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Singapore Moves to Relax Covid-19 Curbs | By P.R. Venkat and Ben Otto
Singapore next week will begin relaxing most of its Covid-19 restrictions, including by easing border controls, with the virus largely under control in the Southeast Asian nation.
Beginning March 29, the city-state will allow up to 75% of employees who can work from home to return to offices, as well as double the permissible size of groups to 10 people, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Thursday.
Cross-border travel will be eased `` substantially, '' with officials lifting most restrictions for fully vaccinated visitors to the country, Mr. Lee said. The use of masks will now be optional outdoors while remaining mandatory indoors.
`` Our fight against Covid-19 has reached a major turning point, '' Mr. Lee said. `` We are not quite yet at the finish line, though we are getting closer. ''
Mr. Lee added that the Omicron wave has crested in Singapore and is now subsiding, but the country is stopping short of a full end to Covid measures to allow conditions to further stabilize. He noted some countries that declared the pandemic finished `` are anxiously watching their infection and mortality numbers rising rapidly again. ''
The relaxation comes two years after the regional financial hub introduced mobility and gathering curbs to address the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
According the country's health ministry, 93% of the total population in Singapore has received at least one vaccination dose, while 71% of the total population has received booster shots.
Write to Ben Otto at ben.otto @ wsj.com
( END) Dow Jones Newswires
03-23-22 2355ET | business |
Covid 'hasn’ t gone away ' as hospitalisations rise again | People have been urged to `` rekindle old public health habits '' such as hand washing and mask-wearing. Picture: Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie
There is a need for the public to be sensible and responsible about public health measures to combat the current rise in Covid-19 cases, a leading medic has said.
The chair of the Irish Medical Organisation’ s GP committee, Dr Denis McCauley, said that doctors were seeing a surge in Covid cases with some people getting quite ill.
More than 23,500 cases of Covid-19 were confirmed on Tuesday, while the number of people in hospital and in intensive care has been rising.
Some 1,395 people were recorded as being in hospital with the virus on Wednesday, the highest number it has been at since February 2021. It is a rise of 56 on yesterday's figure. 61 patients were in ICU on Tuesday, which was a jump of 11.
Dr McCauley said that there was a problem and it needed to be recognised. Thinking needed to be changed “ subtly ” initially, he told RTÉ radio’ s Morning Ireland.
The public needed to be advised to wear masks in settings where there were groups of people and to maintain social distance and continue to wash hands.
He added that public health measures worked, warning: “ This hasn’ t gone away, it’ s coming back ”.
“ Let’ s be sensible, simple public health measures should be recommended again. ”
People had been hoping the virus would go away, that hasn’ t happened so now action needed to be taken, he said.
“ We are a little bit in denial. ”
Politicians did not want to be seen as the bearers of bad news, but there was nothing wrong with being sensible and responsible, he said, adding: “ We need to rekindle old public health habits. ” | general |
Singapore to relax more COVID curbs including for overseas arrivals | Singapore was one of the first countries to shift to a strategy of living with COVID-19, but had to slow some of its easing plans due to subsequent outbreaks.
The Southeast Asian country's Omicron wave has started to subside. At its peak, Singapore reported a record of nearly 26,000 cases in February, but the daily number of infections fell to about 9,000 on Wednesday.
Most cases have mild or no symptoms, with about 92% of its 5.5 million population having been fully vaccinated. Another 71% have received a booster jab.
( Reporting by Chen Lin and Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore; Editing by Ed Davies) | business |
Wall Street pulls back on stocks, Treasury yields dip | ( Updates to U.S. market close)
* U.S. stock indexes drop more than 1%
* Oil rises up more than 5% on continued Ukraine conflict
* U.S. Treasury yields dip after big gains earlier in month
March 23 ( Reuters) - Wall Street pushed stocks and Treasury yields down on Wednesday after both had powered higher earlier in the week as investors took in the strength of the economy and hawkish comments from U.S. policymakers.
Two-year U.S. Treasury yields have risen sharply so far in March and were set for their biggest monthly jump since 2004. Investors have been relatively sanguine about the implications of higher yields on stock market valuations, with many choosing to buy back in after a bruising few months for equity prices.
That narrative took a pause on Wednesday as major U.S. equities indexes declined more than 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 448.96 points, or 1.29%, to 34,358.5; the S & P 500 lost 55.41 points, or 1.23%, to 4,456.2; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 186.21 points, or 1.32%, to 13,922.60.
European stocks also fell about 1%, with a pan-European equity benchmark hitting a new one-month high in early London trading before falling back as traders took profits. MSCI's broadest gauge of world stocks declined 0.9%.
Investors were still trying to make up their minds about interest rates and stocks.
`` Although there is widespread criticism, it's too early to take the view that the Fed won't be able to negotiate the fine line of reducing inflation without derailing growth, '' said Mark Haefele, Chief Investment Officer, UBS Global Wealth Management.
`` Given a higher degree of uncertainty, rather than make a directional play on stocks moving higher, we prefer selected overweight and underweight positions, yielding an overall neutral allocation to equities. ''
BOND SELL-OFF
The most eye-catching moves recently have been in the bond market, although there was some reversal on Wednesday. The two-year U.S. Treasury yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations, was down 4.8 basis points at 2.107%. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was down 7.6 basis points to 2.301%.
The sharp rise in short-dated yields has flattened the gap between two- and 10-year U.S. yields to its lowest levels since the coronavirus pandemic hit global markets in March 2020. An inverted yield curve is widely seen as a predictor of future U.S. recessions.
JPMorgan market strategists wrote in a recent note that markets have rebounded recently because investors are `` looking through the hawkish Fed and ominous signal '' from the rates curve flattening.
`` We believe this is warranted given strong economic fundamentals, our expectation the ( two-year and 10-year Treasury) curve will stay positive this year, and moderating risks of large energy supply disruptions, '' they wrote.
The economics conversation came as Western leaders began gathering in Brussels to plan more measures to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt his month-old Ukraine campaign; Putin, in response, said Moscow planned to switch its gas sales to `` unfriendly '' countries to roubles.
Oil prices rose in volatile trading on Wednesday, supported by disruption of Russian and Kazakh crude exports. U.S. crude recently rose 4.71% to $ 114.42 per barrel and Brent was at $ 121.37, up 5.1% on the day.
Gold prices also gained on Wednesday as investors looked to shield against soaring inflation and uncertainty caused by events in Ukraine, with elevated U.S. bond yields capping gains in non-interest-bearing metal. Spot gold added 1.3% to $ 1,946.44 an ounce.
Currency market activity continued to be relatively subdued, confirming the lack of clear directional trends.
Against the U.S. dollar, the yen was up about 0.25% by 2000 GMT/4 pm ET, but held around 121 yen after Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said it was premature to debate the exit from ultra-loose monetary policy.
The euro and sterling fell about 0.25% and 0.4% respectively against a broadly stronger dollar.
( Reporting by Lawrence Delevingne in Boston, Saikat Chatterjee and Tommy Wilkes in London; Editing by Nick Macfie, Kirsten Donovan, Cynthia Osterman and Jonathan Oatis) | business |
China finds first black box from crashed jet, U.S. discussing quarantine for investigators | The black box device recovered is the plane's cockpit voice recorder, based on an early assessment, a Civil Aviation Administration of China ( CAAC) official told a media briefing, adding that the recording material appeared to have survived impact in relatively good shape.
Flight MU5735 was en route from the southwestern city of Kunming to Guangzhou on the coast on Monday when the Boeing 737-800 jet suddenly plunged from cruising altitude at about the time when it should have started its descent before landing.
The cause of the crash has yet to be determined. Most of the jet appears to have disintegrated upon impact, although some debris and human remains have been found.
`` An initial inspection showed that the exterior of the recorder has been severely damaged, but the storage units, while also damaged to some extent, are relatively complete, '' CAAC official Zhu Tao said.
The black box is being sent to an institute in Beijing for decoding, although how long that takes would depend on the extent of the damage, Zhu said.
Weather along the flight path on Monday did not pose any danger to the aircraft and air controllers had communication with it after take-off and prior to its rapid descent, said Mao Yanfeng, head of aircraft investigation at CAAC.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday that Chinese authorities had invited the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board ( NTSB) to take part in the investigation of the crash, adding that he was very encouraged by the invitation to be on the ground in China.
The NTSB, however, later said it had not yet determined if investigators would travel to China in light of visa and quarantine requirements.
`` We are working with the Department of State to address those issues with the Chinese government before any travel will be determined, '' the NTSB said.
China has very few COVID cases and strict requirements for at least two weeks of hotel quarantine on arrival for citizens and foreigners. A World Health Organization team that last year investigated the origins of the pandemic had to quarantine first.
The crash investigation is being led by China but the United States is invited to take part because the plane was manufactured there.
The Chinese authorities have said the plane, which did not respond to repeated calls during its descent, met airworthiness standards before take-off and all three pilots - one more than normally required on a 737 - were in good health.
The captain, hired in January 2018, had 6,709 hours flying experience, while the first and second officers had 31,769 hours and 556 hours, respectively, a China Eastern official said.
`` From what we know, the performance of the three pilots had been good and their family life relatively harmonious, '' the official said.
One co-pilot was an observer to build up experience, the airline said.
EXTRA PRECAUTIONS
China Eastern tightened precautions after the crash, requiring two senior captains and a senior co-pilot on a three-person crew on some aircraft types, state-backed The Paper said.
Heavy rain in southern China on Wednesday hampered the search for victims and black boxes, with wet weather forecast to last the rest of the week.
Grief-stricken relatives visited the site, among them a retiree surnamed Zhang from Shenzhen, whose eyes filled with tears as he told Reuters his nephew was onboard.
`` I hope the country can thoroughly investigate this matter and find out whether it was the manufacturer's fault or it was a maintenance problem, '' Zhang said.
CAAC has launched a two-week inspection of the sector, involving checks on all regional air traffic control centres, airline companies and flight training institutes to ensure `` absolute '' safety.
FlightRadar24 data showed the aircraft plunged rapidly at a rate of 31,000 feet per minute.
