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Planet set to hit crucial temperature restrict quickly

Planet set to hit critical temperature limit soon

A family walks across dry cracked earth that used to be the bottom of Lake Mendocino on April 22, 2021 in Ukiah, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

The likelihood of the planet reaching a key temperature limit within the next five years has doubled, according to a study by climate scientists, with the world on track to witness the hottest year on record in that same time frame.

“There is about a 40% chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5° Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial level in at least one of the next five years — and these odds are increasing with time,” the World Meteorological Organization said on Thursday. The WMO, a specialized agency of the United Nations, said this had doubled from 20% in the last decade.

That 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level is the lower target of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. The climate accord is widely recognized as critically important to avoid an irreversible climate crisis.

In 2020 — one of the three hottest years on record — the global average temperature was 1.2 °C above the pre-industrial baseline, the WMO reported in April. The Paris Agreement aims to keep the rise in global temperature significantly below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels this century.

“There is a 90% likelihood of at least one year between 2021-2025 becoming the warmest on record,” the WMO said in its press release.

Between now and 2025, high latitude regions like Europe, the northern U.S. and Canada, and Russia, as well as the Sahel in Africa, are likely to become wetter and the Atlantic is expected to see more tropical cyclones compared to the recent past, which the WMO defines as the 1981-2010 average. 

“These are more than just statistics,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. 

“Increasing temperatures mean more melting ice, higher sea levels, more heatwaves and other extreme weather, and greater impacts on food security, health, the environment and sustainable development,” he said.

Still, the WMO says that it is “very unlikely,” with just a 10% probability, that the five-year mean annual temperature of the planet will be 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels for the entire 2021-2025 period. The 90% likelihood refers to that temperature rise in any one of the next five years.  

Speaking about the report, senior Met Office scientist Leon Hermanson told BBC News on Thursday: “We’re approaching 1.5 C – we’re not there yet but we’re getting close. Time is running out for the strong action which we need now.”

Worse extreme disaster events

Governments around the world have launched ambitious targets to cut carbon emissions and major energy companies are now beginning to feel the impact of the climate movement as some heavyweight investors pressure firms to decrease their fossil fuel use.

But substantially lowering emissions will be an extremely challenging endeavor, scientists warn. The WMO notes that the Paris Accords’ “nationally determined contributions,” or states’ commitments to emissions reductions, “currently fall far short of what is needed to achieve this target.”

And energy demand is expected to rise dramatically in the coming years as the world’s population continues to grow, with most of that need still set to be met by fossil fuels, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The COP26 Summit scheduled for November of this year in Glasgow, Scotland is being described by many in the scientific and policymaking community as a crucial “make or break” moment for governments to stem what many warn will be a climate disaster as sea levels and global temperatures rise. 

In the U.S. alone, intensifying rainfall fueled by climate change has caused nearly $75 billion in flood damage in the past thirty years, Stanford University researchers found in a study published in January. Those researchers warned that passing warming levels outlined in the global Paris Climate Accord will worsen extreme disaster events.

And developing nations are most exposed to climate risk — especially those in coastal areas and those highly dependent on predictable weather patterns for agricultural production.

Morgan Stanley in 2019 reported that climate-related disasters have cost the world $650 billion over the last three years, with North America shouldering most of the burden.

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Business

U.S.-China Section 1 Commerce Deal May Set Guidelines for Commerce

U.S.-China Phase 1 Trade Deal Could Set Rules for Commerce

SHANGHAI — Just days before the coronavirus shut down the Chinese city of Wuhan and changed the world, the Trump administration and China signed what both sides said would be only a temporary truce in their 18-month trade war.

Since then, the pandemic has scrambled global priorities, international commerce has stalled and surged again and President Biden has taken office. But the truce endures — and now appears to be setting new, lasting ground rules for global trade.

The agreement didn’t stop many of the same practices that sparked the trade war, the biggest in history. It does nothing to prevent China from throwing huge subsidies at a range of industries — from electric cars to jetliners to computer chips — that could shape the future, but for which the country often relies heavily on American technology.

In return, the truce enshrined most of the tariffs that the Trump administration imposed on $360 billion a year in Chinese-made goods, many of them subsidized. Such unilateral moves run counter to the spirit of the rules of global trade, which were set up to stop nations from starting economic conflicts on their own and to keep them from spiraling out of control.

But the new model seems to be catching on. The European Union announced on May 5 that it was drafting legislation that would allow it to broadly penalize imports and investments from subsidized industries overseas. E.U. officials, who had initially looked askance at the U.S.-China truce, said their policy was not aimed specifically at China. But trade experts were quick to note that no other exporter has the scale of manufacturing and breadth of subsidies that China has.

“You see a real appetite in the U.S. but also in the E.U. for unilateral measures,” said Timothy Meyer, a former State Department lawyer who is now a professor at Vanderbilt Law School.

