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Amazon Vote Depend Outcomes: Dwell Updates

There were 3,215 ballots cast, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, from 55 percent of the 5,805 eligible voters at the warehouse.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Bob Miller for The New York Times

The counting of ballots in the closely watched unionization drive at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., is set to resume Friday at 8:30 a.m. Central time.

With about half the ballots counted late Thursday, votes against unionization had an advantage of more than 2-to-1 over those in favor, according to a live broadcast of the counting that was tallied by The New York Times. When the counting paused, there were 1,100 votes against unionization and 463 in support.

There were 3,215 ballots cast, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, from 55 percent of the 5,805 eligible voters at the warehouse. The union must get support from more than half of the votes cast to prevail.

Unofficial Tally of Amazon Warehouse Unionization Votes

1,608 yes votes are needed for the union to win today.

The New York Times·As of 9:39 a.m. Hundreds of ballots have been contested, which could delay either side from reaching the threshold. One ballot was marked as void.

The ballots were being counted in random order in the National Labor Relations Board’s office in Birmingham, Ala., and the process was broadcast via Zoom to more than 200 journalists, lawyers and other observers.

The voting was conducted by mail from early February until the end of last month. A handful of workers from the labor board called out the results of each vote “Yes” for a union or “No” for nearly four hours on Thursday.

Amazon and the union had spent more than a week in closed sessions, reviewing the eligibility of each ballot cast with the labor board, the federal agency that conducts union elections. The union said several hundred ballots had been contested, largely by Amazon, and those ballots were set aside to be adjudicated and counted only if they were vital to determining an outcome. If Amazon’s large margin holds steady throughout the count, the contested ballots are likely to be moot.

The incomplete tally put Amazon on the cusp of defeating the most serious organized-labor threat in the company’s history. Running a prominent campaign since the fall, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union aimed to establish the first union at an Amazon warehouse in the United States. The result will have major implications not only for Amazon but also for organized labor and its allies.

Labor organizers have tapped into dissatisfaction with working conditions in the warehouse, saying Amazon’s pursuit of efficiency and profits makes the conditions harsh for workers. The company counters that its starting wage of $15 an hour exceeds what other employers in the area pay, and it has urged workers to vote against unionizing.

Amazon has always fought against unionizing by its workers. But the vote in Alabama comes at a perilous moment for the company. Lawmakers and regulators — not competitors — are some of its greatest threats, and it has spent significant time and money trying to keep the government away from its business.

The union drive has had the retailer doing a political balancing act: staying on the good side of Washington’s Democratic leaders while squashing an organizing effort that President Biden has signaled he supported.

Labor leaders and liberal Democrats have seized on the union drive, saying it shows how Amazon is not as friendly to workers as the company says it is. Some of the company’s critics are also using its resistance to the union push to argue that Amazon should not be trusted on other issues, like climate change and the federal minimum wage.

Sophia June contributed to this report.

After a lengthy review, the F.A.A. allowed the Boeing 737 Max to fly again in November.Credit…Matt Mcknight/Reuters

Boeing said Friday it had notified 16 customers of a potential electrical issue with its troubled 737 Max plane and recommended that they temporarily stop flying some planes.

Boeing said airlines should verify that “that a sufficient ground path exists for a component of the electrical power system” on certain Max planes. The statement comes just months after airlines resumed flying the jet, which had been grounded for nearly two years because of a pair of accidents that killed nearly 350 people.

“We are working closely with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on this production issue,” Boeing said in a statement. “We are also informing our customers of specific tail numbers affected and we will provide direction on appropriate corrective actions.”

Southwest Airlines, one of the biggest customers of the plane, said that 30 of its 58 Max jets were affected by the notification and that it was swapping those planes out for now. The airline is only flying 15 or fewer Max jets each day.

“Southwest anticipates minimal disruption to our operation, and we appreciate the understanding of our customers and employees as safety is always our uncompromising priority,” it said in a statement.

The Max was banned from flying globally in March 2019 after the crashes. After a lengthy review, the F.A.A. allowed the Max to fly again in November, provided that Boeing and airlines make required changes to the jet, including updating its flight control software.

Since then, aviation regulators around the world have followed suit and the plane has been used on thousands of flights.

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a White House appearance on Thursday.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

The White House budget office will release the first fragments of President Biden’s budget proposals to Congress on Friday, providing a fresh sense of his priorities as lawmakers wait on his administration’s full budget.

Officials have stressed that the document — which will outline plans for discretionary spending within government agencies — is not a formal budget and will not include tax proposals or so-called mandatory spending in areas like Social Security. Instead, it will provide overall funding levels for agencies, like the Treasury and Defense Department, and some detail on proposed spending across the administration in areas like combating climate change.

The request will cover the 2022 fiscal year, which starts in October. White House officials had originally announced it would be released last week, before pushing back the timeline. The budget office does not have a confirmed director, after Mr. Biden’s first pick for the job, Neera Tanden, withdrew from consideration amid Republican opposition centered on her past statements on Twitter that were critical of conservatives.

Shalanda D. Young, who was confirmed by the Senate last month to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, is serving as Mr. Biden’s acting budget director.

Officials have promised that Mr. Biden’s full budget will be released later this spring. They have blamed delays on a lack of cooperation from outgoing members of the Trump administration.

“Well there’s no question, as we talked about during the transition, that we dealt with some impactful intransigence from the outgoing political appointees,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters this week.

“We had some cooperation from the career staff, but we didn’t have all of the information that we needed,” she added. “As you all know, we also don’t have a budget director. We have not had a budget director confirmed. We have now an acting budget director, which is an important step forward.”

Congress, which is responsible for approving government spending, is under no requirement to adhere to the White House budget, which is generally viewed as a political messaging document. In recent years, lawmakers rejected many of the Trump administration’s efforts to gut domestic programs.

Officials say the proposal that will be released on Friday will not reflect the details in Mr. Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, which he introduced last week, or of a second plan he has yet to roll out, which will focus on what officials call “human infrastructure” like education and child care.

After its initial public offering imploded, WeWork went public through a SPAC deal.Credit…Kate Munsch/Reuters

After weeks of wading into the debate over how to regulate SPACS, the popular blank-check deals that provide companies a back door to public markets, the Securities and Exchange Commission is sending its first shot across the bow.

John Coates, the acting director of the corporate finance division at the S.E.C., issued a lengthy statement on Thursday about how securities laws apply to blank-check firms, the DealBook newsletter reports.

In particular, he is interested in a crucial (and controversial) difference between SPACs and traditional initial public offerings: blank-check firms are allowed to publish often-rosy financial forecasts when merging with an acquisition target, while companies going public in an I.P.O. are not.

“With the unprecedented surge has come unprecedented scrutiny,” Mr. Coates wrote of the recent boom in blank-check deals.

Investors raise money for SPACs via an I.P.O. of a shell company, and those funds are used to merge with an unspecified company within two years, which then also becomes a publicly traded company. Because the deal is technically a merger, it’s given the same “safe harbor” legal protections for its financial forecasts as a typical M.& A. deal.

With traditional I.P.O.s, companies can’t issue such projections to prospective investors, because regulators consider it too risky for firms as yet untested by the public markets. And that’s why there are flying-taxi companies with little revenue going public via a SPAC while promising billions in sales far in the future.

The S.E.C. thinks allowing financial forecasts for these deals might be a problem. They can be “untested, speculative, misleading or even fraudulent,” Mr. Coates wrote. And he concludes his statement by suggesting a major rethink of how the “full panoply” of securities laws applies to SPACs, which could upend the blank-check business model.

If the S.E.C. does not treat SPAC deals as the I.P.Os they effectively are, he writes, “potentially problematic forward-looking information may be disseminated without appropriate safeguards.”

The letter serves as a warning, but perhaps not much else — yet. Unless the S.E.C. issues new rules (as it did for penny stocks) or Congress passes legislation, SPAC projections will continue. But this strongly worded statement could moderate or even mute them.

“The S.E.C. has now put them on notice,” Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant of the agency, said.

Revolut’s office in London in 2018. The banking start-up is offering its workers the opportunity to work abroad for up to two months a year.Credit…Tom Jamieson for The New York Times

Before the pandemic, companies used to lure top talent with lavish perks like subsidized massages, Pilates classes and free gourmet meals. Now, the hottest enticement is permission to work not just from home, but from anywhere — even, say, from the French Alps or a Caribbean island.

Revolut, a banking start-up based in London, said Thursday that it would allow its more than 2,000 employees to work abroad for up to two months a year in response to requests to visit overseas family for longer periods.

“Our employees asked for flexibility, and that’s what we’re giving them as part of our ongoing focus on employee experience and choice,” said Jim MacDougall, Revolut’s vice president of human resources.

Georgia Pacquette-Bramble, a communications manager for Revolut, said she was planning to trade the winter in London for Spain or somewhere in the Caribbean. Other colleagues have talked about spending time with family abroad.

Revolut has been valued at $5.5 billion, making it one of Europe’s most valuable financial technology firms. It joins a number of companies that will allow more flexible working arrangements to continue after the pandemic ends. JPMorgan Chase, Salesforce, Ford Motor and Target have said they are giving up office space as they expect workers to spend less time in the office, and Spotify has told employees they can work from anywhere.

Not all companies, however, are shifting away from the office. Tech companies, including Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple, have added office space in New York over the last year. Amazon told employees it would “return to an office-centric culture as our baseline.”

Dr. Dan Wang, an associate professor at Columbia Business School, said he did not expect office-centric companies to lose top talent to companies that allow flexible working, in part because many employees prefer to work from the office.

Furthermore, when employees are not in the same space, there are fewer spontaneous interactions, and spontaneity is critical for developing ideas and collaborating, Dr. Wang said.

“There is a cost,” he said. “Yes, we can interact via email, via Slack, via Zoom — we’ve all gotten used to that. But part of it is that we’ve lowered our expectations for what social interaction actually entails.”

Revolut said it studied tax laws and regulations before introducing its policy, and that each request to work from abroad was subject to an internal review and approval process. But for some companies looking to put a similar policy in place, a hefty tax bill, or at least a complicated tax return, could be a drawback.

A screenshot of a “vax cards” page on Facebook. 

Online stores offering counterfeit or stolen vaccine cards have mushroomed in recent weeks, according to Saoud Khalifah, the founder of FakeSpot, which offers tools to detect fake listings and reviews online.

The efforts are far from hidden, with Facebook pages named “vax-cards” and eBay listings with “blank vaccine cards” openly hawking the items, Sheera Frenkel reports for The New York Times.

Last week, 45 state attorneys general banded together to call on Twitter, Shopify and eBay to stop the sale of false and stolen vaccine cards.

Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Shopify and Etsy said that the sale of fake vaccine cards violated their rules and that they were removing posts that advertised the items.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced the vaccination cards in December, describing them as the “simplest” way to keep track of Covid-19 shots. By January, sales of false vaccine cards started picking up, Mr. Khalifah said. Many people found the cards were easy to forge from samples available online. Authentic cards were also stolen by pharmacists from their workplaces and put up for sale, he said.

Many people who bought the cards were opposed to the Covid-19 vaccines, Mr. Khalifah said. In some anti-vaccine groups on Facebook, people have publicly boasted about getting the cards.

Other buyers want to use the cards to trick pharmacists into giving them a vaccine, Mr. Khalifah said. Because some of the vaccines are two-shot regimens, people can enter a false date for a first inoculation on the card, which makes it appear as if they need a second dose soon. Some pharmacies and state vaccination sites have prioritized people due for their second shots.

An empty conference room in New York, which is among the cities with the lowest rate of workers returning to offices.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York Times

In only a year, the market value of office towers in Manhattan has plummeted 25 percent, according to city projections released on Wednesday.

Across the country, the vacancy rate for office buildings in city centers has steadily climbed over the past year to reach 16.4 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield, the highest in about a decade. That number could climb further if companies keep giving up office space because of hybrid or fully remote work, Peter Eavis and Matthew Haag report for The New York Times.

So far, landlords like Boston Properties and SL Green have not suffered huge financial losses, having survived the past year by collecting rent from tenants locked into long leases — the average contract for office space runs about seven years.

But as leases come up for renewal, property owners could be left with scores of empty floors. At the same time, many new office buildings are under construction — 124 million square feet nationwide, or enough for roughly 700,000 workers. Those changes could drive down rents, which were touching new highs before the pandemic. And rents help determine assessments that are the basis for property tax bills.

Many big employers have already given notice to the owners of some prestigious buildings that they are leaving when their leases end. JPMorgan Chase, Ford Motor, Salesforce, Target and more are giving up expensive office space and others are considering doing so.

The stock prices of the big landlords, which are often structured as real estate investment trusts that pass almost all of their profit to investors, trade well below their previous highs. Shares of Boston Properties, one of the largest office landlords, are down 29 percent from the prepandemic high. SL Green, a major New York landlord, is 26 percent lower.

A closed restaurant and pastry store in Tucson, Ariz. The Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said the economic recovery from the pandemic has been “uneven and incomplete.”Credit…Rebecca Noble for The New York Times

  • U.S. stock futures rose on Friday along with government bond yields after the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, reiterated his intention to keep supporting the economic recovery until it is complete.

  • The rollout of vaccinations meant the United States economy could probably reopen soon, but the recovery was still “uneven and incomplete,” Mr. Powell said at the International Monetary Fund annual conference on Thursday.

  • He pointed out that the economic burden of the pandemic was falling most heavily on low-income service workers who were least able to bear it. “I really want to finish the job and get back to a great economy,” Mr. Powell said.

  • The yield on 10-year Treasury notes jumped 5 basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 1.67 percent. The yield on 10-year government bonds rose across Europe, too.

  • The S&P 500 index was set to open 0.1 percent higher and has risen 0.4 percent so far this week.

  • The relatively quiet week in the stock market has sent the VIX index, a measure of volatility, to its lowest level since February 2020. The index was at 17 points on Friday. In mid-March, as the pandemic shut down huge parts of the global economy, it spiked above 80.

  • European stock indexes were mixed on Friday, though the Stoxx Europe 600 was heading for its sixth straight week of gains. The DAX index in Germany rose 0.1 percent after data showed an unexpected drop in industrial production.

  • Oil prices rose slightly with futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, 0.2 percent higher to $59.70 a barrel.

Categories
Business

State Jobless Claims Climb, Exhibiting Continued Stress on Labor Market: Stay Updates

Essen im Freien in einem Restaurant in Philadelphia letzte Woche. Wirtschaftswissenschaftler rechnen mit einer Verbesserung des Arbeitsmarktes, da sich die Einführung von Impfstoffen beschleunigt und immer mehr Staaten die Geschäftsbeschränkungen aufheben.

Folgendes müssen Sie wissen:

Anerkennung…Hannah Beier für die New York Times

Der Arbeitsmarkt bleibt herausfordernd. Die Regierung berichtet am Donnerstag, dass die ersten Ansprüche auf staatliche Arbeitslosenunterstützung letzte Woche gestiegen sind.

Insgesamt 741.000 Arbeitnehmer haben letzte Woche erstmals Anträge auf staatliche Arbeitslosenunterstützung gestellt, was einer Zunahme von 18.000 entspricht, teilte das Arbeitsministerium mit. Es war der zweite wöchentliche Anstieg in Folge, nachdem neue Ansprüche ein Pandemietief erreicht hatten.

Gleichzeitig wurden 152.000 neue Anträge auf Pandemic Unemployment Assistance gestellt, ein Bundesprogramm für Freiberufler, Teilzeitbeschäftigte und andere Personen, die nicht routinemäßig Anspruch auf staatliche Leistungen haben. Das war ein Rückgang von 85.000.

Keine der Zahlen ist saisonbereinigt.

Die Ansprüche stiegen zu Beginn des Jahres auf über eine Million, haben es aber getan seitdem gesunken, unterstützt durch die Verbreitung von Impfungen, die Lockerung der Beschränkungen für Unternehmen in vielen Staaten und die Ankunft von Konjunkturfonds.

Die meisten Personen erhielten in den letzten Wochen Zahlungen in Höhe von 1.400 US-Dollar als Teil des Hilfspakets der Biden-Regierung in Höhe von 1,9 Billionen US-Dollar, und die Mittel sollten die Verbraucherausgaben in den kommenden Monaten stützen.

Am Freitag berichtete die Regierung, dass die Arbeitgeber im März 916.000 Arbeitsplätze geschaffen haben, doppelt so viel wie im Februar und am meisten seit August. Die Arbeitslosenquote sank auf 6 Prozent, den niedrigsten Stand seit Beginn der Pandemie. Fast 350.000 Menschen sind wieder erwerbstätig.

Trotzdem gibt es viel zu tun.

Selbst nach dem Beschäftigungszuwachs im März sind in der Wirtschaft 8,4 Millionen Arbeitsplätze weniger als im Februar 2020. Ganze Sektoren wie Reisen und Freizeit sowie Restaurants und Bars erholen sich erst allmählich von den Millionen von Arbeitsplatzverlusten, die sich daraus ergaben Ankunft der Pandemie.

Die Stimmzettel in der Gewerkschaftsfahrt in einem Amazonas-Lagerhaus in Bessemer, Alabama, werden voraussichtlich ab Donnerstagnachmittag oder Freitagmorgen von Hand gezählt.Anerkennung…Charity Rachelle für die New York Times

Die Gewerkschaft, die Arbeiter in einem Amazonas-Lagerhaus in Alabama vertreten will, gab am späten Mittwoch bekannt, dass 3.215 Stimmzettel abgegeben wurden – oder etwa 55 Prozent der rund 5.800 wahlberechtigten Arbeiter.

Die Stimmzettel werden nach Angaben der Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union voraussichtlich ab Donnerstagnachmittag oder Freitagmorgen im Büro des National Labour Relations Board in Birmingham von Hand gezählt. Hunderte von Stimmzetteln werden angefochten, hauptsächlich von Amazon, sagte die Gewerkschaft.

Die Stimmenzählung wird in einem Videokonferenzaufruf an eine kleine Anzahl von Außenstehenden, einschließlich Journalisten, sowie an Vertreter der Gewerkschaft und des Unternehmens gezeigt.

Gewerkschaftswahlen werden in der Regel persönlich abgehalten, aber die Arbeitsbehörde entschied, dass die Wahlen per Post durchgeführt werden sollten, um die Risiken während der Pandemie zu minimieren. Die Stimmzettel wurden Anfang Februar an die Arbeitnehmer verschickt und waren vor dem 30. März bei der Agentur fällig. Seitdem hatten Amazon und die Gewerkschaft die Möglichkeit, zu prüfen, ob bestimmte Arbeitnehmer wahlberechtigt waren.

Wenn die öffentliche Zählung abgeschlossen ist, wird die Agentur die formellen Ergebnisse bekannt geben, wenn die Gewinnspanne für eine Seite größer ist als die Anzahl der umstrittenen Stimmzettel.

Wenn der Spielraum enger ist, kann es zwei bis drei Wochen dauern, bis die NLRB eine Anhörung abhält, um die angefochtenen Stimmzettel zu sortieren und von beiden Seiten Beweise dafür zu erhalten, ob sie gezählt werden sollten.