China has improved air safety over the past two decades, and Monday's disaster was the first major crash in a dozen years.
China Eastern and two subsidiaries have grounded their fleet of more than 200 Boeing 737-800 jets. An airline official said the move was more an emergency reaction to the crash rather than a response to any safety issue.
The disaster comes as Boeing is working to recover from several crises, notably safety concerns over its 737 MAX model following two deadly crashes and the impact on travel from the pandemic.
( Additional reporting by Stella Qiu and Ryan Woo in Beijing, Meg Shen and Twinnie Siu in Hong Kong, David Shepardson in Washington and Jamie Freed in Sydney; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Edmund Blair, Peter Henderson, Jonathan Oatis and Bernard Orr)
By Martin Quin Pollard | business |
FTSE Edges Higher, Cautious Fiscal Spending Plans Would Likely Hold Back Sterling | Cautious UK Fiscal Spending Plans Would Likely Hold Back Sterling
U.K. Treasury chief Rishi Sunak's new fiscal spending plans may offer less support for households than expected and that could hold back sterling, MUFG Bank says. Sunak may argue for prudence given the prospect of rising costs for servicing government debt as market rates rise, MUFG says. Less-than-expected fiscal support would reinforce the risks to economic growth stemming from the cost of living crisis that looks set to worsen, the Japanese bank says. `` While the pound has performed well in recent days, we remain sceptical of any sustained move higher from here and caution from Sunak today would only reinforce our view, '' it says. Sunak is set to unveil his spring statement at 1230 GMT.
Ultra Electronics 2021 Revenue, Pretax Profit Fell on Str74onger Pound, One-Off Loss
Ultra Electronics Holdings PLC said Wednesday that revenue and pretax profit fell in 2021 due to a stronger pound against the dollar and a one-off loss on the disposal of two small loss-making noncore businesses.
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Saga Says FY 2022 Pretax Loss Narrowed Despite Covid-19 Backdrop
Saga PLC reported on Wednesday a significantly narrowed pretax loss and a material increase in revenue for fiscal 2022, and said it continued to apply its turnaround strategy amid a challenging Covid-19 backdrop.
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Petrofac 2021 Pretax Loss Widened on Drop in Revenue
Petrofac Ltd. said Wednesday that its pretax loss widened in 2021 on a fall in revenue.
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Dignity Swung to 2021 Pretax Profit; Says New Strategy Means Lower Short-Term Profits
Dignity PLC said Wednesday that it swung to 2021 pretax profit after booking lower costs, and that its new strategy will lead to lower profits in the short term.
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Halma Sees FY 2022 Profit in Line With Market Expectations, Strong Sterling Could Hurt Profit
Halma PLC said Wednesday that fiscal 2022 adjusted pretax profit is expected to be in line with market expectations due to increased demand across the group, but warned that a strong sterling could have a negative impact on its profit.
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RWS Holdings Expects FY 2022 Results in Lower End of Range of Expectations
RWS Holdings PLC said Wednesday that it expects fiscal 2022 results to be around the lower end of the range of current market expectations.
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James Cropper to Miss FY 2022 Adjusted Pretax Profit Market Forecasts
James Cropper PLC said Wednesday that it will miss adjusted pretax profit market expectations for fiscal 2022 due to the rise in wholesale gas prices over the latest quarter, which has hurt its paper unit.
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Pendragon Swung to 2021 Pretax Profit, Sees Potential Disruption From Ukraine Conflict
Pendragon PLC said Wednesday that it swung to a pretax profit on increased revenue in 2021 after booking strong performance in all parts of the business, but warned that the Ukraine conflict may hit new vehicle supply.
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Henry Boot 2021 Pretax Profit More Than Doubled
Henry Boot PLC said Wednesday that 2021 pretax profit more than doubled on a strong performance from residential land sales, industrial development, investment property revaluation gains and returns from joint ventures.
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AB Dynamics's 1H Performance Was in Line With Views; FY 2022's Forecasts Unchanged
AB Dynamics PLC said Wednesday that its performance for the first half of fiscal 2022 is in line with management expectations, adding that it has been able to mitigate the effects of inflationary cost pressures by rising its prices for new orders.
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Quartix Technologies Sees 1Q Performance in Line With Market Views
Quartix Technologies PLC said Wednesday that it expects first-quarter performance to meet market expectations, with a 25% on-year increase in new installations and a gain in annualized recurring revenue that was significantly ahead of the growth rate a year earlier.
Diageo Needs to Ensure Smirnoff Brand's 'Not Russian ' Message is Clear
1135 GMT - U.K. drinks company Diageo needs to make sure that consumers understand well that its Smirnoff vodka brand isn't Russian or produced in Russia, Jefferies says. The U.S. bank notes that Smirnoff -- which represents 7% of the group sales -- had a spike in consumer interest on social media following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, making it important that the `` not Russian '' message be well understood to avoid a consumer backlash. Jefferies sees Diageo as well-positioned to face higher cost-of-goods-sold and says its growth model is working. Jefferies has a buy recommendation on the stock with a price target of 4,100.0 pence.
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Judges Scientific's Recovery Momentum Is Evident
1118 GMT - Although Judges Scientific delivered a good 2021 performance, analysts at Shore Capital note some tailwinds in the form of tax and capitalized development expenses in the published EPS performance. Nevertheless, momentum for the precision-instruments maker is evident with six of the portfolio businesses showing a record performance in the year and others recovering from the pandemic with benefits from this still to come in 2022, Shore says. Analysts say they are aware of the uncertainties stemming from the war in Ukraine and note that inflationary trends on costs and stiff supply chains have to be managed. `` We confidently hold our current forecasts at this juncture, but would otherwise expect to upgrade later in the year reflecting the order book, '' Shore says.
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UK Inflation Overshoot Adds Pressure on BOE to Raise Rates
1113 GMT - A bigger-than-expected increase in U.K. consumer prices in February is likely to add further pressure on the Bank of England to keep tightening monetary policy, says social investment network eToro. Official data showed the annual rate of inflation rose to 6.2% in the month, beating expectations for a 6% increase, according to a WSJ survey of economists. `` It will get worse before it gets better, with inflation set to rise to over 8% next month, under the twin impact of the 50% rise in the household energy cap and further fuel price rises, '' it says. This piles pressure on the BOE to continue raising interest rates to contain inflation, it says.
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Pendragon Takeover Talk in Focus, Developments Seen as Material for Share Price
1110 GMT - Pendragon's 2021 results were slightly ahead of company guidance and takeover talk is a key focus for the U.K. motor dealership following reports on Saturday that its largest shareholder Hedin Group previously made a 28 pence-a-share offer, Berenberg says. `` Pendragon's share price has risen by 24% since the reports, and any further developments will of course likely be material for the share price, '' the German bank says, adding that Hedin was said to be considering a further offer. Elsewhere, continuing margin support from supply-chain constraints, coupled with increasing confidence in underlying improvement delivery, leads Berenberg to raise its estimate of Pendragon's 2022 EBIT by 16%. Berenberg has a buy rating on the stock and raises its target price to 36 pence from 30 pence.
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Nickel Prices Rise as Trading Returns to New Normal
1058 GMT - Nickel prices gain at the London Metal Exchange after trading was finally successfully rebooted on Tuesday -- at the fifth attempt, Commerzbank says. Benchmark nickel prices are up 13.2% according to FactSet, to $ 32,240 a metric ton. The metal had hit daily lower limits on four consecutive trading days from March 16, having been previously suspended in trading from March 8 after a short-squeeze sent prices surging as high as $ 100,000 a ton. Following a rapid slump in prices at the start of Tuesday's trading, which saw the lower limit narrowly missed, prices picked up again and were down 10.3% at the end of the day's trading, Commerzbank says. `` Whether trading settles back into more normal patterns will become evident over the next few days, '' it adds.
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Halma Gains After 'Robust ' FY Trading Update
1018 GMT - Shares in Halma rise 0.9% after the FTSE 100-listed safety-equipment supplier forecast 2021/22 adjusted pretax profit in line with market expectations due to increased demand, but warned that strong sterling could weigh. The trading update for the year to the end of March was robust, Jefferies says. Lack of detailed guidance for the year ahead may disappoint investors, though the company said orders have continued to track ahead of revenue and ahead of last year, the brokerage says. `` One item of interest for us is the drop-off in M & A to GBP55 million in 2H22 from GBP111m in 1H22, though the company does say the pipeline remains 'healthy ', '' Jefferies says.
Contact: London NewsPlus, Dow Jones Newswires; Write to Sarka Halas at sarka.halas @ wsj.com
( END) Dow Jones Newswires
03-23-22 0804ET | business |
Equities creep to five-week highs, ignore bond selloff | * Graphic: Global asset performance http: //tmsnrt.rs/2yaDPgn
* Graphic: World FX rates http: //tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh
LONDON, March 23 ( Reuters) - World stocks climbed to five-week highs on Wednesday as investors ignored a broadening selloff in global bond markets fuelled by a combination of soaring inflation and hawkish comments from U.S. policymakers.
Even though two-year U.S. Treasury yields are up 73 bps so far in March and set for their biggest monthly jump since 2004, investors have been relatively sanguine about the implications of higher yields on stock market valuations.
MSCI's broadest gauge of world stocks rose 0.2% to a Feb. 17 high, a level last seen days before Russia invaded Ukraine. An Asian gauge rose 1% to its highest since early March.
European stocks also rose, with a pan-European equity benchmark hitting a new 1-month high in early London trading. U.S. stock futures signalled small gains.
`` It is almost as if the negative impacts of inflation, rising interest rates and the uncertainties of war are no longer of concern, '' said Stuart Cole, head macro economist at Equiti Capital, who added that investors were focusing on stocks that could withstand the high inflationary environment.
Technology shares which have had an inverse correlation with higher interest rates in the past were the biggest drivers of broader market gains, with a Hong Kong gauge of technology stocks rising to a three-week high.
Battered e-commerce giant Alibaba, which recently expanded a buyback programme, rose 6% and in Tokyo out-of-favour tech investment firm SoftBank Group rose 7%. The main U.S. tech index ended up 2% overnight cutting its year-to-date losses to 10% from 20% at mid-March.