The truce, known as the Phase 1 agreement, could still be supplanted by a new deal. The agreement requires that the two sides conduct a high-level review of it this summer. On Wednesday in Washington, Katherine Tai, the United States trade representative, held an introductory call with a senior Chinese official, Vice Premier Liu He — a signal that Mr. Liu, the same top negotiator who squared off against the Trump administration, will be kept in place by China.

But prospects for a far-reaching new deal this year are slim. The Biden administration is drafting a comprehensive strategy toward China, a complex interagency procedure that could last into early next year. It has also shown little appetite for easing up on China’s trade practices, and it has publicly discussed smoothing ties with European and other allies that were ruffled by other disputes during the Trump administration.

“We welcome the competition,” Ms. Tai told lawmakers earlier this month. “But the competition must be fair, and if China cannot or will not adapt to international rules and norms, we must be bold and creative in taking steps to level the playing field and enhance our own capabilities and partnerships.”

On the Chinese side, Beijing won’t budge on the issue of subsidies, said people familiar with both countries’ positions who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Apart from numerous demands that the United States simply abandon its tariffs, China has not even made a proposal to revamp the agreement, they said, because Chinese officials do not want to discuss subsidy limits.

If that intransigence lasts, Phase 1 could keep setting trade rules for years to come.

Though a few provisions expire at the end of the year, the agreement includes permanent requirements, such as that China stop forcing foreign companies to transfer technology to Chinese firms as a condition of doing business there. An obscure clause also calls for China to buy rising amounts of American goods through 2025.

That could set the stage for more narrowly targeted talks, including about whether China has lived up to the agreement’s annual purchase targets. The two sides might also discuss the solar industry, which sparked previous trade spats between them but could get a new look as the Biden administration emphasizes climate change.

On its face, the Phase 1 trade agreement has fallen short of the Trump administration’s goals. The administration had hoped negotiations would even out the huge trade imbalance between the two countries and rein in Chinese subsidies, which American companies and officials see as creating huge, state-funded competitors to U.S. industries.

Today in Business

Updated 

May 26, 2021, 4:06 p.m. ET

Instead, the U.S. trade deficit with China grew by nearly half again, to $78.6 billion, in the first three months of this year compared with a year earlier, fueled by pandemic purchases like consumer electronics, exercise equipment and other goods made mainly in China.

But China’s imports from the United States have been catching up since bad weather and a deadly pig disease sharpened China’s appetite for American-grown food. He Weiwen, a retired Commerce Ministry official who is now an executive director of the China Association of International Trade in Beijing, said that China had made a sincere effort to meet its pledges.

“China is not violating that Phase 1 agreement,” he said.

Over the long term, the Phase 1 deal could cement the American approach of using tariffs to offset China’s drive to retool and upgrade its economy through lavish subsidies.

The Trump administration tried during the trade war to persuade China to renounce subsidies for its exporters, which include cheap land for factories and huge loans to manufacturers at below-market interest rates. The Biden administration plans extensive subsidies as well, but those are aimed mostly at research and development, a category of subsidies that seldom violates international trade rules.

Some economists in China have also tried without success over the years to argue that the country’s industrial policy is too expensive and adds to its debt burden.

But Beijing has stood fast, reluctantly tolerating American tariffs instead of accepting limits on subsidies. In the year and a half since, China has doubled down on subsidies in many sectors. Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, has strongly endorsed a drive by China to achieve industrial self-reliance.

Even coming up with a serious offer now to exchange reductions in Chinese subsidies for cuts in American tariffs would require confronting powerful domestic constituencies in China. Most government ministries now appear to be determined to spend whatever it takes to turn the country into a technological powerhouse, said the people familiar with China’s economic policies.

Premier Li Keqiang signaled in his annual report to the legislature in March that China remained committed to strengthening its manufacturing sector, already the world’s largest by a wide margin. “In pursuing economic growth, we will continue to prioritize the development of the real economy, upgrade the industrial base, modernize industrial chains and keep the share of manufacturing in the economy basically stable,” he said.

Chinese officials appear more open to talking narrowly about solar energy. Such a deal could involve lifting Chinese tariffs on American polysilicon, the main raw material for solar panels, in exchange for removing American tariffs on Chinese panels. That would make solar energy less expensive in the United States and help Americans rely less on coal and other fuels that contribute to climate change.

Exports of American polysilicon, mainly produced with electricity from hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest, would also lessen China’s dependence on producing polysilicon using coal-fired power in its western Xinjiang region. A recent report alleged that the Chinese government worked with big Chinese solar companies to create jobs in programs that activists describe as prone to human rights abuses.

The Chinese government has denied that any abuses took place.

But a deal would worry those in Congress and elsewhere who contend that the West needs to shore up its industrial base and who point to its dependence on Chinese solar panels.

“Countries outside China,” said Seamus Grimes, a professor emeritus at the National University of Ireland who studies Chinese supply chains, “are becoming much more aware of how dependent they are.”