Der zweite Stausee von Baoshan. Während der Regenzeit im letzten Jahr landete kein einziger Taifun.Anerkennung…Ein Rong Xu für die New York Times

Beamte nennen Taiwans Dürre die schlimmste seit mehr als einem halben Jahrhundert. Und es stellt die enormen Herausforderungen dar, die mit dem Hosting der Halbleiterindustrie der Insel verbunden sind, die ein zunehmend unverzichtbarer Knotenpunkt in den globalen Lieferketten für Smartphones, Autos und andere Grundpfeiler des modernen Lebens ist.

Chiphersteller verwenden viel Wasser, um ihre Fabriken und Wafer zu reinigen, die dünnen Siliziumscheiben, aus denen die Chips bestehen. Raymond Zhong und Amy Chang Chien berichten für die New York Times. Im Jahr 2019 verbrauchten die Anlagen der Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in Hsinchu nach Angaben des Unternehmens 63.000 Tonnen Wasser pro Tag oder mehr als 10 Prozent der Versorgung aus zwei lokalen Lagerstätten.

In den letzten Monaten hat die Regierung:

Die umfassendste Maßnahme war jedoch die Einstellung der Bewässerung, die 183.000 Morgen Ackerland betrifft, rund ein Fünftel von Taiwans bewässertem Land.

Die taiwanesische Öffentlichkeit scheint entschieden zu haben, dass der Reisanbau sowohl für die Insel als auch für die Welt weniger wichtig ist als Halbleiter. Die Regierung subventioniert die Erzeuger für die Einkommensverluste. Der 55-jährige Chuang Cheng-deng befürchtet jedoch, dass die vereitelte Ernte die Kunden dazu bringen wird, andere Lieferanten zu suchen, was Jahre mit schwachen Erträgen bedeuten könnte.

Das Ikea-Geschäft in Franconville, Frankreich, in dem die Mitarbeiter überwacht wurden, zeigten Dokumente.Anerkennung…Elliott-Werte für die New York Times

Die Staatsanwaltschaft beschuldigt den französischen Arm von Ikea, dem schwedischen Einrichtungsgiganten, und einigen seiner ehemaligen Führungskräfte, in einem Strafverfahren, das die Aufmerksamkeit der Öffentlichkeit in Frankreich erregt hat, von 2009 bis 2012 ein „Spionagesystem“ entwickelt zu haben.

Das angebliche Schnüffeln wurde verwendet, um Mitarbeiter und Gewerkschaftsorganisatoren zu untersuchen, die im Urlaub befindlichen Arbeitnehmer zu untersuchen und Kunden einzuschätzen, die Rückerstattungen für verpfuschte Bestellungen beantragen, berichtet Liz Alderman für die New York Times. Ein ehemaliger Militäragent wurde angeheuert, um einige der geheimeren Operationen durchzuführen.

Insgesamt werden 15 Personen belastet. Ein Urteil einer Jury ist für den 15. Juni geplant.

Der Fall erregte 2012 Empörung, nachdem die E-Mails an die französischen Nachrichtenmedien durchgesickert waren und Ikea sofort mehrere Führungskräfte in seiner französischen Einheit entlassen hatte, darunter auch seinen Geschäftsführer. Es gibt keine Hinweise darauf, dass in einem der anderen 52 Länder, in denen der globale Einzelhändler ein frisches Bild von stilvoller Sparsamkeit mit schwedischen Fleischbällchen serviert, eine ähnliche Überwachung stattgefunden hat.

Die Anwälte der Opfer beschrieben eine methodische Operation, die auf zwei Wegen verlief: eine, die Hintergrund- und Strafkontrollen von Bewerbern und Arbeitnehmern ohne deren Wissen beinhaltete, und eine andere, die sich an Gewerkschaftsführer und -mitglieder richtete.

Der Anwalt von Ikea, Emmanuel Daoud, bestritt, dass in den französischen Geschäften von Ikea eine systemweite Überwachung durchgeführt worden sei. Er argumentierte, dass jegliche Verletzung der Privatsphäre die Arbeit einer einzelnen Person gewesen sei, Jean-François Paris, dem Leiter des Risikomanagements der französischen Einheit.

E-Mails und Quittungen zeigten, dass Herr Paris einen Großteil der Arbeit an Jean-Pierre Fourès übergab, der Hunderte von Bewerbern überwachte und Informationen aus sozialen Medien und anderen Quellen sammelte, um die Überprüfung und Einstellung zu beschleunigen. Er führte auch Hintergrundprüfungen bei ahnungslosen Kunden durch, die sich wegen großer Rückerstattungen mit Ikea verhedderten. Er bestand darauf, dass er beim Sammeln von Hintergrundmaterial nie gegen das Gesetz verstoßen hatte.

Die Überwachung umfasste Berufstätige. In einem Fall wurde Herr Fourès beauftragt, zu untersuchen, ob der stellvertretende Direktor für Kommunikation und Merchandising von Ikea France, der sich ein Jahr lang krank hatte und sich von Hepatitis C erholt hatte, die Schwere ihrer Krankheit vorgetäuscht hatte, als Manager erfuhren, dass sie nach Marokko gereist war.

Ein Karnevalskreuzfahrtschiff legte letztes Jahr in Long Beach, Kalifornien, an. Die Kreuzfahrtlinie hat gedroht, ihre Schiffe außerhalb der US-Häfen zu bewegen.Anerkennung…Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

  • Carnival Cruise Line, der größte Kreuzfahrtanbieter in den USA, ist optimistisch, dass mehrere seiner in den USA ansässigen Linien bis Juli in Betrieb sein werden, teilte das Unternehmen am Mittwoch mit, als es seine Finanzdaten für das erste Quartal meldete. Das Buchungsvolumen für zukünftige Karnevalskreuzfahrten war im ersten Quartal 2021 um etwa 90 Prozent höher als im Vorquartal, was „sowohl die erhebliche aufgestaute Nachfrage als auch das langfristige Potenzial für Kreuzfahrten widerspiegelt“, so Arnold Donald, Geschäftsführer der Carnival Corporation , sagte die Muttergesellschaft der Kreuzfahrtgesellschaft in einer Erklärung am Mittwoch. Das Unternehmen meldete für das erste Quartal 2021 einen Nettoverlust von 2 Milliarden US-Dollar.

  • Gewerkschaften, die Mitarbeiter von zwei bekannten Podcasting-Unternehmen von Spotify, dem Audiostreaming-Riesen, vertreten, gaben am Mittwoch bekannt, dass sie ihre ersten Arbeitsverträge ratifiziert haben. Die größere der beiden Gewerkschaften mit 65 Mitarbeitern befindet sich bei The Ringer, einer Website für Sport- und Popkultur mit einem Podcasting-Netzwerk. Die zweite Gewerkschaft der Podcast-Produktionsfirma Gimlet Media beschäftigt knapp 50 Mitarbeiter. Die beiden Gruppen gehörten zu den ersten in der Podcasting-Branche, die sich gewerkschaftlich organisiert haben, und beide werden von der Writers Guild of America, East, vertreten.

Ein Anerkennung…Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press

  • Die S & P 500-Futures stiegen am Donnerstag und deuteten auf einen Anstieg zu Beginn des Wall Street-Handels hin, einen Tag nachdem der Referenzindex am Vortag einen weiteren Rekord aufgestellt hatte. Die Anleger warten auf den neuesten wöchentlichen Bericht über Arbeitslosenansprüche, der ein neues Maß für eine sich stärkende Wirtschaft darstellen könnte.

  • Die europäischen Märkte waren überwiegend höher und die asiatischen Aktien hatten einen überwiegend positiven Tag. Die Öl-Futures waren niedriger und die Renditen für Staatsanleihen gaben nach.

  • Die Anleger am Mittwoch wurden von den Bemerkungen im Protokoll der Sitzung der Federal Reserve im vergangenen Monat beflügelt, wonach Richtlinien, die die Märkte und Unternehmen durch die Pandemie unterstützt haben, nicht entfernt werden sollten.

  • Die politischen Entscheidungsträger der Fed haben erklärt, dass sie “erhebliche weitere Fortschritte” bei der Erreichung ihrer Beschäftigungs- und Inflationsziele sehen wollen, bevor sie die akkommodierenden Maßnahmen zurückfahren.

  • Wöchentliche Zahlen zu Arbeitslosenansprüchen, die später am Donnerstag veröffentlicht werden sollen, stehen angesichts des wachsenden Vertrauens in Bezug auf Einstellungen in der US-Wirtschaft. Der Lohnbericht für März zeigte einen beeindruckenden Zuwachs von 916.000 Arbeitsplätzen. Aber trotz dieser Verbesserung sind in der Wirtschaft immer noch 8,4 Millionen Arbeitsplätze weniger als im Februar 2020.

  • Die Anleger gehen auch näher auf den Unternehmenssteuerplan von Präsident Biden ein, der darauf abzielt, in 15 Jahren bis zu 2,5 Billionen US-Dollar aufzubringen. Es beinhaltet eine strenge neue Mindeststeuer auf globale Gewinne und das Vorgehen gegen Unternehmen, die versuchen, Gewinne offshore zu verlagern.

  • In Europa war der Handel mit dem Stoxx Europe 600 um 0,4 höher, nachdem er am Mittwoch zum Handelsschluss ein Rekordhoch erreicht hatte. In Großbritannien war der FTSE 100 ebenfalls um 0,4 Prozent höher. In Asien beendete der Hang Seng in Hongkong den Tag um 1,2 Prozent höher.

  • In New York stiegen die S & P 500-Futures um 0,3 Prozent, nachdem der Index am Mittwoch um 0,2 Prozent gestiegen war.

  • Die Öl-Futures rutschten ab, da steigende Coronavirus-Infektionen die Prognosen der Ölnachfrage belasten. Brent-Rohöl, die globale Benchmark, fiel um 0,2 Prozent auf 63 USD pro Barrel, und die US-Benchmark West Texas Intermediate fiel um 0,5 Prozent auf 59,47 USD pro Barrel.

  • Die Renditen 10-jähriger Schatzanweisungen gingen um mehr als 2 Basispunkte auf 1,64 Prozent zurück.

Categories
Business

‘The U.S. Economic system Will Possible Increase,’ Jamie Dimon Predicts: Reside Updates

Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Jeenah Moon/Reuters

The annual letter to shareholders by JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, was published early Wednesday. The letter, which is widely read on Wall Street, is not just an overview of the bank’s business but also covers Mr. Dimon’s thoughts on everything from leadership lessons to public policy prescriptions.

“The U.S. economy will likely boom.” A combination of excess savings, deficit spending, vaccinations and “euphoria around the end of the pandemic,” Mr. Dimon wrote, may create a boom that “could easily run into 2023.” That could justify high stock valuations, but not the price of U.S. debt, given the “huge supply” soon to hit the market. There is a chance that a rise in inflation would be “more than temporary,” he wrote, forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates aggressively. “Rapidly raising rates to offset an overheating economy is a typical cause of a recession,” he wrote, but he hopes for “the Goldilocks scenario” of fast growth, gently increasing inflation and a measured rise in interest rates.

“Banks are playing an increasingly smaller role in the financial system.” Mr. Dimon cited competition from an already large shadow banking system and fintech companies, as well as “Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and now Walmart.” He argued those nonbank competitors should be more strictly regulated; their growth has “partially been made possible” by avoiding banking rules, he wrote. And when it comes to tougher regulation of big banks, he wrote, “the cost to the economy of having fail-safe banks may not be worth it.”

“China’s leaders believe that America is in decline.” The United States has faced tough times before, but today, “the Chinese see an America that is losing ground in technology, infrastructure and education — a nation torn and crippled by politics, as well as racial and income inequality — and a country unable to coordinate government policies (fiscal, monetary, industrial, regulatory) in any coherent way to accomplish national goals,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, recently, there is a lot of truth to this.”

“The solution is not as simple as walking away from fossil fuels.” Addressing climate change doesn’t mean “abandoning” companies that produce and use fossil fuels, Mr. Dimon wrote, but working with them to reduce their environmental impact. He sees “huge opportunity in sustainable and low-carbon technologies and businesses” and plans to evaluate clients’ progress according to reductions in carbon intensity — emissions per unit of output — which adjusts for factors like size.

Other notable news (and views) from the letter:

  • With more widespread remote working, JPMorgan may need only 60 seats for every 100 employees. “This will significantly reduce our need for real estate,” Mr. Dimon wrote.

  • JPMorgan spends more than $600 million a year on cybersecurity.

  • Mr. Dimon cited tax loopholes he thought the United States could do without: carried interest, tax breaks for racing cars, private jets and horse racing, and a land conservation tax break for golf courses.

This was Mr. Dimon’s longest letter yet, at 35,000 words over 66 pages. The steadily expanding letters — aside from a shorter edition last year, weeks after Mr. Dimon had emergency heart surgery — could be seen as a reflection of the range of issues top executives are now expected, or compelled, to address.

Target said its commitment added to its other moves to improve racial equity in the past year,.Credit…Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times

Target will spend more than $2 billion with Black-owned businesses by 2025, it announced on Wednesday, joining a growing list of retailers that have promised to increase their economic support of such companies in a bid to advance racial equity in the United States.

Target, which is based in Minneapolis, will add more products from companies owned by Black entrepreneurs, spend more with Black-owned marketing agencies and construction companies and introduce new resources to help Black-owned vendors navigate the process of creating products for a mass retail chain, the company said in a statement.

After last year’s protests over police brutality, a wave of American retailers, from Sephora to Macy’s, have committed to spending more money with Black-owned businesses. Many of them have joined a movement known as the 15 Percent Pledge, which supports devoting enough shelf space to Black-owned businesses to align with the African-American percentage of the national population.

Target’s announcement appears to be separate from that pledge. It said its commitment added to other racial-equity and social-justice initiatives in the past year, including efforts to improve representation among its work force.

A Samsung store in Seoul. The company’s Galaxy S21 series of  phones have sold well in the United States since their introduction in January. Credit…Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Samsung’s sales grew by an estimated 17 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, and operating profit increased by 44 percent, the company said on Wednesday. The South Korean electronics titan’s growth has been helped during the pandemic by strong demand for televisions, computer monitors and other lockdown staples.

The company released its latest flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S21 series, in January. In the United States, the devices handily outsold Samsung’s last line of premium phones in their first six weeks on the market, according to Counterpoint Research, which attributed the strong performance in part to Americans receiving stimulus payments.

Samsung’s handset business has also been buoyed of late by the U.S. campaign against Huawei, one of the company’s main rivals in smartphones. The Chinese tech giant’s device sales have plummeted because American sanctions prevent its phones from running popular Google apps and services, limiting their appeal to many buyers.

Another competitor, LG Electronics, said this week that it was getting out of the smartphone business to focus on other products.

Samsung’s first-quarter revenue was likely hurt by February’s winter storm in Texas, which caused the company to halt production for a while at its manufacturing facilities in Austin.

The company is expected to report detailed financial results later this month.

Jeff Bezos in 2019. He said in a statement on Tuesday that he applauded the Biden administration’s “focus on making bold investments in American infrastructure.”Credit…Jared Soares for The New York Times

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, said on Tuesday that he supported an increase in the corporate tax rate to fund investment in U.S. infrastructure.

President Biden is pushing a plan to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure improvements, in part by raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, from its current rate of 21 percent.

Mr. Bezos said in a statement on Amazon’s corporate website that he applauded the administration’s “focus on making bold investments in American infrastructure.”

“We recognize this investment will require concessions from all sides — both on the specifics of what’s included as well as how it gets paid for (we’re supportive of a rise in the corporate tax rate),” Mr. Bezos said.

For years, Amazon has been a model for corporate tax avoidance, fielding criticism of its tax strategies from Democrats and former President Donald J. Trump. In 2019, Amazon had an effective tax rate of 1.2 percent, which was offset by tax rebates in 2017 and 2018, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning research group in Washington. In 2020, the company paid 9.4 percent in taxes on U.S. pretax profit of about $20 billion, the group said.

The company has said in the past that it “pays all the taxes we are required to pay in the U.S. and every country where we operate.”

Companies employ varied strategies to reduce their tax liabilities. In 2017, the same federal bill that lowered the tax rate to 21 percent expanded tax breaks, including allowing the immediate expensing of capital expenditures. The goal was to lift investment, but the change also caused the number of profitable companies that paid no taxes to nearly double in 2018 from prior years.

Brandon Brown and Jeremiah Collins, students at American Diesel Training.Credit…Brian Kaiser for The New York Times

American Diesel Training, a school in Ohio that prepares people for careers as diesel mechanics, is part of a new model of work force training — one that bases pay for training programs partly on whether students get hired.

The students agree to an share about 5 percent to 9 percent of their income depending on their earnings. The monthly payments last four years. If you lose your job, the payment obligation stops.

Early results are promising, Steve Lohr reports for The New York Times, and experts say the approach makes far more economic sense than the traditional method, in which programs are paid based on how many people enroll. But there are only a relative handful of these pay-for-success programs. The challenge has been to align funding and incentives so that students, training programs and employers all benefit.

State and federal officials are now looking for new ways to improve work force development. President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs plan, announced last week, includes billions for work force development with an emphasis on “next-generation training programs” that embrace “evidence-based approaches.”

Social Finance, a nonprofit organization founded a decade ago to develop new ways to finance results-focused social programs, is seeking, designing and supporting new programs — for-profit or nonprofit — that follow the pay-for-success model.

“There is emerging evidence that these kinds of programs are a very effective and exciting part of work force development,” said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. “Social Finance is targeting and nurturing new programs, and it brings a financing mechanism that allows them to expand.”

A former Kmart in West Orange, N.J., is now a coronavirus vaccination center. The International Monetary Fund said successful vaccination programs have improved countries’ growth prospects.Credit…James Estrin/The New York Times

Major U.S. and European stock indexes hovered near record highs on Wednesday after a stream of mostly upbeat economic data and the progress on vaccinations.

U.S. stock futures were little changed on Wednesday, but the S&P 500 was set to open within half a percentage point of its record. The Stoxx Europe 600 and DAX index in Germany both fell about 0.1 percent after climbing to new highs on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund upgraded its forecast for global economic growth and said some of the world’s wealthiest countries would lead the recovery, particularly the United States, where the economy is now projected to grow by 6.4 percent this year.

The rollout of vaccines is a major reason for the rosier forecast in some countries, the I.M.F. said. President Biden said that he wanted states to make all adults eligible for vaccines by April 19, two weeks earlier than his previous deadline. In Britain, the Moderna vaccine was administered for the first time on Wednesday, making it the third vaccine available.

Still, the I.M.F. warned on Tuesday against an unequal recovery because of the uneven distribution of vaccines around the world with some lower-income countries not expected to be able to vaccinate their populations this year.

  • The yield on U.S. 10-year bonds dropped for a third straight day to 1.64 percent, the lowest in two weeks, before the Federal Reserve publishes the minutes from its mid-March meeting. Last month, policymakers released new economic projections that had the central bank’s interest rate near zero for several more years.

  • Oil price fell with futures for West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, declining 0.5 percent to $59.06 a barrel.

  • Shares in Carnival, the cruise ship operator, rose nearly 5 percent in premarket trading after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said sailings could restart “hopefully, by midsummer,” Bloomberg reported. Carnival shares have already jumped 10 percent since the C.D.C. issued new guidance for the cruise industry on Friday.