`` ( Stocks) sold off too much and you see a bit of a rally, '' said Jun Bei Liu a portfolio manager at Tribeca Investment Partners in Sydney, but she added it had the flavour of hedge fund short covering rather than new money piling in.
BOND SELLOFF
But the bulk the action was focused in the bond markets, with two-year U.S. yields pausing for breath at a six-year high after a massive rise this month.
The sharp rise in short-dated yields flattened the gap between two and 10-year U.S. yields to its lowest levels since the coronavirus pandemic hit global markets in March 2020. An inverted yield curve is widely seen as a predictor for future U.S. recessions.
The selloff in short-dated yields prompted Fed fund futures to price in an aggressive 190 bps through the remainder of the year after a 25 bps rate hike last week. Futures were nearly pricing in the probability of a 50 bps hike in May.
The selloff in U.S. markets reverberated elsewhere with German and British bond yields climbing, with soaring British inflation readings also a factor. Data showed inflation rose to a new 30-year high of 6.2% last month.
Currency market activity continued to be relatively subdued with major FX pairs trading in tight ranges, confirming the lack of any clear directional trends with the Japanese yen the only notable outlier.
Against the U.S. dollar, the Japanese unit is now trading below 121 yen after Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said it was premature to debate the exit from ultra-loose monetary policy.
Commodity markets have been kept on edge by anticipated supply disruptions from the war in Ukraine and were firm against a lack of tangible progress toward peace.
Oil steadied at lofty heights, with Brent crude futures up 1% at $ 116.67 a barrel and U.S. crude up 1% to $ 110.34.
Grain prices remained supported by supply concerns, especially for delivery later in the year.
`` Those gains are a sign that the market is setting itself to be without much Black Sea supply well into season 2022, '' said Tobin Gorey, an agriculture commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.
( Reporting by Saikat Chatterjee; Additional reporting by Tom Westbrook in Singapore; Editing by Alison Williams) | business |
Japan inflation may perk up but lacks momentum, says BOJ's Kataoka | In a speech, Kataoka also said risks to the economic outlook were skewed to the downside, because of the fallout from the crisis in Ukraine and the lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
( Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Christian Schmollinger) | business |
No reason to reintroduce restrictions despite high case numbers, says CMO | While Nphet has been stood down, Dr Tony Holohan has proposed a new form of advisory group to the Government. Picture: Julien Behal/PA Wire
The Chief Medical Officer ( CMO) has told the Taoiseach that there is no need to reintroduce Covid restrictions. | general |
Shanghai's daily COVID caseload at nearly 1,000, but containment in sight | Though the number of cases in Shanghai remains small by global standards, the densely populated city has become a testing ground for China's `` zero-COVID '' strategy as it tries to bring the highly infectious Omicron variant under control.
In a meeting on Wednesday, Shanghai's Communist Party leaders emphasised the need to continue testing, implementing `` closed loops '' and cutting off transmission chains in order to bring new infections to zero as soon as possible.
The city also said more districts would be locked down for mass testing from Thursday to Friday, including the major financial district of Lujiazui, with residents told not to leave home unless strictly necessary.
Zhang Wenhong, who leads a team of experts on COVID treatment in Shanghai, said on Thursday that the city was struggling to balance its COVID response with the need to maintain normal economic activities.
But while asymptomatic cases were rising `` exponentially '' at first, the results of mass testing suggest the outbreak was now being effectively contained, he said on his Weibo microblog, though there was still no `` inflection point ''.
Some of the failings that have emerged in recent days, including difficult and lengthy lockdown conditions as well as restricted access to hospitals, needed to be resolved one by one, Zhang said.
`` Otherwise, the significance of the successful fight against the epidemic will be greatly reduced, '' he said, adding that in future, maintaining normal life in the city should be as big a priority as `` dynamic clearance ''.
Shanghai recorded four new locally transmitted symptomatic cases on March 23 and another 979 asymptomatic infections, according to data from the National Health Commission.
There were 2,054 new confirmed coronavirus cases reported for the whole of China on the same day, down from 2,667 a day earlier.
Of the new cases, 2,010 were locally transmitted, down from 2,591 a day earlier, with the majority in the northeastern province of Jilin.
New asymptomatic cases, which are compiled separately, stood at 2,829, up from 2,469 a day earlier.
As of March 23, mainland China had confirmed 139,285 cases. There were no new deaths, leaving the death toll unchanged from a day earlier at 4,638.
( Reporting by David Stanway, Ryan Woo and Yifan Wang; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Kenneth Maxwell) | business |
Global Over The Counter Drugs Market Research Report to 2027 - by Product, Distribution Channel and Region - ResearchAndMarkets.com | DUBLIN -- ( BUSINESS WIRE) -- The `` Over The Counter Drugs Market Research Report by Product, by Distribution Channel, by Region - Global Forecast to 2027 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19 '' report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.
The Global Over The Counter Drugs Market size was estimated at USD 362.95 billion in 2020, is expected to reach USD 393.20 billion in 2021, and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 8.70% to reach USD 650.84 billion by 2027.
Competitive Strategic Window:
The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies to help the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. It describes the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth during a forecast period.
FPNV Positioning Matrix:
The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Over The Counter Drugs Market based on Business Strategy ( Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction ( Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape.
Market Share Analysis:
The Market Share Analysis offers the analysis of vendors considering their contribution to the overall market. It provides the idea of its revenue generation into the overall market compared to other vendors in the space. It provides insights into how vendors are performing in terms of revenue generation and customer base compared to others. Knowing market share offers an idea of the size and competitiveness of the vendors for the base year. It reveals the market characteristics in terms of accumulation, fragmentation, dominance, and amalgamation traits.
The report provides insights on the following pointers:
1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players
2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes penetration across mature segments of the markets
3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments
4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, certification, regulatory approvals, patent landscape, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players
5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R & D activities, and breakthrough product developments
The report answers questions such as:
1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Over The Counter Drugs Market?
2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Over The Counter Drugs Market during the forecast period?
3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Over The Counter Drugs Market?
4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Over The Counter Drugs Market?
5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Over The Counter Drugs Market?
6. What is the market share of the leading vendors in the Global Over The Counter Drugs Market?
7. What modes and strategic moves are considered suitable for entering the Global Over The Counter Drugs Market?
Market Dynamics
Drivers
Restraints | general |
Aptinyx Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Results and Highlights | Data readouts from Phase 2b studies of NYX-2925 in painful DPN and fibromyalgia expected in April 2022 and early to mid 3Q 2022, respectively
Ongoing Phase 2 study in cognitive impairment expected to read out in late 2022 or 1Q 2023
Initiated Phase 2b study of NYX-783 50 mg in PTSD in 4Q 2021; Phase 2b study of NYX-783 150 mg in PTSD expected to commence in early 2Q 2022
Balance sheet expected to fund R & D and operations through mid 2023
Conference call today at 5:00 p.m. EDT
EVANSTON, Ill. -- ( BUSINESS WIRE) -- Aptinyx Inc. ( Nasdaq: APTX), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing transformative therapies for the treatment of brain and nervous system disorders, today reported financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2021 and provided updates across the company’ s pipeline of novel NMDA receptor modulators.
“ We continued our strong execution against an ambitious set of clinical development goals in 2021, reaching several key milestones during the year and positioning us well for multiple catalysts in the coming months, ” said Andy Kidd, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Aptinyx. “ Having completed enrollment in both of our Phase 2b studies of NYX-2925 in chronic pain, we are primed for a steady stream of data readouts expected throughout the year, beginning next month with our painful DPN study. In parallel, we have continued to make great progress in advancing our other pipeline programs, including NYX-458 in a Phase 2 study of cognitive impairment and NYX-783, which recently began Phase 2b development in PTSD. With this strong progress, our robust pipeline of novel NMDA receptor modulators is poised to take major steps forward toward our ultimate goal of bringing new therapeutic solutions to patients in need. ”
Pipeline Overview
NYX-2925 for chronic pain – Phase 2b readouts in painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy ( DPN) and fibromyalgia expected in April 2022 and early to mid 3Q 2022, respectively
Aptinyx is developing NYX-2925, a novel oral NMDA receptor positive allosteric modulator, for the treatment of chronic pain conditions. To date, NYX-2925 has been studied in more than 400 human subjects, including three Phase 1 studies in healthy volunteers and two prior Phase 2 studies in patients with chronic pain. Across all studies, NYX-2925 has been well tolerated with no drug-related serious adverse events reported.
NYX-458 for cognitive impairment – readout of exploratory Phase 2 study in cognitive impairment associated with Parkinson’ s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies expected in late 2022 or 1Q 2023
Aptinyx is developing NYX-458, a novel oral NMDA receptor positive allosteric modulator, for the treatment of cognitive impairment. NYX-458 has been shown to reverse cognitive deficits in non-human primates in a model that is highly translatable to Parkinson’ s disease in humans. In a Phase 1 clinical study, NYX-458 exhibited a favorable safety and tolerability profile across a wide dose range and achieved CNS exposures consistent with exposures observed at efficacious preclinical dose levels.
NYX-783 for post-traumatic stress disorder ( PTSD) – Phase 2b readout expected in 2H 2023
Aptinyx is developing NYX-783, a novel oral NMDA receptor positive allosteric modulator, for the treatment of PTSD. Across previously completed Phase 1 and Phase 2 studies, including more than 200 human subjects combined, NYX-783 was well tolerated with no drug-related serious adverse events reported.
Corporate and Team Updates
2022 Upcoming Milestones
2022 Scientific Conferences
Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Financial Results
Cash Position: Cash and cash equivalents were $ 106.1 million at December 31, 2021, compared to $ 141.0 million at December 31, 2020. The company expects its current cash balance and guaranteed available cash will support anticipated operations through mid 2023.
Collaboration Revenue: Revenue was $ 0.0 million and $ 1.0 million for the fourth quarter and full year 2021, respectively, as compared to $ 0.0 million and $ 1.6 million for same periods in 2020. Aptinyx’ s revenue was derived from its research collaboration agreement with Allergan, now a wholly owned subsidiary of AbbVie, which came to its contractual conclusion in February 2021.
