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Business

Pelosi Says Invoice on Investing Guidelines for Lawmakers Will Face Vote This Month

Pelosi Says Bill on Investing Rules for Lawmakers Will Face Vote This Month

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that Democrats would bring legislation into the House this month that would impose new restrictions on lawmakers’ ability to buy and sell stocks.

Her announcement comes after months of negotiations over whether and how to limit personal financial activities by members of Congress that could create real or perceived conflicts of interest with their public duties. And it came a day after the New York Times published an analysis showing that between 2019 and 2021, 97 congressmen and senators or their immediate family members reported trading in stocks, bonds or other financial assets mandated by committees, who they were could have been influenced serve on.

Ms Pelosi declined to give details of the proposed legislation other than calling it “very strong”.

“We believe we have a product to launch this month,” Ms. Pelosi said during her weekly news conference at the Capitol.

In the seven months since Ms Pelosi first signaled her support for legislation to tighten stock trading in Congress, there have been few signs of legislative progress likely to pass the House. A number of slightly different bills have been proposed in both the House and Senate, some with bipartisan support.

The slump in equity and bond markets this year has been painful and it remains difficult to predict the future.

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  • Persistent Meme Stocks: The frenzy in which traders rallied on social media and drove up the stock prices of companies like GameStop can no longer be explained simply as a pandemic phenomenon.
  • Junk Bonds: Companies with poor credit ratings, whose debt is often labeled “junk,” are now taking the opportunity to borrow more money.

“For months, House and Senate leaders have promised action,” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat and the main sponsor of a bipartisan trade curb proposal by the Legislature. “It’s long past time to move forward.”

One version of a legal framework in the House of Representatives, outlined in a late August memo reviewed by The Times, would effectively ban lawmakers, their spouses and dependent children from trading in individual stocks, bonds, cryptocurrencies and other financial assets that are tied to specific companies.

Under the framework that forms the basis of current negotiations for a proposed law, congressmen would either have to divest these assets or place them in a blind trust in which they would have no visibility or interest. Legislators would still be allowed to invest in mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and some other categories.

According to the memo, the new legislation would also require more detailed transaction disclosures for permitted investments — for example, by narrowing published value ranges of assets — and toughen penalties for those who evade or break the law.

“Congress can add some bite to these penalties, which will encourage compliance and result in harsher penalties for violations,” the memo said.

According to the memo, members of the Supreme Court would be subject to the same restrictions. So would senior congressional officials, according to a Democratic official in the House of Representatives.

Congressional leaders have faced increasing pressure in recent months to crack down on their peers’ financial activities. An ongoing investigation by website Insider that began last year has found 72 examples of lawmakers who have violated applicable laws by late, inaccurate or not filing transaction reports.

A poll conducted earlier this year showed that nearly two-thirds of respondents supported a blanket ban on members of Congress from trading in individual stocks. And with public confidence in Congress down to just 7 percent in June, many lawmakers are reluctant to ignore voters’ demands.

“Congress is mired in a crisis of institutional legitimacy, caused in part by reports by members of both parties who appear to be benefiting from their public trust,” wrote Noah Bookbinder, president of Washington nonprofit group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, in a letter on Wednesday calling for sweeping restrictions on trade by members of Congress.

In a separate news conference on Tuesday, other senior House Democrats signaled confidence that progress was being made on new trade restrictions.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, leader of the House Democrats, said he expects legislation “soon” from Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who has commissioned Ms Pelosi to draft a bill that has broad support can.

It’s not clear if the Senate will pass legislation on the issue this year. A number of senators have been working on proposals, but none appear to have garnered the 60 votes required for passage by the Senate.

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, who is working on one of the proposals, said Wednesday, “I am committed to getting the stock trading ban in Congress across the finish line. I’ve carried this fight for a decade and I will not let it die.”

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Health

U.S. to start extensive distribution of third vaccine doses subsequent month

U.S. to begin wide distribution of third vaccine doses next month

The United States will begin distributing Covid-19 booster vaccinations on a large scale next month as new data shows vaccine protection wears off over time, US health officials said on Wednesday.

It is now “very clear” that immunity declines after the first two doses, and with the dominance of the delta variant, “we see evidence of decreased protection against mild and moderate disease,” according to the CDC. signed declaration Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock, the White House Senior Medical Advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and other US health leaders.

“Based on our latest assessment, current protection against serious illness, hospitalization and death could decline in the coming months, especially for those at higher risk or who were vaccinated during the earlier stages of vaccination.”