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Business

China Is Set to Rule Electrical Automotive Manufacturing

China Is Set to Rule Electric Car Production

ZHAOQING, China – Xpeng Motors, a Chinese start-up for electric cars, recently opened a large assembly plant in southeast China and is building a suitable factory nearby. It has announced plans for a third.

Another Chinese electric car company, Nio, has opened a large factory in central China and is preparing to build a second a few kilometers away.

Zhejiang Geely, owner of Volvo, showed off a huge new electric car factory in east China last month that could rival some of the largest assembly plants in the world. Evergrande, a troubled Chinese real estate giant, has just built electric car factories in the cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou and hopes to produce nearly as many all-electric cars as all of North America by 2025.

China is building electric car factories almost as quickly as the rest of the world put together. Chinese manufacturers are using the billions they have raised from international investors and personable local executives to bring established automakers to market.

Success is far from assured. Players include startups, electronics manufacturers, and other newbies to the auto industry. They bet that drivers in China and beyond will be willing to spend $ 40,000 or more on brands they have never heard of.

Chinese automakers acknowledge that the experience brings some advantages to the mainstream auto companies. But they insist that their plans work.

“We have the will and we have the patience,” said He Xiaopeng, chairman and general manager of Xpeng, in an interview. “I think we will find it very challenging, but we also have to move forward.”

The Chinese industry is on the move. China will produce over eight million electric cars a year by 2028, estimates LMC Automotive, a global data company, compared to a million last year. Europe is well on the way to producing 5.7 million fully electric cars by then.

General Motors and other North American automakers have plans to catch up. In April, President Biden urged the United States to step up its electric vehicle efforts. During a virtual visit to an electric bus factory in South Carolina, he warned: “At the moment we are running far after China.”

North American automakers are well on their way to building just 1.4 million electric cars a year by 2028, compared to 410,000 last year, according to LMC.

Global auto companies are helping China’s leadership. Volkswagen started recently Third Chinese electric car factory built.

Thanks to the nationwide rollout of over 800,000 public charging stations supported by the government, China already has the infrastructure for electric cars. That’s almost twice as much as the rest of the world, although US drivers who tend to live in single-family homes find it easier to hook up their cars at home.

With a slower deployment of charging stations outside of China, automakers elsewhere plan to continue building some plug-in hybrids with small gasoline engines for a few more years. However, the market for fully electric cars is already larger than for plug-in hybrids, and the lead of electric cars is growing rapidly. Automakers like GM plan to completely eliminate gasoline and diesel engines over the next 15 years.

Name recognition will be a major challenge for the new Chinese cars. The brands are mostly unknown even to Chinese drivers. On streets full of Buicks, Volkswagens and Mercedes-Benzes, it was difficult for them to stand out.

E-commerce company Alibaba and two state-backed companies have set up a joint venture for electric cars called IM Motors, which is scheduled to begin delivering cars early next year.

Evergrande called his brand Hengchi, pronounced “Hung-cheh”. An electric car craze has brought Hong Kong-traded shares in the company’s Evergrande New Energy Vehicle electric car unit to nearly the same market cap as GM

Evergrande plans to manufacture and sell one million all-electric cars annually by 2025. So far none have been sold.

Geely, an industry veteran with recognized brands in China, has named his electrical brand Zeekr, which rhymes with “seeker”. The delivery of the cars is planned for October.

The Zeekr will be manufactured in a new electric car factory near Ningbo on China’s east coast. The factory is a cavernous space with miles of white conveyor belts and rows of cream-colored 15-foot robots made by ABB of Sweden. It has an initial capacity of 300,000 cars per year, is larger than most Detroit auto plants, and has space for expansion.

“The most important thing is that China has the market,” said Zhao Chunlin, general manager of the factory.

Mr. He named Xpeng, pronounced “X-Pung”, after himself. Xpeng’s niche feature is a cooing Siri-like voice assistant that controls the car’s internet services like directions and music, as well as computer-aided driving on the highway. Xpeng plans to produce 300,000 cars a year by 2024. it sold less than a tenth as many last year.

Mr. He made his first fortune developing a cell phone browser company, UCWeb. He sold it to Alibaba in 2014 and became president of Alibaba’s Mobile Business Services division. That same year, he helped two former Guangzhou Auto State executives set up Xpeng.

Three years later, Mr. He took direct control of Xpeng and left Alibaba, which also acquired a small stake in the automaker. Mr. He said his second child had been born and that he wanted to tell his son that he ran a car company. Mr. He holds 23 percent of Xpeng’s shares, while Alibaba holds 12 percent.

Chinese government officials helped with this. A state-owned company in Zhaoqing, a 1,000-year-old jade carving town near Guangzhou, donated $ 233 million to Xpeng in 2017 to build its first factory with an annual capacity of around 100,000 cars. The city has since subsidized the company’s interest payments according to Xpeng’s regulatory filings.