Research and Development ( R & D) Expenses: R & D expenses were $ 14.1 million and $ 55.4 million for the fourth quarter and full year 2021, respectively, as compared to $ 6.8 million and $ 32.8 million for same periods in 2020. The increase in R & D expenses during 2021 was primarily driven by increased costs associated with clinical development activities and enrollment across three Phase 2 clinical studies.
General and Administrative ( G & A) Expenses: G & A expenses were $ 5.1 million and $ 20.1 million for the fourth quarter and full year 2021, respectively, as compared to $ 4.8 million and $ 19.5 million for the same periods in 2020.
Net Loss: Net loss was $ 19.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to a net loss of $ 11.5 million for the same period in 2020. For the year ended December 31, 2021, net loss was $ 74.9 million, or basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders of $ 1.11, compared to a net loss of $ 50.1 million, or basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders of $ 1.02, for the year ended December 31, 2020.
Conference Call Details
To access the live conference call, please dial 1 ( 844) 200-6205 ( domestic) or +1 ( 929) 526-1599 ( international) and refer to conference ID 768426. A live audio webcast of the event will be available on the Investors & Media section of Aptinyx’ s website at https: //ir.aptinyx.com. A replay of the webcast will be archived on Aptinyx’ s website for 30 days following the event.
About Aptinyx
Aptinyx Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of proprietary synthetic small molecules for the treatment of brain and nervous system disorders. Aptinyx has a platform for discovery of novel compounds that work through a unique mechanism to modulate—rather than block or over-activate—NMDA receptors and enhance synaptic plasticity, the foundation of neural cell communication. The company has three product candidates in clinical development in central nervous system indications, including chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and cognitive impairment. Aptinyx is also advancing additional compounds from its proprietary discovery platform, which continues to generate a rich and diverse pipeline of small-molecule NMDA receptor modulators with the potential to treat an array of neurologic disorders. For more information, visit www.aptinyx.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements contained in this press release regarding matters that are not historical facts are “ forward-looking statements ” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Because such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the company’ s business plans and objectives, including future plans or expectations for NYX-2925, NYX-783, and NYX-458, the safety, therapeutic effects, and stage of development of the company’ s product candidates and discovery platform, expectations regarding the design, implementation, timing, and success of its current and planned clinical studies, including providing updated guidance with respect thereto, the timing for the company’ s receipt and announcement of data from its clinical studies, the timing and outcome of discussions with FDA and other regulatory agencies, expectations regarding its preclinical development activities, expectations regarding its uses and sufficiency of capital, the company’ s growth and the anticipated contribution of its executive officers and management to its operations and progress, and its expectations regarding its uses of capital and expenses, and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the foregoing. Risks that contribute to the uncertain nature of the forward-looking statements include: the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and financial results, including with respect to disruptions to our clinical trials, business operations, and ability to raise additional capital; the success, cost, and timing of the company’ s product candidate development activities and planned clinical studies; the company’ s ability to execute on its strategy; positive results from a clinical study may not necessarily be predictive of the results of future or ongoing clinical studies; regulatory approval processes of the FDA and comparable foreign regulatory authorities are lengthy, time-consuming, and inherently unpredictable; regulatory developments in the United States and foreign countries; the company’ s estimates regarding expenses, future revenue, and capital requirements; the company’ s ability to fund operations into mid-2023; as well as those risks and uncertainties set forth in the company’ s most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q and subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our upcoming Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date on which they were made. Aptinyx undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.
APTINYX INC.
CONDENSED BALANCE SHEETS
( in thousands)
( Unaudited)
Assets
December 31, 2021
December 31, 2020
Current Assets:
Cash and cash equivalents
$
106,124
$
141,028
Restricted cash
197
179
Accounts receivable
—
257
Prepaid expenses and other current assets
8,422
8,140
Total current assets
114,743
149,604
Property and equipment and other long-term assets
185
1,002
Total assets
$
114,928
$
150,606
Liabilities and stockholders’ equity
Current Liabilities:
Accounts payable
$
622
$
1,209
Accrued expenses and other current liabilities
5,064
3,374
Total current liabilities
5,686
4,583
Other long-term liabilities
14,486
114
Total liabilities
20,172
4,697
Stockholders’ equity
94,756
145,909
Total liabilities and stockholders’ equity
$
114,928
$
150,606
APTINYX INC.
CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS
( in thousands, except per share data)
( Unaudited)
Three Months Ended December 31,
Year Ended December 31,
2021
2020
2021
2020
Collaboration revenue
$
—
$
—
$
1,000
$
1,564
Operating expenses
Research and development
14,056
6,786
55,444
32,835
General and administrative
5,116
4,775
20,090
19,494
Total operating expenses
19,172
11,561
75,534
52,329
Loss from operations
( 19,172
)
( 11,561
)
( 74,534
)
( 50,765
)
Other income ( expense)
( 438
)
73
( 352
)
712
Net loss and comprehensive loss
$
( 19,610
)
$
( 11,488
)
$
( 74,886
)
$
( 50,053
)
Net loss per share - basic and diluted
$
( 0.29
)
$
( 0.20
)
$
( 1.11
)
$
( 1.02
)
Weighted average shares outstanding - basic and diluted
67,716
58,882
67,220
| general |
EUROPEAN MIDDAY BRIEFING - Stocks Suffer Modest Losses; UK Budget Statement Eyed | European stocks edged into the red Wednesday, giving up earlier modest gains. London's FTSE 100 bucked the trend, however, with the blue chip index remaining just in positive territory, as investors digested the latest U.K. inflation data.
Ahead, U.K. Treasury chief Rishi Sunak unveils his latest fiscal spending plans when he presents the budget later Wednesday.
Adidas's strategic plan to focus on its premium and sportswear offerings looks well-thought-out, Jefferies said after the sporting-goods giant held a two-day innovation event this week.
Adidas is looking to boost its top-line through premiumization of its offering, with the benefits boosted by greater direct-to-consumer sales, Jefferies added. Adidas is also aiming to expand its sportswear offering, targeting younger consumers especially, and this looks to have started well with strong wholesale orders.
Further validation will come with strong second-half sell out, reinforcing Adidas's upbeat outlook for this year and beyond, Jefferies said. The bank kept a buy rating and a EUR250 target on the stock.
The U.K.'s annual inflation rate is expected to peak above 8% in April as higher food and gas prices combine with the increase in household utility bills, ING said. Inflation is then expected to fall to around 6% -6.5% in late-2022, but its path is difficult to predict given the current uncertainty and volatility in energy prices, ING added.
`` The situation later this year is looking less worrisome than it was a few weeks ago given the pullback in gas prices, '' ING said. The main unknown is how far the war in Ukraine, alongside the recent Covid-19 outbreaks in parts of Asia, amplify the bottlenecks on supply chains.
Pantheon Macroeconomics said February's U.K. inflation rate is at the top end of the range expected by the Bank of England, but it isn't high enough to warrant a very aggressive rate increase path.
The near-term outlook for inflation is clearly uncomfortable for the BOE, but the economic recovery is likely to slow sharply as households feel the pinch of the cost of living crisis, Pantheon said.
`` We expect the [ Monetary Policy ] Committee to pause raising bank rate, once it has increase it to 1.00% in May. Further rate hikes would increase the risk of a recession and the chances that inflation ultimately would significantly undershoot the 2% target in the medium term, '' Pantheon said.
Stock futures fell and a selloff in government bonds stabilized, as investors digested the recent sharp swings that have dominated markets and awaited updates on the war in Ukraine.
A sharp rally in U.S. government bond yields slowed, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note hovering around 2.375% in recent trading, unchanged from the day before. The last time the yield on the benchmark note traded around that level was May 2019.
In premarket trading in New York, shares of meme stocks -- which have largely slumped this year -- enjoyed a resurgence. Shares of GameStop climbed 11% after the company's chairman, Ryan Cohen, disclosed his firm bought 100,000 shares of the company's stock on Tuesday. Shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings, which tend to move in correlation with GameStop, climbed 6.5%.
Meanwhile, shares of Adobe slumped 3.1%. The software company reported higher profit and better-than-expected revenue growth Tuesday, but said it expects a hit to annual revenue from the war in Ukraine.
The dollar is likely to get a boost from the market raising its expectations for U.S. interest rates, according to ING analysts. `` The futures market is fully pricing in 75 basis points of tightening in the next two meetings, which implies at least one 50bp increase. ''
That should offer the dollar a `` positive undercurrent, '' particularly against low-yielding currencies and European currencies exposed to the Ukraine war, the analysts said.
Expectations that the European Central Bank will raise interest rates by more than previously thought is capping the euro's depreciation against the dollar after the Fed signalled more aggressive rate rises, Monex Europe said.
Markets are now pricing in about three rate rises by the ECB within the next 12 months after the central bank accelerated the removal of stimulus at last Thursday's meeting despite uncertainty over the Ukraine crisis.
`` This has shielded the euro from further downside against the dollar in Monday's and Tuesday's session, and is likely to serve as a backstop for the euro in the months ahead in an environment where U.S. yields are rising. ''
Sterling edged lower versus the dollar but was little changed against the euro after data showed U.K. inflation accelerated by more than expected in February.
BRI Wealth Management said it seems inevitable the Bank of England will continue to raise interest rates to curb inflation. `` Raising rates at a time of high household bills and rising taxes could stifle the economic recovery by putting the consumer under too much pressure though. ''
Bank of America said interest rate rises may not necessarily support the pound. The BOE seemed to raise rates with a tinge of regret for the second consecutive meeting last Thursday, BofA analysts said.
`` With the Monetary Policy Committee sounding almost apologetic about hiking once again, this serves to underscore to us the position of weakness the BOE finds itself: hiking due to supply shocks [ one of which -- Brexit -- it still does not acknowledge ] and against the backdrop of a generational squeeze in personal incomes. ''
Raising rates into a slowing economy and squeeze on personal incomes will inevitably take its toll on sterling over the medium term, the BofA analysts said.