Categories
Business

Inventory Market Information: Reside Updates

Mickey Mantle’s 1952 Topps rookie card is one of the most sought-after cards. While a Mantle with a rating of SGC 7 like this one is valuable, a version of the same card rated PSA Mint 9 recently sold for $5.2 million.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

Topps, known for its trading cards and Bazooka gum, is going public by merging with a blank-check firm in a deal that values the company at $1.3 billion, the DealBook newsletter was the first to report.

The transaction includes an investment of $250 million led by Mudrick Capital, the sponsor of the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, along with investors including Gamco and Wells Capital. Michael Eisner, the chairman of Topps and former chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, will roll his entire stake into the new company and stay on.

“Everybody has a story about Topps,” Mr. Eisner said. That’s what initially attracted him to the trading card company, which he acquired in 2007 via his investment firm, Tornante, and Madison Dearborn for $385 million. Buying Topps was a bet on a brand that elicits an “emotional connection” as strong as Disney, the company Mr. Eisner ran for 21 years.

In the years since Mr. Eisner’s initial purchase, Topps has focused on a shift to digital, starting online apps for users to trade collectibles and play games. It also created “Topps Now,” which makes of-the-moment cards to capture a defining play or a pop culture meme. (It sold nearly 100,000 cards featuring Senator Bernie Sanders at the presidential inauguration in his mittens.) And it has moved into blockchain, too, via the craze for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.

The pandemic has driven new interest in memorabilia, especially trading cards. Topps generated record sales of $567 million in 2020, a 23 percent jump over the previous year.

The secondhand market is particularly hot, with a Mickey Mantle card recently selling for more than $5 million. “Topps probably made something like a nickel on it, 70 years ago,” said Jason Mudrick, the founder of Mudrick Capital. NFT mania will allow Topps to take advantage of the secondhand market by linking collectibles to digital tokens. Topps is also growing beyond sports, like its partnerships with Marvel and “Star Wars.”

It continues to see value in its core baseball-card business, as athletes come up from the minor leagues more quickly. “The trading card business has been growing for the last several years,” Michael Brandstaedter, the chief executive of Topps, said. “While it definitely grew through the pandemic — and perhaps accelerated — it did not arrive with the pandemic.”

That resilience is part of the bet that Mudrick Capital is making on the 80-year old Topps. It’s a surer gamble, Mr. Mudrick said, than buying one of the many unprofitable start-ups currently courting SPAC deals. “Our core business is value investing,” he said.

The I.M.F. forecast for global economic growth has climbed to 6 percent for the year.Credit…Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

The global economy is recovering from the coronavirus pandemic faster than previously expected, largely thanks to the strength of the United States, but the International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that major challenges remained as the uneven rollout of vaccines threatens to leave developing countries behind.

The I.M.F. said it was upgrading its global growth forecast for the year thanks to vaccinations of hundreds of millions of people, efforts that are expected to help fuel a sharp rebound in economic activity. The international body now expects the global economy to expand by 6 percent this year, up from its previous projection of 5.5 percent, after a contraction of 3.3 percent in 2020.

“Even with high uncertainty about the path of the pandemic, a way out of this health and economic crisis is increasingly visible,” Gita Gopinath, the I.M.F.’s chief economist, said in a statement accompanying the fund’s World Economic Outlook report.

The emergence from the crisis is being led by the wealthiest countries, particularly the United States, where the economy is now projected to expand by 6.4 percent this year. The euro area is expected to expand by 4.4 percent and Japan is forecast to expand by 3.3 percent, according to the I.M.F.

Among the emerging market and developing economies, China and India are expected to lead the way. China’s economy is projected to expand by 8.4 percent and India’s is expected to expand by 12.5 percent.

Ms. Gopinath credited the robust fiscal support that the largest economies have provided for the improved outlook and pointed to the relief effort enacted by the United States. The I.M.F. estimates that the economic fallout from the pandemic could have been three times worse if not for the $16 trillion of worldwide fiscal support.

Despite the rosier outlook, Ms. Gopinath said that the global economy still faced “daunting” challenges.

Low-income countries are facing bigger losses in economic output than advanced economies, reversing gains in poverty reduction. And within advanced economies, low-skilled workers have been hit the hardest and those who lost jobs could find it difficult to replace them.

“Because the crisis has accelerated the transformative forces of digitalization and automation, many of the jobs lost are unlikely to return, requiring worker reallocation across sectors — which often comes with severe earnings penalties,” Ms. Gopinath said.

The I.M.F. cautioned that its projections hinged on the deployment of vaccines and the spread of variants of the virus, which could pose both a public health and economic threat. The fund is also keeping a close eye on interest rates in the United States, which remain at rock-bottom levels but could pose financial risks if the Federal Reserve raises them unexpectedly.

The global economy is on firmer ground one year into the pandemic thanks to the rollout of vaccines, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. But the recovery will be uneven around the world because of persistent inequality and income gaps.

“Emerging market and developing economies are expected to suffer more scarring than advanced economies,” the I.M.F. said in its World Economic Outlook report, which projected 6 percent global growth in 2021. Here are projections for the growth of some individual countries:

  • The United States economy will expand 6.4 percent this year, after contracting 3.5 percent the year before, while Britain will grow 5.3 percent this year, after shrinking 9.9 percent in 2020.

  • China, the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, is expected to grow 8.4 percent this year, after expanding 2.3 percent in 2020.

  • India’s economy is expected to see the biggest jump among major economies and climb 12.5 percent this year, after contracting 8 percent last year.

United Airlines is the first major U.S. carrier to run its own pilot academy.Credit…Chris Helgren/Reuters

United Airlines said on Tuesday that it had started accepting applications to its new pilot school, promising to use scholarships, loans and partnerships to help diversify a profession that is overwhelmingly white and male.

The airline said it planned to train 5,000 pilots at the school by 2030, with a goal of half of those students being women or people of color. The school, United Aviate Academy in Phoenix, expects to enroll 100 students this year, and United and its credit card partner, JPMorgan Chase, are each committing $1.2 million in scholarships.

About 94 percent of aircraft pilots and flight engineers are white and about as many are male, according to federal data. United said 7 percent of its pilots were women and 13 percent were not white.

Airlines have had more employees than they needed during the pandemic, when demand for tickets fell sharply, and they have encouraged thousands, including many pilots, to retire early or take voluntary leaves. Since September, nearly 1,000 United pilots had retired or taken leave. Last week, the airline said it would start hiring pilots again after stopping last year.

But the industry is facing a long-term shortage of pilots because many are nearing retirement age and many potential candidates are daunted by the cost of training, which can reach almost $100,000 after accounting for the cost of flight lessons.

United is the first major U.S. carrier to run its own pilot academy, although many foreign airlines have run such programs for years. The company said it hoped the guarantee of a job after graduation would be a draw. In addition to the 5,000 pilots it plans to train, United said it would hire just as many who learned to fly elsewhere.

United Aviate is meant for people with a wide range of experience, from novices who have never flown to pilots who are already flying for one of United’s regional partners. A student with no flying experience could become a licensed pilot within two months and be flying planes for a living after receiving a commercial pilot license within a year, the airline said. Within five years, that person could fly for United after a stint at a smaller airline affiliate to gain experience.

The airline said it was also working with three historically Black colleges and universities — Delaware State University, Elizabeth City State University and Hampton University — for recruitment. The first class of 20 students is expected to start this summer.

Air France is considered too big to fail in its home country, but the company’s debt has ballooned during the pandemic.Credit…Christian Hartmann/Reuters

Air France on Tuesday said it would receive a new bailout from the French government worth 4 billion euros ($4.7 billion) to help the beleaguered airline cope with mounting debts as a third wave of pandemic lockdowns around Europe prolong a slump in continental air travel.

The support comes on top of €10.4 billion ($12.3 billion) in loans and guarantees that Air France and its partner, the Netherlands-based KLM, received from the French and Dutch governments last year.

Air France-KLM chief executive, Benjamin Smith, citing an “exceptionally challenging period,” said the funds would “provide Air France-KLM with greater stability to move forward when recovery starts, as large-scale vaccination progresses around the world and borders reopen.”

Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, said Tuesday that the new aid is taking the form of a state-backed recapitalization, which involves converting €3 billion in loans the government granted the airline last year into bonds with no maturity, as well as €1 billion in fresh capital through the issuance of new shares.

The French government is the airline’s largest shareholder, at 14.3 percent. The agreement could allow the government to raise its stake as high as 30 percent, Mr. Le Maire and Air France said, by buying some of the new shares. China Eastern Airlines, also a large shareholder, will also participate, Air France said.

Air France-KLM lost two-thirds of its customers last year, and its debt has nearly doubled to €11 billion. It expects an operating loss of €1.3 billion in the first quarter.

As vaccinations speed ahead in the United States, air travel has started to recover, fueling a return of ticket sales. Delta Air Lines announced it would add more passengers and start selling middle seats for flights starting May 1.

By contrast, Europe’s vaccine rollout has faltered and variants of the virus have gained ground, prompting renewed travel restrictions. That has left major flagship air carriers, including Air France-KLM, Lufthansa of Germany, and Alitalia of Italy, struggling.

The French government recently cut its economic growth forecast for 2021 to 5 percent, down from 6 percent.

Air France’s board approved the deal on Tuesday after the French government and European regulators agreed on the terms.

The Dutch government is holding separate talks with European regulators over converting a €1 billion loan to KLM into hybrid debt in return for slot concessions at the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.

Air France employs tens of thousands of workers in France and is considered too big to fail. Still, Mr. Le Maire said the aid was not a “blank check,” adding that the company would have to “make efforts on competitiveness” in exchange for the support and must continue to reduce its carbon emissions.

To conform to European competition rules, Air France was forced to relinquish 18 slots per day, representing nine round-trips, to competing airlines at Orly, Paris’ second-largest airport after Charles de Gaulle.

Tucson is building on a five-year growth plan that predated the pandemic. “We’re working together as a region,” Mayor Regina Romero said.Credit…Rebecca Noble for The New York Times

Some midsize cities — like Austin, Texas; Boise, Idaho; and Portland, Ore. — may be poised to rebound faster than others because they have developed strong relationships with their local economic development groups.

These partnerships have established comeback plans that incorporate a number of common goals, like access to affordable loans, relief for small businesses and a focus on downtown areas, Keith Schneider reports for The New York Times.

In Tucson, the revitalization plan, which goes into effect this month, calls for assessing the effect of the pandemic on important business sectors, including biotech and logistics. Other provisions advocate recruiting talented workers and preparing so-called shovel-ready building sites of 50 acres or more.

City leaders are building on a five-year, $23 billion growth plan in industrial and logistics development in the Tucson region that resulted in 16,000 new jobs before the pandemic, according to Sun Corridor, the regional economic development agency that sponsored the recovery plan. Caterpillar and Amazon moved into the region, while Raytheon, Bombardier and GEICO were among the many prominent companies that expanded operations there.

Other cities are struggling to recover after pandemic restrictions emptied their central business districts. The question is how much these downtowns will bounce back when the pandemic ends.

“The number of square feet per worker has declined really dramatically since 1990,” said Tracy Hadden Loh, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Couple that with recent announcements from companies like Google, Microsoft, Target and Twitter about remote work, and some cities could see less office construction activity.

A Starbucks cafe in Seoul.Credit…Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Starbucks says it plans to eliminate all single-use cups from its South Korean stores by 2025, the chain’s first move of this sort as it seeks to reduce its carbon footprint.

The coffeehouse chain plans to introduce a “cup circularity program” in some stores beginning this summer, in which customers would pay a deposit for reusable cups that would be refunded when the containers are returned and scanned at contactless kiosks, the company said in a statement on Monday. The arrangement will be expanded to cafes across the country over the next four years.

“Starbucks Coffee Korea is a leader in sustainability for the company globally, and we are excited to leverage the learnings from this initiative to drive meaningful change in our stores and inform future innovation on a regional and global scale,” Sara Trilling, the president of Starbucks Asia Pacific, said in the statement.

South Korea has in recent years tried to cut back on disposable waste in cafes, banning the use of plastic cups for dine-in customers in 2018. Legislation introduced last year would require fast food and coffee chains to charge refundable deposits for disposable cups to encourage returns and recycling. Last year, the environmental ministry said it planned to reduce the country’s plastic waste by one-fifth by 2025.

The increased use of plastic packaging and containers amid the coronavirus pandemic has been a setback for initiatives aimed at reducing single-use plastic waste. In March 2020, Starbucks and other chains said they would no longer offer drinks in washable mugs or customer-owned cups to help prevent the spread of the virus.

Investors have been focused on the Biden administration’s infrastructure spending plan, which includes money to encourage investment in renewable energy, including wind turbines.Credit…Mike Blake/Reuters

U.S. stocks dipped on Tuesday, a day after Wall Street’s major benchmarks climbed to records.

The S&P 500 dipped 0.1 percent, and the Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.3 percent.

Last week, the S&P 500 climbed above 4,000 points for the first time amid signs that the economic recovery was strengthening, with manufacturing activity quickening and the biggest jump in jobs since the summer. The United States is administering three million vaccines per day on average, but the number of coronavirus cases has started to tick up again because of the spread of new variants.

That said, many investors have focused on the vaccine rollout and the potential impact of the Biden administration’s large spending plans, including the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, intended to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure and speed up the shift to a green economy.

“Investors should not fear entering the market at all-time highs,” strategists at UBS Global Wealth Management said in a note on Tuesday, recommending stocks in the financial, industrial and energy sectors. The reopening of economies because of the vaccine rollout also favored small and medium-size companies, they wrote.

The Stoxx Europe 600 index rose 0.7 percent to a record in its first day of trading since Thursday because of the long Easter weekend. In Britain, mining companies led the FTSE 100 up 1.3 percent. The DAX in Germany rose 0.6 percent

Asian stock indexes were mixed. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong rose 2 percent and the Nikkei 225 fell 1.3 percent.

The yield on 10-year Treasury notes slipped to 1.65 percent.

Oil prices rose. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, rose 1.2 percent to about $59.33 a barrel.

  • Disney Cruise Line will suspend departures through June after reviewing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the company said Tuesday on its website. The C.D.C. recommends that people avoid travel on cruises worldwide because of the high risk of contracting the coronavirus aboard ship. The cruise line also canceled sailings in Europe through Sept. 18. Guests who have paid their reservations in full can choose either a credit with Disney Cruise Line for a future sailing or a full refund.

VideoCinemagraphCreditCredit…By Jinhwa Oh

In today’s On Tech newsletter, Shira Ovide explains why the technology industry was relieved by the Supreme Court’s ruling siding with Google over Oracle, and the ways this might be relevant for artists, writers and archivists.

Categories
World News

Covid-19 Reside Updates: Vaccines, Instances and Variants

Leanne Montenegro, 21, covered her eyes to avoid seeing the needle when she received the coronavirus vaccine in Miami on Monday.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Lynne Sladky/Associated Press

President Biden plans to announce on Tuesday that he is speeding up the deadline for states to make all adults eligible for a coronavirus vaccine — to April 19 — according to an administration official familiar with his planned remarks.

The announcement will come as nearly every U.S. state has already heeded earlier calls by the president to accelerate their timelines for when all adult residents will be eligible to be vaccinated — the vast majority now meeting or beating the April 19 target. On Tuesday, Oregon said those who are 16 or older will be eligible for vaccination on April 19.

Mr. Biden’s newest target comes almost a month after he set an original deadline of May 1 for every state, and a week after he said that by April 19, 90 percent of adults would be eligible for a shot and within five miles of a site.

A White House official said last week that Mr. Biden revised the timeline because states, encouraged by increases in shipments, were ramping up their vaccination programs more rapidly than expected.

Mr. Biden on Tuesday plans to visit a vaccination site at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va., then deliver a speech at the White House on the state of vaccinations across the nation.

The U.S. vaccination campaign has steadily picked up pace: More than three million doses are being given on average each day, compared with well under one million when Mr. Biden took office in January, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Every state has now given at least one dose to a quarter or more of its population. About 62.4 million people — 19 percent of Americans — have been fully vaccinated.

Mr. Biden has said he hopes for 200 million doses to be administered by his 100th day in office, a goal that the nation is on pace to meet. The federal government has delivered about a total of 207.9 million doses to states, territories and federal agencies since last year.

The recent burst in supply has prompted governors to move up eligibility timelines on their own weeks ahead of Mr. Biden’s original May 1 marker.

“Today, we are pleased to announce another acceleration of the vaccine eligibility phases to earlier than anticipated,” Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said on Monday, announcing that all Maryland residents 16 or older would be eligible from Tuesday for a vaccine at the state’s mass vaccination sites, and from April 19 at any vaccine provider in the state.

Also on Monday, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said residents 16 or older in his state would be eligible on April 19. Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington said later on Monday that city residents 16 or older would also be eligible on April 19.

Public health experts have said that the vaccines are in a race against worrisome coronavirus variants that were identified in Britain, South Africa and Brazil. New mutations have continued to pop up in the United States, from California to New York to Oregon.

The shots will eventually win, scientists say, but because each infection gives the coronavirus a chance to evolve further, vaccinations must proceed as fast as possible.

As that race continues, the optimism sown by the steady pace of vaccinations may be threatening to undermine the progress the nation has made. Scientists also fear Americans could let their guard down too soon as warmer weather draws them outside and case levels drop far below the devastating surge this winter.

Cases are now rising sharply in parts of the country, with some states offering a stark reminder that the pandemic is far from over: New cases in Michigan have increased 112 percent and hospitalizations have increased 108 percent over the past two weeks, according to a New York Times database.

The United States is averaging more than 64,000 new cases each day, an 18 percent increase from two weeks earlier. That’s well below the peak of more than 250,000 new cases daily in January, but on par with last summer’s surge after reopenings in some states, like Arizona, where patrons packed into clubs as hospital beds filled up. The United States is averaging more than 800 Covid-19 deaths each day, the lowest level since November.

United States › United StatesOn April 5 14-day change
New cases 76,594 +20%
New deaths 530 –24%
World › WorldOn April 5 14-day change
New cases 505,121 +20%
New deaths 7,565 +11%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Where states are reporting vaccines given

Several businesses in China are offering incentives for those getting inoculated, including this Lego stall outside a vaccination center in Beijing.Credit…Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

In Beijing, the vaccinated qualify for buy-one-get-one-free ice cream cones. In the northern province of Gansu, a county government published a 20-stanza poem extolling the virtues of the jab. In the southern town of Wancheng, officials warned parents that if they refused to get vaccinated, their children’s schooling and future employment and housing were all at risk.

China is deploying a medley of tactics, some tantalizing and some threatening, to achieve mass vaccination on a staggering scale: a goal of 560 million people, or 40 percent of its population, by the end of June.

China has already proven how effectively it can mobilize against the coronavirus. And other countries have achieved widespread vaccination, albeit in much smaller populations.

But China faces a number of challenges. The country’s near-total control over the coronavirus has left many residents feeling little urgency to get vaccinated. Some are wary of China’s history of vaccine-related scandals, a fear that the lack of transparency around Chinese coronavirus vaccines has done little to assuage. Then there is the sheer size of the population to be inoculated.