The City of Wuhan helped Xpeng buy land and borrow money for a new plant at low interest rates. The Guangzhou government also helped Xpeng build its factory in that city, said Brian Gu, vice chairman and president of Xpeng.

Last year, after weathering the pandemic, Xpeng benefited from Wall Street, where Tesla’s rise sparked investor appetites for the industry. The Chinese company raised $ 5 billion through an initial public offering and subsequent share sales. It spends part of the money on new factories and part on research and development, especially on autonomous driving.

Xpeng’s deep pockets are visible in costly automation in the Zhaoqing factory. Robots lift 44-pound car roofs made from dark-tinted glass, apply aerospace adhesive, and press into place. Waist-high robots slide across the gray concrete floor and carry instrument panels as they play an instrumental version of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”. (The robots were programmed that way, company officials explained.)

The construction of the factory took only 15 months, which was considerably faster than the assembly plants in the west. Yan Hui, the general manager of the plant’s final assembly area, said decisions were made faster than at the German auto parts maker where he used to work.

“Every design change took a long time – characters, characters, even characters in German,” he said. “But at Xpeng, we can just make the change.”

Although many of the electric car brands are new to China, their owners already have ambitions abroad. Xpeng starts exporting cars to Europe, starting with Norway. Chery, a large state-owned automaker in central China, announced last week that it would start exporting gasoline-powered cars to the US next year, followed by electric cars.

The United States will be a difficult market. The Trump administration imposed 25 percent tax on cars imported from China in 2018, which has slowed exports. Many electric car parts are subject to the same tariffs. This makes it more difficult, but not impossible, for Chinese companies to deliver electric cars in kits for assembly in the United States.

Chinese companies currently see great potential for building their brands.

Michael Dunne, managing director of ZoZo Go, a consulting firm specializing in the electric car industry in Asia, said the industry’s prospects were clear: “China will be the global dominator in electric car manufacturing.”

Liu Yi and Coral Yang contributed to the research.

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Health

FDA Set to Authorize Pfizer Vaccine for Adolescents by Early Subsequent Week

FDA Set to Authorize Pfizer Vaccine for Adolescents by Early Next Week

WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to approve the use of the Pfizer BioNTech coronavirus vaccine in adolescents ages 12-15 by early next week, according to federal officials familiar with the agency’s plans, and opens the US vaccination campaign to millions more people.

Some parents have counted down the weeks since Pfizer announced results of its teenage study showing the vaccine was at least as effective in this age group as it was in adults. Vaccinating children is key to increasing immunity in the population and reducing the number of hospitalizations and deaths.

The approval in the form of an amendment to the existing emergency approval for the Pfizer vaccine could come as early as later this week. If so, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory board is expected to meet the following day to review the clinical trial data and make recommendations on the use of the vaccine in adolescents.

The enlargement would be a major development in the country’s vaccination campaign and welcome news for some parents looking to protect their children during summer activities and before the start of the next school year. This is also another challenge for policy makers who have difficulty vaccinating a large percentage of adults who are reluctant to get the shot. Many more may refuse to vaccinate their children.

Pfizer reported a few weeks ago that none of the adolescents in the clinical trial who received the vaccine developed symptomatic infections, a sign of significant protection. The company said volunteers produced strong antibody responses and had roughly the same side effects seen in people aged 16-25.

Stephanie Caccomo, a spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration, said she was unable to comment at the time the agency made the decision.

“We can assure the public that we are working to look into this request as quickly and transparently as possible,” she said.

Over 100 million adults in the US have been fully vaccinated. However, approval would come in the middle of a delicate and complex push to reach the 44 percent of adults who have not yet received a single shot.

With much of the world demanding the surplus of US-made vaccines, the use of the Pfizer BioNTech shot in adolescents will also raise questions about whether care should be targeted at an age group largely spared heavy vaccines seems Covid19.

“I think we need to have a national and global conversation about the ethics of our vaccinated children, who are at low risk of serious complications from the virus, when there aren’t enough vaccines in the world to protect high-risk adults from dying “Said Jennifer B. Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Updated

May 3, 2021, 8:53 p.m. ET

President Biden has come under increasing pressure to shed some of the country’s vaccine supplies. Some federal officials have also urged the government to decide soon how much vaccine is needed so that the doses do not expire or be shipped to the states and not used. The federal government has bought 700 million doses of three state-approved vaccines to be dispensed before the end of July, well in excess of what would be required for any American.

White House officials said last week that the intention is to make up to 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine available to other countries as long as federal regulators deem the doses to be safe. The vaccine has not yet been approved by American regulators. However, global health groups and public health experts said engagement was not enough.

Dr. Rupali J. Limaye, a Johns Hopkins University researcher investigating vaccine use and reluctance, said the United States should donate any surplus Pfizer BioNTech shots – and any surpluses from other manufacturers – to India and other countries that are had severe outbreaks and asked for help.