Rising German Bund yields `` seem on a one-way street, '' said Commerzbank's rates strategists, adding that multiyear resistance levels are proving `` soft as butter '' as central banks talk up their inflation resolve.
10-year Bund yields rose above 0.50% on Tuesday for the first time since October 2018. Commerzbank's strategists see the scope for further rises, but recommend selling Bunds into recoveries during the day.
DZ Bank analysts are betting on Spanish and Portuguese government bonds in the eurozone periphery, and they also like Irish, French and Belgian government bonds in the semicore segment. `` Compared with Italy, Spain and Portugal offer much lower political risks and, to a degree, also the chance to improve their rating profiles. ''
The trading link between Ireland, France and Belgium on the one hand and Russia on the other are less close than for other countries, DZ's analysts said. These countries also benefit from the fact that they are geographically not as close to the current conflict and they also offer a higher carry within the semicore segment, the analysts said.
The German Finance Agency's review of the issuance schedule for the second quarter is `` unlikely to feature major surprises, '' said Commerzbank's rates strategists.
`` We don't expect major adjustments: the government's indications about additional funding requirements from the supplementary Ukraine-related expenditures are still very vague and will most likely be incorporated at a later stage. ''
In the preliminary funding plans published in December, the German Finance Agency penciled in EUR52.5 billion in capital market issuance and EUR54 billion in treasury bills, with these figures excluding inflation-linked bond sales and syndications.
Suggestions that the EU could ban Russian oil imports have supported crude prices, though news that Germany and Hungary still oppose a ban has softened the rise. Prices have also gained from reports that Russian and Kazakhstan oil exports via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium from the Black Sea may fall by 1 million barrels a day due to storm-damaged berths, according to SPI Asset Management.
Read: Jamie Dimon tells Biden that U.S., Europe Need 'Marshall Plan ' for Energy Independence
BRUSSELS-President Biden and European allies are gathering for meetings here Thursday to project a united front as they announce new measures to target Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine and escalating attacks on civilians.
Mr. Biden, who is scheduled to land in Brussels Wednesday, plans to meet with leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union and the Group of Seven leading industrial countries to discuss deterrence efforts, humanitarian relief and the campaign of sanctions against Russia.
Volodymyr Zelensky plans to hold talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Ukrainian presidential spokesman Andriy Yermak said, as part of a whirlwind of virtual visits for Ukraine's president to rally support for his country in the face of Russia's nearly monthlong assault.
`` Kyiv is hopeful Beijing will play a more prominent role in bringing this war to an end, '' Mr. Yermak tweeted.
U.K. Inflation Rate Hit 6.2% in February, a 30-Year High
Inflation in the U.K. reached a new three-decade high in February, accelerating to a 6.2% annual rate, and is expected to rise further in the coming months on higher energy and other commodity prices.
This is the highest rate since March 1992 -- when prices rose at an annual pace of 7.1% -- and beats the 6.0% rate expected by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal. In January, consumer prices increased 5.5% on year, according to the data from the Office for National Statistics.
U.S., U.K. Strike Trade Deal to End Tariffs on British Steel and American Whiskey
WASHINGTON-The U.S. and U.K. struck a trade accord Tuesday that will remove U.S. tariffs on British steel and aluminum, while the U.K. will lift levies on American whiskey, motorcycles and tobacco.
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Wood Panel Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2021 | This site uses cookies, including third-party cookies, that help us to provide and improve our services.
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According to latest research by Future Market Insights, wood panel market is set to witness steady growth during 2021-2031. Rapid expansion of the construction industry in recent years has positively influenced global market trends, owing to economic improvement in both developed and developing economies. As a result, the wood panel market is set to witness a CAGR of 6.1% -6.9%.
The key factor driving the demand for wood panel for cladding, roofing, ceiling, flooring and furniture application is fueled by low product cost combined with superior properties such as longevity and strength.
Increase investment in commercial and residential activities across several region are expected to propel the demand for wood panels. Furthermore, growing public-private partnerships for the development of the construction sector in the developing economies like India, China, and Saudi Arabia are expected to support market growth.
Moreover, in order to expand their customer base and gain a competitive advantage, major companies have invested in R & D for new, and improved products. Many entities have entered into alliances, acquisitions, and mergers with an aim to expand their global reach and expand their product portfolio. For instance, in February 2021, West Fraser announced the acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Norbord, which led to strengthening the company's product portfolio.
However, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the global construction and furniture industries. People have been restricted from travelling and working in order to control the spread of the novel virus, which has hampered the completion of construction projects around the world.
The industry has also been impacted by supply chain bottlenecks caused by sudden restrictions on the supply of raw materials such as steel and glass. Furthermore, the construction sector has been harmed by the reduction in labor and financial losses caused by delays in funded projects, which has slowed the growth of the wood- panel industry.
Wood panels ' high impact resistance and strength make them an ideal packaging material, particularly for long-distance transportation. Further, the market is expected to be driven by the rising product usage as an environment-friendly packaging material to replace non-recyclable packaging materials such as plastics.
Moreover, the rising demand for traditional furniture for living rooms and bedrooms is expected to upsurge the demand for the product over the forecast period. Rising product demand for manufacturing small accent pieces and Ready-to-Assemble ( RTA) furniture is further expected to propel the industry forward.
In the U.S, the wood panel market is booming over the past few years and is expected to rise owing to robust growth in residential construction spending in the country.
Further, significant growth in single family housing construction and rising consumer spending on aesthetically appealing furniture products are likely to drive the regional product demand over the projected period.
The demand for wood panel market in the European market is estimated to grow significantly in the upcoming years. The regional demand is mainly driven by Germany, which is the leading furniture market in the region.
The growth of the furniture industry in the region is also anticipated to positively influence the demand for particleboard in the forthcoming years. A rise in packaging applications is supporting the demand for the products owing to increasing industrial exports from the country.
Increasing R & D activities by regional players in Europe to develop cost-effective and high-performance wood panels are estimated to boost market growth.
The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain.
The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.
Note: Although care has been taken to maintain the highest levels of accuracy in reports, recent market/vendor-specific changes may take time to reflect in the analysis.
A key factor for our unrivaled market research accuracy is our expert- and data-driven research methodologies. We combine an eclectic mix of experience, analytics, machine learning, and data science to develop research methodologies that result in a multi-dimensional, yet realistic analysis of a market.
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Mini Refillable Perfume Bottles market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2021 | This site uses cookies, including third-party cookies, that help us to provide and improve our services.
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The mini refillable perfume bottles market is set to witness steady growth during 2021-2031, with a CAGR of around 3.5-4.5%. The market for mini refillable perfume bottles is projected to grow owing to the rising standard of living in luxury and trending developments in the cosmetic industry based on new fashion and personal care.
In addition, mini refillable perfume bottles are easy to carry as the normal perfume bottles are glass made and thus, difficult to carry and have high chances of being damaged.
Evolving customer demands and rising interest of e-commerce platforms for shopping of essential and personal care products are likely to contribute towards the growth of the refillable perfume bottles industry. Moreover, the easy availability of perfume bottles through various retailers has had a positive influence on mini refillable perfume bottles sales.
Moreover, the increased usage of recycled products in various industries has led to the diversification of bottle types available in the market. Further, with the help of technology and development, lightweight materials are used to manufacture perfume bottles that can resist the liquid and not spoil it. In addition, major players offer schemes such as customizable packaging that makes the product more affordable and grows the demand in the market.
The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 had resulted in severely affected the working of industries and shutting down every day activities to stop the spread of the virus, as implemented by the regional governments. Moreover, the ruled-out strict regulations on the movement of individuals in commercial areas led to the rise of essential products and declined the demand for various personal beauty and care products, therefore, affecting the sales of mini refillable perfume bottles.
Mini refillable perfume bottles are easy to carry, use, and further, be refilled by unscrewing the pump. The perfume bottles are generally made of glass and plastics that can be recycled and thus, is a product market. Moreover, companies provide with desired sizes of bottles and extra liquids that can be purchased separately as well with a variety of fragrances.
In addition, the growing demand for unisex perfumes and fragrances especially, among millennials who intend to express their personality through their fragrances, as various brands also launch products that mark a certain character in an individual. Thus, it is encouraging manufacturers to diversify their product line and provide unique and affordable perfumes.
The countries of North America are likely to contribute and lead the market in terms of sales of mini refillable perfumes bottles, owing to the rise in customer spending capacity on beauty and personal care products. The presence of innovative product awareness strategies, which gain the attention of the customers especially, millennials who are the key drivers for the demand for mini refillable perfume bottles.
In addition, countries such as the U.S., Canada, and Mexico are anticipated to grow the demand at a rapid pace due to the growing number of international perfume manufacturers. However, demand for perfume and other luxury products is hindered due to the decrease in the economy and new regulations on trading have led to disruption of the supply chain.
Are likely to help the mini refillable perfume bottle industry to grow. Moreover, the distributors conduct a market study, and target their audience, and thus, with the growing popularity of working women the volume of sales is projected to rise.
Moreover, the presence of various global leaders in the beauty and personal care industry such as – Chanel, Gucci Gucci S.p.A., and LVMH among others in the countries of Europe are the key factors that make Europe the fastest-changing and evolving market for mini refillable perfumes bottles.
The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides an in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators, and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.
Note: Although care has been taken to maintain the highest levels of accuracy in reports, recent market/vendor-specific changes may take time to reflect in the analysis.
A key factor for our unrivaled market research accuracy is our expert- and data-driven research methodologies. We combine an eclectic mix of experience, analytics, machine learning, and data science to develop research methodologies that result in a multi-dimensional, yet realistic analysis of a market.
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Sandwich Preparation Refrigerators Market: Forecast, Trend Analysis & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 | This site uses cookies, including third-party cookies, that help us to provide and improve our services.
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Customers are in surge of variety of products and are looking for additional features in conventional products. Thus, Companies focus on offering large number of product and introduction of new products every years.
These strategies are adopted by key players in the global sandwich preparation refrigerators market to increase their market share.
Moreover, companies are involved in marketing campaign and promoting products at various events to increasing product awareness among customers. This provides the opportunities of partnership with restaurants for sandwich preparation refrigerators manufacturers.