As a result, U.S. authorities are preparing to offer booster shots to all eligible Americans starting the week of September 20, eight months after their second dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, officials said. While they said recipients of the Johnson & Johnson single vaccine will likely need booster vaccinations, they are waiting for more dates in the next few weeks before making a formal recommendation.

“With this data, we will also keep the public informed with a timely schedule for J&J booster shots,” officials said.

The plan is subject to formal recommendation by a CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee and FDA approval, also a formality.

The announcement came ahead of a Covid press conference at the White House on Wednesday, where federal health officials further outlined their plan for boosters. President Joe Biden is expected to speak about the U.S. efforts after the briefing, the White House told reporters on Tuesday.

The decision to recommend booster vaccinations comes as the public becomes increasingly concerned about the Delta variant and an increase in breakthrough cases – infections in fully vaccinated individuals. It marks a departure from previous comments by U.S. health officials who said in recent months that fully vaccinated Americans did not need a booster at this point.

U.S. officials changed their embassy to boosters in the past few days as cases continued to rise. Fauci said Thursday that everyone is “likely” to need a booster at some point. On Friday, federal officials approved the administration of booster shots to Americans with compromised immune systems, which include cancer and HIV patients, as well as people who have had organ transplants.

The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, who also signed the statement, said Tuesday that new Covid data, including from Israeli health officials, had caused US health leaders to reconsider their position on vaccine boosters. Israel on Monday released new data showing a reduction in the effectiveness of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine against serious illness in people 65 and over who were fully vaccinated in January or February.

There are similar trends in vaccine effectiveness in the United States, Collins said. He said the surge in breakthrough cases could be due to a combination of the rapidly spreading Delta variant and the deterioration in Covid vaccine protection over time.

The effectiveness of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine has steadily declined over time, dropping to around 84% around four to six months after receiving the second dose for vaccinated people, according to CEO Albert Bourla. Moderna said his vaccine remained 93% effective for the first six months after the second dose, but expects protection to decrease and boosts to be needed.

During a news conference on Wednesday, Walensky said officials based their decision on studies showing immunity to Pfizer and Moderna vaccines decreased over several months. A study in New York from May 3 to July 25 showed that the vaccine’s effectiveness in protecting against infection decreased from around 92% to 80%. Another study by the Mayo Clinic showed that the effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine decreased from around 76% to 42%, while that of Moderna’s decreased from 86% to 76%.

“Right now, it’s still like our vaccine protection is working really well,” said Collins. “But we don’t want to wait until it’s oh, too late.”

The move to recommend boosters is likely to trigger criticism, especially since a large part of the world population has not even received a dose of a Covid vaccine.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization urged rich nations to stop distributing booster vaccinations until at least the end of September to allow poorer countries to vaccinate their populations with the first rounds of vaccination. The application is part of WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ plan to vaccinate 40% of the world’s population by December.

The US released the statement minutes after the WHO condemned wealthy nations who support boosters for the general public.

“We clearly believe that the data so far does not suggest the need for boosters,” said Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, WHO senior scientist, during a press conference. “And we need to know which groups and at what point in time after the vaccination and which specific vaccinations the people received in their basic course.”

Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center for National and Global Health Law, called the US booster shot plan “a slap in the face” of the international health agency.

“There is a better way to create a win-win situation,” he said in a telephone interview. “We should only empower our health workers and vulnerable people. At the same time, Biden should undertake a bold campaign to vaccinate the world, including significantly increased donations and an increase in vaccine production. “

“In this way we are doing good to America and good to the world. It is in our national interest to stop the development of even more dangerous varieties,” he added.

During a briefing at the White House Tuesday, press secretary Jen Psaki said the government believes it can empower the American people while ensuring that the rest of the world is vaccinated.

“We believe this is a wrong decision. We can do both,” said Psaki. “The United States is by far the largest contributor to the global fight against Covid. We will continue to be the vaccine arsenal around the world. We also have enough supplies and had planned long enough should a refresher be required for those eligible. “Population.”

Giving third shots appears safe. Early data from small studies on the effects of booster doses in immunocompromised patients showed no serious side effects from a third vaccination with an mRNA vaccine, nor did recipients develop side effects beyond those already seen after the initial two-dose treatment.

Once the booster is approved, nursing home residents, health care providers and the elderly – the first groups to be vaccinated in December and January – will likely be given priority for additional vaccinations, Collins said Tuesday. He said “ideally” people should stick with the same manufacturer that they got their first two doses from.

“But if for some reason you don’t have access to it, get the other one,” he said. “Again, as a scientist, I would be more comfortable fixing our plans on real dates, and that means sticking to the same type of vaccine that you had to start with.”