To get it done, the government has turned to a familiar tool kit: a sprawling, quickly mobilized bureaucracy and its sometimes heavy-handed approach. This top-down, all-out response helped tame the virus early on, and now the authorities hope to replicate that success with vaccinations.

Already, uptake has skyrocketed. Over the past week, China has administered an average of about 4.8 million doses a day, up from about one million a day for much of last month. Experts have said they hope to reach 10 million a day to meet the June goal.

“They say it’s voluntary, but if you don’t get the vaccine, they’ll just keep calling you,” said Annie Chen, a university student in Beijing who received two such entreaties from a school counselor in about a week.

Millions of people have received the AstraZeneca vaccine without safety problems, but reports of rare blood clots have raised concerns.Credit…Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times

A top vaccines official at the European Medicines Agency said on Tuesday that AstraZeneca’s vaccine was linked to blood clots in a small number of recipients, the first indication from a leading regulatory body that the clots may be a real, if extremely rare, side effect of the shot.

The agency itself has not formally changed its guidance, issued last week, that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh the risks. It said on Tuesday that its review was ongoing and that it would announce its findings this week. But any further ruling from regulators would be a setback for a shot that Europe and much of the world are relying on to save lives amid a global surge in coronavirus cases.

The medicines agency said last week that no causal link between the vaccine and rare blood clots had been proven. Only a few dozen cases of blood clots have been recorded among the many millions of people who have received the vaccine across Europe.

But the vaccines official, Marco Cavaleri, told an Italian newspaper that “it is clear there is an association with the vaccine.” He said that it would likely remain up to individual countries to decide how to respond, given the variation in supply of Covid-19 vaccines and in the state of the virus.

Those comments represented the first indication from a member of a leading regulatory body that the blood clots could be a genuine, if extremely rare, side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Previously, health officials in several European countries temporarily restricted the use of the shot in certain age groups, despite the European Medicines Agency’s recommendation to keep administering it.

Regulators in Britain and at the World Health Organization have also said that, while they were investigating any rare side effects, the shot was safe to use and would save many lives.

Mr. Cavaleri told the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero that European regulators had not determined why the vaccine might be causing the rare blood clots, which generated concern because the cases were so unusual. They involved blood clots combined with unusually low levels of platelets, a disorder that can lead to heavy bleeding.

The most worrisome of the conditions, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, involves clots in the veins that drain blood from the brain, a condition that can lead to a rare type of stroke.

The clots are, by all accounts, extremely rare. European regulators were analyzing 44 cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, 14 of them fatal, among 9.2 million people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine across the continent. Emer Cooke, the European Medicines Agency’s director, said that the clotting cases in younger people translated to a risk for one in every 100,000 people under 60 given the vaccine. Younger people, and especially younger women, are at higher risk from the brain clots, scientists have said.

In Britain, regulators last week reported 30 cases of the rare blood clots combined with low platelets among 18 million people given the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed with the University of Oxford. No such cases were reported in people who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Britain.

Regulators in Britain have said that people should get the vaccine “when invited to do so.” But British news reports indicated Monday night that regulators were considering updating that guidance for certain age groups.

Monika Pronczuk and Emma Bubola contributed reporting.

The North Koreans at the closing ceremony for the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.Credit…Edgar Su/Reuters

North Korea said on Tuesday that it had decided not to participate in the Tokyo Olympic Games this summer because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The North’s national Olympic Committee decided at a March 25 meeting that its delegation would skip the Olympics “in order to protect our athletes from the global health crisis caused by the malicious virus infection,” according to Sports in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a government-run website.

It is the first Summer Olympics that the North has missed since 1988, when they were held in Seoul, the South Korean capital.

North Korea, which has a decrepit public health system, has taken stringent measures against the virus since early last year, including shutting its borders. The country officially maintains that it has no virus cases, but outside health experts are skeptical.

North Korea’s decision deprives South Korea and other nations of a rare opportunity to establish official contact with the isolated country. Officials in the South had hoped that the Olympics — to be held from July 23 to Aug. 8 — might provide a venue for senior delegates from both Koreas to discuss issues beyond sports.

The 2018 Winter Olympics, held in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang, offered similar hope for easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Kim Yo-jong, the only sister of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, grabbed global attention when she attended the opening ceremony, becoming the first member of the Kim family to cross the border into South Korea.

Mr. Kim used the North’s participation in the Pyeongchang Olympics as a signal to start diplomacy after a series of nuclear and long-range missile tests. Inter-Korean dialogue soon followed, leading to three summit meetings between Mr. Kim and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea. Mr. Kim also met three times with President Donald J. Trump.

But since the collapse of Mr. Kim’s diplomacy with Mr. Trump in 2019, North Korea has shunned official contact with South Korea or the United States. The pandemic has deepened the North’s diplomatic isolation and economic difficulties amid concerns over its nuclear ambitions. North Korea launched two ballistic missiles on March 25 in its first such test in a year, in a challenge to President Biden.

Since North Korea’s first Olympic appearance in 1972, it has participated in every Summer Games except for the Los Angeles event in 1984, when it joined a Soviet-led boycott, and in 1988, when South Korea played host. North Korean athletes have won 16 gold medals, mostly in weight lifting, wrestling, gymnastics, boxing and judo, consistently citing the ruling Kim family as inspiration.

The Tokyo Games were originally scheduled for 2020 but were delayed by a year because of the pandemic. The organizing committee has been scrambling to develop safety protocols to protect both participants and local residents. But as a series of health, economic and political challenges have arisen, large majorities in Japan now say in polls that the Games should not be held this summer.

Even though organizers have barred international spectators, epidemiologists warn the Olympics could still become a superspreader event. Thousands of athletes and other participants will descend on Tokyo from more than 200 countries while much of the Japanese public remains unvaccinated.

The Australia-New Zealand travel bubble is expected to deliver a boost to tourism and to families that have been separated by strict border closures.Credit…Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand announced on Tuesday that her nation would establish a travel bubble with Australia, allowing travelers to move between the countries without needing to quarantine for the first time since the pandemic began.

The bubble, which will open just before midnight on April 19, is expected to deliver a boost to tourism and to families that have been separated since both countries enacted strict border closures and lockdown measures that have all but eliminated local transmission of the coronavirus.

The announcement came after months of negotiations and setbacks, as Australia battled small outbreaks and officials in both countries weighed testing requirements and other safety protocols.

“The director general of health considers the risk of transmission of Covid-19 from Australia to New Zealand is low and that quarantine-free travel is safe to commence,” Ms. Ardern said at a news conference.

Since last year, Australia has permitted travelers from New Zealand to bypass its hotel quarantine requirements. New Zealand’s decision to reciprocate makes the two countries among the first places in the world to set up such a bubble, following a similar announcement last week by Taiwan and the Pacific island nation of Palau.

Australians flying to New Zealand will be required to have spent the previous 14 days in Australia, to wear a mask on the plane and, if possible, to use New Zealand’s Covid-19 contact tracing app. In the event of an outbreak in Australia, New Zealand could impose additional restrictions, including shutting down travel to a particular Australian state or imposing quarantine requirements, Ms. Ardern said.

She warned that the new requirements would not necessarily free up many spaces in New Zealand’s overwhelmed hotel quarantine system, which has a weekslong backlog for New Zealanders wishing to book a space to return home. Of the roughly 1,000 slots that would now become available every two weeks, around half would be set aside as a contingency measure, while most of the others would not be appropriate for travelers from higher-risk countries, Ms. Ardern said.

Before New Zealand closed its borders to international visitors in March 2020, its tourism industry employed nearly 230,000 people and contributed 41.9 billion New Zealand dollars ($30.2 billion) to economic output, according to the country’s tourism board. Most of the roughly 3.8 million foreign tourists who visited New Zealand over a 12-month period between 2018 and 2019 came from Australia.

Ms. Ardern encouraged Australians to visit New Zealand’s ski areas, and said she would be conducting interviews with Australian media outlets this week to promote New Zealand as a tourism destination.

The bubble would also make it easier for the more than 500,000 New Zealanders who live in Australia to visit their families.

“It is ultimately a change of scene that so many have been looking for,” Ms. Ardern said, addressing Australians. “You may not have been in long periods of lockdown, but you haven’t had the option. Now you have the option, come and see us.”

Fans filled the seats on Monday for the Texas Rangers opening day game in Arlington, Texas, against the Toronto Blue Jays.Credit…Tom Pennington/Getty Images

There was no need to pipe in crowd noise at Globe Life Field on Monday, as the Texas Rangers hosted the Toronto Blue Jays in front of the largest crowd at a sporting event in the United States in more than a year.

From the long lines of fans waiting to get into the stadium to the persistent buzz of the spectators during quiet moments, the game in Arlington, Texas, was a throwback to a time before the coronavirus crippled the country.

“It felt like a real game,” Rangers Manager Chris Woodward said. “It felt like back to the old days when we had full capacity.”

The official crowd of 38,238 fans, which was announced as a sellout, represented 94.8 percent of the stadium’s 40,300-seat capacity. It topped the Daytona 500 (which allowed slightly more than 30,000 fans) and the Super Bowl (24,835), both of which were held in February, as the largest crowd at a U.S. sporting event since the pandemic began last year.

The lifting of capacity restrictions in Texas made the enormous crowd possible. And for Major League Baseball, which claims its teams collectively lost billions during a largely fanless 2020 season, it was a hopeful sign that large crowds can return to all of the league’s games before too long. The open question is whether such events can be safe as the pandemic continues.

M.L.B. requires all fans over age 2 to wear masks at games this season, but a large percentage of the fans in Arlington went maskless. That will undoubtedly raise fears of the event resulting in a spike in coronavirus cases.

A garment worker in Cambodia signaled support for a campaign demanding relief for garment workers who have lost jobs and reform of the apparel industry, including a severance guarantee fund.Credit…Enric Catala/Wsm

Garment workers in factories producing clothes and shoes for companies like Nike, Walmart and Benetton have seen their jobs disappear in the past 12 months, as major brands in the United States and Europe canceled or refused to pay for orders after the pandemic took hold and suppliers resorted to mass layoffs or closures.

Most garment workers earn chronically low wages, and few have any savings. Which means the only thing standing between them and dire poverty are legally mandated severance benefits that are often owed upon termination, wherever the workers are in the world.

According to a new report from the Worker Rights Consortium, however, garment workers are being denied some or all of these wages.

The study identified 31 export garment factories in nine countries where, the authors concluded, a total of 37,637 workers who were laid off did not receive the full severance pay they legally earned, a collective $39.8 million.

According to Scott Nova, the group’s executive director, the report covers only about 10 percent of global garment factory closures with mass layoffs in the last year. The group is investigating an additional 210 factories in 18 countries, leading the authors to estimate that the final data set will detail 213 factories with severance pay violations affecting more than 160,000 workers owed $171.5 million.

“Severance wage theft has been a longstanding problem in the garment industry, but the scope has dramatically increased in the last year,” Mr. Nova said. He added that the figures were likely to rise as economic aftershocks related to the pandemic continued to unfold across the retail industry. He believes the lost earnings could total between $500 million and $850 million.

The report’s authors say the only realistic solution to the crisis would be the creation of a so-called severance guarantee fund. The initiative, devised in conjunction with 220 unions and other labor rights organizations, would be financed by mandatory payments from signatory brands that could then be leveraged in cases of large-scale nonpayment of severance by a factory or supplier.

Several household names implicated in the report made money during the pandemic. Amazon, for example, reported an increase in net profit of 84 percent in 2020, while Inditex, the parent company of Zara, made 11.4 billion euros, about $13.4 billion, in gross profit. Nike, Next and Walmart all also had healthy earnings.

Some industry experts believe the purchasing practices of the industry’s power players are a major contributor to the severance pay crisis. The overwhelming majority of fashion retailers do not own their own production facilities, instead contracting with factories in countries where labor is cheap. The brands dictate prices, often squeezing suppliers to offer more for less, and can shift sourcing locations at will. Factory owners in developing countries say they are forced to operate on minimal margins, with few able to afford better worker wages or investments in safety and severance.

“The onus falls on the supplier,” said Genevieve LeBaron, a professor at the University of Sheffield in England who focuses on international labor standards. “But there is a reason the spotlight keeps falling on larger actors further up the supply chain. Their behavior can impact the ability of factories to deliver on their responsibilities.”

Jon Laster performing on Friday at the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

More than a year after the pandemic brought down the curtain at theaters and concert halls around the world, the performing arts are beginning to return to the stage.

A smattering of theater and comedy shows lit up New York stages over the last few days, but next week will see one of the higher-profile arts returns. The New York Philharmonic is scheduled to give its first live performance in a concert hall since the pandemic began: “a musical musing on Goethe,” at the Shed at the Hudson Yards development on April 14.

The reopenings come at a confusing moment in the pandemic. Vaccinations are rising in the United States — Saturday was the first time the country reported more than four million doses in a single day, according to data compiled by The New York Times — but so are case counts.

While new cases, deaths and hospitalizations are far below their January peak, the average number of new reported cases has risen 19 percent over the past two weeks.

Still, performance spaces are carefully starting to welcome audiences, at a fraction of their capacity. There remains much debate over what regulations to impose on attendees. In Israel, concertgoers are required to have a Green Pass, which certifies that they have been vaccinated, though enforcement can be spotty.

In New York, as at the Daryl Roth Theater, an Off Broadway venue, temperatures were checked as a small audience streamed in for an immersive sound performance based on the José Saramago novel “Blindness” — a dystopian tale from 25 years ago whose resonances eerily align with the present. Mayor Bill de Blasio, masked and sneaker-clad, greeted some theatergoers on the sidewalk outside with wrist and elbow bumps.

But that optimism has been tinged with more halting news that underscores how fragile these reopenings are.

The Park Avenue Armory had to postpone one of the most high-profile experiments to bring indoor live performance back to New York. A sold-out run of “Afterwardsness,” a new piece that addresses the pandemic and violence against Black people, was canceled after several members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company tested positive for the virus.

At the Comedy Cellar, a Greenwich Village club that has nursed the early careers of many comics, laughter filled the room for its first show, but reminders of reality were impossible to miss: Performers’ microphones were swapped out between each set, every fresh one covered with what looked like a miniature shower cap.

John Touhey, 27, said that his reason for coming was simple. “Just to feel something again,” he said.California officials have announced guidelines for indoor concerts, theater, sports and other events, which will be permitted beginning April 15. Capacity will be linked to a county’s health tier.

Los Angeles County, for example, on Monday moved into the orange tier, which would allow venues that hold up to 1,500 people to operate at 15 percent capacity, or 200 people. The number rises to 35 percent if all attendees are tested or show proof of vaccination.

In Minneapolis, pandemic-weary music fans may have to wait longer, but the results will be louder. First Avenue, a legendary club, last month booked its first new, non-postponed show since the pandemic began, The Star Tribune reported. The band is Dinosaur Jr., led by J. Mascis, one of the most durable indie rockers of the last 30 years. The show is scheduled for Sept. 14.

“Those people have not been catered for,” said Dr. Raja Amjid Riaz, a surgeon who is a leader at the Central Mosque of Brent in North London.Credit…Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Minority communities in Britain have long felt estranged from the government and medical establishment, but their sense of alienation is suddenly proving more costly than ever amid a coronavirus vaccination campaign that depends heavily on trust.

With Britons enjoying one of the fastest vaccination rollouts in the world, skepticism about the shots remains high in many of the communities where Covid-19 has taken the heaviest toll.

“The government’s response to the Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities has been rather limited,” said Dr. Raja Amjid Riaz, 52, a surgeon who is also a leader at the Central Mosque of Brent, an ethnically diverse area of North London. “Those people have not been catered for.”

As a result, communities like Brent offer fertile ground for the most outlandish of vaccine rumors, from unfounded claims that they affect fertility to the outright fabrication that shots are being used to inject microchips.

With the government seen as still disengaged in Black, Asian and other ethnic minority communities even as they have been hit disproportionately hard both by the virus itself and by the lockdowns imposed to stop its spread, many local leaders like Dr. Riaz have taken it upon themselves to act.

Some are well-known and trusted figures like religious leaders. Others are local health care workers. And still others are ordinary community members like Umit Jani, a 46-year-old Brent resident.

Mr. Jani’s face is one of many featured on 150 posters across the borough encouraging residents to get tested for the virus and vaccinated, part of a local government initiative.

The goal is to reframe the community’s relationship with the power structure, and perhaps establish some trust.

“In Brent, things have been done to communities and not in partnership,” said Mr. Jani, who said he had seen the toll the virus has taken on the area’s Gujarati and Somali communities.

A line for meals at the Bowery Mission in New York last month. Some people who would benefit most from the stimulus are having the hardest time getting it.Credit…Andrew Seng for The New York Times

For most Americans, the third stimulus payment, like the first two, arrived as if by magic, landing unprompted in the bank or in the mail.

But it’s not as straightforward for people without a bank account or a mailing address. Or a phone. Or identification.

Just about anyone with a Social Security number who is not someone else’s dependent and who earns less than $75,000 is entitled to the stimulus. But some of the people who would benefit most from the money are having the hardest time getting their hands on it.

“There’s this great intention to lift people out of poverty more and give them support, and all of that’s wonderful,” said Beth Hofmeister, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project. “But the way people have to access it doesn’t really fit with how most really low-income people are interacting with the government.”

Interviews with homeless people in New York City over the last couple of weeks found that some mistakenly assumed they were ineligible for the stimulus. Others said that bureaucratic hurdles, complicated by limited phone or internet access, were insurmountable.

Paradoxically, the very poor are the most likely to pump stimulus money right back into devastated local economies, rather than sock it away in the bank or use it to play the stock market.

“I’d find a permanent place to stay, some food, clothing, a nice shower, a nice bed,” said Richard Rodriguez, 43, waiting for lunch outside the Bowery Mission last month. “I haven’t had a nice bed for a year.”

Mr. Rodriguez said he had made several attempts to file taxes — a necessary step for those not yet in the system — but had given up.

“I went to H&R Block and I told them I was homeless,” he said. “They said they couldn’t help me.”

People dining indoors in Northville, Mich., on Sunday. Coronavirus cases are rising even as restrictions are eased, with a more transmissible variant of the virus making up many of the cases in Michigan and elsewhere.Credit…Emily Elconin/Reuters

U.S. coronavirus cases have increased again after hitting a low late last month, and some of the states driving the upward trend have also been hit hardest by variants, according to an analysis of data from Helix, a lab testing company.

The country’s vaccine rollout has sped up since the first doses were administered in December, recently reaching a rolling average of more than three million doses per day. And new U.S. cases trended steeply downward in the first quarter of the year, falling almost 80 percent from mid-January through the end of March.

But during that period, states also rolled back virus control measures, and now mobility data shows a rise in people socializing and traveling. Amid all this, more contagious variants have been gaining a foothold, and new cases are almost 20 percent higher than they were at the lowest point in March.

“It is a pretty complex situation, because behavior is changing, but you’ve also got this change in the virus itself at the same time,” said Emily Martin, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Michigan has seen the sharpest rise in cases in the last few weeks. B.1.1.7 — the more transmissible and more deadly variant of the coronavirus that was first discovered in Britain — may now make up around 70 percent of all of the state’s new cases, according to the Helix data.