“From an ethical point of view, we shouldn’t give people like them priority over people in countries like India,” said Dr. Limaye about teenagers.

If the United States continues its supply of Pfizer-BioNTech, it should be reserved for adults while health officials grapple with the phase of the vaccination campaign that requires more individualized local contact.

“We still have to move past hesitant adults and start at the same time maybe 14 or 15,” said Dr. Limaye. “But the priority should still be adults.”

The current vaccine supply in the United States is substantial. As of Monday, about 65 million doses had been dispensed but not given, according to the CDC, including 31 million doses of the vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, nearly 25 million doses from Moderna, and 10 million doses from Johnson & Johnson

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines each require two doses. Pfizer is approved for ages 16 and up, Moderna for ages 18 and over.

Dozens of millions more Pfizer BioNTech cans – about three weeks long, according to a federal official – have been made and are in various stages of readiness. They wait for the final tests before they are shipped.

Moderna expects results from its own clinical study in adolescents aged 12 to 17 years old soon, followed by results in children aged 6 months to 12 years later this year.

The approval of the Food and Drug Administration should ease the concerns of middle and high school administrators scheduled for the fall. If students can be vaccinated by then, it could lead to more normal gatherings and allow administrators to plan further ahead in the academic year.

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Modi’s Occasion Is Set to Lose a Key Election, Held Beneath the Cloud of Covid

Modi’s Party Is Set to Lose a Key Election, Held Under the Cloud of Covid

NEW DELHI – One of India’s liveliest opposition parties led the first results of the West Bengal state election on Sunday, a closely watched race that took place during a catastrophic spike in Covid-19 infections.

In West Bengal, one of the most populous states in India and a stronghold of the opposition to the powerful Prime Minister Narendra Modi, top parties had fought tirelessly. Even as cases skyrocketed and more people died across India, Mr. Modi and other politicians held enormous rallies across the state, which critics say contributed to the spread of the disease.

By early Sunday afternoon, Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was behind schedule despite their heavy investment in West Bengal, a prize they dearly wanted to win. The party is likely to win more seats in the state assembly than in the last election – a sign of how dominant it has become nationwide. Even so, the All India Trinamool Congress Party, which holds power in the state, certainly seemed to be ahead.

This party is led by Mamata Banerjee, India’s only female prime minister who has developed her own personality cult and reputation as a street fighter strong enough to fend off the BJP’s withered attacks, as is widely known by Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist party .

Three other states and one federal area also released early election results on Sunday that contained few surprises.

Kerala in the south seemed likely to remain under the control of the Left Democratic Front, an alliance of centrist and leftist parties.

Tamil Nadu, also in the south and home to some of India’s most innovative tech companies, is likely controlled by the centrist alliance Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, according to polls on the exit.

Assam, a northeastern region plagued by some very divisive religious and civic issues, will remain a stronghold of the BJP

And a regional party affiliated with the BJP appeared to be firmly in the lead in Puducherry, a former French colony on the east coast of India that is now controlled by the central government.

“Early trends suggest that Modi’s personal, divisive and aggressive campaign in West Bengal has not produced the expected results,” said Gilles Verniers, professor of political science at Ashoka University near New Delhi. “The BJP has failed to gain a foothold in the south, which shows that nationalist rhetoric alone is not enough to expand the base of the BJP.”

Many Indians were stunned that these elections were actually being held. The country is facing the biggest crisis in decades. A second wave of the coronavirus is causing major illness and death. Hospitals are so full that people die on the streets.

The cremation sites work day and night and burn thousands of bodies. New Delhi is suffering from an acute shortage of medical oxygen and dozens have died gasping for breath in their hospital beds.

On Sunday, India reported around 400,000 new infections and nearly 3,700 deaths, the highest daily number to date. Experts say that this is a tremendously outnumbered number and that the actual toll is far higher.

Mr Modi was due to meet with his health minister on Sunday to discuss the lack of oxygen and concerns that doctors and nurses are overwhelmed and exhausted. On Saturday, Indian officials announced that the first batch of Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, had arrived, fueling India’s declining vaccination campaign.

Critics have blown up Mr. Modi’s handling of the crisis. His government ignored warnings from scientists and its own Covid-19 task force did not meet for months. To signal that India is open to business, Mr Modi himself declared an early victory over Covid at the end of January, while a mere infection pause emerged.

Much of India dropped its guard. Coupled with the emergence of more dangerous variants and the sluggish vaccination campaign, this is likely to have fueled the staggering number of infections, the worst numbers the world has ever seen.

The elections in West Bengal took place gradually, beginning at the end of March and ending last week. Many reviewers said it should have been canceled, or at least rallies should have been stopped.

But that didn’t happen. Mr. Modi’s party went on the attack, telling Hindu voters that if they did not vote for Mr. Modi’s party, their deepest religious beliefs could be at risk.