– CNBC’s Rich Mendez and Robert Towey contributed to this report.

Categories
Health

Vaccine Booster Shot Distribution to Start Subsequent Month in US

Vaccine Booster Shot Distribution to Begin Next Month in US

The Biden administration on Wednesday outlined a plan for Americans who received the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines to get a booster shot eight months after receiving their second doses, starting Sept. 20.

Health care workers, nursing home residents and other older adults who were vaccinated early will be first in line, starting then, contingent on authorization by federal regulators. “We are starting to see evidence of reduced protection against mild and moderate disease,” officials of several federal agencies said in a prepared statement.

“Here’s what you need to know: If you are fully vaccinated, you still have a high degree of protection from the worst outcomes of Covid-19, severe disease hospitalization and death,” Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, said at a White House briefing.

“We are not recommending that you go out and get a booster today. Instead, starting the week of Sept. 20,” he added, but that fully vaccinated adults should “begin getting their booster shots eight months after their second shot of an mRNA vaccine.”

Protection conferred by the vaccines against severe disease, hospitalization and death could diminish in the months ahead, especially among high-risk groups who were vaccinated early, the officials said. “For that reason, we conclude that a booster shot will be needed to maximize vaccine-induced protection and prolong its durability.”

Still, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, sought to be reassuring. “These data confirm that while protection against infection may decrease over time, protection against severe disease and hospitalization is currently holding up pretty well,” she said.

People who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine may also require additional doses. But that vaccine was not rolled out until March 2021, and a plan to provide boosters for those individuals will be made after reviewing new data expected over next few weeks, officials said.

Some experts immediately pushed back against the decision, saying only some older adults and people with weakened immune systems needed extra protection. The World Health Organization has asked that wealthy countries defer distributing booster shots until the end of September.

Jeff Zients, the White House pandemic coordinator, said at the briefing on Wednesday that the administration is on its way to donating more than 600 million doses of vaccines to other countries.

“We’re going to do both,” he said. “We’re going to both protect the American people and we’re going to do more and more to help vaccinate the world. ”

Before Americans can begin to receive boosters, the Food and Drug Administration must first authorize a third dose of the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, and an advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must review the evidence and make recommendations.

Federal officials plan to begin by offering booster shots directly to residents of long-term care facilities, since the vaccines were distributed to this population early in the rollout and the virus poses a particular threat to the elderly.

“We will continue to follow the science on a daily basis, and we are prepared to modify this plan should new data emerge that requires it,” federal officials said.

Still, “there’s nothing magical about this number,” Dr. Murthy said, referring to the recommendation to get a booster eight months after the second dose. “This is where judgment comes in.”

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Health

F.D.A. Goals to Give Remaining Approval to Pfizer Vaccine by Early Subsequent Month

F.D.A. Aims to Give Final Approval to Pfizer Vaccine by Early Next Month

WASHINGTON — With a new surge of Covid-19 infections ripping through much of the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has accelerated its timetable to fully approve Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine, aiming to complete the process by the start of next month, people involved in the effort said.

President Biden said last week that he expected a fully approved vaccine in early fall. But the F.D.A.’s unofficial deadline is Labor Day or sooner, according to multiple people familiar with the plan. The agency said in a statement that its leaders recognized that approval might inspire more public confidence and had “taken an all-hands-on-deck approach” to the work.

Giving final approval to the Pfizer vaccine — rather than relying on the emergency authorization granted late last year by the F.D.A. — could help increase inoculation rates at a moment when the highly transmissible Delta variant of the virus is sharply driving up the number of new cases.

A number of universities and hospitals, the Defense Department and at least one major city, San Francisco, are expected to mandate inoculation once a vaccine is fully approved. Final approval could also help mute misinformation about the safety of vaccines and clarify legal issues about mandates.

Federal regulators have been under growing public pressure to fully approve Pfizer’s vaccine ever since the company filed its application on May 7. “I just have not sensed a sense of urgency from the F.D.A. on full approval,” Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said in an interview on Tuesday. “And I find it baffling, given where we are as a country in terms of infections, hospitalizations and deaths.”

Although 192 million Americans — 58 percent of the total population and 70 percent of the nation’s adults — have received at least one vaccine shot, many remain vulnerable to the ultracontagious, dominant Delta variant. The country is averaging nearly 86,000 new infections a day, an increase of 142 percent in just two weeks, according to a New York Times database.

Recent polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has been tracking public attitudes during the pandemic, have found that three of every 10 unvaccinated people said that they would be more likely to get a shot with a fully approved vaccine. But the pollsters warned that many respondents did not understand the regulatory process and might have been looking for a “proxy” justification not to get a shot.

