ways to slow or reverse aging in the laboratory, the question of the potential limits of human life expectancy is more pressing than ever. When their work is closely examined, it is clear that longevity scientists have a wide range of nuanced perspectives on the future of humanity. Historically, however, and somewhat frivolously in the view of many researchers, their views have been divided into two broad camps that some journalists and researchers refer to as pessimists and optimists. Those in the first group consider lifespan to be a candle wick that can only burn for so long. They generally think that we are rapidly approaching or have already reached life expectancy and that soon we will not see anyone older than Calment.

In contrast, the optimists see the lifespan as a highly, perhaps even infinitely elastic band. They anticipate significant increases in life expectancy around the world, an increase in the number of extraordinarily long-lived people – and eventually supercenturies who survive Calment and push the record to 125, 150, 200 and beyond. Although unresolved, the longstanding debate has already led to a much deeper understanding of what defines and limits lifespan – and the interventions that could one day extend it significantly.

The theoretical limits The length of a human life has annoyed scientists and philosophers for thousands of years, but for most of history their discussions have been largely based on deliberation and personal observation. In 1825, however, the British actuary Benjamin Gompertz published a new mathematical model of mortality that showed that the risk of death increased exponentially with age. If that risk accelerated further over the course of life, people would eventually reach a point where they essentially had no chance of surviving until the next year. In other words, they would reach an effective life limit.

Instead, Gompertz found that the risk of death was on a plateau with old age. “The lifespan limit is an issue that is likely to never be determined,” he wrote, “even if it should exist.” Since then, other scientists around the world, using new data and more sophisticated math, have found further evidence of accelerating death rates, followed by death plateaus not only in humans but also in numerous other species, including rats, mice, shrimp, nematodes and fruit flies and beetles .

A particularly provocative study in the prestigious research journal Nature in 2016 strongly suggested that the authors had found the limit of human lifespan. Jan Vijg, geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and two colleagues analyzed decades of mortality data from several countries and concluded that while the highest reported age of death in these countries rose rapidly between the 1970s and 1990s, it has failed to rise since then and stagnates on average at 114.9 years. The human lifespan seemed to have reached its limit. Although some individuals, like Jeanne Calment, could live to an astounding age, they were outliers and not indicators of continuous life extension.

“Could someone run a two-minute mile? No. The human body is unable to move that fast due to anatomical restrictions. ‘

Tags Live, Long

Business

Europe’s Economic system Shrank in First Quarter, Revealing a Recession: Reside Updates

Post author By
Post date April 30, 2021

Shuttered storefronts in Milan last month. Extended lockdowns across Europe have slowed economic growth.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times

The eurozone economy contracted by 0.6 percent over the first three months of the year, sliding back into recession, as the still-raging pandemic prompted governments to extend lockdowns.

Coming a day after the United States disclosed that its economy expanded 1.6 percent over the same period, the European downturn presented a contrast of fortunes on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Propelled by dramatic public expenditures to stimulate growth, as well as swift increases in vaccination rates, the United States — the world’s largest economy — expanded rapidly during the first months of 2021. At the same time, the 19 nations that share the euro currency were caught in the second part of a so-called double-dip recession, reflecting far less aggressive stimulus spending and a botched effort to secure vaccines.

But figures for gross domestic product represent a snapshot of the past, and recent weeks have produced encouraging signs that Europe is on the mend. The alarming spread of Covid-19 in major economies like Germany and France has begun to trend downward, factories have revived production, while growing numbers of people are on the move in cities.

Even as the German economy diminished by 1.7 percent from January to March, Italy and Spain slipped by much smaller magnitudes — 0.4 percent and 0.5 percent respectively. The French economy grew by a modest 0.4 percent, though its prospects face a fresh challenge in the form of new pandemic restrictions imposed this month by the government.

The initial lockdowns last year punished Europe’s economies, bringing large swaths of commercial life to a halt. But the current restrictions are calibrated to reflect improved understanding of how the virus spreads. Rather than closing their doors altogether, restaurants in some countries are serving meals on patios and dispensing takeout orders. Roofers, carpenters and other skilled trades have resumed work, so long as they can stay outside.

“We have sort of learned to live with the pandemic,” said Dhaval Joshi, chief strategist at BCA Research in London. “We are adapting to it.”

Vaccination rates are increasing throughout Europe, a trend likely to be advanced by the European Union’s recent deal to secure doses from Pfizer.

Most economists and the European Central Bank expect the eurozone to expand at a blistering pace over the rest of 2021, yielding growth of more than 4 percent for the full year.

Still, even in the most hopeful scenario, Europe’s recovery is running behind the United States, a reflection of their differing approaches to economic trauma.

Since last year, the United States has unleashed additional public spending worth 25 percent of its national economic output for pandemic-related stimulus and relief programs, according to the International Monetary Fund. That compares to 10 percent in Germany.

But Europe also began the crisis with far more comprehensive social safety net programs. While the United States directed cash to those set back by the pandemic, Europe limited a surge in unemployment.

“Europe has more insurance schemes,” said Kjersti Haugland, chief economist at DNB Markets, an investment bank in Oslo. “You don’t fall as hard, but you don’t rebound that sharply either.”

Credit…Lee Celano/Reuters

Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two biggest oil companies in the United States, on Friday reported their first quarterly profits after several quarters of losses, signaling that the energy industry is rebounding from the coronavirus pandemic.

Oil prices have climbed in recent months and are now roughly where they were before the pandemic’s full force was felt. As a result, Exxon reported a $2.7 billion profit in the first three months of the year, compared with a loss of $610 million in the same period a year ago. Chevron said its profit was $1.4 billion, down from $3.6 billion a year earlier. Chevron this week raised its dividend by nearly 4 percent.

The American oil benchmark price, now around $64 a barrel, has tripled since last April. Natural gas prices have also strengthened during the recovery.

“The strong first quarter results reflect the benefits of higher commodity prices and our focus on structural cost reductions,” Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Only six months ago, many analysts warned that Exxon would have to cut its dividend, but now the shareholder payout appears safe because of rising production and higher chemical prices. Exxon this month reported yet another in a string of big oil discoveries off the coast of Guyana, one of its most important growth areas.

At Chevron, sales and other revenue in the quarter increased to $31 billion, $1 billion more than the year-ago quarter.

“Earnings strengthened primarily due to higher oil prices as the economy recovers,” said Mike Wirth, Chevron’s chief executive.

Both companies suffered losses from the severe Texas freeze in February. Exxon reported that lost sales and repairs cost the company nearly $600 million. Chevron said its results were weakened by $300 million in lost oil and refining production and repairs.

Credit…Bryan Derballa for The New York Times

Volkswagen’s American unit was only kidding when it put out the word late in March that it was changing its name to “Voltswagen” to show its commitment to electric vehicles. To say the April Fool’s joke didn’t land is an understatement. Now the misfired marketing gag has prompted an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Volkswagen did not dispute reports in Der Spiegel and other German media that the S.E.C. was looking into whether the carmaker misled shareholders with the faux rebranding. Volkswagen in Germany declined to comment Friday.

Publicly listed companies are not supposed to fool their shareholders, even in jest. Some media reported the purported name change as fact until Volkswagen of America admitted it was all a joke.

German law also requires companies to be honest with their shareholders, but a spokeswoman for the stock market regulator, known as Bafin, said the agency saw no basis to investigate the Voltswagen issue.

It is unlikely that Volkswagen will face a serious penalty if the S.E.C. finds a violation, at least not compared to the tens of billions of dollars that an emissions scandal has cost the company since 2015. The gag does not appear to have had any influence on the price of Volkswagen shares, which rose for several days even after the company admitted it was all a ruse.

Like a comedian bombing onstage, the most painful consequence may be the humiliation.

Credit…Pool photo by Pat Greenhouse/EPA, via Shutterstock

Martin J. Walsh, the labor secretary, said on Thursday that “in a lot of cases” gig workers in the United States should be classified as employees, not independent contractors. “In some cases they are treated respectfully and in some cases they are not, and I think it has to be consistent across the board,” he told Reuters.

