Tag: majority

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Politics

Biden job approval hits 53%, majority assist infrastructure plan: NBC Information ballot

Biden job approval hits 53%, majority support infrastructure plan: NBC News poll

United States President Joe Biden speaks about his $ 2 trillion infrastructure plan during an event at Carpenters Pittsburgh Training Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on March 31, 2021.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

More than half of Americans say they support President Joe Biden’s performance to date and agree with his sweeping proposal for an infrastructure, according to a new NBC News poll.

Poll results, released on Sunday, showed that 53% of respondents approve of Biden’s inauguration, including 90% Democrats, 61% of Independents and 9% of Republicans, while 39% of respondents disapprove of Biden’s performance.

The president also received support for his coronavirus bailout package, approved in March, and his $ 2 trillion infrastructure proposal, which is designed to help boost the post-pandemic economy.

The poll found that 46% of Americans thought the president’s $ 1.9 trillion Covid relief bill, which included direct payments to Americans and expanded unemployment insurance, was a good idea. while 25% thought it was a bad idea and 26% had no opinion.

Additionally, 61% of respondents said the worst of the U.S. pandemic is over, while only 19% think the worst is yet to come.

Biden’s infrastructure plan, which aims to revitalize U.S. transportation infrastructure, water systems, broadband, manufacturing, and combat climate change, was also popular with respondents. 59% said the plan was a good idea, 21% disagreed, and 19% disagreed.

Reactions varied across party lines: 87% of Democrats, 68% of Independents and 21% of Republicans said they supported the infrastructure plan.

CNBC policy

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“What we don’t know is whether this is part of a 100-day honeymoon or something that is more permanent and permanent for the Biden-Harris administration,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the poll with the Republican pollster Bill McInturff conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, NBC News told.

“What we do know is that Joe Biden’s presidency is timely,” said Horwitt.

The president also received high marks for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which received 69% approval, as well as his handling of the economy, which received 52% approval.

Regarding the unification of the country and dealing with racial relations, 52% and 49% of respondents agreed.

Participants were less satisfied with Biden’s handling of relations with China, arms issues, and border security and immigration. The poll also found that 80% of people still believe the US is largely divided, despite Biden’s promises to unite the country.

The survey polled 1,000 adults across the country from April 17th to 20th. The error rate is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Categories
Health

ATAI takes majority stake in mind laptop interface start-up Psyber

Peter Thiel-backed psychedelics start-up ATAI targets schizophrenia

ATAI Life Sciences, a Peter Thiel-supported biopharmaceutical company developing psychedelics for the treatment of mental health, has acquired a majority stake in the US company Psyber.

Psyber is a company that wants to use brain-computer interfaces to treat people with mental illness.

ATAI, calling itself a drug development platform, was founded to acquire, incubate, and develop psychedelics and other drugs that can be used to treat depression, anxiety, addiction, and other mental illnesses.

The Berlin-based company, which was founded in 2018 by entrepreneurs Christian Angermayer, Florian Brand, Lars Wilde and Srinivas Rao, announced its majority stake in Psyber on Wednesday. It declined to reveal what it was offering Psyber in exchange for the majority stake.

In theory, a brain-computer interface enables direct communication between a human brain and an external device.

ATAI said that Psyber’s brain-computer interface technology, which is in its early stages of development, could one day help patients understand how drugs affect activity in their brain while improving the effectiveness and safety of their drugs.

ATAI said it will combine the development of its psychedelic compounds with the ability to record electrical activity in the brain to interpret emotional, behavioral and mental states in real time.

“By combining medicine and BCI-assisted therapy, the patient sits firmly in the driver’s seat as it is tailored to the specific needs of each individual,” said David Keene, director of digital therapy at Atai, in a statement.

Prahlad Krishnan, CEO of Psyber, said BCI has the potential to “change the world” as we know it.

“In the context of mental health, this is no exception, as each patient participating in BCI-based therapy has greater autonomy and is increasingly able to change their feelings and behaviors in order to improve their quality of life,” said Krishnan.

ATAI, which has around 50 employees in offices in Berlin, New York and San Diego, currently works with 14 companies focused on drug development and other technologies. In return for a controlling stake in the drugs and technologies they develop, ATAI helps scientists raise money, work with regulators, and conduct clinical trials. None of ATAI’s drugs have yet been officially approved by regulatory agencies.

Billionaire Thiel initiated a $ 125 million round of investments in ATAI last November and a $ 157 million round of investments in the company in March. According to two sources close to ATAI, an IPO is now planned in the next few weeks.

“The great virtue of ATAI is taking mental illness as seriously as we should have,” said Thiel, co-founder of Palantir, in a statement shared with CNBC last November. “The company’s most valuable asset is its urgency.”

Thiel is a business partner of ATAI co-founder Angermayer and both have made a number of investments together. Beyond investing, it is not immediately clear whether Thiel plays a significant role at ATAI.

“We were introduced back in 2011 because we are both very interested in global politics,” said Angermayer, referring to his first meeting with Thiel, who was born in Germany. “I know many politicians as friends. During the euro crisis, I became a bit of a point of contact for many Americans and Asians who didn’t understand Europe at all. How complicated we are, but also how positive we are.”

Elon’s Neuralink

Elon Musk, who co-founded PayPal with Peter Thiel in 1998, founded a brain-computer interface company called Neuralink.