Higher vaccination rates among the country’s older adults — those prioritized first in the vaccination rollout — mean that some of those at highest risk of complications are protected as cases rise again.

But almost 70 percent of the U.S. population has still not received a first dose, and only about half of those ages 65 and older are fully vaccinated. And in many states, those with high-risk conditions or in their 50s and 60s had not yet or had only just become eligible for the vaccine when cases began to rise again, leaving them vulnerable.

Global Roundup

A gym in Saarbruecken, Germany, reopened on Tuesday to anyone with a negative coronavirus test in the previous 24 hours.Credit…Oliver Dietze/DPA, via Associated Press

The tiny German state of Saarland, home to around 990,000 people, is making a cautious return to a new kind of normal in a pilot project that state officials hope could show how to keep the local economy open while controlling infections. From Tuesday, residents who test negative for the coronavirus will be able to use outdoor dining areas, gyms and movie theaters and even attend live theater performances.

Even as cases have continued to rise in Germany, prompting calls for a harsher national lockdown to halt a third wave of the pandemic — which has already shut down many of its European neighbors.

“More vaccinating, more testing, more mindfulness, more options: That’s the formula we want to use as Saarland break new ground in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic,” Tobias Hans, the governor of the state in southwestern Germany, said last week as he announced the reopening plans.

Under the guidelines, as many as 10 people can meet outdoors, and anyone with a negative test result within the previous 24 hours can visit stores, gyms, theaters and beer gardens — places that have largely been closed across Germany since the country announced a “lockdown light” in November.

(Many stores have been open since March, when a court overturned the rules.)

The Saarland project begins the same day that new regulations require travelers from the Netherlands to present a negative coronavirus test to cross the border into Germany. Travelers from the Czech Republic, France and Poland face similar measures.

In other news from around the world:

  • The new leader of Tanzania said she would set up a committee to look into the coronavirus pandemic in the country — a sharp departure from her predecessor’s stance. “We cannot isolate ourselves as an island,” President Samia Suluhu Hassan said in a speech on Tuesday in the port city of Dar es Salaam. Tanzania has not shared data on the coronavirus with the World Health Organization since April, and it has reported just 509 cases and 21 deaths, figures that have been widely viewed with skepticism. President John Magufuli, who died last month, had scoffed at masks and social distancing measures, argued that “vaccines don’t work,” and said that God had helped the country eliminate the virus.

  • The World Health Organization does not support requiring vaccination passports for travel, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday during at a news briefing in Geneva, Switzerland.

    “At this stage we would not like to see the vaccination passport as a requirement for entry or exit because we are not certain at this stage that the vaccine prevents transmission,” the spokeswoman, Margaret Harris, said, according to Reuters. She also cited concerns over the “question of discrimination against the people who are not able to have the vaccine for one reason or another.”

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Business

Yellen Pushes for World Minimal Tax Fee on Corporations: Dwell Updates

Janet L. Yellen made the case for a global minimum tax during a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen made the case on Monday for a global minimum tax, kicking off the Biden administration’s effort to help raise revenue in the United States and prevent companies from shifting profits overseas to evade taxes.

Ms. Yellen, in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, called for global coordination on an international tax rate that would apply to multinational corporations regardless of where they locate their headquarters. Such a global tax could help prevent the type of “race to the bottom” that has been underway, Ms. Yellen said, referring to countries trying to outdo one another by lowering tax rates in order to attract business.

Her remarks came as the White House and Democrats in Congress begin looking for ways to pay for President Biden’s sweeping infrastructure plan to rebuild America’s roads, bridges, water systems and electric grid.

“Competitiveness is about more than how U.S.-headquartered companies fare against other companies in global merger and acquisition bids,” Ms. Yellen said. “It is about making sure that governments have stable tax systems that raise sufficient revenue to invest in essential public goods and respond to crises, and that all citizens fairly share the burden of financing government.”

The speech represented Ms. Yellen’s most extensive comments since taking over as Treasury secretary, and she underscored the scope of the challenge ahead.

“Over the last four years, we have seen firsthand what happens when America steps back from the global stage,” Ms. Yellen said. “America first must never mean America alone.”

Ms. Yellen also highlighted her priorities of combating climate change and reducing global poverty and underscored the importance of the United States helping to lead the world out of the crisis caused by the pandemic. Ms. Yellen called on countries not to pull back on fiscal support too soon and warned of growing global imbalances if some countries do withdraw before the crisis is over.

In a sharp break with the administration of former President Donald J. Trump, Ms. Yellen emphasized the importance of the United States working closely with its allies, noting that the fortunes of countries around the world are intertwined.

Overhauling the international tax system is a big part of that. Corporate tax rates have been falling around the world in recent years. Under the Trump administration, the rate in the United States was cut from 35 percent to 21 percent. Mr. Biden wants to raise that rate to 28 percent and increase the international minimum tax rate that American companies pay on their foreign profits to 21 percent.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in coordination with the United States, has been working to develop a new international tax architecture that would include a global minimum tax rate for multinational corporations as part of its effort to curtail profit shifting and tax base erosion.

Ms. Yellen said she is working with her counterparts in the Group of 20 advanced nations on changes to the global tax system that will help prevent businesses from shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions.

“President Biden’s proposals announced last week call for bold domestic action, including to raise the U.S. minimum tax rate, and renewed international engagement, recognizing that it is important to work with other countries to end the pressures of tax competition and corporate tax base erosion,” Ms. Yellen said. “We are working with G20 nations to agree to a global minimum corporate tax rate that can stop the race to the bottom.”

Norwegian Cruise Line outlined a plan on Monday to start cruises in July.Credit…Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued long-awaited technical guidance for cruise lines on Friday, bringing them one step closer to sailing again in United States waters.

While some cruise lines operating in Europe have been requiring all passengers to be vaccinated, the C.D.C. did not go that far. Vaccination will be critical in the safe resumption of cruising, the agency said, and it recommended that all eligible port personnel, crew and passengers get a Covid-19 vaccine as soon as one becomes available to them.

By making vaccinations a recommendation instead of a requirement, the C.D.C. has avoided conflict with Florida, one of the cruise industry’s biggest bases of operations, which has banned businesses from requiring customers to show proof of vaccinations.

Cruise ships in the U.S. have been docked for over a year because of the pandemic and can only restart operations by following the C.D.C.’s Framework for Conditional Sailing Order, issued in October to ensure that cruise ships build the onboard infrastructure needed to mitigate the risks of the coronavirus.

The technical instructions will allow cruise lines to prepare their ships for simulation voyages, designed to test health and safety protocols and operational procedures with volunteers before sailing with paying passengers.

The new recommendations include increasing from weekly to daily the reporting of Covid-19 cases, implementing routine testing of all crew based on a ship’s Covid-19 status and making contractual arrangements with medical facilities on shore for passengers who may fall ill during a voyage.

Once cruise lines have prepared their ships, they must give 30 days notice to the C.D.C. before starting test cruises and will have to apply for a conditional sailing certificate 60 days before a planned regular voyage.

Norwegian Cruise Line, one of the industry’s biggest operators, submitted a letter to the C.D.C. on Monday outlining its plan to resume cruises from U.S. ports in July, which included mandatory vaccination of all guests and crew. The company said that its vaccination requirement and multilayered health and safety protocols exceeded the agency’s Conditional Sailing Order requirements.

Some big employers are making plans to call employees back to the office, but others are waiting.Credit…Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times

At one point the target was the start of 2021. Then it was bumped to July. Now September is the new goal that many companies have marked on the calendar for bringing back office workers who have been working remotely for the past year.

Maybe. Companies are wary of setting hard deadlines, recent reporting by The New York Times found. Some corporations are reopening offices in the spring, while many are saying they will remain flexible, will stage returns over several months and will allow some workers to continue to work from home for a few days a week or more. As nerve-racking as it was for people last year to be abruptly torn from their desks, many people find the prospect of returning distressing.

Here is what some of the country’s biggest companies are telling workers.

Ford, which has more than 30,000 employees in the United States working remotely because of the pandemic, said in March that it would transition to a “flexible hybrid work model.” The company plans to let people stay home for focused work and come into the office for activities that require teamwork. The new protocol will start in July, when the company, which has its main campus in Dearborn, Mich., expects to gradually start bringing more employees back.

IBM, which employs about 346,000 people, hasn’t set a strict timeline for when its U.S. workers will return to the office. It expects about 80 percent of its employees to work with some combination of remote and office schedules, depending largely on role.

The bank, which has more than 20,000 office employees in New York City, has told employees that the five-day office workweek is a relic. It is considering a rotational work model, meaning employees would switch between working remotely and in the office.

The consulting firm formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has about 284,000 employees, is set to open one office in each of its major cities in May and all of its offices in September. Even when the offices are formally reopened, PwC will allow some workers, depending on their job, to work remotely at least part time.

Most of Walmart’s 1.5 million employees work at the retail giant’s stores, and a vast number have continued to go into work throughout the pandemic. It said on March 12 that it would start bringing workers back at its Bentonville, Ark., office campus no earlier than July. Its global technology employees will continue to work virtually “for the long-term.”

At Wells Fargo, 60,000 employees worked at bank branches and other facilities during the pandemic, but 200,000 more worked remotely. The company told its staff in a memo last month that it had set a Sept. 6 return-to-office target and was “optimistic” that conditions surrounding Covid-19 vaccinations and case levels would allow it to keep it.

Ed Bastian, the chief executive of Delta Air Lines, abandoned all pretense of neutrality last week about the Georgia voting law. “The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie,” he told employees.Credit…Etienne Laurent/EPA, via Shutterstock

Corporations have increasingly taken social and political stands, often spurred by the policies of former President Donald J. Trump. But the fight over voting laws, like the one recently passed in Georgia that restricts ballot access in several ways, has again thrust big businesses into partisan politics, pulled by Democrats focused on social justice and Republicans who have proven willing to punish those that cross them.

It presents a “head-spinning new landscape for big companies,” The New York Times’s David Gelles writes.

In Georgia, Delta tried to stay out of the fight at first. The airline is the state’s largest employer, and civil rights activists reached out to the company in February, flagging what they saw as problematic provisions in the Georgia voting law. The next month, Delta’s lobbyists pushed state lawmakers to remove some of the provisions, although Ed Bastian, the carrier’s chief executive, spoke out only in general terms until the bill was passed.

Then a group of more than 70 Black executives published a letter decrying the law and others like it in the works. The former American Express chief executive Kenneth Chenault, who is Black, spoke at length with Mr. Bastian. Mr. Bastian wrote a strongly worded memo that was sent to staff members the next morning, expressing “crystal clear” opposition to the law, which he said was “based on a lie.” Coca-Cola’s James Quincey quickly followed. The companies subsequently faced more criticism from Republican leaders than did other big Atlanta employers, like Home Depot and UPS, that stuck to less-specific statements about voting rights.

More fallout from the Georgia law:

  • Major League Baseball cited its opposition to “restrictions to the ballot box” as the reason for moving its All-Star Game out of Atlanta. Moving the game could cost Georgia over $100 million in tourism revenue, prompting the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, to decry the move as a surrender to liberal activists.

  • Stacey Abrams, the prominent Georgia Democrat and voting rights activist, said she was “disappointed” by M.L.B.’s move and worried about the economic hit, but supported the league’s overall stance. The producer and actor Tyler Perry also fretted about collateral damage from boycotts even as he protested the law.

  • Trying to avoid a repeat in Texas, American Airlines and Dell have objected to a proposal that would restrict measures designed to make voting easier in the state. The statements were more forceful than Coke and Delta had initially been in Georgia. “To make American’s stance clear: We are strongly opposed to this bill and others like it,” the airline said.

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

Wall Street began the week on an upswing on Monday, climbing further into record territory, led by gains in travel and tourism stocks.

The S&P 500 climbed more than 1 percent, as did the Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq composite.

Norwegian Cruise Line jumped 8 percent after it submitted a letter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday outlining its plan to resume cruises from U.S. ports in July. Other cruise operators were also higher. The C.D.C. on Friday issued technical guidance for how cruises may resume.

Also sharply higher were shares of MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment and United Airlines.

Tesla jumped more than 6 percent in the wake of its report on Friday that it more than doubled the number of cars it delivered in the first quarter from the prior year. The electric carmaker sold 184,8000 vehicles in the first three months of the year, up from 88,500 a year ago. It produced 180,338 vehicles, compared with 102,672 in the first quarter of 2020.

Investors have heard a drumbeat of good economic news in recent days, and Monday was also the first chance stock investors on Wall Street had to react to employment figures released on Friday, as markets were closed that day for Good Friday. The Labor Department said that U.S. employers added 916,000 jobs in March, the biggest jump since August, with hiring in the hospitality, retailing and transportation sectors all rising.

On Monday, the Institute for Supply Management said economic activity in the services sector grew in March for the 10th month in a row.

Although a recent sharp rise in coronavirus cases does add a dose of uncertainty to the picture, few economists expect the impact of a new Covid-19 surge to be as severe as it was last year, thanks in large part to the rapid growth of vaccinations.

In other markets, yields on 10-year Treasury notes, which have been on an upward trajectory since October, have stabilized over the last few days. On Monday the yield was steady at 1.72 percent.

Oil prices fell. West Texas Intermediate dropped more than 3 percent to below $60 a barrel. Traders have been adjusting their positions since last Thursday’s decision by OPEC and its allies to slowly relax curbs on output. Those controls were put in place in response to the sharp decline in oil demand during the pandemic.

Stock markets were closed for holidays in China, Hong Kong and much of Europe. The Nikkei index in Japan rose 0.8 percent, to its highest level since mid-March, and the Kospi index in South Korea gained 0.3 percent.

Shaundell Newsome of Small Business for America’s Future said changes were needed throughout the banking industry to improve outcomes for Black owners.Credit…Bridget Bennett for The New York Times

The government’s central small business relief effort, the Paycheck Protection Program, has made $734 billion in forgivable loans to nearly seven million businesses. But minority-owned businesses were disproportionately underserved by the program, a New York Times analysis found.

“The focus at the outset was on speed, and it came at the expense of equity,” said Ashley Harrington, the federal advocacy director at the Center for Responsible Lending.

The aid program’s rules were mostly written on the fly, and reaching harder-to-serve businesses was an afterthought. Structural barriers and complicated, shifting requirements contributed to a skewed outcome, The New York Times’s Stacy Cowley reports.

In the program’s final weeks — it is scheduled to stop taking applications on May 31 — President Biden’s administration has tried to alter its trajectory with rule changes intended to funnel more money toward businesses led by women and minorities. But those revisions have run into their own obstacles, including the speed with which they were rushed through. Lenders, caught off guard, have struggled to carry them out.

“Historically, access to capital has been the leading concern of women- and minority-owned businesses to survive, and during this pandemic it has been no different,” Jenell Ross, who owns an auto dealership, told a House committee.

The United States is particularly important to the world economy because it has long spent more than it sells.Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

The United States and its record-setting stimulus spending could help haul a weakened Europe and struggling developing countries out of their own economic morass.

American buyers are spurring demand for German cars, Australian wine, Mexican auto parts and French fashions. And many Americans have spent their stimulus checks on video game consoles, exercise bicycles or other products made in China.

The United States’ comparatively fast recovery involved a little bit of luck — new variants of the virus have just begun to push domestic infections higher — and a large policy response, including more than $5 trillion in debt-fueled pandemic relief, The New York Times’s Jeanna Smialek and Jack Ewing report.

“When the U.S. economy is strong, that strength tends to support global activity as well,” said Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve.

But some hazards lurk. The slow pace of the European Union’s vaccination campaign will probably hurt its economy. Poorer and smaller countries, facing severely limited vaccine supplies and fewer resources to support government spending, are likely to struggle to stage an economic turnaround even if the U.S. recovery increases demand for their exports.

Chocolate is Britain’s second-largest food and drink export, after whiskey.Credit…Tom Jamieson for The New York Times

Small British chocolate makers emphasizing ethically sourced ingredients and bespoke batches became big sellers in Europe in recent years but have been nearly impossible to find there since January, David Segal reports for The New York Times.

“We have customers complain to us all the time, ‘Why can’t I buy my favorite British chocolate?’” said Hishem Ferjani, the founder of Choco Dealer in Bonn, Germany, which supplies grocery stores and sells through its own website. “We have store owners with empty shelves.”

“We have to explain, it’s not our fault, it’s not the fault of the producer. It’s Brexit,” he said.

Chocolate is Britain’s No. 2 food and drink export, after whiskey, according to the Food and Drink Federation. Chocolate exports to all countries hit $1.1 billion last year, and Europe accounts for about 70 percent of those sales. In January, exports of British chocolate to Europe fell 68 percent compared with the same period the year before.

The trade deal struck late last year with the European Union has not saved British companies from a maddening, unpredictable array of time-consuming, morale-sapping procedures and from stacks of paperwork that have turned exporting to the E.U. into a sort of black-box mystery. Goods go in and there is no telling when they will come out.

The Supreme Court in Washington.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Around 50 groups have filed amicus briefs in a coming Supreme Court case pitting charities against the state of California in a fight over donation disclosures. A new brief from 15 Democratic senators explained how untraceable donations, or “dark money,” make their way into politics through social welfare charities. The senators warned that siding with the charities will increase the political influence of wealthy individuals and corporations, the DealBook newsletter reports.

The case was brought by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a “social welfare” nonprofit affiliated with the Koch network, against the state, which requires charities to privately disclose major donors in tax documents. The foundation says that anonymity is protected by the First Amendment and that disclosure could expose donors to threats. An appeals court sided with California, however, and the foundation wants the justices to reverse the ruling.

The Capitol riot on Jan. 6 put a spotlight on corporations’ direct and indirect political donations; justices agreed on Jan. 8 to hear the case and arguments will take place later this month.

Business interests want to create a “broad expansion of dark money rights,” the senators’ brief stated, referring to untraceable donations that are often routed via nonprofit groups. The court case is an influence campaign disguised as a technical legal fight, the senators said. The Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers are among the trade groups supporting the foundation’s demand for anonymity.

Anonymous donors work like covert intelligence operations, the senators wrote. The donors give millions annually to charities that spend it in an effort to influence politics and policy. The senators pointed to congressional appropriations rules blocking disclosure efforts by the I.R.S. and S.E.C. over the past decade as evidence that the groups have swayed lawmakers behind the scenes. They also cite the number of amicus briefs filed as evidence of this issue’s significance, noting that briefs are an element of the business lobby’s influence campaigns.

The federal government is siding with California, more or less, telling the justices in a brief that the charities’ constitutional claim is wrong but that the case should be sent back to the lower courts for more analysis.

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Inventory Market Right this moment: Dwell Updates on Jobs and Shopper Spending

An expanded measure of the jobless rate that adjusts for misclassified workers and those on the sidelines shows that the “real” rate was around 9.1 percent in March.

Here’s what you need to know:

The U.S. jobs rebound picked up steam last month, fueled by the accelerating pace of vaccinations and a new injection of federal aid.