Shares of Uber, Lyft, Fiverr and DoorDash fell sharply on the news. These companies’ business models depend on classifying workers as independent contractors, who are not entitled to labor protections like a minimum wage or overtime pay.

But how much control does Mr. Walsh have over how companies classify their employees?

There’s no single law that makes workers employees or contractors. The Labor Department can enforce the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes the federal minimum wage and overtime pay. This law applies only to employees, and who should fall into that category has been the subject of a long-running debate.

In 2015, the Obama administration issued guidance that many interpreted to mean that app-based workers should be considered employees. It was rescinded by the Trump administration.

In 2021, the Trump administration issued a rule that would have made it easier for the same companies to classify workers as contractors. It was nixed by the Biden administration. Mr. Walsh’s comments suggest his interpretation will be similar to the Obama administration’s. And David Weil, reportedly President Biden’s nominee to lead the Labor Department’s wage and hour division, wrote the 2015 guidance.

New guidance wouldn’t change the law, but it could change how the Labor Department decides whether to bring lawsuits against gig economy companies. “It’s implicitly a sign to employers that you should comply with this interpretation or there’s a risk of enforcement,” Brian Chen, a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project, told the DealBook newsletter.

Although such guidance is nonbinding, Benjamin Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School, said courts “tend to give it deference” when making decisions. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw specific action coming from the department sometime this year,” said William Gould, a Stanford law professor and the former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.

Credit…Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The Endeavor Group, the entertainment conglomerate run by the Hollywood mogul Ari Emanuel, pulled its initial public offering at the last minute in 2019, amid lukewarm interest from investors. Last year posed its own difficulties, with a pandemic that hurt its live events business as well as its talent agency.

But Endeavor finally made its market debut on Thursday, closing the day with a market cap of more than $10 billion. Mr. Emanuel spoke with the DealBook newsletter about what changed — and what comes next.

On why the I.P.O. went ahead this time:

“There was confusion with regard to the U.F.C., so we cleaned that up,” Mr. Emanuel said about the mixed-martial arts league that Endeavor is acquiring full control of with proceeds from the offering. Debt was also a worry before, and the company’s leverage will be reduced with help from a $1.7 billion private placement, with Third Point and Elliot Management among the investors. S&P Global upgraded the company’s credit rating on Thursday.

Endeavor also used the pandemic period to restructure and consolidate, shifting further away from its talent agency roots. And Mr. Emanuel expects its events business, entertainment relationships and intellectual property will help feed a demand for “content in all forms” after the pandemic: “We’re the story about coming out.”

On Endeavor’s role in the streaming wars:

“We’re platform agnostic, and we serve all parties,” Mr. Emanuel said. The broadcasters are spending “huge” amounts to build out their streaming platforms. “I don’t have to do that,” he said. “I just have to supply it.”

On how he met Elon Musk, who is joining Endeavor’s board:

“I definitely cold called. That’s kind of in my nature,” Mr. Emanuel said. “We’ve represented him in some of his endeavors. And then over time, he and I became friendly.”

“He’s also a great entrepreneur, meaning he knows how hard it is to build and run a company,” he added, noting that they often call each other for advice.

On whether he has any concerns about putting Mr. Musk on the board given the Tesla chief’s run-ins with securities regulators:

“No.”

Credit…Akos Stiller for The New York Times

The vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford brought in $275 million in sales from about 68 million doses delivered in the first three months of this year, AstraZeneca reported on Friday.

AstraZeneca disclosed the figure, most of which came from sales in Europe, as it reported its first-quarter financial results. It offers the clearest view to date of how much money is being brought in by one of the leading Covid vaccines.

AstraZeneca, which has pledged not to profit on its vaccine during the pandemic, has been selling the shot to governments for several dollars per dose, less expensive than the other leading vaccines. The vaccine has won authorization in at least 78 countries since December but is not approved for use in the United States.

The vaccine represented just under 4 percent of AstraZeneca’s revenue for the quarter; it was nowhere near the company’s biggest revenue generator. By comparison, the company’s best-selling product, the cancer drug Tagrisso, brought in more than $1.1 billion in sales in the quarter.

AstraZeneca has said it is planning to seek emergency authorization for its vaccine to be used in the United States, even as it has become clear that the doses are not needed. The Biden administration said this week that it would make available to the rest of the world up to 60 million doses of its supply of AstraZeneca shots, pending a review of their quality.

If the company does win authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it could help shore up confidence in a vaccine whose reputation been hit by concerns about a rare but serious side effect involving blood clotting. The F.D.A.’s evaluation process is considered the gold standard globally.

Johnson & Johnson, whose vaccine was authorized for emergency use at the end of February, reported last week that its vaccine generated $100 million in sales in the United States in the first three months of the year. The federal government is paying the company $10 a dose. Like AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson has pledged to sell its vaccine “at cost” — meaning it won’t profit on the sales — during the pandemic.

Vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna cost more, and neither company has said that it will forego profits. Pfizer has said that it expects its vaccine to bring in about $15 billion in revenue this year; Moderna said it anticipates $18.4 billion in sales.

Both companies are scheduled to report their first-quarter results next week.

By: Ella Koeze·Data delayed at least 15 minutes·Source: FactSet

U.S. stocks fell in early trading on Friday, with the S&P 500 pulling back from a record high reached the day before, as traders closed positions for the end of the month and continued to react to company earnings.

Despite Friday’s decline, the S&P 500 is still on track for a gain of about 5 percent for April, its best monthly showing since November — when stocks rallied nearly 11 percent in the wake of the U.S. presidential election.

The benchmark stock index had hit a record after data showed the American economy grew strongly at the start of the year. Forecasters predict the economy will be back to its prepandemic size by the summer and will help drive global economic growth.

Oil prices fell, with futures on West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, dropping more than 2 percent to $63.50 a barrel.

Europe

The Stoxx Europe 600 index was slightly lower. The index is heading for a second consecutive week of losses, which hasn’t happened since October.
The eurozone economy contracted by 0.6 percent over the first three months of the year, sliding back into recession, as the pandemic prompted governments to extend lockdowns. The decline was smaller than economists surveyed by Bloomberg had forecast, but it still puts much of Europe in a double-dip recession.

Company earnings

AstraZeneca rose 3.4 percent in London after the drugmaker’s first-quarter earnings beat analysts expectations. The company also said that the vaccine it developed with the University of Oxford brought in $275 million in sales from about 68 million doses in the first three months of the year; the company has pledged not to profit from the vaccine.
Barclays shares plunged 6 percent after what the bank’s chief executive described as a “mixed result” for its first-quarter earnings. Income from trading in equities rose but fell for other assets. Still, the bank has a sunny outlook for the future. Jes Staley, the chief executive, said he expected the British economy to grow at the fastest pace since 1948.
Twitter shares dropped 13 percent after the social media platform cautioned investors that its user numbers were unlikely to increase substantially this year when compared with the spike caused by the pandemic.
Amazon rose about 1 percent after it reported $108.5 billion in sales in the first three months of the year, up 44 percent from a year earlier. It also posted $8.1 billion in profit, an increase of 220 percent from the same period last year.

With the pandemic shifting sales online and consumers flush with stimulus checks, Amazon on Thursday reported $108.5 billion in sales in the first three months of the year, up 44 percent from a year earlier. It also posted $8.1 billion in profit, an increase of 220 percent from the same period last year. The high volume of orders during the pandemic has let Amazon operate more efficiently. It has run its warehouses closer to full capacity, and delivery drivers have made more stops on their routes, with less time driving between customers. The number of items Amazon sold grew 44 percent, but the cost to fulfill those orders was up only 31 percent.
Twitter reported on Thursday that its revenue in the first quarter of the year was $1.04 billion, a 28 percent increase from the same quarter the previous year that modestly exceeded analyst expectations. Net income for the quarter was $68 million, a turnaround from an $8.4 million loss in the same quarter a year ago. The banning of former President Donald J. Trump did not appear to have hurt Twitter’s financial performance in the quarter. The company saw a 20 percent jump in daily active users who see ads, to 199 million. It also added new advertising formats, leading to a 32 percent increase in ad revenue in the quarter.