Musk describes it as a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires going into your brain.

Earlier this year, Musk said in an interview that Neuralink wired a monkey to use his mind to play video games.

A YouTube video showing the monkey playing the arcade game pong with his mind was shared by Neuralink on Friday.

Last August, Neuralink conducted a live demo of its technology on three pigs. An audience was shown real-time neural signals from one of the pigs Musk named Gertrude.

Categories
Politics

Rep. Alcee Hastings dies, narrowing Democratic Home majority to only 7

Rep. Alcee Hastings dies, narrowing Democratic House majority to just 7

Rep Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL) at a House Committee meeting on Rules to Examine H. Res. 755 charges against Donald John Trump, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors on Capitol Hill.

Erin Schaff | Pool | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., Died Tuesday after fighting pancreatic cancer for more than two years, NBC News confirmed.

Hastings, who served in the House of Representatives for nearly three decades, was 84 years old. During his career, he has held several important committee and management positions, most recently as vice chairman of the regulatory committee.

After the Congressman’s death, the Democrats have a slim advantage of 218-211 in the House of Representatives, giving the party little margin for error in passing laws. Six places are free.

Hastings, a former federal district judge, was charged in 1988 on charges of bribery and perjury. The Senate voted to remove him from the bank the next year, but did not vote to exclude him from his future office.

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Categories
World News

Biden wins majority of Electoral Faculty votes, securing presidency

Biden wins majority of Electoral College votes, securing presidency

WASHINGTON – The electoral college voted Monday to consolidate President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election.

The ballots were cast throughout the day by individual voters in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and reflect their state’s referendum.

Just before 5:30 p.m. ET, California voters cast their 55 votes for Biden, pushing him past the crucial 270-ballot threshold. Around 7.15 p.m., Hawaii cast the last 4 votes of the day for Biden, who won a total of 306 votes. Trump won 232 votes.

Biden plans to address the nation on Monday evening, where he will stress that “the integrity of our elections remains intact”.

“And so now is the time to turn the page. To unite. To heal,” Biden will say, according to the snippets released by the transition.

Democratic voter Stacey Abrams leads her fellow voters through the process of voting for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris in the Georgia Senate Chambers in the Georgia State Capitol building in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, December 14. 2020.

Elijah Nouvelage | Reuters

Voting in the electoral college is usually a formality that takes place more than a month after the vote is cast on election day. But Trump’s unprecedented legal and legislative efforts to reverse election results this year have made the process more important.

The president, his campaigning and political allies have filed dozens of lawsuits since election day, urging federal and state courts to invalidate the election results on the basis of countless unfounded allegations of irregularities.

These efforts failed repeatedly, prompting the president to change tactics in early December and personally pressure the Republican legislature to intervene in the selection of individual voters. This has also failed so far.

Still, Trump continues to falsely claim that he was not Biden, the legitimate winner of the November election, and that he was the victim of a massive, coordinated nationwide conspiracy to change the votes in Biden’s favor.

In Pennsylvania (below) and Arizona, two major swing states that Biden won, Trump supporters met outside their state capitals on Monday to protest the election of the electoral college.

A small group of Trump supporters march with flags as voters gather to cast their votes for the U.S. presidential election at the State Capitol complex in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the United States, on December 14, 2020.

Joanathan Ernst | Reuters

In Michigan, voters were given police escorts under threat of violence in the state capital. A Republican official was stripped of committee assignments by GOP leaders Monday after refusing to rule out violence in the capital, Lansing, during the election.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans, fearful of angering their Trump-loving voters, have largely lagged behind the president and have refused to recognize Biden’s victory.

After voters officially register their votes for the President and Vice-President, the next big event in the electoral college process is a joint congressional session on January 6th when both houses will officially count the votes.

Vice President Mike Pence, in his formal role as President of the Senate, is expected to lead the trial on January 6th. These tasks also include announcing the results.

All congressional objections to voting must be submitted in writing and signed by at least one member of the House and one senator. If an objection is raised, the two chambers will consider the objection separately.

Alabama Republican MP Mo Brooks has already announced that he will question the results of the House Electoral College census. In the Senate, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson has not ruled out filing a similar objection.

But not all Republicans are in favor of Brooks’ plan to increase the number of elections to challenge the results, which are sure to fail. And several Republican senators, who have yet to publicly acknowledge Biden’s victory, have announced that they will accept the results of Monday’s vote in the electoral college as the final verdict on the 2020 presidential election.

Still, some Republicans’ rejection of Biden’s victory in Congress is likely to extend into January and beyond.

In a December 6 poll by the Washington Post of all 249 Republicans in Congress, only 27 said they would accept Biden as legally elected president. Another 220 GOP lawmakers gave an unclear answer or didn’t respond, and two, Brooks and Rep. Paul A. Gosar of Arizona, said they believed Trump was the rightful election winner.

Since Election Day, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have tried largely to defy Trump’s increasingly desperate campaign to reverse the results.

While a small team of Biden campaign lawyers oversees Trump’s lawsuits, the former vice president goes through a formal transition process, announcing his candidates for his new cabinet, and putting forward a plan to aggressively fight the coronavirus pandemic during his first 100 days in office .

Biden and Harris are sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States on January 20, the day of their inauguration.