Ms. Banerjee, 66, who has run the state for a decade, dismissed this as nonsense. It has long been popular with Muslims and other minorities and also appealed directly to Hindus. She painted the BJP as an outsider to their state, intent on causing trouble.

Mr. Modi traveled to West Bengal about a dozen times to attend rallies (often without a mask, with many people in the crowd). His face was so ubiquitous that people joked that he appeared to be running for prime minister, the top state executive in India’s decentralized system.

Ms. Banerjee’s campaign slogan was simple and nativist: “Bengal chooses its own daughter.”

Despite this likely loss, Mr. Modi’s party is by far the dominant political outfit in India, and there is no other political figure that comes close to his popularity.

Given the tough battle for West Bengal, some analysts saw Sunday’s results as a blow to him. Ms. Banerjee and other regional figures – notably MK Stalin in Tamil Nadu and Pinarayi Vijayan in Kerala – gained strength.

“This government is now fighting a public backlash against the mistreatment of the Covid pandemic,” said Arati Jerath, a noted political commentator. “I think it is bad news for Modi that three powerful regional chiefs emerge from these elections.”

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Business

Biden administration set to loosen up outside masks steering

Biden administration set to relax outdoor mask guidance

People wear face masks in Central Park on April 10, 2021 in New York City.

Noam Galai | Getty Images

WASHINGTON – The Biden government is scheduled to relax federal guidelines for wearing masks outdoors earlier this week, a source familiar with the plans told NBC News.

The announcement, which may come as early as Tuesday, could include separate recommendations for those fully vaccinated and those who have not received the coronavirus vaccine, added the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The administration is finalizing the guidelines, NBC reported.

Over the weekend, the White House Chief Medical Officer, Dr. However, Anthony Fauci, suggesting the new mask tour was imminent, also warned Americans should adhere to public health measures until the CDC does an assessment.

“What I think you’re going to hear, what the country is about to hear is updated guidelines from the CDC,” Fauci told ABC’s Sunday program “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”. “The CDC is a science-based organization. You don’t want to make guidelines unless you look at the data and the data back it up.”

“But if you look around in the common sense situation, the risk is very small, especially if you are vaccinated,” he said.

The CDC’s current guidance states, “Masks may not be required when you are alone outside of others or with people who live in your household.”

“However, some areas may have mask mandates when you are in public. So please check the rules in your area (such as your city, county, or state). Also, check for federal mask mandates where you are apply, “adds the agency.

A New York City waiter wears a face mask in a restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on November 10, 2020.

Noam Galai | Getty Images

Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto, said he supported the expected guidance from the CDC. He added that further research shows that very few Covid-19 infections occur outdoors.

But masks should still be prescribed indoors until most of the US population is vaccinated and it is difficult for the virus to spread from one person to another.

“It’s been over a year. We have a very good understanding of who gets infected and how they get infected,” he told CNBC in a telephone interview. “I think it’s fair to say you don’t have to wear a mask outside unless you can’t maintain 2 meters or 6 feet of social distance.”

“Masking outdoors probably doesn’t provide any additional protection,” he added.

On Monday, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC that he believed outdoor mask mandates were no longer necessary as the US vaccinated more people.

More than 42% of the US population have received at least one dose of vaccine, according to CDC data, including 28.5% who were fully vaccinated.

“People could choose to wear a mask if they want. I think there shouldn’t be any requirement that they wear masks outdoors,” the former commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration said on Squawk Box.

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Politics

Derek Chauvin sentencing date set for June after homicide conviction

Derek Chauvin sentencing date set for June after murder conviction

Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is shown in a combination of police booking photos after a jury found him guilty on all counts in his trial for second degree murder, third degree murder and second degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis , Minnesota, April 20, 2021.

Minnesota Department of Corrections | via Reuters

Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died after Chauvin kneeled on his neck for more than nine minutes. The video of the incident sparked a nationwide protest movement against police brutality and systemic racism.

The most serious charges against Chauvin have a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, although the guidelines for the conviction often call for much less prison than the maximum sentence.

Chauvin’s sentencing date is expected to be more than eight weeks after the verdict was pronounced by the anonymous 12-person jury after approximately ten hours of deliberation at the end of the three-week Minnesota trial.

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Health

New Mexico Is Set to Legalize Leisure Marijuana

New Mexico Is Set to Legalize Recreational Marijuana

New Mexico was set to be the 16th state to legalize recreational marijuana after lawmakers passed a bill on Wednesday that joined a national movement to reconsider anti-drug laws that are increasingly seen as obstacles to racial justice and the economy.

Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, said she would sign the bill, which would also clear criminal records of people who owned marijuana for personal use. She said in a statement that workers, entrepreneurs and the government will benefit from the new industry, creating jobs and tax revenue.

“And those harmed by this country’s failed drug war, disproportionate color communities, will benefit from our state’s smart, fair and equitable new approach to previous low-level convictions,” she said.