Credit…Caleb Kenna for The New York Times

Tesla’s solar ambitions date to 2015 when it announced that it would sell panels and home batteries alongside its electric cars. A year later, Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive, promised that Tesla’s new shingles would turbocharge installations by attracting homeowners who found solar panels ugly.

After delays, Tesla began rolling out the shingles in a big way this year, but it is already encountering a major problem, Ivan Penn reports for The New York Times.

The company is hitting some customers with price increases before installation that are tens of thousands of dollars higher than earlier quotes, angering early adopters and raising big questions about how Tesla, which is better known for its electric cars, is running its once dominant rooftop solar business.

The shingles remain such a tiny segment of the solar market that few industry groups and analysts bother to track installations.

Tesla is not the only company to pursue the idea of embedding solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity, in shingles. Dow Chemical, CertainTeed, Suntegra and Luma, among others, have offered similar products with limited success.

But given Mr. Musk’s success with Tesla’s electric cars and SpaceX’s rockets, Tesla’s glass shingles attracted outsize attention. He promised that they would be much better than anything anybody else had come up with and come in a variety of styles so they could resemble asphalt, slate and Spanish barrel tiles to fit the aesthetic of each home.

During a quarterly earnings call on Monday, Mr. Musk insisted that demand for Tesla’s solar roofs “remains strong” even though the company had raised prices substantially. He described the last-minute increases as a teething problem.

Customers are unhappy with the growing pains. Dr. Peter Quint was eager to install Tesla’s solar shingles on his 4,000-square-foot home in Portland, Ore., until the company raised the price to $112,000, from $75,000, in a terse email. When he called Tesla for an explanation, he was put on hold for more than three hours.

“I said, ‘This isn’t real, right?’” said Dr. Quint, whose specialty is pediatric critical care. “The price started inching up. We could deal with that. Then this. At that price, in our opinion, it’s highway robbery.”

Credit…Mohamed Sadek for The New York Times

In the first months of 2021, what was good for the auto industry was decidedly good for the American economy.

Spending on motor vehicles and parts rose almost 13 percent in the first quarter, making a big contribution to the increase in gross domestic product, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. Strong sales of new and used vehicles were propelled by consumers who had delayed purchases earlier in the pandemic and by others who — because of the virus — wanted to rely less on public transit or shared transportation services like Uber.

Two rounds of stimulus payments since late December were a big factor. Low interest rates, readily available credit, rising home values and stock prices, and strong trade-in values for used models also eased the path for consumers.

In fact, demand in the first quarter was robust enough that the auto industry was able to post healthy results despite a shortage of computer chips that forced temporary shutdowns of many auto plants.

The number of new cars and light trucks sold increased 11 percent from the comparable period a year earlier, to 3.9 million, according to the auto-sales data provider Edmunds.com.

On Wednesday, Ford Motor reported it made a $3.3 billion profit in the quarter, its highest total since 2011. While it produced 200,000 fewer vehicles in the quarter than it had planned, the average selling price of Ford models rose to $47,858, 8 percent higher than in the first quarter a year ago, Edmunds reported.

The combination of strong consumer demand and tight inventories — partly a result of the chip shortage — has produced something of a dream scenario for auto retailers. At AutoNation, the country’s largest chain of dealerships, many vehicles are being sold near or at sticker price even before they arrive from the factory.

“I’ve never seen so much preselling of shipments,” said Mike Jackson, the chief executive. “These vehicles are coming in and going right out.”

In the first quarter, AutoNation’s revenue jumped 27 percent, to $5.9 billion, and the company reported $239 million in profit. That was a turnaround from a loss a year ago, when the pandemic crimped sales and forced AutoNation to close stores.

Tags Economy, Europes, Live, quarter, Recession, Revealing, Shrank, Updates

Business

U.S. Economic system Rebounds as Ache Brought on by Pandemic Eases: Stay Updates

Post author By
Post date April 29, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

The economy picked up speed last quarter, shaking off some of the lingering effects of the pandemic as consumer spending grew, bolstered by government stimulus checks and an easing of restrictions in many parts of the country.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the economy expanded 1.6 percent in the first three months of 2021, compared with 1.1 percent in the final quarter last year.

On an annualized basis, the first-quarter growth rate was 6.4 percent.

Gross domestic product,

adjusted for inflation and

seasonality, at annual rates

Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation

and seasonality, at annual rates

“This was a great way to start the year,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “We had the perfect mix of improving health conditions, strong fiscal stimulus and warmer weather.”

“Consumers are now back in the driver’s seat when it comes to economic activity, and that’s the way we like it,” he added. “A consumer that is feeling confident about the outlook will generally spend more freely.”

Looking ahead, economists said they expected to see even better numbers this quarter.

“It’s good news, but the better news is coming,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “There’s nothing in this report that makes me think the economy won’t grow at a gangbusters pace in the second and third quarter.”

The expansion last quarter was spurred by stimulus checks, he said, which quickly translated into purchases of durable goods like cars and household appliances.

“This demonstrates the value of government intervention when the economy is on its knees from Covid,” he added. “But in the coming quarters, the economy will be much less dependent on stimulus as individuals use the savings they’ve accumulated during the pandemic.”

Cumulative percent change in

G.D.P. from the start of the

last five recessions

Final quarter

before

recession

5 quarters

into recession

Cumulative percent change in G.D.P.

from the start of the last five recessions

Final quarter

before

recession

5 quarters

into recession

Overall economic activity should return to prepandemic levels in the current quarter, Mr. Anderson said, while cautioning that it will take until late 2022 for employment to regain the ground it lost as a result of the pandemic.

Still, the labor market does seem to be catching up. Last month, employers added 916,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 6 percent, while initial claims for unemployment benefits have dropped sharply in recent weeks.

Tom Gimbel, chief executive of LaSalle Network, a recruiting and staffing firm in Chicago, said: “It’s the best job market I’ve seen in 25 years. We have 50 percent more openings now than we did pre-Covid.”

Hiring is stronger for junior to midlevel positions, he said, with strong demand for professionals in accounting, financing, marketing and sales, among other areas. “Companies are building up their back-office support and supply chains,” he said. “I think we’re good for at least 18 months to two years.”

Spending on goods like automobiles led the way in the first quarter, but demand for services like dining out should revive in the second quarter, said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. “I think we will see a surge in services spending,” she said.

Credit…James Estrin/The New York Times

Initial jobless claims fell last week to yet another pandemic low in the latest sign that the economic recovery is strengthening.

About 575,000 people filed first-time claims for state unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, a decrease of 9,000 from the previous week’s revised figure. It was the third straight week that jobless claims had dropped.

In addition, 122,000 new claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program that covers freelancers, part-timers and others who do not routinely qualify for state benefits. That was a decline of 12,000 from the previous week.

Neither figure is seasonally adjusted. On a seasonally adjusted basis, new state claims totaled 553,000.

“Today’s report, and the other data that we got today, signals an improving labor market and an improving economy,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist with the career site Glassdoor. “It is encouraging that claims are continuing to fall.”

Although weekly jobless claims remain above levels reached before the pandemic, vaccinations and warmer weather are offering new hope. Most economists expect the slow downward trend in claims to continue in the coming months as the economy reopens more fully.

But challenges lie ahead. The long-term unemployed — a group that historically has had a more difficult time rejoining the work force — now make up more than 40 percent of the total number of unemployed. Of the 22 million jobs that disappeared early in the pandemic, more than eight million remain lost.

“The labor market is definitely moving in the right direction,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at the online job site Indeed. She noted that job postings as of last Friday were up 22.4 percent from February 2020.

Still, she cautioned that industries like tourism and hospitality would probably remain depressed until the pandemic was firmly under control. She also stressed that child care obligations might be preventing people ready to return to work from seeking jobs.

“We still are in a pandemic — the vaccinations are ramping up but there is that public health factor still,” Ms. Konkel said. “We’re not quite there yet.”