Employers added 916,000 jobs in March, up from 416,000 in February and the most since August, the Labor Department said Friday. The leisure and hospitality sector led the way, adding 280,000 jobs as Americans returned to restaurants and resorts in greater numbers. Construction firms added 110,000 jobs as the housing market stayed strong and activity resumed following winter storms in February.

The unemployment rate fell to 6 percent, down from 6.2 percent in February.

“March’s jobs report is the most optimistic report since the pandemic began,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist of the career site Glassdoor. “It’s not the largest gain in payrolls since the pandemic began, but it’s the first where it seems like the finish line is in sight.”

The report came one year after the pandemic ripped a hole in the American labor market. The U.S. economy lost 1.7 million jobs in March 2020 and more than 20 million in April, when the unemployment rate peaked at nearly 15 percent.

The job market bounced back quickly at first, but progress began to slow as virus cases surged and states reimposed restrictions on businesses. Over the winter, the recovery stalled out, with employers cutting more than 300,000 jobs in December.

Economists said the latest data marked a turning point. Last month was the third straight month of accelerating hiring, and even bigger gains are likely in the months ahead. The March data was collected early in the month, before most states broadened vaccine access and before most Americans began receiving $1,400 checks from the federal government as part of the most recent relief package.

“The tide is turning,” said Michelle Meyer, chief U.S. economist for Bank of America. The report, she said, “reaffirms this idea that the economy is accelerating meaningfully in the spring.”

The United States still has 8.4 million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic. Even if employers kept hiring at the pace they did in March, it would take months to fill the gap. More than four million people have been out of work for more than six months, a number that continued rising in March.

And the virus remains a risk. Coronavirus cases are rising again in much of the country as states have begun easing restrictions. If that trend turns into a full-blown new wave of infections, it could force some states to backpedal, impeding the recovery.

But few economists expect a repeat of the winter, when a spike in Covid-19 cases pushed the recovery into reverse. More than a quarter of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and more than two million people a day are being inoculated. That should allow economic activity to continue to rebound.

“This time is different, and that’s because of vaccines,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at the job site ZipRecruiter. “It’s real this time.”

Credit…Charles Krupa/Associated Press

The labor market is healing, pushing the unemployment rate steadily lower. But alternative measures of the job market show more weakness remaining than the most frequently cited data might suggest.

When the pandemic hit the economy, two big issues began to mess with the unemployment rate. A big chunk of people were classified as “employed but not at work” when they should have been counted as laid off. And many people dropped out of the labor market altogether. Since the unemployment rate only counts people who are actively applying to jobs, that means a lot of would-be workers were suddenly left out.

The jobless rate fell to 6 percent in March from a high of 14.8 percent in April, but that overstates the labor market’s healing. An expanded measure that adjusts for misclassified workers and those on the sidelines — using a methodology that closely tracks a gauge Federal Reserve officials often reference — shows that the “real” unemployment rate was around 9.1 percent in March.

To be sure, that expanded measure is down sharply from a peak of nearly 24 percent last April. But it shows the extent of the damage yet to be repaired since the pandemic shuttered broad parts of the economy in 2020.

Fed officials, who are tasked with returning the labor market to maximum employment, are keeping a close eye on broad measures of slack as they try to assess how far the job market remains from full strength. Another point they often raise is that total employment in the economy remains well below its prepandemic level — as of March, 8.4 million jobs were missing compared with February 2020.

“It’s just a lot of people who need to get back to work and it’s not going to happen overnight, it’s going to take some time,” Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said at a news conference last month.

The stronger-than-expected job gains in March were also surprisingly broad-based.

Forecasters had expected the lifting of restrictions in Texas and other states to lead to a surge in hiring at restaurants, hotels and related businesses. They were right: The leisure and hospitality sector added 280,000 jobs.

But hiring was also strong in other industries. Retailers and wholesalers added more than 20,000 jobs apiece. Manufacturers added 53,000. Construction businesses added 110,000 as activity resumed after winter storms hit the South in February. Public and private education added a combined 190,000 jobs as schools reopened across the country.

Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton, said the widespread gains showed that the recovery was being driven by more than just the reopening of previously shuttered businesses. Government aid has given Americans money to spend, and the confidence to spend it.

Businesses, too, appear to be growing more confident. Many of the jobs added in January and February were temporary positions, but in March, temporary staffing levels were essentially flat, indicating companies were filling permanent positions instead.

“That’s also a sign of optimism that the rebound we’re seeing will be sustained,” Ms. Swonk said.

Amy Glaser, senior vice president at the staffing firm Adecco, said that in recent weeks, a growing share of her clients had been looking for permanent employees, or converting temporary hires into permanent ones.

“Our conversations have really shifted even over the last six weeks,” she said. “We spent the last year doing a lot of worst-case-scenario planning with our clients, and now the conversation is the opposite — how do we capture the rebound to make the most effective use of it?”

The Saudi oil minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, is arguably the most powerful individual in the oil business. Credit…Ahmed Yosri/Reuters

For months, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, arguably the most powerful individual in the oil business, has urged his fellow producers to keep a tight rein on output, fearing additional crude could flood the world’s markets and cause prices to drop. At the same time, some producers, notably Russia, have been chafing to open the spigot a bit more.

On Thursday, the prince seemed to relent, as the group called OPEC Plus — the members of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies like Russia — agreed to modest output increases over the next three months.

Analysts said the prince, who is the chair of OPEC Plus, appeared to be calculating that by appeasing other producers who want to produce more oil, he can remain in control over the longer term.

The prince repeated his go-slow message on Thursday, arguing that the global economic recovery from the pandemic remained fragile, and so his willingness to sign off on an increase came as something of a surprise. But the decision seemed to be an acknowledgment of the diversity of opinions within OPEC Plus, and that he must take the views of other key producers like Russia and the United Arab Emirates into account to maintain leadership and to keep them from going their own way.

“It is not my decision, it is everybody’s decision,” he said at a news conference after Thursday’s OPEC Plus meeting.

So far traders have signaled their approval by pushing up prices in what had been a weak market. On Friday, Brent crude, the international benchmark was up about 3.4 percent to $64.86 a barrel.

Under the deal agreed to on Thursday, OPEC Plus will gradually increase production by 350,000 barrels a day in May and June and 441,000 barrels a day in July. Over the same period, the Saudis will also relax the one million barrels a day they have been voluntarily keeping off the market, bringing the total increase to about 2.1 million barrels a day by July.

The plan “points to a still cautious and orderly ramp-up from OPEC Plus, still allowing for a tight oil market,” rather than a flood, analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote in a note to clients on Thursday.

OPEC Plus also retain the option of adjusting output at monthly meetings. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter, can also take unilateral decisions to trim supplies.

This ability to quickly backtrack “provides the prince with comfort that he is exercising a fairly low-risk option,” Helima Croft, a strategist at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients.

Unemployment rates for Black, Hispanic, Asian and white men

Unemployment rates for Black, Hispanic, Asian and white women

As the labor market heals at different paces for different demographic groups, women — who had been hit especially hard early in the downturn — are staging a particularly strong rebound.

Unemployment for women spiked at the onset of the pandemic, jumping to 16.1 percent in April, and their labor force participation dropped sharply. Now, their labor market experiences are improving along both dimensions: The unemployment rate for women fell to 5.9 percent in March, lower than that for men, and the share of women either working or looking for work nudged higher.

Women had been hit hard economically by pandemic shutdowns both because they work more often in jobs that were lost amid local lockdowns — from teaching to restaurant serving — and because they have shouldered a heavy share of caregiving responsibilities as day care centers and schools closed. Now, as state and local economies reopen, those trends are reversing.

“You open schools, and imagine what happens — women return to the work force,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist for the accounting firm Grant Thornton.

Other demographic groups that had borne much of the pandemic’s fallout remain far behind, however. Unemployment rates are falling across racial and ethnic groups, but the rate for Black workers stood at 9.6 percent last month. That figure is far higher than the 5.4 percent for white workers, and it is falling much more slowly.

The uneven healing has been a focal point for the Federal Reserve, which is focused on how far the job market has to go to get back to full strength.

“The K-shaped labor market recovery remains uneven across racial groups, industries, and wage levels,” Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, said during a recent speech — referring to the divergence in economic fates between those doing fine and those doing poorly, which looks like a “K” when drawn on a graph. “We are far from our broad-based and inclusive maximum-employment goal.”

Ben Casselman contributed reporting.

Shoppers at a Bed, Bath & Beyond last month. With the vaccine rollout accelerating, economists expect Americans to start spending again.Credit…Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Economists think the big job gains reported on Friday are just the beginning. One reason: Americans have plenty of cash, and they are ready to spend it.

U.S. households had $2.4 trillion in savings in February, $1 trillion more than a year earlier. And that was before the latest wave of $1,400 relief checks started going out in March.

The primary factor holding back spending has been the pandemic, which has prevented people from spending on restaurant meals, vacations and concert tickets. But with the vaccine rollout accelerating, that could soon change.

About 35 percent of Americans plan to spend more on travel over the next 12 months than they do in a typical year, according to a survey conducted last month for The New York Times by the online research firm SurveyMonkey. About 28 percent plan to spend more than usual at restaurants. And over all, close to 70 percent of adults plan to spend more than usual in at least one category, at least if the health situation allows.

“They have the money in the bank, they’re ready to spend it, but what was holding them back was not having a comfort about being able to go out,” said Jay Bryson, chief economist for Wells Fargo. “We’re getting into a critical mass of people that are feeling comfortable beginning to go out again.”

But there are signs that Americans remain cautious. The survey was conducted in mid-March, just as the Treasury was preparing to send the $1,400 checks to millions of households. More than half the survey respondents who expected to receive checks said they planned to save most of the money or pay down debt. One-third said they would use it for immediate needs like food or rent. Only 10 percent said they planned to spend most of the money on discretionary items.

And while many Americans may be dreaming up ways to spend the money they saved during the pandemic, those hardest hit by the crisis are still trying to regain their financial footing. Among the unemployed, 62 percent said they planned to use their stimulus check to meet immediate needs, compared with 29 percent of the employed. Only 3 percent of the unemployed said they planned to use their stimulus checks on discretionary purchases.

A Tesla showroom in Beijing. A lot of  recent growth for the the electric-car maker has been in China.Credit…Tingshu Wang/Reuters

Tesla said on Friday that it more than doubled the number of cars it delivered in the first quarter, bouncing back after the pandemic slowed sales in the same period a year ago.

The electric carmaker said it sold 184,8000 vehicles in the first three months of the year, up from 88,500 a year ago. It produced 180,338 vehicles, compared with 102,672 in the first quarter of 2020.

The company’s sales numbers, which cover the entire world, come a day after General Motors and Ford Motor reported that their U.S. sales were up modestly. Tesla does not break out its sales by region and a lot of its recent growth has been in China, where electric cars make up a much larger share of the auto market than in the United States.

Tesla was helped by the arrival of the Model Y, a roomier version of its Model 3 sedan. Those two cars accounted for almost all of its deliveries in the first quarter. It reported just 2,020 deliveries of its high-end cars — the Model S luxury sedan and the Model X sport-utility vehicle.

Tesla has halted production of the Model S and Model X while preparing its plant in Fremont, Calif., to build updated versions of the cars. The company said in a statement that it was “in the early stages of ramping production” of the new models, which generate much more profit than the Model 3 and Model Y.

The first-quarter sales numbers could lift Tesla shares, which have lost more than a quarter of their value since January when they hit a high of about $900. The impact won’t be known until next week, however, because the stock market is closed in observance of Good Friday. On Thursday, Tesla’s stock fell about 1 percent, closing at $661.75.

Analysts were surprised by the jump in sales. Most had been expecting deliveries of about 172,000 vehicles.

“The company yet again defied the skeptics and bears,” Dan Ives, a Wedbush analyst, said in a report. “It’s been a brutal sell-off for Tesla and EVs, but we believe that will now be in the rear view mirror.”

Mannequins at a Brooks Brothers warehouse in Enfield, Conn.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

In the fallout of Brooks Brothers’ bankruptcy filing and sale last year, the retailer abandoned a warehouse in Connecticut full of junk — mannequins, sewing machines and a whole section of Christmas trees.

Ever since, the couple that owns the warehouse, Chip and Rosanna LaBonte, has been scrambling to figure out how to get rid of it all.

Junk removal companies have told them it will cost at least $240,000 to clear the space, which Brooks Brothers had rented through November, Sapna Maheshwari and Vanessa Friedman report for The New York Times. In order to pay the bill, the LaBontes are going to have to sell their home.

Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

Brooks Brothers, which was founded in 1818 and is the oldest continuously operated apparel brand in the United States, began renting the warehouse in Enfield in 2011, most recently at a rate of roughly $20,000 a month.

The couple bought the warehouse in 2010. They said that it was their first foray into commercial real estate and that they worked on residential projects before that. They have other tenants and a self-storage section, but are frustrated about the mess and the fact they can’t use the space for anything else until it is cleared.

The couple’s plight illustrates the far-reaching consequences of retail bankruptcies, which cascaded during the pandemic and affected everyone from factory workers to executives. Smaller vendors and landlords have often been left holding the short end of the stick during lengthy byzantine bankruptcy proceedings, particularly with limits on what they can spend on legal bills compared with larger corporations. And once bankrupt brands are sold, people like the LaBontes are typically left in the dust.

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Jobless Claims Tick Up, Exhibiting a Lengthy Highway to Restoration: Stay Updates

The Forecast Salon in Birmingham, Ala. A pickup in business activity nationwide has fed hopes that workers’ prospects are improving. 

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Wes Frazer for The New York Times

A year after they first rocketed upward, jobless claims may finally be returning to earth.

More than 714,000 people filed for state unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was up slightly from the week before, but still among the lowest weekly totals since the pandemic began.

In addition, 237,000 people filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program that covers people who don’t qualify for state benefits programs. That number, too, has been falling.

Jobless claims remain high by historical standards, and are far above the norm before the pandemic, when around 200,000 people a week were filing for benefits. Applications have improved only gradually — even after the recent declines, the weekly figure is modestly below where it was last fall.

But economists are optimistic that further improvement is ahead as the vaccine rollout accelerates and more states lift restrictions on business activity. Fewer companies are laying off workers, and hiring has picked up, meaning that people who lose their jobs are more likely to find new ones quickly.

“We could actually finally see the jobless claims numbers come down because there’s enough job creation to offset the layoffs,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at the job site ZipRecruiter.

But Ms. Pollak cautioned that benefits applications would not return to normal overnight. Even as many companies resume normal operations, others are discovering that the pandemic has permanently disrupted their business model.

“There are still a lot of business closures and a lot of layoffs that have yet to happen,” she said. “The repercussions of this pandemic are still rippling through this economy.”

Shoppers in Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. Germany and other countries have cut their value-added taxes to encourage consumer spending.Credit…Lena Mucha for The New York Times

The European Central Bank’s chief economist argued on Thursday that fears of a big rise in inflation are overblown, a sign that the people who control interest rates in the eurozone are likely to keep them very low for some time to come.

The comments — by Philip Lane, an influential member of the central bank’s Governing Council whose job includes briefing other members on the economic outlook — are an attempt to calm bond investors who are nervous that the end of the pandemic will lead to high inflation.

Fueling their fears, inflation in the eurozone rose to an annual rate of 1.3 percent in March from 0.9 percent in February, according to official data released on Wednesday, the fastest increase in prices in more than a year.

Market-based interest rates have been rising because investors worry that President Biden’s $2 trillion stimulus program will provoke a broad increase in prices for years to come. The interest rates that prevail on bond markets ripple through the financial system and can make mortgages and other types of borrowing more expensive, creating a drag on economic growth.

Despite big monthly swings in inflation during the last year, the average had been remarkably stable at an annual rate of about 1 percent, Mr. Lane wrote in a blog post on the central bank’s website on Thursday. That is well below the European Central Bank’s target of 2 percent.

“The volatility in inflation over 2020 and 2021 can be attributed to a host of temporary factors that should not affect medium-term inflation dynamics,” Mr. Lane wrote.

That is another way of saying that the European Central Bank is not going to panic about short-lived fluctuations in inflation and put the brakes on the eurozone economy anytime soon.

On the contrary, Mr. Lane’s analysis suggests that the European Central Bank will continue trying to push inflation toward the 2 percent target. In March, the central bank said it would increase its purchases of government and corporate bonds to try to keep a lid on market-based interest rates.

Mr. Lane said it was no surprise to see “considerable volatility in inflation during the pandemic period.” He attributed the ups and downs to quirky factors that are not likely to recur.

Germany and some other countries cut their value-added taxes to encourage consumer spending, then raised them again later. The price of fuel fluctuated wildly. People spent almost nothing on travel, but increased spending on home exercise equipment or products that they needed to work from home. That affected the way inflation is calculated and made the annual rate look higher, Mr. Lane said.

“The medium-term outlook for inflation remains subdued,” he wrote, “and closing the gap to our inflation aim will set the agenda for the Governing Council in the coming years.”

Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi oil minister, has argued that increasing oil output too fast would be risky.Credit…via Reuters

OPEC and its allies, including Russia, are meeting by videoconference Thursday to discuss whether to ease production curbs on oil as countries around the world try to expand from pandemic lockdowns.

Analysts say recent events will support the views of Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi oil minister, who has argued for caution in increasing supply, noting the risks of swamping the market. But other outcomes are possible at the meeting of the group known as OPEC Plus, including modest increases and even cuts in oil production,

France’s reimposition of a national lockdown, announced Wednesday, underlines persistent doubts about the pace of recovery from the pandemic, as have rising case numbers in the United States.

After modest increases when the Suez Canal was recently blocked by a cargo ship, oil prices were rising again on Thursday, with Brent crude, the global benchmark, more than 1 percent higher, to more than $63 a barrel.

“All signs seemingly point to the group maintaining current production levels,” Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, an investment bank, wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.

Yet pressure may also come to increase supply. Members of the OPEC Plus group are withholding an estimated eight million barrels of a day, or about 9 percent of current global consumption. As the global economy recovers, it will become increasingly difficult for the Saudis to persuade others to restrain supplies.

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

Wall Street’s rally continued on Thursday as tech shares extended their gains. Shares in Europe and Asia were also higher, as traders focused on optimism about the economic recovery.

The S&P 500 rose 0.8 percent in early trading, on track for a record close, while the Nasdaq composite gained 1.8 percent.

Bond yields pulled further back from their recent 14-month high. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell to 1.69 percent.

Adding to the optimism about the economy, a measure of manufacturing activity rose to its highest since 1983, the Institute for Supply Management said.

New data released on Thursday showed a slight rise in claims for unemployment benefits, though the data from the week before showed claims at the lowest since the start of the pandemic. On Friday, the Labor Department will publish its monthly jobs report for March.

  • On Wednesday, President Biden laid out a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which included money for a range of activities, including repairing roads and bridges, building affordable housing and caregiving facilities, and expanding access to broadband. It would be paid for by an increase in corporate taxes, undoing some of the cut by his predecessor, President Donald J. Trump.

  • The infrastructure plan also includes spending about $50 billion on the semiconductor industry, where a global shortage in chips has disrupted car manufacturing. Shares in Micron Technology, an Idaho-based chip maker, rose nearly 5 percent in premarket trading.