Moderna, the second most widely used vaccine in the United States, filed for final approval of its vaccine on June 1. But the company is still submitting data and has not said when it will finish. Johnson & Johnson, the third vaccine authorized for emergency use, has not yet applied but plans to do so later this year.

Full approval of the Pfizer vaccine will kick off a patchwork of vaccination mandates across the country. Like most other employees of federal agencies, civilians working for the Defense Department must be vaccinated or face regular testing. But the military has held off on ordering shots for 1.3 million active-duty service members until the F.D.A. acts.

The City of San Francisco has said its roughly 44,500 employees must be fully vaccinated within 10 weeks of F.D.A. approval. The State University of New York, with roughly 400,000 students, is on a parallel track.

A number of health care systems have issued similar mandates to employees, including Beaumont Health, the largest health provider in Michigan, with 33,000 employees, and Mass General Brigham in Massachusetts, with about 80,000 workers.

Updated 

Aug. 3, 2021, 9:15 p.m. ET

Full approval typically requires the F.D.A. to review hundreds of thousands of pages of documents — roughly 10 times the data required to authorize a vaccine on an emergency basis. The agency can usually complete a priority review within six to eight months and was already working on an expedited timetable for the Pfizer vaccine. The F.D.A.’s decision to speed up was reported last week by Stat News.

In a guest essay in The Times last month, Dr. Peter Marks, the agency’s top vaccine regulator, wrote that undue haste “would undermine the F.D.A.’s statutory responsibilities, affect public trust in the agency and do little to help combat vaccine hesitancy.”

The regulators want to see real-world data on how the vaccine has been working since they authorized it for emergency use in December. That means verifying the company’s data on vaccine efficacy and immune responses, reviewing how efficacy or immunity might decline over time, examining new infections in participants in continuing clinical trials, reviewing adverse reactions to vaccinations and inspecting manufacturing plants.

At the same time, senior health officials at the F.D.A. and other agencies are grappling with whether at least some people who are already vaccinated need booster shots. Several officials are arguing that boosters will be widely needed before long, while others contend that the scientific basis for them remains far from settled.

Two people familiar with the deliberations, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that if booster shots are needed, the administration wants a single strategy for all three vaccines currently authorized for emergency use.

Different recommendations on boosters for different vaccines, they said, could confuse the public. Fully approving a vaccine and then authorizing a booster for it soon after might also offer conflicting messages about its effectiveness.

Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.

While research is continuing, senior administration officials increasingly believe that at the least, vulnerable populations like those with compromised immune systems and older people will need them, according to people familiar with their thinking. But when to administer them, which vaccine to use and who should get shots are all still being discussed.

In a study posted online last week, Pfizer and BioNTech scientists reported that the effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine against symptomatic disease fell from about 96 percent to about 84 percent four to six months after the second shot, but continued to offer robust protection against hospitalization and severe disease.

Administration officials said Moderna and Johnson & Johnson needed to present data as well and Moderna had been asked to do so quickly. Officials have said other studies will also influence their decision-making, including data that the government is collecting on the rate of breakthrough infections among tens of thousands of people, including health care workers.

Pfizer is expected to submit an application for a booster shot to the F.D.A. this month. While the F.D.A. could authorize such shots, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would need to recommend them after a meeting of its outside committee of experts.

A decision to fully approve Pfizer’s vaccine will give doctors more latitude to prescribe additional shots at least for certain Americans, including those with weakened immune systems. The C.D.C. had been exploring possible special programs for that group, but administration officials said it became clear that by the time any such initiative got underway, the Pfizer vaccine would already be fully approved and doctors could prescribe a third shot.

Roughly 3 percent of Americans — or about 10 million people, by some estimates — have compromised immune systems as a result of cancer, organ transplants or other medical conditions, according to the C.D.C. While studies indicate that the vaccines work well for some of them, others do not produce the immune response that would protect them from the virus.

Some people are trying to get booster shots from pharmacies or other providers on their own, without waiting for the federal government’s blessing. Officials in Contra Costa County, home to 1.1 million people in Northern California, were so eager to offer boosters that on July 23 they told vaccine providers to give extra shots to people who asked for them “without requiring further documentation or justification.”

Then, realizing that policy violated the F.D.A. rules on vaccines authorized for emergency use, the county reversed it this week.

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

Categories
World News

Inventory futures rise to kick off August buying and selling after S&P notches sixth-straight profitable month

Stock futures rise to kick off August trading after S&P notches sixth-straight winning month

U.S. stock futures rose on Monday as investors geared up for the first trading day of August.