Microsoft will decrease the share of money it charges independent developers that publish computer games on its online store, starting in August, the company said on Thursday.

Developers will keep 88 percent of the revenue from their games, up from 70 percent. That could make Microsoft’s store more attractive to independent studios than competitors like Valve’s gaming store, called Steam, which typically starts by taking a 30 percent cut. Epic Games’ store takes 12 percent.

“We want to make sure that we’re competitive in the market,” said Sarah Bond, a Microsoft vice president who leads the gaming ecosystem organization. “Our objective is to have a leading revenue share and really a leading platform.”

The share of revenue that developers get to keep has come under greater scrutiny across the tech industry. Google and Apple have faced antitrust questions for the 30 percent fees they charge developers whose programs appear in their app stores.

Last year, Epic sued Apple and Google separately, claiming they violated antitrust laws by forcing developers to use their payment systems. Epic had tried to bypass the fees by letting customers pay for items in its Fortnite video game directly through Epic. That caused Apple and Google to boot Fortnite from their app stores.

Apple and Google have since reduced fees for some developers. Epic’s lawsuit against Apple is set to head to trial on Monday in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif.

Credit…Koen Van Weel/EPA, via Shutterstock

Strong profit increases from two of Europe’s largest energy companies, Royal Dutch Shell and Total, demonstrated that what really matters for the financial performance of these companies remains the price of oil and natural gas.

Their recent investments in clean energy, described by company officials as essential for the future, remain marginal.

Total said that adjusted net income rose by 69 percent compared with the period a year earlier, when the effects of the pandemic were beginning to kick in, to $3 billion, while Shell said that what it calls adjusted earnings rose by 13 percent to $3.2 billion.

The main factor in the improved performance by both companies was a roughly 20 percent rise in oil prices along with an increase in natural gas prices, leading to higher revenues. During a news conference to discuss the results, Jessica Uhl, Shell’s chief financial officer, said that a $10 jump in oil prices would translate into a $6.4 billion increase in cash for the company’s coffers on an annual basis.

Shell, which cut its dividend last year for the first time since World War II, confirmed that it would increase the payout for the quarter by 4 percent, to about 17 cents a share.

Both companies have tethered their futures to generating and distributing renewable sources of energy. Shell in February said its oil production had peaked in 2019, and it has been investing in various clean energy ventures, including a network of 60,000 charging stations for electric vehicles. And Total has, among other things, invested in options to build offshore wind farms off Britain.

In its earnings statement, Total took the lead among the oil majors in providing details on its investments in renewable energy like wind and solar. The company said these businesses brought in $148 million for the quarter, measured as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. This figure was about 2 percent of the overall total for the company of $7.3 billion, according to analysts at Bernstein, a research firm.

Credit…Chema Moya/EPA, via Shutterstock

Airbus announced Thursday that it had returned to a profit in the first quarter following a 1.1 billion euro loss last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, but its top executive warned that the economic toll would continue.

“The first quarter shows that the crisis is not yet over for our industry, and that the market remains uncertain,” Guillaume Faury, chief executive of the world’s largest airplane maker, said in a statement.

Airbus booked a net profit of 362 million euros ($440 million) between January and March, compared with a loss of 481 million euros a year earlier, as cost-cutting measures — which included more than 11,000 layoffs announced last year for its global operations — bolstered the bottom line. Revenue fell 2 percent to 10.5 billion euros.

Airbus delivered 125 commercial aircraft to airlines in the three-month period, up from 122 a year earlier. Over all, Airbus delivered 566 aircraft to airlines in 2020, 40 percent less than expected before the pandemic.

Airbus has previously warned that the industry might not recover from the disruption caused by the pandemic until as late as 2025, as new virus variants delay a resumption of worldwide air travel.

Given the uncertain outlook, Airbus won’t ramp up aircraft deliveries this year. The company said it expected to deliver 566 aircraft on back order from airline companies, the same number as last year.

It maintained its forecast for an underlying operating profit of two billion euros for the year.

As of

Data delayed at least 15 minutes

Source: Factset

Stocks on Wall Street jumped on Thursday, rising with European stock indexes, amid indications that the economy is moving toward a recovery to prepandemic levels.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the U.S. economy expanded 1.6 percent in the first three months of 2021, compared with 1.1 percent in the final quarter last year, or 6.4 percent on an annualized basis.

A day earlier, the Federal Reserve said that the outlook was improving and that it would continue to provide substantial monetary support, easing investors’ concerns that it would soon start easing the stimulus efforts it launched a year ago when the Covid-19 crisis forced a near shutdown of many parts of the economy.

“While the level of new cases remains concerning,” Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said, “continued vaccinations should allow for a return to more normal economic conditions later this year.” The central bank kept interest rates near zero and said it would continue buying bonds at a steady clip.

The S&P 500 rose 0.7 percent. Market sentiment continued to rise after President Biden detailed more of his spending plans — which total $4 trillion — to fund expanded access to education and reduce the cost of child care, among other things.

Oil prices rose. Futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, climbed more than 2 percent to above $5 a barrel.

The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.3 percent as a measure of economic confidence for the eurozone surged higher.

Company earnings

Facebook shares rose nearly 6 percent after the company said on Wednesday that profit nearly doubled to $9.5 billion in the first quarter as advertising revenue and user numbers increased.
Apple shares rose about half a percent after the iPhone maker’s profit more than doubled to $23.6 billion in the first quarter. The company also said it would buy back $90 billion of its own stock, part of its continued program to return much of its earnings to shareholders.
Qualcomm, which makes chips for smartphones, rose nearly 6 percent after the company said its revenue increased 52 percent in the first three months of the year compared with the previous year.
Airbus shares rose 2.7 percent after the French plane maker said it had returned to a profit in the first quarter following a 1.1 billion euro loss last year. But the company’s chief executive added that the crisis was not over for the industry.

Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Amazon will increase pay between 50 cents and $3 an hour for half a million workers in its warehouses, delivery network and other fulfillment teams, the company said on Wednesday.

The action follows scrutiny of Amazon from lawmakers and an unsuccessful unionization push that ended this month at its large warehouse in Alabama. In 2018, Amazon raised its minimum pay to $15 an hour. In recent months, it has publicly campaigned to raise the federal minimum to $15, too.

Amazon has been on a hiring spree during the pandemic. As more customers ordered items online, the company added 400,000 employees in the United States last year. Its total work force stands at almost 1.3 million people.

Amazon typically revaluates wages each fall, before the holiday shopping season. But this year, it moved those changes earlier, said Darcie Henry, an Amazon vice president of people experience and technology. The new wages will roll out from mid-May through early June. Ms. Henry said the company was hiring for “tens of thousands” of open positions.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, recently told shareholders in his annual letter that he recognized the company needed “a better vision for how we create value for employees — a vision for their success.” He said that Amazon had always striven to be “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company,” and that now he wanted it to be “Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work” as well.

Amazon is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on Thursday.

Gary Gensler’s tenure leading the Securities and Exchange Commission is off to a rocky start: Alex Oh, who he named just days ago to run the regulator’s enforcement division, has resigned following a federal court ruling in a case involving one of her corporate clients, ExxonMobil.

In her resignation letter on Wednesday, Ms. Oh said the matter would be “an unwelcome distraction to the important work” of the enforcement division.

Ms. Oh’s resignation letter followed a ruling on Monday from Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia over the conduct of Exxon’s lawyers during a civil case involving claims of human rights abuses in the Aceh province of Indonesia.

According to Judge Lamberth’s ruling, Exxon’s lawyers claimed without providing evidence that the plaintiffs’ attorneys were “agitated, disrespectful and unhinged” during a deposition. He ordered Exxon’s lawyers to show why penalties were not warranted for those comments.

The ruling did not single out any lawyers by name. Ms. Oh was one of the lead lawyers for Exxon.

The judge’s order also granted the plaintiffs’ motion that Exxon pay “reasonable expenses” associated with litigating their request for sanctions and with an accompanying motion to compel additional testimony from Exxon related to the deposition.