The bill was passed the same day that New York State legalized recreational marijuana. Lawmakers in both states said they were motivated to create a legal, tax-revenue-generating industry that used to run underground and end the arrests for low-level crimes.

New Mexico law allows people over 21 to ingest up to two ounces of marijuana, and individuals can have six plants at home, or up to 12 per household. The sale would begin in April 2022 at the latest and be taxed at 12 percent, eventually at 18 percent plus gross income taxes.

According to a tax analysis quoted by the Albuquerque Journal, the industry is government regulated and will generate estimated revenues of $ 20 million for the state and $ 10 million for local governments in 2023.

The New Mexico move is part of a growing consensus in the United States in favor of decriminalizing marijuana. According to the Pew Research Center, 91 percent of Americans support legal medical or recreational use in 2019. Voters in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota voted to legalize recreational marijuana in November, while Mississippi and South Dakota became the 34th and 35th states to allow medicinal marijuana.

New Mexico law ignored Republican objections, but not all opposed legalization. Some only argued over the details, including how the industry would be taxed, licensed, and regulated.

Supporters including Emily Kaltenbach, Senior Director for States of Residence and New Mexico for the Drug Policy Alliance, welcomed the passage of the bill.

“Today’s adoption of the cannabis legalization and expulsion package will ensure equitable opportunities and long overdue justice – including automatic expulsion – for farmers and other small businesses – for those with previous cannabis arrests or convictions,” she said in a statement.

According to The Associated Press, around 100 prisoners will have their sentences reconsidered under the new law.

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World News

Shares are set to rebound with Dow futures up 100 factors, Intel shares acquire

5 things to know before the stock market opens Feb 17, 2021

U.S. stocks are likely to rebound on Wednesday as investors again bet on a strong economic recovery from the pandemic.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose 130 points, or 0.4%. S&P 500 futures rose 0.5% while Nasdaq futures rose 0.8%.

Intel’s shares drove market gains that rose nearly 5% after the chip giant announced plans for a comeback. He opened two new factories to manufacture his own chips and those for other companies.

The Dow lost more than 300 points on Tuesday, as Caterpillar stocks fell 3% late in the day as it worried about the surge in new coronavirus cases in the US and abroad. The S&P 500 fell 0.8%, with airlines and cruise lines taking significant losses. The small-cap benchmark Russell 2000 fell 3.58% on its worst day since June.

However, cruise lines and airlines rebounded on the Wednesday before entering the market, with Carnival and United Airlines shares soaring more than 2%. Energy stocks also rebounded as oil prices rebounded.

Fundstrat Global Advisors’ Tom Lee said his clients were concerned about the increasing cases of Covid in Europe, but he believes Tuesday’s sell-off had more to do with the portfolio realignment towards the end of the quarter and superstitious investors a year after took profits at the lows of the market. He is still betting on stocks that will benefit the most from an economic recovery compared to previous post-war periods.

“After the war, cyclical companies will become new growth stocks,” Lee told CNBC. “This is what happened. It happened in Iraq and the Middle East. It happened in Japan. It happened in Korea after the Korean War. It happened in the US after World War II and the Korean War. This is a post-war environment . “”

In many regions of the world there are actually increasing Covid-19 cases as highly contagious variants continue to spread, according to the World Health Organization. Germany and France are extending or enforcing new lockdown measures.

But the pace of vaccination in the US is picking up, with nearly one in five adults now fully vaccinated.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will continue their testimony before the US House Committee on Financial Services on Wednesday. When they first appeared together on Tuesday, the pair acknowledged the highly valued asset prices in the markets but said they are not concerned about financial stability.

“I would say that while the valuation of assets is increased by historical metrics, there is also a belief that with rapid vaccinations the economy can get back on track,” Yellen said during the testimony. “I think in an environment with high asset prices, it is important that regulators make sure that the financial sector is resilient and that markets are functioning well.”

Powell said the economic recovery from the pandemic “has advanced faster than generally expected and appears to be strengthening”.

However, he said the economic sectors hardest hit by the pandemic “remain weak” and the unemployment rate “underestimates the deficit,” so the recovery still has a long way to go.

Government bond yields fell on Tuesday and continued to decline slightly on Wednesday.

General Mills, Tencent, KB Homes and RH are among the companies posting profits on Wednesday.

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Business

E.U. Set to Curb Covid Vaccine Exports for six Weeks

E.U. Set to Curb Covid Vaccine Exports for 6 Weeks

BRUSSELS – The European Union completes emergency legislation that gives it extensive powers to curb exports of the block-made Covid-19 vaccines for the next six weeks. This is a marked escalation in their response to domestic supply shortages that have created a political vortex amid a rising third wave on the continent.

The bill, due to be released on Wednesday, has been reviewed by the New York Times and approved by two EU officials involved in the drafting process. The new regulations will make it harder for pharmaceutical companies that make Covid-19 vaccines in the European Union to export them, and supplies to the UK are likely to be disrupted.