However, restriction on social gathering has challenged the marketing campaign adopted by the companies. This is negatively impacting the sales of sandwich preparation refrigerators across the globe.
Technological advancements are contributing to the launch of new versions of sandwich preparation refrigerators. Companies in the sandwich preparation refrigerators market are focusing on the designing of innovative products.
Moreover, increasing household spending and increasing number of modular kitchens in South Asia and East Asia region is another factor boosting the electric toothbrush market.
On the other hand increasing costumers concern for breakfast and health benefits related with it is increasing demand of sandwich preparation refrigerators market across the world.
Improvisation in lifestyle of people and increasing house hold adoption of modern kitchen appliances is positively influencing the growth of sandwich preparation refrigerators market.
Customer preference has become a major focus for companies operating in the sandwich preparation refrigerators market. Hence, companies are focusing on launching innovative advanced products in the market such as table sandwich preparation refrigerator, compact sandwich preparation refrigerators and others.
Companies operating in the market use online platforms and e-commerce sites for the marketing and selling of sandwich preparation refrigerators. The increasing adoption of e-commerce apps is another factor leading to the higher online sales of products.
Consumers are inclined towards purchasing sandwich preparation refrigerators from online stores due to the various discounts offered by e-retailers.
Increasing manufacturing spending on research and development is expected to decrease the product price associated with it. This is expected to register growth opportunities for the sandwich preparation refrigerators market as costumers are in surge of economic products in South Asia, East Asia and Latin America.
High product price decreases the product consumption by costumers in the global sandwich preparation refrigerators market. Also, less product awareness among customers is the key challenging the growth of sandwich preparation refrigerators market.
On the other hand supply chain disturbance of key players in the market, due to spread of coronavirus is hindering the growth of sandwich preparation refrigerators across the globe.
Product offering thorough company own website is registering growth opportunities for the key players in the sandwich preparation refrigerators market across the globe.
North America is expected to hold the significant share in the global sandwich preparation refrigerators market due to high product awareness and high retail space for the products. Europe is expected to have an increasing trend of partnership, merger and acquisitions among companies in the region.
This is expected to shift the retail trend in the Europe market. Increasing focus on product innovation and launch of economic sandwich preparation refrigerators in East Asia is significantly driving growth of the sandwich preparation market in the region.
Increasing purchasing power among customers and increasing number of restaurant chains in South Asia is expected to boost the growth of the sandwich preparation refrigerators market in the region. Moreover, increasing companies penetration in Latin America is fueling growth of the sandwich preparation refrigerator market in the region.
A key factor for our unrivaled market research accuracy is our expert- and data-driven research methodologies. We combine an eclectic mix of experience, analytics, machine learning, and data science to develop research methodologies that result in a multi-dimensional, yet realistic analysis of a market.
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China invites NTSB to participate in Boeing crash probe, U.S. says | `` I am very encouraged that the Chinese civil aviation authorities invited NTSB to participate and be on the ground there, '' Buttigieg told reporters. `` The ( Federal Aviation Administration) will stand ready to support NTSB any way that they can. ''
Under an international aviation agreement, the NTSB can participate in the investigation led by China because the plane was manufactured in the United States.
Senator Maria Cantwell, who chairs the Commerce Committee that oversees transportation issues, said Wednesday her office had spoken to both the FAA and NTSB about the crash investigation and the U.S.'s role.
`` They are getting a team to work through the ( Chinese air regulator) '' in order to get to China, she said, adding she hoped China would be able to waive a two-week COVID-19 quarantine requirement for the U.S. team.
`` We 've asked them to keep us informed and briefed, '' Cantwell said.
The NTSB did not immediately comment on Wednesday but had said Tuesday it was in contact with China's investigator-in-charge `` and we will support their investigation with our technical advisors from the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing and CFM in all ways necessary. ''
CFM, a joint venture between GE and Safran SA manufactured the plane's engine.
( Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
By David Shepardson | business |
Spackling Paste Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2021 | This site uses cookies, including third-party cookies, that help us to provide and improve our services.
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The spackling paste market is set to witness steady growth during 2021-2031, with a CAGR of around 4.5-5.5%. A spackling paste is a non-porous substance applied on a surface to act as a waterproofing and holding agent and used to fill spaces.
Moreover, a layer of spackling paste over a constructed surface allows users to easily design and apply desired interior designs. The growing construction industry in both residential and commercial sectors is likely to grow the spackling paste market.
The rapidly growing urbanization has led to the fuel of construction activities, growing population, and availability of high spending capacity is driving the demand for spackling paste. Moreover, the advancement in technology and construction developments have eased the production and usability of spackling paste thus, boosting sales.
With time, the cultures and trends in the designing industry keep changing globally, and thus, in order to make necessary changes in residential and commercial sectors drives the demand for premium and affordable spackling paste. In addition, the rising interest for highly water-borne spackling paste across the globe is encouraging manufacturers to supply unique and reliable products.
The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 had resulted in severely affecting the global economy and declining the demands for various products due to the rise in unemployment. Moreover, the restricted movement of individuals in commercial areas had led to the decline of maintenance of building thus, hindering the construction industry and affecting the sales of spackling paste.
The spackling paste industry has always been impacted by the evolving trends in the construction industry. The growing trends such as rising interest low volatile compounds, growth in the availability of various diversified paints and coats, and more are likely to grow the volume of sales.
In addition, the growing filling equipment market is boosting the demand for spackling pastes that are lightweight, easy to handle and flow with ease. Moreover, the improvement in the packaging machinery and services has led to the rise in demand for spackling compounds that can be easily turned into a paste using water or cement.
North America is one of the largest markets for spackling paste globally because the construction industry in the countries is the major contributor. For instance, the U.S. economy heavily relies upon the construction industry as it contributes over US $ 1.4 Trillion and thus requires regular maintenance. Therefore, driving the demand for spackling paste industry.
However, the U.S. construction sector faces a challenging year, however, the change in the mortgage rates tends to help recover the industry by early 2022. The momentum is likely to hold ground, which will provide an impetus to a range of construction materials, including spackling pastes.
Initially, Europe was heavily reliant on the western countries for the import of various materials and products and thus, could not match the supply and demand rate. However, the supporting government has helped players to establish their manufacturing plants, and thus, for better maintenance and reliable products, the spackling paste industry is likely to grow and provide innovative products.
Moreover, the high significance of spackling paste over plaster of Paris ( POP) is because of its unique characteristics such as a longer life span, stronger holding capacity, and is highly water-resistant. Thus, builders are always seeking innovative products. In addition, according to CPA, the construction industry is likely to grow with a CAGR of over 5.2% in 2022, thus creating a lucrative market for spackling paste industry.
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S.Korean stocks end at 3-week high on tech boost, Wall Street gains | * KOSPI rises, foreigners net buyers
* Korean won strengthens against U.S. dollar
* South Korea benchmark bond yield rises
* For the midday report, please click
SEOUL, March 23 ( Reuters) - Round-up of South Korean financial markets:
* * South Korean shares ended at a near three-week high on Wednesday after technology stocks gained tracking Wall Street overnight, as investors continued to assess developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
* * The Korean won strengthened, while the benchmark bond yield rose.
* * The benchmark KOSPI ended up 25.05 points, or 0.92%, at 2,735.05, its highest close since March 3.
* * Leading the gains, chip giant Samsung Electronics rose 0.28%. Battery maker LG Energy Solution and web portal operator Naver added 2.39% and 1.77%, respectively.
* * The rally comes after the U.S. tech-heavy Nasdaq index jumped 2% on gains in big growth names such as Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc.
* * Talks between Ukraine and Russia are confrontational but moving forward, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday, as the West plans to announce more sanctions against the Kremlin amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.
* * At home, the presidential office on Wednesday nominated veteran International Monetary Fund official Rhee Chang-yong as its new central bank chief, a pick who is widely expected to continue the bank's efforts to curb inflation with aggressive interest rate hikes.
* * Meanwhile, the country's total coronavirus infections topped 10 million, or nearly 20% of its population, authorities said on Wednesday.
* * Foreigners were net buyers of 60.4 billion won ( $ 49.75 million) worth of shares on the main board.
* * The won ended at 1,213.8 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.35% higher than its previous close at 1,218.1.
* * In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,213.5, while in non-deliverable forward trading its one-month contract was quoted at 1,214.1.
* * In money and debt markets, June futures on three-year treasury bonds fell 0.08 point to 106.92.
* * The most liquid 3-year Korean treasury bond yield rose by 2.6 basis points to 2.425%. ( $ 1 = 1,214.1200 won)
( Reporting by Joori Roh; Editing by Amy Caren Daniel) | business |
Greta Thunberg's campaign has a new school-ditching strike video: 'If current generations don’ t care about the future of our planet, who will? ' | For Gen Z, aged roughly 10 to 25, climate change is personal. Within the short time they’ ve spent on Earth, record-breaking wildfires risk becoming the new normal and hurricane relief funds flood their social media feeds as often as branded content.
The equally personal inaugural protest by one familiar face of climate-change activism — Greta Thunberg’ s 2018
solo sit-in outside Sweden’ s parliament
at age 15 — has now turned into its own global storm.
Her campaign, Fridays for Future, which leads several awareness efforts, is still fundamentally based on turning Fridays into a school skip day for attention on global warming’ s harmful effects. In 185 countries, an estimated 7.6 million people have attended Fridays for Future climate strike,
by one count
.
Read:
Greta Thunberg slams’ empty words and promises’ about climate change from politicians
Far from the early days of signs with block letters in marker, the campaign’ s U.S. effort will kick off this Friday’ s protest with a polished video titled “ We Don’ t Care. ”
In it, young people skateboarding, dancing or giving the camera a shrug-off, mimic familiar refrains generally credited to older generations when it comes to global warming nonchalance.
“ Have you seen how much it rains? We’ re fine, ” one actor says. “ Who cares? Let’ s make money, ” offers another.
“ There are a lot of positives to global warming, ” one more pipes in.