Ms. Oh’s resignation letter did not mention the Exxon case by name, but a person briefed on the matter confirmed that the ruling from Judge Lamberth had prompted her to step down.

Ms. Oh, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who worked for the elite firm Paul, Weiss for nearly two decades, was picked by Mr. Gensler to oversee the S.E.C.’s 1,000-attorney enforcement division on April 22. The same day, she filed a notice with the court in the Exxon case saying she had withdrawn from the matter because she had resigned from the firm to join the federal government.

The civil litigation involving Exxon is nearly two decades old and involves allegations by the plaintiffs that Exxon’s security personnel “inflicted grievous injuries” on them. The lawsuit was brought under the federal Alien Tort Claims Act, which enables residents of other countries to sue in the United States for damages arising from violations of U.S. treaties or “the law of nations.”

Mr. Gensler said in a news release that Melissa Hodgman, who had been the enforcement division’s acting chief since January, will return to that position. Ms. Hodgman has been an enforcement attorney with the agency since 2008. He thanked Ms. Oh for her “willingness to serve the country.”

Ms. Oh could not immediately be reached for comment.

Brad Karp, chairman of Paul, Weiss, said the firm would not comment on the matter because it involved ongoing litigation. “Alex is a person of the utmost integrity and a consummate professional with a strong ethical code,” he added.

Ms. Oh is a highly respected lawyer, but her selection had been criticized by the Revolving Door Project, a good-government group, because she had been in private practice for so many years and had defended some of the largest U.S. companies.

Apple said on Wednesday that its profits more than doubled to $23.6 billion in the most recent quarter. Apple said its revenues soared by 54 percent to $89.6 billion. As usual, the main driver of Apple’s success was sales of the iPhone, which rose by 66 percent to $47.9 billion, its steepest increase in years. In the latest quarter, iPhones accounted for 54 percent of Apple’s revenues.
Facebook said on Wednesday that revenue rose 48 percent to $26.2 billion in the first three months of the year, while profits nearly doubled to $9.5 billion. Advertising revenue, which makes up the bulk of Facebook’s income, rose 46 percent to $25.4 billion. Nearly 3.5 billion people now use one of Facebook’s apps every month, up 15 percent from a year earlier.
Ford Motor said on Wednesday that the global shortage of computer chips will take a greater toll on its business than previously expected and would likely cut its vehicle production in the second quarter by about half. Ford expects the shortage to lower its operating profit this year by $2.5 billion, to between $5.5 billion to $6.5 billion. The company made a $3.3 billion profit in the first quarter, a turnaround from a year ago when the company lost $2 billion as the coronavirus pandemic was starting to shut down much of the world’s economy.

Credit…Sara Hylton for The New York Times

Before the pandemic, when suppliers raised the cost of diapers, cereal and other everyday goods, retailers often absorbed the increase because stiff competition forced them to keep prices stable.

Now, with Americans’ shopping habits having shifted rapidly — with people spending more on treadmills and office furniture and less at restaurants and movie theaters — retailers are also adjusting, Gillian Friedman reports for The New York Times.

The Consumer Price Index, the measure of the average change in the prices paid by U.S. shoppers for consumer goods, increased 0.6 percent in March, the largest rise since August 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Procter & Gamble is raising prices on items like Pampers and Tampax in September. General Mills, which makes cereal brands including Cheerios, is facing increased supply-chain and freight costs that could translate into higher retail prices for customers.

At the beginning of the pandemic, companies were focused on fulfilling demand for toilet paper, cleaning supplies, canned food and masks, said Greg Portell, a partner at Kearney, a consulting firm. The government was watching for price-gouging, and customers were wary of being taken advantage of.

Now that the economy is beginning to stabilize, companies are starting to rebalance pricing so that it better fits their profit expectations and takes into account inflation. “This isn’t an opportunistic profit-taking by companies,” Mr. Portell said. “This is a reset of the market.”

Credit…Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times

For many cryptocurrency supporters and investors, regulatory approval of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund in the United States represents the holy grail. It would allow the crypto-curious to get exposure to Bitcoin without having to buy the tokens themselves, signifying that digital assets are really, truly mainstream.

But it’s not meant to be — yet. On Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission delayed a decision on a Bitcoin E.T.F. proposal from the investment manager VanEck, saying it needs more time but offering no other explanation.

Delay is not denial, and it may be a good sign, Todd Cipperman, the founder of the compliance services firm CCS, told the DealBook newsletter. When considering the concept of a crypto E.T.F. in 2018, the S.E.C. raised questions about investor protection issues and put a “wet blanket on the whole idea,” he said.

Now, crypto is much bigger, and Gary Gensler, who taught courses about blockchain technology at M.I.T., is chair of the S.E.C. His expertise doesn’t guarantee success for crypto E.T.F.s, but it will be easier for an expert in the field to approve them, Mr. Cipperman suggested.

The S.E.C. gave itself until mid-June, with the option to take more time, but it must decide before year’s end. The regulator has rejected every proposal to date, starting with the first Bitcoin E.T.F. pitch in 2013, presented by the Winklevoss twins, which was eventually dismissed in 2017 (and again in 2018). There are several E.T.F. proposals on the table now, including one from the traditional finance giant Fidelity.

Canada is moving faster, approving all kinds of crypto E.T.F.s, after allowing its first Bitcoin E.T.F. in February. Hester Peirce, an S.E.C. commissioner and vocal crypto champion, told DealBook earlier this month that she has been “mystified” by her agency’s response to some prior applications, which met the standards in her view. With more players now engaging in the process, approval could be looming — eventually.

Credit…Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

The first-quarter economic recovery was powered by spending. Specifically, by spending on stuff.

Consumer spending rose 2.6 percent in the first three months of the year, with a 5.4 percent increase in spending on goods accounting for most of the growth. Americans ramped up spending on cars, furniture, recreational vehicles and other long-lasting items, as well as on clothes and food. Spending on services, which has slumped throughout the pandemic, rose by a more modest 1.1 percent.

Services spending is likely to pick up in the second quarter, as the acceleration of the vaccine rollout allows more Americans to return to restaurants, airplanes and other activities that they avoided during the pandemic. The data released Thursday by the Commerce Department largely predates that surge.

What the first-quarter data does capture is the impact of two rounds of relief checks from the federal government. After-tax personal income, adjusted for inflation, jumped 12.7 percent in the first quarter, with the government payments accounting for most of the increase. There was a similar jump in income when the first round of relief checks hit last year, which was followed by a similar surge in spending on goods.

“To some extent, when people have money, they’re going to spend it,” said Ben Herzon, executive director of IHS Markit, a forecasting firm. “If they’re not spending on services because they’re not going to movies or amusement parks, they’re going to derive utility from goods.”

He said he expected goods spending to ease in the second quarter as services spending begins to rebound more strongly.

Americans still have plenty of cash to spend. Households were sitting on a collective $4.1 trillion in savings in the first quarter, up from $1.2 trillion before the pandemic began — although such aggregates can obscure the fact that many families have seen their finances wiped out by the crisis.

Ample savings and rising consumer optimism are giving businesses the confidence to bet on the future as well. Business investment rose 2.4 percent in the first quarter and is now above its prepandemic level. The housing market has been juiced by low interest rates and strong demand; residential construction spending rose 2.6 percent in the first quarter.

Tags Caused, Eases, Economy, Live, pain, Pandemic, rebounds, Updates

Business

Boeing Sees Restoration Forward Regardless of Persevering with Losses: Dwell Updates

Post author By
Post date April 28, 2021

Boeing 777X jets at the company’s production facility in Everett, Wash. Boeing said it continued to expect the recovery to take years to unfold.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

Boeing said Wednesday that it lost $561 million in the first three months of the year as it emerged from its prolonged 737 Max crisis and contended with new problems related to the 787 Dreamliner jet. Revenue fell 10 percent to $15.2 billion compared with the same period last year.

But, like his counterparts at major airlines, Dave Calhoun, Boeing’s chief executive, struck an optimistic tone.