The European Union has come into conflict with AstraZeneca in the first place, as it drastically reduced its supplies to the bloc and cited production problems in January. The company is the main target of the new regulations. However, legislation that could block the export of millions of doses from EU ports could also affect Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Britain is by far the biggest benefactor of EU exports and will lose the most to these rules. However, they could also be used to curb exports to other countries such as Canada, for example the second largest recipient of vaccines made in the EU. and Israel, which is receiving doses from the block but is very advanced in its vaccination campaign and is therefore seen as less needy.

“We are in the crisis of the century. And I’m not ruling anything out for now, because we have to make sure that Europeans are vaccinated as soon as possible, ”said Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, in comments last week that paved the way for the new rules. “Human life, civil liberties and also the prosperity of our economy depend on it, on the speed of vaccination and on further development.”

The legislation is unlikely to affect the United States, which has received fewer than one million doses from facilities in the EU.

The Biden government has announced that it has received enough doses from its three authorized manufacturers – Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson – to cover all adults in the country by the end of May. Most of this supply comes from plants in the United States. The country also exports vaccine components to the European Union, which is reluctant to risk disrupting the raw material supply chain.

The European Union allowed pharmaceutical companies to perform their contracts by authorizing them to export more than 40 million doses of vaccine to 33 countries between February and mid-March, with 10 million going to the UK and 4.3 million going to Canada. The bloc has kept about 70 million at home and distributed them to its 27 member states, but its efforts to run mass vaccination campaigns have been set back by a series of missteps.

Liberal overseas exports when domestic supply is low was a significant part of the problem, and the bloc was criticized for allowing exports at all when the United States and Britain practically closed domestic production through contracts with pharmaceutical companies .

The result was a problematic introduction of vaccines for the richest group of nations in the world. The impact of the outages is compounded by a third wave that puts health systems across the continent on emergency mode and instigates painful new lockdowns.

Updated

March 23, 2021, 8:03 p.m. ET

The European Commission, which ordered the vaccines, and individual governments in member states responsible for their national campaigns, have been banned by voters fed up of being banned and increasing the number of Covid-19 cases because of their failure , heavily criticized. Public anger and political costs have risen as the bloc has fallen behind several wealthy counterparts in the world in promoting vaccination campaigns, despite major manufacturers based here.

The bloc has seen recipients of vaccines made in its member countries as well as other rich countries drive their vaccination campaigns. Almost 60 percent of Israelis have received at least one dose of vaccine, 40 percent of British and a quarter of Americans, but only 10 percent of EU citizens have been vaccinated, according to the latest information released by Our World in Data.

The export restrictions are being enforced by the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, and while changes to the new rules could take place before the law is finalized, officials said they are unlikely to be substantial. They are expected to enter into force quickly.

EU officials said the rules would allow for a degree of discretion, meaning they would not result in a blanket export ban, and officials still expected many exports to continue.

“The proposed measures concern,” said Youmy Han, spokeswoman for Canada’s Minister for International Trade, Mary Ng.

“Minister Ng’s colleagues have repeatedly assured her that these measures will not affect vaccine shipments to Canada,” said Ms. Han. She added: “We will continue to work with the EU and its member states, as we have done throughout the pandemic, to ensure that our essential health and medical supply chains remain open and resilient.”

Canada depends on the European Union for almost all of its vaccine supply: all of Canada’s Moderna and Pfizer vaccines come from Europe, although the country received a small shipment of the AstraZeneca vaccine from India.

The new rules come after months of escalating tensions between the European Union and AstraZeneca in a situation that has become toxic to the bloc’s fragile relations with its recently deceased member, the UK.

The problems started in late January when AstraZeneca notified the block that it would cut its shipments by more than half in the first quarter of 2021, which turned plans to launch vaccines upside down. In response, the European Union has put in place an export authorization process whereby pharmaceutical companies must obtain permission to export vaccines and give the European Union the power to block them if they are seen as a breach of a company’s contractual obligations to the bloc.

As of February 1, the European Union has blocked just one of more than 300 exports, a small shipment of AstraZeneca vaccines to Australia, on the grounds that the country is virtually Coviden-free while the block struggles with increasing infections.

The new rules will introduce more reasons to block exports, the drafts show. They will encourage blocking shipments to countries that do not export vaccines to the European Union – a clause clearly targeting the UK – or to countries that have “a higher vaccination rate” than the European Union, “or where the current epidemiological situation is less serious “than in the block according to the Times.

In recent days, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has tried to use a conciliatory tone to avert an EU export ban that would deal a severe blow to his country’s rapidly advancing vaccination campaign.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Johnson said he was against blockades and was “encouraged by some of the things I’ve heard from the continent.” The UK news media reported that his government would be ready to have the block produce four million AstraZeneca cans in an EU factory.

Benjamin Mueller reported from London, Sharon LaFraniere from Washington and Ian Austen from Ottawa.