Ending with an earnest call-to-action, Fridays for Future ponders: “ If we don’ t care about climate change, who will? ”
The U.N.’ s climate panel has warned that global warming of 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless rapid and deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse-gas emissions occur in the coming decades. The burning of oil
CL00,
-0.46%
,
gas and coal are the largest contributors
to speeding up global warming
.
Some 76% percent of this Gen Z considers climate change among the biggest societal concerns, according to a 2021 Pew Research survey. And maybe for good reason. A report out in 2021 said today’ s kids will live through
three times as many
climate-change disasters as their grandparents.
Read:
It’ s very rare for a tornado to hit New Orleans — is climate change to blame?
“ Juxtaposing the same rhetoric stubbornly upheld over the last three decades with these fashionable adolescents, the spot establishes urgency while its stars skateboard, sing, and mess around without a care in the world, ” the Los Angeles creative agency FRED & FARID said of the video, in a release.
“ Although the energy of the film is lighthearted, enriched with the flair of a ‘ 90s public service announcement, the message at its core is paramount, ” they said. “ We need to turn familiar apathy into serious concern, and serious concern into immediate change. ”
No doubt for some of Gen Z, and younger millennials, issues like global warming, rising sea levels and drought-induced hunger are impacting life decisions. An Earth Day study last year found young adults increasingly believing
it’ s “ morally wrong ” to have children
because of climate change.
Some also likely see opportunity to be part of the solution. The number of jobs in renewable energy worldwide, for instance,
increased in 2020
despite the huge economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. | business |
Ireland needs a national tuberculosis controller, expert warns | The World Health Organization says tuberculosis ( TB) is the second biggest infectious diseases killer after Covid-19.
Ireland needs to appoint a national tuberculosis controller as figures rise worldwide with the Russia-Ukraine war likely to further increase these figures, a leading respiratory expert has warned.
This week the World Health Organisation said tuberculosis ( TB) is the second biggest infectious diseases killer after Covid-19 — claiming over 4,100 lives every day around the world. Rates of infection increased during the pandemic for the first time in over a decade.
Professor Joseph Keane, respiratory physician at St James's Hospital and professor of medicine at Trinity College Dublin, said it is not accurate to view TB as over in Ireland.
Treatment, including using a drug called rifampicin, usually takes six months but there are now more cases of multiple-drug resistant TB here, requiring 18 months of extremely expensive treatment. | general |
Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort barred from Dubai flight | Federal authorities blocked former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort from boarding a flight to Dubai from Miami over the weekend because he was trying to travel on a passport that was revoked after his 2017 arrest, NBC News reported Wednesday.
Manafort was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump in late 2020 for criminal convictions related to the Republican operative's consulting work in Ukraine for a pro-Russia political party.
He was due to depart on an Emirates flight at 9:10 p.m. Sunday bound for Dubai when Customs and Border Patrol officials barred him from boarding the plane, NBC News reported, citing a Miami-Dade Police spokesperson.
Manafort is not legally prevented from leaving the country or from applying for a new passport to replace his old one. It was not clear why he had tried to travel on an invalid passport.
Dubai's airport offers connections to multiple airports in Russia.
Manafort managed Trump's 2016 presidential campaign for several months that year.
He was present at a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer who had suggested she had damaging information about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee that year.
Read more of CNBC's politics coverage:
Manafort later became one of the highest-profile defendants in criminal cases filed by then-special counsel Robert Mueller, as part of Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign with that meddling.
He eventually was sentenced to 7½ years in prison in 2019 after being convicted of financial crimes related to his work in Ukraine, which was not connected to Russian interference in the U.S. election.
But Manafort was released in May 2020 from a prison in Pennsylvania because of fears he was at heightened risk from the Covid-19 virus. Trump pardoned him months later after losing in November's election to President Joe Biden.
Manafort's passport was revoked in October 2017 after his arrest. But it was physically returned to him by the FBI after Trump pardoned him.
A lawyer for Manafort did not immediately respond to a request for comment. | business |
North American Morning Briefing: Stock Futures Waver as Bond Selloff Continues | Stock futures edged lower Wednesday as investors considered comments from Federal Reserve officials that endorsed interest-rate increases to combat inflation.
Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, said that `` while the increasingly hawkish tone of the Fed is unequivocally bad for bonds, the outlook for equities is more uncertain. ''
Haefele did say, however, that he still sees a `` path to markets ending the year higher. Although there is widespread criticism, it's too early to take the view that the Fed won't be able to negotiate the fine line of reducing inflation without derailing growth. ''
Read Barrons.com: Why a Long/Short Fund Is Betting on Energy, Chips, and Tesla Stock
Microsoft confirmed Tuesday that hacking group Lapsus $ managed to gain `` limited access '' to its systems just hours after Okta confirmed it was a target of the same group.
The tech giant said it has been actively tracking the group in recent weeks, noting that it is known for `` using a pure extortion and destruction model without deploying ransomware payloads, '' in a blog post Tuesday.
Lapsus $ claimed this week to have gained access to Microsoft and exfiltrated portions of source code.
`` Our investigation has found a single account had been compromised, granting limited access, '' Microsoft said in the blog post. `` Our cybersecurity response teams quickly engaged to remediate the compromised account and prevent further activity. '' Microsoft noted that viewing source doesn't lead to elevation of risk.
The dollar is likely to get a boost from the market raising its expectations for U.S. interest rates, according to ING analysts. `` The futures market is fully pricing in 75 basis points of tightening in the next two meetings, which implies at least one 50bp increase. ''
That should offer the dollar a `` positive undercurrent, '' particularly against low-yielding currencies and European currencies exposed to the Ukraine war, the analysts said.
Expectations that the European Central Bank will raise interest rates by more than previously thought is capping the euro's depreciation against the dollar after the Fed signalled more aggressive rate rises, Monex Europe said.
Markets are now pricing in about three rate rises by the ECB within the next 12 months after the central bank accelerated the removal of stimulus at last Thursday's meeting despite uncertainty over the Ukraine crisis.
`` This has shielded the euro from further downside against the dollar in Monday's and Tuesday's session, and is likely to serve as a backstop for the euro in the months ahead in an environment where U.S. yields are rising. ''
Bond yields rose for a second day, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury hovering around 2.4%. Less than a week ago the 10-year yield was at 2.14%.
Oil prices were higher, with Joe Biden and NATO allies expected to announce additional sanctions on Russia when they meet in Brussels this week.
Read: Jamie Dimon tells Biden that U.S., Europe Need 'Marshall Plan ' for Energy Independence
Amazon.com Inc. over the next month will face union elections at separate warehouses in New York City, a union-friendly area that has challenged the e-commerce giant in the past.
Current and former workers at the company's largest Staten Island warehouse are leading the effort to become the first group of Amazon employees to unionize in the U.S. They are operating without the backing of a major labor union, an uncommon tactic, but one that organizers believe will win support from workers.
Judge Frees China's ZTE From Some U.S. Oversight
HONG KONG-A U.S. judge ruled that ZTE Corp.'s probation for violations of U.S. sanctions on Iran could end, freeing the Chinese technology company from some oversight following years of government supervision.
The decision by the federal judge in Texas effectively ends ZTE's five-year term of supervision under a Dallas lawyer assigned to police the company's adherence to the terms of its 2017 settlement agreement resolving the sanctions charges.
Strict measures aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19 in China and Hong Kong are having knock-on effects in ways that wouldn't immediately spring to mind, including causing the delay of audited earnings results.
The delays, affecting heavily indebted China Evergrande Group as well as property peers and companies operating in several other sectors, mean not only that investors and analysts will have to wait for 2021 results; it also means that shares of some affected companies are days away from automatic trading suspensions, effectively taking them out of the market at a time of heightened volatility and uncertainty.
Small groups of Walt Disney Co. employees across the U.S. took Tuesday off from work and gathered to protest what they described as the company's continued failure to support LGBT employees.
The walkouts mark the beginning of a third week of turmoil inside the entertainment giant as its leadership struggles to contain fallout from its bungled response to a Republican-led education bill in Florida, which many employees said targeted the LGBT community.
Shares of GameStop Corp. rose 16% in after-hours trading after the videogame retailer's chairman disclosed his firm bought 100,000 shares of the company's stock on Tuesday.
Ryan Cohen's RC Ventures LLC said it paid between $ 96.81 and $ 108.82 for the shares it purchased Tuesday. Mr. Cohen owns an 11.9% stake in the retailer, or 9.1 million shares.
A Starbucks Corp. store in Seattle voted to unionize Tuesday, the first in the coffee chain's hometown to seek representation from a growing union of chain baristas.
Chain workers at a single Seattle location voted 9-0 to be represented by the Starbucks Workers United union. Starbucks had petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to review that vote's structure ahead of Tuesday's tally. The federal labor agency denied the appeal, as it has done in response to other review requests by the company so far.
Sandbox AQ, a software startup developing quantum-computing and artificial-intelligence tools for commercial use, on Tuesday officially spun off from Alphabet Inc.'s Google to become a stand-alone company.
The move was fueled by a `` nine-figure '' funding round that included Breyer Capital, T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. and Guggenheim Partners LLC, among other investors, the company said. The amount and terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s fourth-quarter revenue growth slowed to its weakest pace in nearly two decades, the latest sign of a severe slowdown in China's technology sector amid the country's weakening consumption and a yearlong regulatory crackdown.
The world's largest videogame developer's revenue rose 7.9% to 144.19 billion yuan ( $ 22.65 billion). The result missed expectations of analysts polled by FactSet and marked the company's worst top-line growth since it went public in 2004.
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester said Tuesday the U.S. central bank has quite a few rate rises ahead of it as it seeks to lower very high levels of inflation.
`` In my view, inflation, which is at a 40-year high, is the No. 1 challenge for the U.S. economy at this time, '' Ms. Mester said in a speech text.
With gasoline prices setting records across the U.S. and oil topping $ 100 a barrel, consumer interest in electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies is speeding up.
Gasoline prices, which hit a nationwide average record high of $ 4.33 on March 11, are about $ 1.35 higher than they were a year ago, according to AAA. Every dollar of higher gasoline prices adds more than a $ 50 increase in households ' monthly expenses, according to Northern Trust.