  • The plan includes $174 billion to encourage the manufacture and purchase of electric vehicles. Tesla shares rose 2.4 percent in early trading and ChargePoint Holdings, which has a large network of electric-vehicle charing stations, rose as much as 14 percent, adding to a 19 percent increase on Wednesday.

  • Most European stock indexes were higher even as more lockdowns were announced in the region. In France, restrictions have been expanded to more regions and schools will close for several weeks. In Italy, business closures will extend until the end of April. But a series of reports published on Thursday showed manufacturing activity picking up in Europe.

  • Oil prices rose ahead of a meeting between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, at which they are set to decide production quotas for May. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, climbed 2.7 percent to just above $60 a barrel.

  • QuantumScape, a California-based start-up working on a technology that could make batteries cheaper, said it had reached a technical requirement that would clear the way for a $100 million investment by Volkswagen. QuantumScape’s shares jumped 16 percent in early trading.

  • On Friday, markets will be closed in the United States, Europe and some other countries for Good Friday.

The occupancy rate in nursing homes in the fourth quarter of 2020 was down 11 percentage points from the first quarter, but there are hurdles to staying out of facilities.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

The pandemic has intensified a spotlight on long-running questions about how communities can do a better job supporting seniors who need care but want to live outside a nursing home.

The coronavirus had taken the lives of 181,000 people in U.S. nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care facilities through last weekend, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation — 33 percent of the national toll.

The occupancy rate in nursing homes in the fourth quarter of 2020 was 75 percent, down 11 percentage points from the first quarter, according to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, a research group. The shift may not be permanent, but this much is clear: As the aging of the nation accelerates, most communities need to do much more to become age-friendly, said Jennifer Molinsky, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard.

“It’s about all the services that people can access, whether that’s the accessibility and affordability of housing, or transportation and supports that can be delivered in the home,” she said.

But there are hurdles for those who wish to stay out of a facility, Mark Miller reports for The New York Times:

  • A major shortage of age-friendly housing in the United States will present problems for seniors who wish to stay in their homes. By 2034, 34 percent of households will be headed by someone over 65, according to the Harvard center. Yet in 2011, just 3.5 percent of homes had single-floor living, no-step entry and extra-wide halls and doors for wheelchair access, according to Harvard’s latest estimates.

  • Medicare does not pay for most long-term care services, regardless of where they happen; reimbursement is limited to a person’s first 100 days in a skilled nursing facility. Medicaid, which covers only people with very low incomes, has long been the nation’s largest funder of long-term care. From its inception, the program was required to cover care in nursing facilities but not at home or in a community setting. “There’s a bias toward institutions,” said Judith Solomon, a senior fellow specializing in health at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Adam Bouhmad, second from right, has helped low-income families in Baltimore get affordable internet service through his Waves project.Credit…Jared Soares for The New York Times

A year after the pandemic turned the nation’s digital divide into an education emergency, President Biden is making affordable broadband a top priority, comparing it to the effort to spread electricity across the country. His $2 trillion infrastructure plan, announced on Wednesday, includes $100 billion to extend fast internet access to every home.

The money is meant to improve the economy by enabling all Americans to work, get medical care and take classes from wherever they live. Although the government has spent billions on the digital divide in the past, the efforts have failed to close it partly because people in different areas have different problems. Affordability is the main culprit in urban and suburban areas. In many rural areas, internet service isn’t available at all because of the high costs of installation.

“We’ll make sure every single American has access to high-quality, affordable, high speed internet,” Mr. Biden said in a speech on Wednesday. “And when I say affordable, I mean it. Americans pay too much for internet. We will drive down the price for families who have service now.”

Longtime advocates of universal broadband say the plan, which requires congressional approval, may finally come close to fixing the digital divide, a stubborn problem first identified and named by regulators during the Clinton administration. The plight of unconnected students during the pandemic added urgency.

“This is a vision document that says every American needs access and should have access to affordable broadband,” said Blair Levin, who directed the 2010 National Broadband Plan at the Federal Communications Commission. “And I haven’t heard that before from a White House to date.”

Some advocates for expanded broadband access cautioned that Mr. Biden’s plan might not entirely solve the divide between the digital haves and have-nots.

The plan promises to give priority to municipal and nonprofit broadband providers but would still rely on private companies to install cables and erect cell towers to far reaches of the country. One concern is that the companies won’t consider the effort worth their time, even with all the money earmarked for those projects. During the electrification boom of the 1920s, private providers were reluctant to install poles and string lines hundreds of miles into sparsely populated areas.

Taxpayers who received unemployment benefits last year — but who filed their federal tax returns before a new tax break became available — could receive an automatic refund as early as May, the Internal Revenue Service said on Wednesday.

The latest pandemic relief legislation — signed into law on March 11, in the thick of tax season — made the first $10,200 of unemployment benefits tax-free in 2020 for people with modified adjusted incomes of less than $150,000. (Married taxpayers filing jointly can exclude up to $20,400.)

But some Americans had already filed their tax returns by March and have been waiting for official agency guidance. Millions of U.S. workers filed for unemployment last year, but the I.R.S. said it was still determining how many workers affected by the tax change had already filed their tax returns.

On Wednesday, the I.R.S. confirmed that it would automatically recalculate the correct amount of benefits subject to taxation — and any overpayment will be refunded or applied to any other outstanding taxes owed. The first refunds are expected to be issued in May and will continue into the summer.

The I.R.S. said it would begin processing the simpler returns first, or those eligible for up to $10,200 in excluded benefits, and then would turn to returns for joint filers and others with more complex returns.

There is no need for those affected to file an amended return unless the calculations make the taxpayer newly eligible for additional federal credits and deductions not already included on the original tax return, the agency said. Those taxpayers may want to review their state tax returns as well, the I.R.S. said.

People who still haven’t filed and expect to do so electronically can simply answer the questions asked by their online tax preparer, which will factor in the new tax break when they file. The agency provided an updated worksheet and additional guidance in March for taxpayers that prefer paper.

Microsoft’s HoloLens headsets, demonstrated above in 2017, will equip soldiers with night vision, thermal vision and audio communication.Credit…Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

Microsoft said Wednesday that it would begin producing more than 120,000 augmented reality headsets for Army soldiers under a contract that could be worth up to $21.9 billion.

The HoloLens headsets use a technology called the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, which will equip soldiers wearing them with night vision, thermal vision and audio communication. The devices also have sensors that help soldiers target opponents in battle.

The deal is likely to create waves inside Microsoft, where some employees have objected to working with the Pentagon. Employees at other big tech companies, like Google, have also rejected what they say is the weaponization of their technology.

But Microsoft has long courted Defense Department work, including a $10 billion contract to build a cloud-computing system. Amazon had been seen as a front-runner to win the contract, but the Defense Department chose Microsoft.

Amazon claimed that President Donald J. Trump had interfered in the process because of his feud with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive and the owner of The Washington Post. A legal fight over the contract is still active.

Soldiers have tested the Microsoft headsets for two years, the company said. The Army said the devices would be used in combat and training.

Microsoft said its testing of the headsets had helped the Defense Department’s “efforts to modernize the U.S. military by taking advantage of advanced technology and new innovations not available to military.”

The devices will “provide the improved situational awareness, target engagement and informed decision-making necessary” to overcome current and future adversaries, the Army said in a news release.

In 2018, Microsoft won a $480 million bid to make prototypes of the headsets. The Army said Wednesday that the new contract to produce them on a larger scale was for five years, with the option to add up to five more years.

Categories
Business

Enterprise Teams Push Again on Tax Enhance in Biden Plan: Stay Updates

Miami’s Signature Bridge under construction earlier this month. President Biden is expected to propose a $2 trillion package of infrastructure spending.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Business groups and large corporations reacted negatively on Wednesday to President Biden’s expected proposal to fund his $2 trillion package of infrastructure spending with a substantial increase in corporate taxes.

The scale of the infrastructure program — the details of which Mr. Biden is expected to unveil later on Wednesday — is so big that is that it would require 15 years of higher taxes on corporations to pay for eight years of spending. The plans include raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent. The corporate tax rate had been cut from 35 percent under former President Donald J. Trump.

The Business Roundtable said it supported infrastructure investment, calling it “essential to economic growth” and important “to ensure a rapid economic recovery” — but rejected corporate tax increases as a way to pay for it.

“Business Roundtable strongly opposes corporate tax increases” to pay for infrastructure investment, the group’s chief executive, Joshua Bolten, said in a statement. “Policymakers should avoid creating new barriers to job creation and economic growth, particularly during the recovery.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce echoed Business Roundtable’s view. “We strongly oppose the general tax increases proposed by the administration, which will slow the economic recovery and make the U.S. less competitive globally — the exact opposite of the goals of the infrastructure plan,” the chamber’s chief policy officer, Neil Bradley, said in a statement.

Automakers embraced Mr. Biden’s bet to increase the use of electric cars. The plan proposes spending $174 billion to encourage the manufacture and purchase of electric vehicles by granting tax credits and other incentives to companies that make electric vehicle batteries in the United States instead of China.

“Customers want connected and increasingly electric vehicles, and we need to work together to build the infrastructure to help this transformation,” Jim Farley, the chief executive of Ford Motor, said in a statement. “Ford supports the administration’s efforts to advance a broad infrastructure plan that prioritizes a more sustainable, connected and autonomous future — including an integrated charging network and supportive supply chain, built on a foundation of safe roads and bridges for our customers.”

“With vaccinations becoming more widespread and confidence in travel rising, we’re ready to help customers reclaim their lives,” the chief executive of Delta Air Lines said.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Delta Air Lines said Wednesday that it would sell middle seats on flights starting May 1, more than a year after it decided to leave them empty to promote distancing. Other airlines had blocked middle seats early in the pandemic, but Delta held out the longest by several months and is the last of the four big U.S. airlines to get rid of the policy.

The company’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, said that a survey of those who flew Delta in 2019 found that nearly 65 percent expected to have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine by May 1, which gave the airline “the assurance to offer customers the ability to choose any seat on our aircraft.”

Delta started blocking middle seat bookings in April 2020 and said that it continued the policy to give passengers peace of mind.

“During the past year, we transformed our service to ensure their health, safety, convenience and comfort during their travels,” Mr. Bastian said in a statement. “Now, with vaccinations becoming more widespread and confidence in travel rising, we’re ready to help customers reclaim their lives.”

Air travel has started to recover meaningfully in recent weeks, with ticket sales rising and as well over one million people per day have been screened at airport checkpoints since mid-March, according to the Transportation Security Administration. More than 1.5 million people were screened on Sunday, the busiest day at airports since the pandemic began. Air travel is still down about 40 percent from 2019.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to recommend against travel, even for those who have been vaccinated. This week, its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, warned of “impending doom” from a potential fourth wave of the pandemic if Americans move too quickly to disregard the advice of public health officials.

Delta also said on Wednesday that it would give customers more time to use expiring travel credits. All new tickets purchased in 2021 and credits set to expire this year will now expire at the end of 2022.

Starting April 14, the airline plans to bring back soft drinks, cocktails and snacks on flights within the United States and to nearby international destinations. In June, it plans to start offering hot food in premium classes on some coast-to-coast flights. Delta also announced changes that will make it easier for members of its loyalty program to earn points this year.

Deliveroo is now in 12 countries and has over 100,000 riders.Credit…Toby Melville/Reuters

Deliveroo, the British food delivery service, dropped as much as 30 percent in its first minutes of trading on Wednesday, a gloomy public debut for the company that was promoted as a post-Brexit win for London’s financial markets.

The company had set its initial public offering price at 3.90 pounds a share, valuing Deliveroo at £7.6 billion or $10.4 billion. But it opened at £3.31, 15 percent lower, and kept falling. By early afternoon, shares had recovered slightly, trading at about £2.86, 27 percent lower.

The offering has been troubled by major investors planning to sit out the I.P.O. amid concerns about shareholder voting rights and Deliveroo rider pay. Deliveroo, trading under the ticker “ROO,” sold just under 385 million shares, raising £1.5 billion.

The business model of Deliveroo and other gig economy companies is increasingly under threat in Europe as legal challenges mount. Two weeks ago, Uber reclassified more than 70,000 drivers in Britain as workers who will receive a minimum wage, vacation pay and access to a pension plan, after a Supreme Court ruling. Analysts said the move could set a precedent for other companies and increase costs.

Deliveroo, which is based in London and was founded in 2013, is now in 12 countries and has more than 100,000 riders, recognizable on the streets by their teal jackets and food bags. Last year, Amazon became its biggest shareholder.

Demand for Deliveroo’s services could soon diminish, as pandemic restrictions in its largest market, Britain, begin to ease. In a few weeks, restaurants will reopen for outdoor dining. Last year, Deliveroo said, it lost £226.4 million even as its revenue jumped more than 50 percent to nearly £1.2 billion.

Last week, a joint investigation by the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism was published based on invoices of hundreds of Deliveroo riders. It found that a third of the riders made less than £8.72 an hour, the national minimum wage for people over 25.

Deliveroo dismissed the report, calling the union a “fringe organization” that didn’t represent a significant number of Deliveroo riders. The company said that riders were paid for each delivery and earn “£13 per hour on average at our busiest times.”

On Monday, shares traded hands in a period called conditional dealing open to investors allocated shares in the initial offering. The stock is expected to be fully listed on the London Stock Exchange next Wednesday and can be traded without restrictions from then.

Last week, Ed Bastian, the chief executive of Delta, said he thought Georgia’s voting law had been improved, but on Wednesday he sounded a very different note.Credit…Etienne Laurent/EPA, via Shutterstock

The chief executive of Delta, Ed Bastian, sent a letter on Wednesday to employees expressing regret for the company’s muted opposition to a restrictive voting law passed last week by the Georgia legislature.

“I need to make it crystal clear that the final bill is unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values,” he wrote in an internal memo that was reviewed by The New York Times.

Mr. Bastian’s position is a stark reversal from last week. As Republican lawmakers in Georgia rushed to pass the new law, Delta, along with other big companies headquartered in Atlanta, came under pressure from activists to publicly and directly oppose the effort. Activists called for boycotts, and protested at the Delta terminal at the Atlanta airport.

Instead, Delta chose to offer general statements in support of voting rights, and work behind the scenes to try and remove some of the most onerous provisions as the new law came together. After the law was passed on Thursday, Mr. Bastian said he believed it had been improved and included several useful changes that make voting more secure.

But on Wednesday, after dozens of prominent Black executives called on corporate America to become more engaged in the issue, Mr. Bastian reversed course.

“After having time to now fully understand all that is in the bill, coupled with discussions with leaders and employees in the Black community, it’s evident that the bill includes provisions that will make it harder for many underrepresented voters, particularly Black voters, to exercise their constitutional right to elect their representatives,” he said. “That is wrong.”

Mr. Bastian went further, saying that the entire premise of the new law — and dozens of similar bills being advanced in other states around the country — was based on false pretenses.

“The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie: that there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 elections,” Mr. Bastian said. “This is simply not true. Unfortunately, that excuse is being used in states across the nation that are attempting to pass similar legislation to restrict voting rights.”

Also on Wednesday, Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, issued a statement on LinkedIn saying the company was concerned about the wave of new restrictive voting laws. “BlackRock is concerned about efforts that could limit access to the ballot for anyone,” Mr. Fink said. “Voting should be easy and accessible for ALL eligible voters.”

Kenneth Chenault, left, a former chief executive of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck, organized a letter signed by 72 Black business leaders.Credit…Left, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images; right, Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Seventy-two Black executives signed a letter calling on companies to fight a wave of voting-rights bills similar to the one that was passed in Georgia being advanced by Republicans in at least 43 states.

The effort was led by Kenneth Chenault, a former chief executive of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck, Andrew Ross Sorkin and David Gelles report for The New York Times.

The signers included Roger Ferguson Jr., the chief executive of TIAA; Mellody Hobson and John Rogers Jr., the co-chief executives of Ariel Investments; Robert F. Smith, the chief executive of Vista Equity Partners; and Raymond McGuire, a former Citigroup executive who is running for mayor of New York. The group of leaders, with support from the Black Economic Alliance, bought a full-page ad in the Wednesday print edition of The New York Times.

“The Georgia legislature was the first one,” Mr. Frazier said. “If corporate America doesn’t stand up, we’ll get these laws passed in many places in this country.”

Last year, the Human Rights Campaign began persuading companies to sign on to a pledge that states their “clear opposition to harmful legislation aimed at restricting the access of L.G.B.T.Q. people in society.” Dozens of major companies, including AT&T, Facebook, Nike and Pfizer, signed on.

To Mr. Chenault, the contrast between the business community’s response to that issue and to voting restrictions that disproportionately harm Black voters was telling.

“You had 60 major companies — Amazon, Google, American Airlines — that signed on to the statement that states a very clear opposition to harmful legislation aimed at restricting the access of L.G.B.T.Q. people in society,” he said. “So, you know, it is bizarre that we don’t have companies standing up to this.”

“This is not new,” Mr. Chenault added. “When it comes to race, there’s differential treatment. That’s the reality.”

A Huawei store in Beijing. The United States has placed strict controls on Huawei’s ability to buy and make computer chips.Credit…Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Chinese tech behemoth Huawei reported sharply slower growth in sales last year, which the company blamed on American sanctions that have both hobbled its ability to produce smartphones and left those handsets unable to run popular Google apps and services, limiting their appeal to many buyers.

Huawei said on Wednesday that global revenue was around $137 billion in 2020, 3.8 percent higher than the year before. The company’s sales growth in 2019 was 19.1 percent.

Over the past two years, Washington has placed strict controls on Huawei’s ability to buy and make computer chips and other essential components. United States officials have expressed concern that the Chinese government could use Huawei or its products for espionage and sabotage. The company has denied that it is a security threat.

In recent months, Huawei has continued to release new handset models. But sales have suffered, including in its home market. Worldwide, shipments of Huawei phones fell by 22 percent between 2019 and 2020, according to the research firm Canalys, making the company the world’s third largest smartphone vendor last year. In 2019, it was No. 2, behind Samsung.

Huawei remained top dog last year in telecom network equipment, according to the consultancy Dell’Oro Group, even as Britain and other governments blocked Huawei from building their nations’ 5G infrastructure.

Announcing the company’s financial results on Wednesday, Ken Hu, one of its deputy chairmen, said that despite the challenges, Huawei was not changing the broad direction of its business. Another Huawei executive recently revealed on social media that the company was offering an artificial intelligence product for pig farms, which some people took as a sign that Huawei was diversifying to survive.

Mr. Hu took note of the news reports about Huawei’s pig-farming product but said it was “not true” that the company was making any major shifts. “Huawei’s business direction is still focused on technology infrastructure,” he said.

Apple led the $50 million funding round in UnitedMasters, which allows musicians keep ownership of their master recordings.Credit…Kathy Willens/Associated Press

Apple is investing in UnitedMasters, a music distribution company that lets musicians bypass traditional record labels.

Artists who distribute through UnitedMasters keep ownership of their master recordings and pay either a yearly fee or 10 percent of their royalties.

Apple led the $50 million funding round, announced on Wednesday, which values UnitedMasters at $350 million, the DealBook newsletter reports. Existing investors, including Alphabet and Andreessen Horowitz, also participated in the funding.