Dow Jones Industrial average futures rose 93 points, or 0.3%. S&P 500 futures gained 0.4% and Nasdaq 100 futures added 0.5%. The S&P 500 and the Dow sit less than 1% from new all-time highs.

Stocks continued to shake off concerns about the delta variant of Covid, and stocks that would benefit the most from a continued economic recovery led the gains in premarket trading Monday.

Shares of Carnival Corp. were up 3% in premarket trading. Major banks including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America were higher. Airline shares were mostly higher.

“We believe the reopening and recovery trend is on track and continue to see upside for equities,” wrote Mark Haefele, chief investment officer of global wealth management at UBS. “We expect the S&P 500 to climb to around 4,650 by June next year, versus 4,395 at present. But we see the greatest upside for cyclical parts of the market, including energy, financials, and Japanese stocks.”

The Senate was finalizing the text of a bipartisan infrastructure bill, also bolstering optimism on Monday. The bill includes $550 billion in new spending over five years. That’s on top of previously approved funds of around $450 billion.

Caterpillar shares added 1% in premarket trading.

The S&P 500 managed to notch its sixth month of gains in July, although volatility increased amid concerns about the economic recovery in the face of the spreading delta Covid variant. It’s the best monthly winning streak for the benchmark since 2018. The Nasdaq Composite and Dow Jones Industrial Average added about 1.2% and 1.3%, respectively, in July, while the broad S&P 500 gained close to 2.3% last month.

The U.S. is averaging more than 72,000 new Covid cases a day the last 7 days, according to the latest CDC shows, levels not seen since February this year. However, stocks still traded near all-time highs last week even as concerns about the delta variant grew.

“At the end of the day, the stock market is driven by two things: 1) Earnings and 2) Multiples and until COVID (or China) begins to negatively impact one or both of those metrics, stocks can stay resilient,’ Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report, said in a note.

Concerns about inflation also plagued the market, however a key inflation indicator showed lesser-than-feared price pressures on Friday. The core personal consumption expenditures price index rose 3.5% in June year-over-year. It marked a sharp acceleration in inflation, but came in slightly below a Dow Jones forecast of a 3.6% jump.

Also on Friday, U.S. second-quarter gross domestic product accelerated 6.5% on an annualized basis, considerably less than the 8.4% rate of growth expected by economists polled by Dow Jones.

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On the earnings front, Amazon sank nearly 7.6% Friday after the tech giant reported its first quarterly revenue miss in three years and gave weaker guidance. 

But an overall strong earnings season continues to be a tailwind for the market. So far, 88% of S&P 500 companies that have reported have topped EPS estimates, according to FactSet. For the second quarter, the S&P 500 is on track to post earnings growth of 85.1%, which would be the best growth rate since 2009, according to FactSet.

The first trading day of August comes with more big earnings on the way. Lyft, Amgen, Uber, CVS Health, General Motors, Roku and Square all report quarterly results this week.

Square shares sank in premarket trading after Jack Dorsey’s payment company announced a $29 billion all-stock deal to buy Australian installment loan provider Afterpay. Square was off by 4%.

Categories
World News

S&P 500 closes Friday decrease as Amazon shares slide, however notches sixth straight optimistic month

S&P 500 closes Friday lower as Amazon shares slide, but notches sixth straight positive month

US stocks fell on Friday amid a decline in Amazon stocks, but the S&P 500 posted its sixth consecutive positive month.

The broad equity benchmark fell 0.5% to 4,395.26, dragged down by the consumer discretionary and energy sectors. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 0.7% to 14,672.68. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 149.06 points, or 0.4%, to 34,935.47 points.

Amazon fell nearly 7.6% after reporting its first quarterly loss of revenue in three years and giving weaker forecasts. Pinterest fell even further, 18.2%, after losing monthly users in the three months ended June 30.

The major averages finished a solid month, although volatility has increased amid concerns about economic recovery amid the spreading delta variant. The Nasdaq and Dow gained around 1.2% and 1.3% respectively in July, while the broad S&P 500 gained nearly 2.3% over the same period. Utilities, healthcare, real estate and technology stocks led the S&P 500 higher for the month, while energy and financials lagged.

“There has been a fair amount of volatility and price fluctuations in the market over the past few weeks,” said Brian Belski, chief investment strategist at BMO, in a press release. “Heightened concerns about the delta variant and its potential impact on reopening momentum appeared to be a key factor in the price action, while hot topics related to economic growth, earnings and political support also remained an overhang on risk sentiment.”

