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Health

Biden Covid staff holds briefing as U.S. demise toll reaches grim milestone

Biden Covid team holds briefing as U.S. death toll reaches grim milestone

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President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 Response Team is holding a press conference Monday on the coronavirus pandemic that killed nearly 500,000 Americans, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Biden would order that all flags on federal properties be lowered to half the staff for the next five days to mark the grim milestone of 500,000 American deaths from Covid-19 .

Regardless, the Chief Medical Officer of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Americans, fight back a sense of Covid-19 complacency even as coronavirus infections are falling and some scientists predict herd immunity is just around the corner.

Read CNBC’s live updates for the latest news on the Covid-19 outbreak.

Categories
Health

U.S. Reaches 500,000 Covid Deaths

U.S. Reaches 500,000 Covid Deaths

The virus has reached every corner of America, destroying dense cities and counties alike, with waves flowing through one region and then another.

In New York City, more than 28,000 people have died from the virus – or about one in 295 people. In Los Angeles County, the toll is roughly one in every 500 people. In Lamb County, Texas, where 13,000 people live in an area of ​​1,000 square miles, the loss is one in 163 people.

The virus has ravaged nursing homes and other long-term care facilities and spread easily among vulnerable residents: it causes more than 163,000 deaths, about a third of the country’s total.

Virus deaths have also disproportionately affected Americans across racial boundaries. Overall, the death rate for black Americans with Covid-19 was almost twice that of white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The death rate for Hispanics was 2.3 times higher than for white Americans. And for Indians it was 2.4 times higher.

As of Monday, an average of 1,900 Covid deaths had been reported on most days – after more than 3,300 peak points in January. The slowdown was a relief, but scientists said variants made it difficult to project the future of the pandemic, and historians cautioned against turning away from the scale of the country’s losses.

“There will be a real urge to say, ‘See how well we’re doing,” said Nancy Bristow, chair of the history department at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. And author of American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. ”But she now warned of tendencies to“ rewrite this story into another story of American triumph ”.

Categories
Business

Hedge Fund Reaches a Deal to Purchase Tribune Publishing

Hedge Fund Reaches a Deal to Buy Tribune Publishing

The newspaper business has struggled for much of the 21st century as the rise of digital media has penetrated deeply into revenues once generated from print advertising and newspaper kiosk sales. At the same time, Facebook and Google have made a huge chunk of their digital ad revenue, effectively keeping the industry away from one of its traditional sources of money.

About a quarter of newspapers in the United States, most of them weekly, closed between 2004 and 2019, while about 50 percent of newspaper jobs were canceled. However, hedge funds see newspapers as a potential bargain. With a strict management style, which often means downsizing and reporting on local news, they have been able to put this to good use.

In doing so, they often annoyed their employees. Journalists from the Denver Post, a daily newspaper controlled by an Alden media company, mutinied in 2018 by publishing a special opinion-piece section that blew up the hedge fund and compared its executives to “vulture capitalists.” Previously, Alden ordered The Post to cut 30 jobs in a newsroom with up to 100 editorial staff after a significant number of journalists had lost to layoffs and takeovers since the company took control in 2010.

Penny Abernathy, a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal executive who studies local media economics at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism, said Alden’s track record didn’t bode well for tribune publishing newspapers that may be under her control fall.

“Based on the model Alden has been using so far, this is an industry decline with no significant investment in the future of newspapers,” she said. “One of the problems with these big chains is that they are journalistically and economically separate from the communities in which these newspapers operate.”

Some journalists working for Tribune Publishing newspapers – including The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant – have tried to convince wealthy benefactors to step in before the hedge fund could raise more stocks. Last year, two reporters from the Chicago Tribune sent letters to Chicago Lights asking them to buy the paper.

In an interview on Tuesday, Gregory Pratt, president of the Chicago Tribune Union and a city hall reporter, did not appear confident about the deal. “That’s very bad,” he said. “No good news. Alden is the worst in the news business, and that says something when you consider how many bad actors there are.

Categories
Business

Astra Rocket 3.2 reaches house after launch from Alaska

Astra Rocket 3.2 reaches space after launch from Alaska

Astra launches Rocket 3.1 on September 12, 2020 in Kodiak, Alaska.

John Kraus | Astra

San Francisco-based startup Astra was the youngest U.S. rocket builder to hit space on Tuesday with the successful launch of its Rocket 3.2 vehicle from Kodiak, Alaska.

The missile was about to enter orbit, and Astra CEO Chris Kemp told reporters after launch that the vehicle had reached the target altitude of 390 kilometers but was “only half a kilometer per second short” of the target orbit speed.

“This has far exceeded our team’s expectations,” said Kemp.

Astra shared images captured by the rocket on the edge of space. The rocket carried no satellites or other payloads as the launch was a demonstration mission.

Astra was founded just over four years ago in October 2016. Headquartered in Alameda, California, Astra has raised approximately $ 100 million to date from investors including Advance (the investment arm of the family of late billionaire SI Newhouse), ACME Capital, Airbus, Ventures, Canaan Partners and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff .

The company’s missile is about 40 feet tall, making it a small launch vehicle category. These small rockets have become increasingly popular due to the increase in the number of small satellites and spacecraft, often the size of a mailbox or washing machine, in search of trips into orbit. The Astra rocket is said to be able to carry up to 100 kilograms into orbit.

Currently, the small rocket business is dominated by Rocket Lab, which has launched 16 missions with its 60-foot electron rocket to put up to 300 kilograms into low-earth orbit. Elon Musk’s SpaceX also often contains small satellites as “ridesharing” facilities on its much larger Falcon 9 rocket, which is 230 feet high and can carry up to 22,800 kilograms into orbit.

Along with SpaceX and Rocket Lab, Astra is the third US company to have started privately developing a satellite launch system and successfully reaching space since the turn of the century.

Astras Rocket 3.0 during launch preparations in Kodiak, Alaska.

Astra / John Kraus

As the name suggests, Rocket 3.2 is the latest in Astra’s work developing his vehicle. Rocket 3.0 was destroyed on the launch pad due to a valve problem in March while the company was preparing it for launch.

Rocket 3.1 successfully launched on September 11th, but failed to get out of the atmosphere. The missile’s engines fired for about 30 seconds before a problem with its guidance system caused the engines to shut down and the missile to fall back to Earth. Chris Kemp, CEO of Astra, said after Rocket 3.1 launched he expected it to be the first of three flights before the company hits orbit.

Astra uses a very small team of local staff to launch its missiles and sends about half a dozen people to Alaska to prepare for launch.

The company has customer contracts for a few dozen launches once it begins commercial service. A single customer can purchase a dedicated Astra launch for around $ 2.5 million. That makes its rockets competitive against other companies that offer small rocket trips into space, as Rocket Labs Electron costs about $ 7 million.

Kemp said that Astra will be flying payloads in the upcoming Rocket 3.3 launch, which the company expects early next year.

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