“While the global pandemic continues to challenge the overall market environment, we view 2021 as a key inflection point for our industry as vaccine distribution accelerates and we work together across government and industry to help enable a robust recovery,” he said in a statement.

In an investor presentation, Boeing said it continued to expect the recovery to take years to unfold, with passenger traffic unlikely to return to 2019 levels until 2023 or 2024. It also said its financial results for this year “hinge” on a recovery in the commercial airplane market.

At the end of March, the company had a backlog of more than 4,000 commercial airplane orders, valued at $283 billion. Its defense and space backlog was valued at $61 billion.

The company’s results were weighed down by quality concerns with the 787, though deliveries of the plane resumed at the end of the quarter “following comprehensive reviews,” Boeing said in a statement. The company also suffered a $318 million charge related to development of the next Air Force One, which was affected by a pandemic slowdown and problems with a key supplier, which Boeing recently sued.

It was also the first full quarter since the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision in November to lift its ban on the 737 Max, which had been grounded globally nearly two years following two fatal crashes in which hundreds were killed.

Since the ban was lifted, Boeing has delivered more than 85 Max’s to customers worldwide. It also reported that it sold more planes than were canceled in February and March, its first months of positive sales in more than year. Nearly two dozen airlines have put the plane back into service on more than 26,000 flights, Boeing said.

Mr. Calhoun also provided an update on an electrical concern with some Max planes that was disclosed this month. The F.A.A. has said the issue could affect the operation of a backup power control unit in 106 planes worldwide, all of which have been grounded. Boeing is working with the agency on a fix that should take a “few days per airplane” once approved, Mr. Calhoun said in a letter to staff.

Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

Silicon Valley’s favorite shoe brand is headed to Wall Street. Allbirds is interviewing banks over the next few weeks to help it make a market debut, people familiar with the matter told the DealBook newsletter, requesting anonymity because the process is confidential. The direct-to-consumer company was last valued at around $1.7 billion.

The talks come as consumer brands that were founded with a heavy (if not exclusive) internet presence, including Honest Company and Warby Parker, are taking advantage of a pandemic-driven boom in online shopping to see if investor enthusiasm for tech offerings extends to them as well. Many of those companies, including Allbirds, have since opened some retail stores, which has proved an easier transition than the legacy retailers trying to build digital operations after making their names in the offline world.

Allbirds was founded by the New Zealand soccer star Tim Brown and Joey Zwillinger, a renewables expert. Its mantra is to “create better things in a better way,” and the company advertises that the merino wool in its shoes uses 60 percent less energy than typical synthetic materials.

“One of the worst offenders of the environment from a consumer product standpoint is shoes,” Mr. Zwillinger told The New York Times in 2017. “It’s not the making; it’s the materials.”

The brand’s flashy-but-logo-free shoes are popular among techies, celebrities (Leonardo DiCaprio is an investor) and former President Barack Obama. The company has raised more than $200 million since 2016.

Allbirds is a B Corp, a certification earned by focusing on social good as well as profit. (Mr. Zwillinger joined a DealBook Debrief call last year to talk about the purpose of business.) Wall Street hasn’t always taken kindly to such companies: Etsy had to drop the status after taking a beating from the public markets following its I.P.O. Allbirds, though, said the $100 million funding round it announced last September was “indication of investors’ continued enthusiasm for its stakeholder-centric business model.”

“Allbirds has always been focused on building a great company, and as a B Corp and Public Benefit Corporation, doing what is best for our stakeholders (planet, people, investors) at the right time and in a way that helps the business grow in a sustainable fashion,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.

Credit…Ralph Orlowski/Reuters

Deutsche Bank reported its best quarterly profit in seven years Wednesday as it benefited from lively financial markets and avoided losses from the investment firm Archegos Capital that has battered rivals.

The first-quarter profit of 900 million euros, or $1.1 billion, was better than expected and suggested that Deutsche Bank may be emerging from a decade of scandals and disasters that earned it a reputation as Europe’s most troubled lender.

James von Moltke, the chief financial officer of Deutsche Bank, said in response to a question about Archegos during an interview with Bloomberg News that the bank had been able to exit its involvement without a loss.

That is in contrast to rivals like Credit Suisse, which lost $4.7 billion it had lent to Archegos after the firm collapsed in March. Swiss bank UBS disclosed Tuesday that it lost $774 million from its involvement with Archegos.

Deutsche Bank, like most big corporations, is assessing how the pandemic may have permanently changed the way employees do their jobs. Mr. von Moltke said the bank was working on a plan that would allow employees to work from home two or three days a week.

Like many of its peers, Deutsche Bank has benefited from frenetic activity on financial markets, earning fees as it helped governments issue debt to finance stimulus programs or sell shares in blank-check investment vehicles known as SPACs.

The bank said it had also benefited from a European Central Bank stimulus program that effectively pays commercial lenders to provide credit to businesses and consumers in the eurozone. In addition, Deutsche Bank slashed the amount of money it set aside for bad loans.

The financial results are a vindication for Christian Sewing, the bank’s chief executive, who has been trying to show large shareholders like the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management that he can generate consistent profits. Deutsche Bank shares rose 9 percent in Frankfurt trading Wednesday and are up more than 20 percent since the end of January.

“Our first quarter is further evidence that Deutsche Bank is on the right path,” Mr. Sewing said in a statement.

Credit…Pool photo by Susan Walsh

When Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, speaks to reporters in a webcast news conference on Wednesday afternoon, he’s likely to face questions about a simmering topic: inflation.

Prices are expected to pop in the coming months, both as inflation indexes lap very weak 2020 readings and as supply chains experience short-term reopening bottlenecks. The unknowns facing the Fed, and the investment world, are how big the jump will be and how long it will last.

Most forecasters and the Fed itself expect the increases to be only temporary. But some economists have warned that they could be significant enough to become a problem as businesses reopen, consumers start to spend their savings and the government pumps stimulus money into the economy.

If the increases are big enough and sustained, the Fed could find itself in a tough spot, forced to choose between letting prices rise or raising interest rates before the labor market is fully recovered.

Inflation also worries stock investors: If the Fed lifts interest rates to cool off the economy, it could make investing in bonds more attractive and corporate borrowing more expensive, both bad news for equities.

The Fed wants inflation to average 2 percent annually over time, and it defines that goal using the Commerce Department’s headline personal consumption expenditure index. But officials look at a variety of indicators to gauge conditions. Here’s where a handful of critical inflation measures stand and, when it’s relevant, where economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect them to go in the coming months:

P.C.E., the Fed’s preferred gauge: 1.6 percent in February, and expected at 2.3 percent in March and 2.2 percent for the full year.
Core P.C.E., which strips out volatile food and energy prices: 1.4 percent in February, and expected at 1.8 percent in March and 1.9 percent for the full year.
Consumer Price Index, an important Labor Department gauge: 2.6 percent in March and expected at 2.6 percent for the full year.
Producer Price Index, a measure of wholesale prices: 4.2 percent in March, the highest since 2011.
University of Michigan consumer inflation expectation for next year: 3.7 percent as of this month, up from 3 percent at the start of the year.
University of Michigan consumer inflation expectation for five years from now: 2.7 percent as of this month, little changed from start of the year.
Five-year, five-year forward inflation expectation rate, a market-based measure: 2.25 percent in recent days, roughly matching 2018 levels.

Fed officials regularly point out that inflation has been too tepid in recent years, not too high, and they don’t expect that to change quickly. To raise rates, they say, they would need to see that inflation was going to remain higher sustainably — for instance, if it came alongside heftier wage increases.

Part of the Fed’s comfort with a period of faster price gains is that consumer and business expectations have remained relatively low, despite some recent increases. If people aren’t anticipating higher prices, it’s likely to put a lid on how much more companies can charge.

Credit…Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

Government bond yields jumped on Wednesday ahead of the latest Federal Reserve policy meeting.

Economists expect Fed officials to keep interest rates near zero and continue their bond-buying program, but central bank watchers will be looking for clues for how much longer the support will last as the U.S. economy improves. Higher yields on government bonds may reflect expectations that the Fed is inching closer signaling that it will change its policy, including raising its benchmark rate, even if that’s still years in the future.

Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, will speak to reporters Wednesday afternoon. Fed officials have said they would telegraph any changes well in advance and expected the current rise in inflation to be temporary, which would diminish the need for a monetary policy reaction.

The yield on 10-year Treasury notes as high as 1.65 percent on Wednesday. Yields on British and German government bonds also climbed.

“We think risks around this meeting are firmly skewed toward higher rates,” analysts at ING said of bond yields. “This is particularly true if the Fed breaks with its cautious tone of late, or simply decides to hedge its bets by saying it will react as appropriate if the economy overheats.”

Stocks

The S&P 500 was slightly higher on Wednesday.
Deutsche Bank rose nearly 11 percent after the German bank reported its best quarterly profit in seven years. The bank also avoided losses from the collapse of Archegos Capital Management that were a blow to some of its European rivals.
Alphabet rose 4 percent after the tech company said revenue in its most recent quarter increased sharply from the same period a year ago, supported by strong demand for online advertising.
Pinterest shares dropped more than 13 percent after the company said the growth in its number of users would probably slow down as pandemic restrictions were lifted.
On Wednesday, Boeing, Apple, Facebook and Ford report earnings.

European Economy

A group that monitors risk in the eurozone warned on Wednesday that corporate bankruptcies could surge after government support measures for businesses expire. “More than a year of restrictions on economic activity has so far not resulted in financial instability,” the European Systemic Risk Board said in a statement. “However, the threat of a wave of insolvencies looms large.”
The risk board, led by Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, said that governments needed to continue supporting businesses even after the economic effects of the pandemic fade.

Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said on Tuesday that it posted revenue of $55.31 billion in the first three months of the year, up 34 percent from a year earlier, and net profit more than doubled to $17.93 billion in the first quarter. It was the third straight quarter of record profit for the company. Advertising revenue rose 32 percent in the quarter spurred by strong demand for search marketing. Alphabet also generated $6 billion in YouTube ads, an increase of 49 percent.
Microsoft on Tuesday reported that its quarterly sales grew at one of its strongest rates in years, as the company was poised to cross $2 trillion in market value. Revenue rose to $41.7 billion for the fiscal third quarter, up 19 percent from a year earlier, its biggest quarterly increase since 2018. Profits jumped 44 percent to $15.5 billion. Gaming revenue grew 50 percent, fueled by spending on the new Xbox gaming console, which was launched late last year, as well as on Xbox content and services.
The coffee giant Starbucks said that its sales in the United States made a “full recovery” in the first three months of the year. Same-store sales in the U.S. climbed 9 percent in the company’s second quarter compared with the same period last year, while global revenues climbed 11 percent to $6.7 billion. Starbucks made a profit of $659 million in the quarter.

California is expecting a roughly $15 billion budget surplus next fiscal year, which runs from July through June, according to its most recent forecast. The state is so flush that it is now running its own stimulus program, writing one-time checks of $600 or $1,200 to poorer households and spending some $2 billion on aid for small businesses.

Less than a year ago, the state was facing a $54 billion shortfall, Matt Phillips reports for The New York Times. Here’s how the state’s fortunes were turned around:

Almost half of the personal income taxes that California collects comes from the top 1 percent of the state’s earners. Since much of that group’s income comes from stock holdings and stock-based compensation, their fortunes are tied to the performance of the stock market. After hitting a bottom in March 2020, the S&P 500 is up nearly 90 percent, creating close to $17 trillion in paper gains.
Last year, 457 companies sent public, raising $167.8 billion, both records, according to Dealogic. Almost a quarter of those dollars were destined for the 100 California companies that made the jump — the most of any state.
The governor’s office projects that revenue from capital gains taxes next fiscal year will top $18 billion, a key driver of the state’s surplus. “With Silicon Valley, when entrepreneurs get stock grants that they exercise, or stock options, California makes out very well,” said David Hitchcock, the primary analyst on California for bond-rating firm S&P Global.
California’s budget rebound was aided by larger-than-expected federal government spending that kept people afloat and the economy from complete collapse. When California’s governor revises his most recent budget next month as required by law, analysts expect it will show an additional $26 billion in federal funding to California as a result of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed last month.

Tags ahead, Boeing, Continuing, Live, Losses, recovery, Sees, Updates

Business

Biden to Elevate Minimal Wage for Federal Contractors to $15: Stay Updates

Post author By
Post date April 27, 2021

Joseph R. Biden Jr., then vice president, at a 2015 event calling for a $15 minimum wage in New York.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times

President Biden plans to sign an executive order on Tuesday raising the minimum wage paid by federal contractors to $15 an hour, the latest in a set of ambitious pro-labor moves at the outset of his administration.

The new minimum is expected to take effect next year and is likely to affect hundreds of thousands of workers, according to a White House document. The current minimum is $10.95 under an order that President Barack Obama signed in 2014. Like that order, the new one will require that the new minimum wage rise with inflation.

White House economists believed the increase would not lead to significant job losses, a finding in line with recent research on the minimum wage, and that it was unlikely to cost taxpayers more money, two administration officials said in a call with reporters. They argued that the higher wage would lead to greater productivity and lower turnover.

The White House also contends that although the number of workers directly affected by the increase is relatively small as a share of the economy, the executive order will indirectly raise wages beyond federal contractors by forcing other employers to bid up pay as they compete for workers.

Several cities have a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour, and several states have laws that will raise their minimum wage to at least that level in the coming years. There is so far little evidence on how a $15 minimum wage affects employment in lower-cost areas of such states.

Two years ago, the House of Representatives passed a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, but the legislation has faced long odds in the Senate. Mr. Biden sought to incorporate such a measure in his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package so that it could pass on a simple majority vote, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled that it could not be included.

Mr. Biden’s executive order will also eliminate the so-called tipped minimum wage for federal contractors, which currently allows employers to pay tipped workers $7.65 an hour as long as their tips put them over the regular minimum wage. Under the new minimum, all workers must be paid at least $15 an hour.

The order will technically begin a rule-making process that is expected to conclude by early next year. The wage will be incorporated into new contracts and existing contracts as they are extended.

Credit…Matt Rourke/Associated Press

BP reported a sharply higher profit for the first quarter of 2021 on Tuesday, signaling that after a grim 2020, oil companies’ earnings are recovering along with demand for their products.

BP said that underlying replacement cost profit, the metric most closely watched by analysts, was $2.6 billion, up from $791 million in the period year earlier. The London giant said that the price it received for its oil in the quarter was up more than 20 percent. BP described its trading and marketing of natural gas, where prices also increased, as “exceptionally strong.”

Citing strong economic growing in China and the United States, BP said that it expected the oil market to continue to recover from the effects of the pandemic.

Bernard Looney, the chief executive, has said he wants to use the cash from oil and gas operations to finance a shift toward electric power and other clean energy.

In the first quarter, the plan seemed to work well. The company raked in about $10.9 billion, a sum that included revenue from sales of fossil fuel businesses, among them a stake in a gas field in Oman. Because of divestments, BP’s oil production fell by 22 percent compared with the same period a year earlier.

At the same time, BP expanded into the offshore wind business. It entered into a partnership with Equinor, the Norwegian energy company that is developing wind farms off the East Coast of the United States, and is acquiring offshore wind acreage off Britain at what some in the industry considered high prices.

BP also said that, having met debt reduction targets, it would resume a program of buying back shares, a way to increase the price of BP stock; it had not bought back shares since the first quarter of last year, as its business was battered by the pandemic. In the second quarter the company plans to spend $500 million on such purchases.

Last summer, BP also cut its dividend for the first time since the Deepwater Horizon disaster a decade ago, to 5.25 cents a share. The dividend will remain at that level, the company said.

BP said it could generate a surplus with oil prices above $45 a barrel. Lately, prices have been considerably higher, with Brent crude, the international benchmark, at about $66 a barrel.

Credit…T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

A Supreme Court case argued on Monday has created strange bedfellows, which did not escape the attention of the justices.