Investors have digested a key inflation indicator that showed better-than-feared price pressure on Friday. The core price index of private consumption expenditure rose by 3.5% in June compared to the previous year. It marked a sharp acceleration in inflation, but was slightly below the Dow Jones expectation of a 3.6% increase.

Weaker-than-expected values ​​in the US economy further reduced concerns about a withdrawal from the Federal Reserve’s security purchases.

US gross domestic product rose 6.5% on an annualized basis in the second quarter, well below the Dow Jones’ 8.4% estimate. Meanwhile, the latest weekly jobless claims have also been higher than expected.

Fed chairman Jerome Powell noted on Wednesday that while the economy has come a long way since the Covid-19 recession, it still has a way to go before the central bank considers adjusting its monetary policy.

Procter & Gamble stocks rose nearly 2% after the consumer giant beat analysts’ estimates for quarterly earnings and sales. However, the company warned that rising raw material costs could hurt earnings in the coming year.

The stocks of online brokerage Robinhood rebounded just under 1% in volatile trading on Friday after ending their first trading session 8% lower.

Categories
Politics

Biden commemorates Pleasure Month, names Pulse Nightclub a nationwide memorial

Biden commemorates Pride Month, names Pulse Nightclub a national memorial

President Joe Biden commemorated Pride Month at the White House Friday and designated the location of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting a national memorial.

Biden signed a bill honoring the 49 people killed in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida on Nov.

The bill passed the Senate by vote earlier this month and the House of Representatives passed its own version in May.

The president also announced the appointment of Jessica Stern, leader of New York’s human rights group OutRight Action International, as special envoy to the State Department. Stern will help guide U.S. diplomatic efforts to advance the human rights of LGBTQI + people around the world.

Biden signed the bill along with survivors of the shooting and the victim’s family members, as well as members of the Florida Congressional Delegation and the Congressional Equality Caucus.

“The site of the deadliest attack on the LBGTQ + community in American history is now a national memorial,” said Biden.

The President, along with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, made remarks who broke barriers by becoming the first openly gay man to serve in the Cabinet. The president was introduced by 16-year-old transgender advocate Ashton Mota. In attendance were LGBTQ + advocates, elected state and local officials, and members of Congress.

“The fact that we are here shows how much change is possible in America,” said Buttigieg on the podium.

Biden is also urged that the Senate pass the Equality Act, a landmark bill on LGBTQ + rights that would create legal protection for LGBTQ + Americans. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives on February 25, but faces an tougher battle in the evenly divided Senate.

He also condemned the recent proliferation of anti-LGBTQ + laws passed in several states. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, 23 states reviewed more than 50 bills targeting transgender youth during the 2021 legislature.

“More than a dozen of them have already passed … let’s get that straight, this is nothing more than bullying disguised as legislation,” Biden said.

Biden also outlined the steps his government has taken to advocate for equality for LGBTQ + Americans. This includes, among other things, the recognition of Pride Month in a proclamation from 1.

“Representation is important, recognition is important. Another thing that matters is results, ”Biden said at the White House. “I am proud to lead the most professional LGBTQ equality administration in US history.”

Categories
Entertainment

Like ‘Mommie Dearest’? Stream These Films for Pleasure Month

Like ‘Mommie Dearest’? Stream These Movies for Pride Month

It’s Pride Month, and that means it’s time to talk about camp. Not the summer kind. The movie kind.

One of the delightful things about the word “camp” is its semantic resilience. It can be used as an adjective, noun, verb or the most fabulous interjection (“Camp!”).

Camp movies are just as versatile. There’s camp horror, camp documentaries and camp sci-fi. Of course there’s “Mommie Dearest,” camp’s cinematic apogee, which turns 40 this year and is the starting point for any Camp 101 watch party. (It’s on Amazon Prime.)

Here are five films to stream that show the breadth of camp’s sensational, depraved, glam and very gay exuberance.

This film begins with a bald prostitute in a bra beating her pimp with her pocketbook — and gets more bonkers from there.

Written and directed by the genre mastermind Samuel Fuller (“Shock Corridor”), this black-and-white oddity stars Constance Towers as Kelly, a hooker who leaves sex work behind to become a small town nurse who works with disabled children. Kelly figures her relationship with a local rich guy, Grant (Michael Dante), will be her ticket to respectability.

But in one of the film’s most lurid twists, Grant’s sexual interests turn out to be not just perverted, but evil: a “Lolita complex of no mean proportions,” as The New York Times put it.