Musicians are increasingly taking ownership of their work. Taylor Swift, most famously, and Anita Baker, most recently, have publicized their fights with labels over their master recordings. Artists once needed the heft of major publishing labels — which typically demand ownership of master recordings — to build a fan base. But with social media, labels no longer play as significant a gatekeeping role. UnitedMasters has partnerships with the N.B.A., ESPN, TikTok and Twitch, deals that reflect the new ways that people discover music.

“Technology, no doubt, has transformed music for consumers,” said Steve Stoute, the former major label executive who founded UnitedMasters. “Now it’s time for technology to change the economics for the artists.” The deal with UnitedMasters is about “empowering creators,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of internet software and services, said.

As streaming services, including Apple’s, compete for subscribers, they are cutting more favorable deals with the artists who attract users to platforms. Spotify announced an initiative called “Loud and Clear” this week to detail how it pays musicians following public pressure.

An H&M store in Beijing. The retailer’s chief executive, Helena Helmersson, said H&M had a “long-term commitment” to China.Credit…Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

More than a week after the Swedish retailer H&M came under fire in China for a months-old statement expressing concern over reports of Uyghur forced labor in the region of Xinjiang, a major source of cotton, the company published a statement saying it hoped to regain the trust of customers in China.

In recent days, H&M and other Western clothing brands including Nike and Burberry that expressed concerns over reports coming out of Xinjiang have faced an outcry on Chinese social media, including calls for a boycott endorsed by President Xi Jinping’s government. The brands’ local celebrity partners have terminated their contracts, Chinese landlords have shuttered stores and their products have been removed from major e-commerce platforms.

Caught between calls for patriotism among Chinese consumers and campaigns for conscientious sourcing of cotton in the West, some other companies, including Inditex, the owner of the fast-fashion giant Zara, quietly removed statements on forced labor from their websites.

On Wednesday, H&M, the world’s second-largest fashion retailer by sales after Inditex, published a response to the controversy as part of its first quarter 2021 earnings report.

Not that it said much. There were no explicit references to cotton, Xinjiang or forced labor. However, the statement said that H&M wanted to be “a responsible buyer, in China and elsewhere” and was “actively working on next steps with regards to material sourcing.”

“We are dedicated to regaining the trust and confidence of our customers, colleagues, and business partners in China,” it said.

During the earnings conference call, the chief executive, Helena Helmersson, noted the company’s “long-term commitment to the country” and how Chinese suppliers, which were “at the forefront of innovation and technology,” would continue to “play an important role in further developing the entire industry.”

“We are working together with our colleagues in China to do everything we can to manage the current challenges and find a way forward, ” she said.

Executives on the call did not comment on the impact of the controversy on sales, except to state that around 20 stores in China were currently closed.

H&M’s earnings report, which covered a period before the recent outcry in China, reflected diminished profit for a retailer still dealing with pandemic lockdowns. Net sales in the three months through February fell 21 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago, with more than 1,800 stores temporarily closed.

Stocks on Wall Street rose as investors waited for President Biden to lay out plans for a $2 trillion package of infrastructure spending on Wednesday, which he is expected to propose funding with an increase in corporate taxes.

The S&P 500 index opened with a gain of about 0.3 percent, while the Nasdaq composite climbed about 0.7 percent. Bonds fell with the yield on 10-year Treasury notes at 1.72 percent. On Tuesday, the 10-year yield climbed as high 1.77 percent, a level not seen since January 2020.

Prospects of a strong economic recovery in the United States, supported by large amounts of fiscal spending and the vaccine rollout, have pushed bond yields higher. Economic growth and higher inflation have made bonds less appealing as investors adjust their expectations for how much longer the Federal Reserve will need to keep its easy-money policies.

  • European stock indexes were mixed. The Stoxx Europe 600 index rose slightly, while the FTSE 100 index in Britain dropped about 0.3 percent.

  • H&M shares fell 3 percent in Stockholm after the clothing retailer reported a drop in sales in its quarterly earnings and said it was “dedicated to regaining the trust and confidence” of its Chinese customers and partners. Recently, H&M and other brands have been caught up in calls for a boycott in China after they expressed concerns about forced labor in the region of Xinjiang, a major source of cotton. H&M’s shares have dropped 10 percent in the past two weeks.

  • Deliveroo shares dropped 25 percent below their I.P.O. price on their first morning of trading in London. The food delivery company’s public debut has been marred by concerns about low pay for its riders and lack of profits, and major investors sat out the offering.

  • Apple rose 1 percent after Huawei, the Chinese tech company, said sales of its smartphones and other products were hit by American sanctions. Last year, its global revenue rose 3.8 percent compared with a 16 percent increase in 2019.

The Ever Given cargo ship was stuck in the Suez Canal nearly a week.Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The traffic jam at the Suez Canal will soon ease, but behemoth container ships like the one that blocked that crucial passageway for almost a week aren’t going anywhere.

Global supply chains were already under pressure when the Ever Given, a ship longer than the Empire State Building and capable of carrying 20,000 containers, wedged itself between the banks of the Suez Canal last week. It was freed on Monday, but left behind “disruptions and backlogs in global shipping that could take weeks, possibly months, to unravel,” according to A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company.

The crisis was short, but it was also years in the making, reports Niraj Chokshi for The New York Times.

For decades, shipping lines have been making bigger and bigger vessels, driven by an expanding global appetite for electronics, clothes, toys and other goods. The growth in ship size, which sped up in recent years, often made economic sense: Bigger vessels are generally cheaper to build and operate on a per-container basis. But the largest ships can come with their own set of problems, not only for the canals and ports that have to handle them, but for the companies that build them.

“They did what they thought was most efficient for themselves — make the ships big — and they didn’t pay much attention at all to the rest of the world,” said Marc Levinson, an economist and author of “Outside the Box,” a history of globalization. “But it turns out that these really big ships are not as efficient as the shipping lines had imagined.”

Despite the risks they pose, however, massive vessels still dominate global shipping. According to Alphaliner, a data firm, the global fleet of container ships includes 133 of the largest ship type — those that can carry 18,000 to 24,000 containers. Another 53 are on order.

A.P. Moller-Maersk said it was premature to blame Ever Given’s size for what happened in the Suez. Ultra-large ships “have existed for many years and have sailed through the Suez Canal without issues,” Palle Brodsgaard Laursen, the company’s chief technical officer, said in a statement on Tuesday.

  • Some of the most vulnerable Americans still haven’t received their stimulus checks, but millions of them who receive federal benefits should get their payments next week, according to the Internal Revenue Service. People who receive benefits from Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, the Railroad Retirement Board and Veterans Affairs — but do not file tax returns because they don’t meet the income thresholds — were among those who faced delays. But most of them, with the exception of those receiving benefits from Veterans Affairs, could have their payments arrive by direct deposit on April 7.

  • About a million student loan borrowers who were left out of earlier relief efforts are getting a reprieve — but only if they defaulted on their loans. The Education Department said on Tuesday that it would temporarily stop collecting on defaulted loans that were made through the Family Federal Education Loans program and were privately held. The change, however, still leaves millions of other borrowers in that program responsible for payments while the bulk of the country’s student loan borrowers have had theirs paused.

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Counting of Ballots Begins in Amazon Union Vote: Reside Updates

The Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Charity Rachelle for The New York Times

The counting of votes that will determine whether to a union can form at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., begins Tuesday. But the results of the union election, one of the most consequential in recent memory, may not be known until later this week or early next week because the vote can often involve a painstaking process that will be closely scrutinized by representatives from the union and Amazon.

The ballots, which were mailed out to workers in early February, must be signed and had to be received by the National Labor Relations Board at its Birmingham office by the end of Monday.

First, a staff member at the labor board will read the names of the workers, without opening an inner envelope with the actual ballot. Representatives from the union and Amazon will be on a private video conference. As each name is read, they will check the workers’ names against a staff list, and if either side contests whether that worker was eligible to vote, that ballot will be set aside. A representative from each side is also expected to be there in person to observe the process.

After the two sides have had the opportunity to make their objections about eligibility, the N.L.R.B. will begin counting the uncontested ballots. After every 100 votes, the labor board will count those ballots again until all the votes are counted. This portion will be open to reporters on a video conference line.

A finding of more contested ballots than uncontested is likely to set off legal arguments by the Retail Warehouse and Department Store union, which has led the organizing drive, and Amazon over the eligibility of each contested ballot. Each side has about a week to make its case before N.L.R.B. certifies the vote.

Either side can contest whether the vote was conducted fairly. The union, for instance, could argue that the company took steps to improperly sway the vote, by potentially making workers fearful of reprisal if they supported organizing.

If the union prevails, workers fear that the company may shut down the warehouse. Amazon has backed away from locations that brought it headaches before.

But the company has committed more than $360 million in leases and equipment for the Bessemer warehouse, and shutting down the vote of a large Black work force could publicly backfire, said Marc Wulfraat, a logistics consultant who closely tracks the company.

A worker inspecting disposable gloves at a Top Glove factory near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in August.Credit…Mohd Rasfan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

United States Customs and Border Protection has ordered port officials to seize disposable gloves made by the world’s largest rubber glove maker, a Malaysian company that the agency says uses forced labor in its factories.

Customs and Border Protection said in a statement on Monday that it had “sufficient information to believe” that the company, Top Glove, “uses forced labor in the production of disposable gloves.”

Last July, the agency issued an import ban on products from two Top Glove subsidiaries because they were suspected of using forced labor. On Monday, it said it had determined that rubber gloves produced by the company with forced, convict or indentured labor “are being, or are likely to be, imported into the United States.”

Based on that determination, the agency said in a notice, it had authorized U.S. port directors to seize the gloves and start forfeiture proceedings unless importers can produce evidence showing that the gloves were not produced with prohibited labor.

The notice was the result of a monthslong investigation “aimed at preventing goods made by modern slavery from entering U.S. commerce,” Troy Miller, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said in a statement.

The agency, he said, “will not tolerate foreign companies’ exploitation of vulnerable workers to sell cheap, unethically made goods to American consumers.” He added that the agency had “taken steps to ensure” that the enforcement action would not significantly affect total imports of disposable gloves into the United States.

After the import ban on Top Glove subsidiaries last summer, officials at the company said they were upgrading their worker dormitories and paying restitution to affected workers.

The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it was in touch with the U.S. agency and hoped to “resolve any ongoing areas of concern immediately.”

Top Glove also said it had engaged a independent labor consultancy from Britain since last July. That consultancy, Impactt Limited, said in a statement this month that its latest investigations had not turned up any “systemic forced labor” among the company’s direct employees.

But Andy Hall, a labor rights campaigner based in Nepal, said on Tuesday that Top Glove “remains an unethical company whose factories and supply chain continue to utilize forced labor,” and one that prioritizes profits and production efficiency over its workers’ basic rights.

Mr. Hall said he welcomed the Customs and Border Protection notice, and that the next step would be holding the company’s owners and investors to account.

Top Glove controls roughly a quarter of the global rubber glove market and has 21,000 employees. Many of them come from some of Asia’s poorest countries — including Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal — and live and work in crowded conditions.

The company has enjoyed record profits during the pandemic, even though thousands of its low-paid workers in Malaysia suffered from a large coronavirus outbreak last year.

Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks goes up for a shot against Ben Simmons and Danny Green of the Philadelphia 76ers. Sports fans can buy, sell and collect digital “moments” on N.B.A. Top Shot.Credit…Matt Slocum/Associated Press

Dapper Labs, the blockchain company that has pushed digital collectibles known as NFTs, for nonfungible tokens, said on Tuesday that it had raised $305 million in new funding.

The company, which has a partnership with the National Basketball Association, created an online marketplace called N.B.A. Top Shot in October where sports fans can buy, sell and collect digital “moments” — essentially, video clips of basketball players. But unlike most basketball highlights that can be found on YouTube or ESPN, these moments are on a blockchain, a digital ledger that records cryptocurrency transactions, which makes it possible for fans to buy, collect and exchange them like trading cards.

Top Shot has exploded in popularity, part of a larger frenzy for cryptocurrencies and NFTs that has driven up the value of Bitcoin and led to head-turning bids for digital artwork. There have been more than three million Top Shot transactions, Dapper Labs said, generating $500 million in sales. The company makes money through the sale of the digital moments and also collects a cut whenever a moment is resold.

The new funding values Dapper Labs, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, at $2.6 billion. It is the biggest financing for the company, which had previously raised $52.5 million.

Investors in the new funding include the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, the hedge fund Coatue Management and former and current N.B.A. stars including Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Kyle Lowry and Klay Thompson, as well as celebrities like Will Smith and Ashton Kutcher.

Roham Gharegozlou, the Dapper Labs founder and chief executive — who also created the 2017 blockchain game CryptoKitties — said Top Shot had “catalyzed” the excitement surrounding NFTs.

“I think N.B.A. Top Shot is proving that these platforms are ready for prime time,” he said.

Mr. Gharegozlou said the new funding would go toward partnerships with other sports leagues like the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the mixed martial arts organization. He said the company would also hire more employees and fund NFT ventures made by other start-ups.

The Obama administration had said that a design “concept” featuring Harriet Tubman on the face of the $20 bill would be unveiled by 2020.Credit…Harvey B. Lindsley/Library of Congress, via Associated Press

On the first day of the Biden presidency, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that the Treasury Department was “taking steps to resume efforts” to put the abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. “It’s important that our money reflects the history and diversity of our country,” Ms. Psaki said.

But it will probably be years before we see the Underground Railroad conductor gracing U.S. currency, the DealBook newsletter reports.

The reason? The deadline for printing a new version of the $20 bill is 2030. It was set by an anti-counterfeiting committee in 2013, two years before Tubman won a campaign to replace President Andrew Jackson on the bill.

“The primary reason currency is redesigned is for security against counterfeiting,” Lydia Washington, a representative for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, told DealBook. “The redesign timeline is driven by security feature development.”

The Obama administration said that a design “concept” would be unveiled by 2020, to coincide with the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Extensive redesign work was reportedly done, but in 2019, President Donald J. Trump’s Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said the project would be delayed until at least 2026. (Insiders said they had always doubted that the 2020 deadline could be met).

It turns out that the complex design and testing process for currency cannot be hurried. “No final images have been selected,” Ms. Washington said. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The container ship Ever Given was refloated on Monday, unblocking the Suez Canal. Oil prices fell as ship traffic on the waterway resumed.Credit…Mahmoud Khaled/Getty Images

  • Wall Street opened lower on Tuesday, as bond yields jumped higher.

  • The S&P 500 was down 0.3 percent in morning trading, and the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite declined 0.7 percent.

  • In bond markets, attention was returning to the pace of the economic recovery in the United States as more details of President Biden’s clean energy and infrastructure spending plans emerged, including a huge expansion of offshore wind energy along the East Coast. A $3 trillion economic package is in the works, on the heels of the $1.9 trillion economic recovery bill.

  • Bond prices dropped, sending yields on 10-year bonds sharply higher. The yield on U.S. Treasury notes rose 5 basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 1.76 percent, the highest since January 2020. Faster economic growth is likely to lead to higher prices, which reduces the appeal of bonds.

  • Most European stock indexes rose, with the Stoxx Europe 600 up 0.5 percent. Data published on Tuesday showed an increase in inflation in Spain and Germany, while an index of economic confidence for the eurozone in March was at its highest level since before the pandemic.

  • Oil prices fell. Futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, fell 1.5 percent to $60.61 a barrel. With the Suez Canal now unblocked, focus shifted to the meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies beginning Thursday to decide on production quotas for May. In early March, OPEC decided to keep the tighter quotas the same for April.

  • “Much as the Suez Canal is seeing traffic return progressively to normal, it seems that bond markets are returning to pricing the economic recovery,” analysts at ING wrote, referring to the rise in bond yields. They also warned that traders and investors settling positions for the end of the first quarter would affect market prices this week.

  • Shares in the Swiss bank Credit Suisse and the Japanese bank Nomura extended their deep declines slightly from Monday, when the banks said they faced losses as they tried to exit positions tied to an American hedge fund, Archegos.

  • The British pound rose 0.2 percent against the euro to the strongest level in 13 months as England’s lockdown restrictions were eased slightly on Monday.

A mobile touch screen doubles as a digital whiteboard while a cellphone on a tripod makes a recording that can be used later in a presentation.Credit…John Muggenborg for The New York Times

As company heads are once again planning for a return to the office, it is not only safety measures but also the new work arrangements that are driving discussions about the post-pandemic workplace. More than 80 percent of companies are embracing a hybrid model whereby employees will be in the office three days a week, according to a new survey by KayoCloud, a real estate technology platform.

Workplaces are being reimagined for activities benefiting from face-to-face interaction, including collaboration on projects, Jane Margolies reports for The New York Times.

Common areas will be increased and equipped with furniture that can be moved as needs change. Steelcase and Knoll, suppliers of office furniture, report strong interest in mobile tables, carts and partitions.

As the amount of space devoted to gathering expands, the fate of one’s own personal turf at the office — a desk decorated with family photos, a couple of file cabinets — hangs in the balance. In some cases, personal desks are being replaced with “hoteling” workstations, also called hot desks, which can be used by whoever needs a place to touch down for a day.

Conference rooms, too, are getting a reboot. Companies are puzzling over how to give remote workers the same ability to participate as those who are physically present. There are even early discussions about using artificial intelligence to conjure up holographic representations of employees who are off-site but could still take a seat at the table. And digital whiteboards are likely to become more popular, so workers at home can see what’s being written in real time.

Kroger requires employees and customers to wear masks.Credit…Eze Amos for The New York Times

Retail and fast-food workers feel newly vulnerable in states like Mississippi and Texas, where governments have removed mask mandates before a majority of people have been vaccinated and while troubling new variants of the coronavirus are appearing.

It feels like a return to the early days of the pandemic, when businesses said customers must wear masks but there was no legal requirement and numerous shoppers simply refused, Sapna Maheshwari reports for The New York Times. Many workers say that their stores do not enforce the requirement, and that if they do approach customers, they risk verbal or physical altercations.

For many people who work in retail, especially grocery stores and big-box chains, the repeals of the mask mandates are another example of how little protection and appreciation they have received during the pandemic. They were praised as essential workers, but that rarely translated into extra pay on top of their low wages. Grocery employees were not initially given priority for vaccinations in most states, even as health experts cautioned the public to limit time in grocery stores because of the risk posed by new coronavirus variants. (Texas opened availability to everyone 16 and older on Monday.)

The differing state and business mandates have some workers worried about more confrontations. Refusing service to people without masks, or asking them to leave, has led to incidents in the past year like a cashier’s being punched in the face, a Target employee getting his arm broken and the fatal shooting of a Family Dollar security guard.

Emily Francois, a sales associate at a Walmart in Port Arthur, Texas, said that customers had been ignoring signs to wear masks and that Walmart had not been enforcing the policy.

“I see customers coming in without a mask and they’re coughing, sneezing, they’re not covering their mouths,” said Ms. Francois, who has worked at Walmart for 14 years and is a member of United for Respect, an advocacy group. “Customers coming in the store without masks make us feel like we aren’t worthy, we aren’t safe.”