The matter pits charities against the State of California over donor disclosure requirements, and it’s a dispute over a seemingly small technical issue that some say has serious implications for political donations. It has turned groups that are often on opposite sides of political fights into — tentative — allies, the DealBook newsletter reports.

Nonprofit organizations “across the ideological spectrum” filed briefs supporting the petitioners, the Koch-backed charity Americans for Prosperity Foundation, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted. The foundation argues that California violates the constitutionally protected right to anonymous association by collecting major donor data and failing to protect it (the state’s website has experienced security breaches). Justice Kavanaugh cited a filing from the American Civil Liberties Union, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Education Fund and others who all agreed that “a critical corollary of the freedom to associate is the right to maintain the confidentiality of one’s associations.”

“Certainly, we don’t see eye to eye with the petitioners in this case on every issue,” Brian Hauss of the A.C.L.U. said at a news conference after arguments at the court. In this case, the A.C.L.U. standing with the Americans for Prosperity Foundation because of what it calls California’s “systemic incompetence” in failing to protect nonpublic data. Legally speaking, however, it recognized a distinction between public disclosure and nonpublic disclosure. In other words, the brief didn’t argue for a general extension of anonymity.

Opponents say this is a case about “dark money.” Democratic senators argued in a brief that the foundation is advancing the matter as a way to make it easier for special interests to influence politics with untraceable money. “This case is really a stalking horse for campaign finance disclosure laws,” Justice Stephen Breyer said. A ruling is expected in June.

Credit…Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

U.S. stocks were little changed on Tuesday as investors digested more company earnings reports and awaited the Federal Reserve’s next policy decision on Wednesday. The S&P 500 drifted between gains and losses soon after the start of trading.
Tesla fell 2 percent even after the electric-car maker posted a quarterly profit of $438 million, its highest ever. UPS rose 11 percent after the parcel delivery company reported earnings that beat analysts’ expectations.
Alphabet, Microsoft and Visa are among companies also reporting earnings on Tuesday after the market closes.
By last Friday, a quarter of companies in the S&P 500 had published their first-quarter results, with 84 percent of them reporting earnings that were better than expected, according to FactSet. If this trend holds, it would be the highest percentage since FactSet started tracking the metric in 2008.

Europe

Most European stock indexes fell. The Stoxx Europe 600 declined nearly 0.3 percent.
HSBC rose 2 percent, becoming the best performer in the FTSE 100, after the bank said its pretax profits rose nearly 80 percent in the first quarter compared with last year. As the global economic outlook has improved, the bank released $435 million it had set aside for loan losses.
UBS dropped 3 percent after the Swiss bank said it lost $774 million in the first quarter from the collapse of the American hedge fund Archegos Capital Management.

Credit…September Dawn Bottoms for The New York Times

An experiment called SEED for Oklahoma Kids, or SEED OK, is one of a growing number of efforts by cities and states — governed by Democrats and Republicans alike — to help a new generation climb the educational ladder and build assets

SEED OK is a far-reaching research project begun in Oklahoma 14 years ago to study whether creating savings accounts containing $1,000 for newborns would improve their graduation rates and their chances of going to college or trade school years later, Patricia Cohen reports for The New York Times.

Research about the Oklahoma project published this month by the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, which created SEED OK, found that families that had been given accounts were more college-focused and contributed more of their own money than those that hadn’t been. And the effects are strongest among low-income families.

The 1,300-plus children who were chosen at random to be given accounts in 2007 had an average of $3,243 saved by the end of 2019. Among the control group — another 1,300 children who were randomly selected to take part but were not given any money — only 4 percent had an account.

Proposals at the federal level to establish savings accounts at birth, for college, homes, business or retirement savings, go back to the 1990s. Canada, Israel, South Korea and Singapore have established versions of the idea. Pennsylvania, Nebraska and Illinois are among the states that have created programs.

Credit…Zack Wittman for The New York Times

After months of delays and technical problems, the federal government finally opened a $16 billion grant fund for music club operators, theater owners and others in the live-event business on Monday.

Thousands of people hit the website for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program the moment it began accepting applications. Speed mattered: The money — awarded on a first-come-first-served basis — is widely expected to run out fast.

One applicant posted a screenshot showing that he was in line behind more than 6,000 others waiting for their turn to apply. “Hunger Games” memes — “May the odds be ever in your favor” — popped up in Twitter posts from desperate business owners venting their collective anxiety.

But this time, the system stayed up. As of 5 p.m. on Monday, the agency had received 6,040 grant applications, according to Andrea Roebker, an agency spokeswoman. Nearly 8,400 more had been created but not yet been completed.

Sarah Elger, chief executive of Pseudonym Productions, an events production company in Philadelphia, successfully submitted her application 16 minutes after she got access to the system.

“It was such a relief,” Ms. Elger said. She was one of thousands of business owners who had their hopes dashed earlier this month, when the Small Business Administration, the agency that runs the program, tried — and failed — to start taking applications. After four hours, the agency took the system offline for what turned into weeks of technology repair work.

Ms. Elger estimated that she uploaded more than 100 documents for her application, which she and her husband, Ricky Brigante, spent months preparing. They knew they would have to move quickly once the application website opened.

“We turned it into a game,” Ms. Elger said. “We had lots of folders on the desktop and raced through the uploads.”

The Small Business Administration said it would immediately start reviewing the applications, which are intended to yield grants for 45 percent of applicants’ prepandemic gross earned annual revenue, up to $10 million.

“We recognize the urgency,” said Barb Carson, the deputy associate administrator of the agency’s Office of Disaster Assistance. “With venue operators in danger of closing, every day that passes by is a day that these businesses cannot afford.”

The program, created in the $900 billion economic support package that President Donald J. Trump approved in December, is the first large direct-to-businesses grant program the Small Business Administration has ever run. The process, for both the agency and applicants, has for months been fraught with complexity and confusion.

John Russell, the executive director of the Montford Park Players, a nonprofit community theater group in Asheville, N.C., submitted his application on Monday afternoon. He is relying on the grant to help cover his group’s return to the stage.

After a full year of hosting only virtual events, the group is planning to open its first full in-person production, the Shakespeare play “The Comedy of Errors,” next month.

“We figured people are in the mood for comedy,” Mr. Russell said. The show’s actors are volunteers, but the production creates paid jobs for its director, stage manager, lighting designer, food vendors and others, as well as for the theater troupe’s support staff.

The Small Business Administration is also preparing to open a second grant program, the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, a $28.6 billion support fund for bars, restaurants and food trucks that was created in last month’s $1.9 trillion relief bill. That program is planning a seven-day test to help the agency avoid the kind of technical problems that plagued the venue program.

Credit…Mike Blake/Reuters

Lyft will sell its unit devoted to developing autonomous vehicles to Woven Planet, a Toyota subsidiary, the companies announced on Monday. Woven Planet will pay $200 million in cash for Level 5, Lyft’s self-driving car initiative, and will follow up with additional payments of $350 million over five years.

Lyft is among several tech companies that have stepped back from developing autonomous vehicles over the last year as the technology has proved difficult to master and the pandemic has placed pressure on the company’s bottom lines. In December, Uber essentially paid Aurora, a self-driving truck start-up, to take its autonomous vehicle unit.

Some automotive executives have said they overestimated how soon the technology would be ready for the road. And although Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has recently expanded its operations, the chief executive of Waymo stepped down earlier this month to pursue “new adventures.”

Lyft said unloading Level 5 would cut about $100 million in annual expenses, helping the company edge closer to profitability after the pandemic sliced into its revenue. Lyft lost $1.8 billion last year. The company is set to report earnings for the first three months of 2021 next month.

Lyft will still have a team focused on third-party self-driving technology and will continue to collect data from trips to help train autonomous systems, the company said.

“Not only will this transaction allow Lyft to focus on advancing our leading autonomous platform and transportation network, this partnership will help pull in our profitability timeline,” Lyft’s president, John Zimmer, said in a statement.

Tags Biden, Contractors, federal, Live, Minimum, raise, Updates, Wage