Prostitution, murder, talk of abortion: “The Naked Kiss” wasn’t afraid to break its era’s cinematic taboos, making it a shocker still. When Kelly gives a beat down to Candy, a local bordello madam, it’s a brawl that camp dreams are made of.

Stream it on HBO Max.

Faye Dunaway’s portrayal of Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest” is a camp-on-camp tour de force. But Crawford herself offers camp gold in this bizarre murder mystery, directed by Jim O’Connolly.

Crawford plays Monica, the “cougar” owner of a traveling circus who develops the hots for the hunky young high-wire walker (Ty Hardin) she hired after his predecessor died in a freak accident during a performance.

For a year, the “Offstage” series has followed theater through a shutdown. Now we’re looking at its rebound. Join Times theater reporter Michael Paulson, as he explores signs of hope in a changed city with Lin-Manuel Miranda, a performance from Shakespeare in the Park and more.

After a mysterious black-gloved killer gruesomely kills Monica’s business partner — other bodies also start piling up — Scotland Yard starts sniffing around, putting the circus on edge.

There’s no shortage of late-career Crawford camp, and while “Berserk!” doesn’t have the creature feature appeal of “Trog” or the exploitation lunacy of “Strait-Jacket,” it does have Crawford playing a ring-mistress who wears her hair in a challah-looking chignon and runs a circus plagued by violent deaths. The movie ends with a doozy of a horror-camp twist.

Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu.

Camp, according to RuPaul, is when you “see the facade of life, the absurdity of life, from outside yourself.” Sounds like a drug, and when it comes to drugs — sorry, dolls — there’s nothing as camp as this soapy and scandalous film, regarded as one of camp’s crowning achievements, from Mark Robson. It’s hard to argue with Lee Grant, who stars in the film, when she called it “the best, funniest, worst movie ever made.”

Based on Jacqueline Susann’s best-selling 1966 novel, the film is about a group of friends facing fame, misfortune and addiction. There’s the ingénue Anne (Barbara Parkins), whose ambition takes her from secretary to star model. The singer Neely (Patty Duke), after being ousted from a Broadway show by her jealous co-star Helen (Susan Hayward), moves to Hollywood and becomes addicted to drugs and alcohol. Jennifer (Sharon Tate, a victim of the Manson family murders) is a gorgeous actress whose fate is the most tragic.

Bosley Crowther panned the film in The New York Times, calling it “an unbelievably hackneyed and mawkish mishmash of backstage plots and ‘Peyton Place’ adumbrations in which five women are involved with their assorted egotistical aspirations, love affairs and Seconal pills.” In other words: Camp!

Rent or buy it on Amazon, Google Play, Vudu.

Next to “Mommie Dearest” in the pantheon of queer camp cinema is “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?,” Robert Aldrich’s 1962 horror spectacle starring Bette Davis as Jane, an aging movie star who holds captive her paraplegic sister Blanche, played by Joan Crawford, in their decaying Hollywood mansion.

This ABC movie remake stars two acting heavyweights, the sisters Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave, as Jane and Blanche. Directed by David Greene, it’s an under-the-radar deep dive worth taking because the Redgraves offer something Davis and Crawford, who couldn’t stand each other, did not: actual sisterhood. The sisters’ scenes together have an “utterly unselfish interplay” with “real emotional verisimilitude,” as Michael Wilmington put it in The Los Angeles Times.

Camp needs commitment and urgency, which Davis and Crawford had to spare. The Redgraves seem hampered by the original, and don’t quite give it their all. But that shouldn’t keep camp die-hards away. There’s still plenty to make this film satisfying, including the disheveled makeup and costumes that make Lynn’s Jane look like a club-kid Raggedy Ann variation of Davis’s monstrously maquillaged original.

Stream it on Tubi, Pluto TV.

In her integral 1964 essay, “Notes on Camp,” Susan Sontag says that in addition to “Swan Lake” and Tiffany lamps, camp is “stag movies seen without lust.” That about sums up the camp eroticism at play in this film from the director Paul Verhoeven and the writer Joe Eszterhas about Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley), an ambitious heart-of-gold exotic dancer navigating violent, backstabbing Las Vegas.

From the cheeseball dance numbers to the trifling dialogue (“I’m not a whore”), “Showgirls” is like “A Star Is Born” gone horribly wrong and therefore spectacularly camp. Over the years, it’s morphed from critical whipping boy to a reconsideration as an outrageously decadent, ludicrously trashy camp demi-masterpiece, with the French director Jacques Rivette among its fans.

It’s also a queer camp favorite, thanks to the steamy synergy between Nomi and her mentor-rival Cristal (Gina Gershon, a flirtation artiste). Jeffrey McHale, the director of a “Showgirls” documentary said Nomi’s decision to follow her dreams, find a chosen family and use her sexuality to fend for herself is “a story that many queer people understand.”

Stream it on MaxGo.

Categories
World News

Inventory futures begin month barely decrease after main indexes noticed beneficial properties in Might

Stock futures slip as Wall Street looks to rebound from losing week

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Source: NYSE

Stock futures are slightly lower in overnight trading after major indexes saw gains in May.

Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 30 points, or 0.09%. S&P 500 futures shed 0.09% and Nasdaq 100 futures ticked 0.04% lower.

The moves in overnight trading come after the blue-chip Dow and the S&P 500 gained 1.93% and 0.55% in May, respectively, to mark their fourth consecutive positive month. The S&P 500 closed Friday just 0.8% off its record high.

The small cap Russell 2000 rose 0.11% in May to post its eighth positive month in a row — its longest monthly win streak since 1995.

The Nasdaq gained 2.06% last week to post its best weekly performance since April. However, the tech-heavy composite lost 1.53% in May, breaking a 6-month win streak.

A key inflation gauge — the core personal consumption expenditures index — rose 3.1% in April from a year earlier, faster than the forecasted 2.9% increase. Despite the hotter-than-expected inflation data, treasury yields fell on Friday.

“Overall, given the market’s reaction to [Friday]’s PCE release, investor concerns about inflation may have been exaggerated — or perhaps already priced in,” Chris Hussey, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, said in a note.

“Consensus may be building that the inflation we are seeing today is ‘good’ inflation — the kind of rise in prices that accompanies accelerating growth, not a monetary policy mistake,” Hussey said.

Investors are awaiting the Federal Reserve’s meeting scheduled for June 15-16. Key for the markets is whether the Fed begins to believe that inflation is higher than it expected or that the economy is strengthening enough to progress without so much monetary support. 

May’s employment report, set to be released on Friday, will provide a key reading of the economy. According to Dow Jones, economists expect to see about 674,000 jobs created in May, after the much fewer-than-expected 266,000 jobs added in April.

Zoom Video Communications and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are set to report quarterly earnings results on Tuesday after the bell.

— CNBC’s Patti Domm contributed reporting.

Categories
Business

Breeze Airways debuts in journey rebound, the second new U.S. airline in a month

Breeze Airways debuts in travel rebound, the second new U.S. airline in a month

Breeze Airline debut.

Source: Breeze

Airlines scrambling to capitalize on a rebound in travel as the pandemic wanes in the U.S. have yet another competitor in the skies.

Breeze Airways, a new airline started by JetBlue Airways’ founder David Neeleman, started selling tickets on Friday. It is the second U.S. carrier to debut in about a month.

Neeleman’s fifth airline, Breeze Airways is offering fares that start at $39, for routes it says are underserved around the U.S. Flights begin May 27, just before Memorial Day weekend, with service from Charleston, South Carolina, to Tampa, Florida, and Hartford, Connecticut. It plans to operate 39 routes by July 22, including Charleston to Columbus, Ohio, New Orleans and Huntsville, Alabama. Breeze will use 10 all-economy class Embraer E-190 jets with 108 seats and three E-195 planes with 118 seats.

Other routes, which will be added in July, include service from New Orleans to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Louisville, Kentucky.

“Covid’s been really tough on our industry, but we’ve been able to take advantage of low aircraft prices,” Neeleman told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday. “We have really low prices. We’re flying routes that really haven’t been flown nonstop, really, ever, and with really low trip costs.”

Breeze says it won’t charge fees for changing or canceling flights. Major carriers got rid of change fees during the pandemic for standard economy tickets in an effort to win back travelers. The start-up will charge $20 for checked or carry-on bags.

Breeze isn’t the only new low-cost entrant into the U.S. market. Avelo Airlines’ first flights took off last month from Burbank, California, on used Boeing 737s. Andrew Levy, the airline’s founder and CEO, a former executive at Allegiant Air and until 2018 United Airlines’ CFO, is also targeting underserved markets with nonstop service.

Breeze raised $83 million from investors, and Neeleman invested $17 million.

The new carriers are debuting when airlines are hoping to stop their losses as travelers come back.

“I think all the competition is significant for us,” Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly told shareholders this week. “And a lot of it will depend with what routes new airlines choose. For the most part, I don’t think … that we’re seeing any direct overlap with a lot of the — well, what I’ve seen with two new entrants into the market … plus at this stage of their corporate lives, they’re relatively small.”

Neeleman first announced he planned to start a new low-cost airline in June 2018.