U.S., U.K. Strike Trade Deal to End Tariffs on British Steel and American Whiskey
WASHINGTON-The U.S. and U.K. struck a trade accord Tuesday that will remove U.S. tariffs on British steel and aluminum, while the U.K. will lift levies on American whiskey, motorcycles and tobacco.
Biden administration officials said the agreement with the U.K. will allow the U.K to ship `` historically-based sustainable volumes '' of steel and aluminum products to the U.S. without levies imposed under the former Trump administration.
Countries must do more to understand the money-laundering and terrorist-financing risks posed by the clandestine business of migrant smuggling, a global finance watchdog said Tuesday.
Over the past decade, political instability, poverty and the effects of climate change have led to more migrants and refugees, fueling the growth of an illegal industry with annual profits exceeding $ 10 billion, according to a new report by the Financial Action Task Force.
U.K. Inflation Rate Hit 6.2% in February, a 30-Year High
Inflation in the U.K. reached a new three-decade high in February, accelerating to a 6.2% annual rate, and is expected to rise further in the coming months on higher energy and other commodity prices.
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Kyrie freed: New York City to let unvaccinated athletes play home games | NEW YORK — New York City’ s mayor will announce Thursday that he’ s exempting athletes and performers from the city’ s vaccine mandate for private workers, a move that will allow Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving to play home games and unvaccinated baseball players to take the field when their season begins.
Mayor Eric Adams will make the announcement Thursday morning and it will be effective immediately, according to a person familiar with the upcoming announcement who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The city’ s sweeping vaccine mandate for workers will still apply to people with other types of jobs, including government employees.
Adams had said he felt the vaccine rule was unfair when it came to athletes and performers because a loophole in the measure, imposed under his predecessor, allowed visiting players and performers who don’ t work in New York to still play or perform even if they are unvaccinated.
Irving, a vaccine holdout, had been among the most high-profile people impacted. He was able to
re-join the team in January
but only when they played out of town games.
This month, concerns had been raised that the rule would also impact Major League Baseball.
Yankees star Aaron Judge
refused to directly answer a question about his vaccine status
earlier this month, leading to speculation that another New York team would be hobbled by a player’ s refusal to get inoculated.
When asked Wednesday about a possible vaccine exemption, Judge said he was “ happy Kyrie can play some home games. ”
“ If the mandate is not there, it’ s good for Kyrie, ” Judge told The Associated Press during spring training in Tampa, Florida, adding he “ wasn’ t too worried ” about the mandate’ s effect on the Yankees.
The Yankees, who open their season at home against the Boston Red Sox on April 7, said earlier this month that the team president was “ working with city hall and all other appropriate officials on this matter. ” The Yankees declined comment Wednesday.
Adams, a Mets fan, is scheduled to make an “ economic and health-related announcement ” Thursday morning at Citi Field, where the Mets play, according to his official calendar that was released Wednesday night.
Adams has been rolling back vaccine mandates and other coronavirus restrictions, including on Tuesday when he said
masks could become optional
for children under 5 starting April 4.
Mask mandates for older children have already been removed, as well as rules
requiring people to show proof of vaccination
to dine in a restaurant, work out at a gym, attend a show, or go to an indoor sporting event.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made vaccination mandatory as a workplace safety rule last year, before leaving office.
All employers are supposed to bar unvaccinated workers from being in shared workplaces.
The city suspended numerous public employees for refusing to get vaccinated, including public servants like firefighters and sanitation workers.
The creation of special exemptions for athletes or entertainers could potentially lead to court challenges arguing the city isn’ t applying the law evenly. | business |
Moderna Covid Vaccine: Positive Data in Young Children, FDA Authorization Next | Moderna will ask the FDA to approve its Covid vaccine for young children.
Leon Neal/Pool/AFP/Getty Images
Moderna
announced early Wednesday that it will ask the Food and Drug Administration to authorize its Covid-19 vaccine for children aged six months to under six years, after interim data from a late-stage study showed that the vaccine induced a strong neutralizing antibody response in the age group.
There are currently no Covid-19 vaccines authorized in the U.S. for children under age 5. The FDA had scheduled an advisory committee meeting for early February to consider authorizing
Pfizer
’ s
( ticker: PFE) Covid-19 vaccine for babies and toddlers as young as six months, then canceled the meeting
just days before
based on new data.
The news from
Moderna
should be greeted with relief from parents of young children, many of whom have felt left behind as measures like masking, which remained in place until adults were vaccinated and boosted, are now being dropped across the U.S.
Still, while Moderna’ s new neutralizing antibody data is positive, the efficacy data the company collected on the age group during the Omicron wave is low, relative to the extraordinary figures returned in the earliest messenger RNA-based Covid-19 vaccine trials. The results could renew debates about the cost-benefit of the vaccines, particularly in an age group that is at low risk of severe disease.
Moderna ( MRNA) tested two 25 microgram doses in children aged six months to under six years, a quarter the size of the 100 microgram doses used in the company’ s adult primary shots.
Moderna said that two doses provided a similar immune response in the pediatric age group to that seen in adults aged 18 to 25 years after their larger two-dose primary series.
The 6,900-subject trial also measured the efficacy of the vaccine at preventing infection. The company said that the trial was run largely during the Omicron wave. “ The secondary endpoint of vaccine efficacy confirms statistically significant, but lower efficacy against COVID-19 infection as expected during the Omicron wave and consistent with adult observational data, ” the company said.
Efficacy in children aged 6 months to 2 years was 43.7%, and efficacy in children 2 years to under 6 years was 37.5%.
The company said that no severe disease was observed in the trial, so efficacy against severe disease, hospitalization or death could not be calculated.
Moderna said that reactions to the drug in the age group were consistent with that seen in older groups. In children aged 6 months to two years, 17% reported a fever over 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit; 14.6% aged two years to under 6 years reported a fever over that level. Fevers over 104 degrees Fahrenheit, the company said, were only seen in a few children.
There was no myocarditis or pericarditis observed in the study. The risk of myocarditis, or heart inflammation, has been a major concern for health regulators, though rates have been highest in young adult males.
Pfizer
’ s
attempts to adapt its Covid-19 vaccine for young children have been hamstrung by dosing issues. In December, the company said that an analysis of its own trial in children aged 2 to under 5 found that immune responses were insufficient. The company is now testing a third dose in the age group, with data expected next month.
Moderna shares are down 26.5% this year, after climbing 6.5% during Tuesday’ s trading session.
Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at
josh.nathan-kazis @ barrons.com | business |
Amazon Faces Union Vote By Staten Island Warehouse Workers | Amazon.com
workers at the company’ s largest warehouse in Staten Island, N.Y., will begin voting Friday on whether to become the e-commerce firm’ s first U.S. employees to join a union.
The effort, spearheaded by current and former
Amazon
workers at the warehouse without the support of a major labor union, could see more success in a union-friendly area that has challenged Amazon before, The Wall Street Journal
reported
.
The
vote at a warehouse
called JFK8, which employs about 7,500 people, begins Friday and runs through March 30. A second union vote at a
different Staten Island facility
named LDJ5, which employs about 1,500, takes place starting April 25.
Pro-union leaders say they want better pay, benefits and working conditions. Some JFK8 warehouse employees protested for safer working conditions during the pandemic, saying Amazon wasn’ t doing enough to protect workers against Covid-19 as it prioritized performance quotas to fulfill a surge in orders.
Amazon said it already offers what organizers are asking for and prefers to negotiate directly with employees. Amazon has raised starting pay to an average of $ 18 an hour, introduced safety training and said it wants to build better relationships with workers.
“ Our employees have the choice of whether or not to join a union. They always have, “ said Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel, in an emailed statement to
Barron’ s
. “ As a company, we don’ t think unions are the best answer for our employees. Our focus remains on working directly with our team to continue making Amazon a great place to work. ”
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
unsuccessfully tried
to organize workers in Staten Island in 2019, after activists, elected officials and unions protested Amazon’ s plans to build its
“ HQ2 ”
headquarters in the city.
Organizers also point to successful efforts by
Starbucks
baristas at a cafe in Buffalo, N.Y., that inspired other locations to unionize. “ We hope to be like the
Starbucks
movement and branch out across the nation, ” said Chris Smalls, the former Amazon employee in charge of the union effort in Staten Island, the Journal reported. Amazon
fired
Smalls in 2020 for what he said was retaliation for trying to organize workers. Amazon said he violated Covid-19 safety protocols.
Amazon workers at another warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., are mailing in their ballots after an organizing effort last year failed. Amazon
won that vote
, with 71% of workers voting against union representation, but the National Labor Relations Board later said Amazon used unlawful influence over workers.
There have been a number of moves by workers lately. More than 500
Chevron
employees
went on strike
Monday at a refinery in the Bay Area California amid a stalemate over the company’ s contract with the United Steelworkers Local 5 union, which expired Feb. 1.
Write to Janet H. Cho at
janet.cho @ dowjones.com | business |
Airline execs ask Biden to end mask mandate, testing requirements for air travel | It’ s time for the masks to come off on planes, the chief executives of 10 airlines and cargo carriers told President Joe Biden in a letter Wednesday urging and end to pandemic travel precautions.
“ Now is the time for the administration to sunset federal transportation travel restrictions — including the international predeparture testing requirement and the federal mask mandate — that are no longer aligned with the realities of the current epidemiological environment, ” said the board of directors of the industry group Airlines for America, which includes the CEOs of United Airlines
UAL,
-1.59%
,
Delta Air Lines
DAL,
-2.06%
and American Airlines
AAL,
-2.11%
,
among others.
In the letter,
which was posted online
, the executives argued that current “ patchwork ” regulations are outdated and cause undue strain on airline employees to enforce, and that COVID-19 testing requirements for international travelers have proven to be ineffective.
Also read:
American Airlines to resume in-flight alcohol sales in April
“ The high level of immunity in the U.S., availability of high-quality masks for those who wish to use them, hospital-grade cabin air, widespread vaccine availability and newly available therapeutics provide a strong foundation for the administration to lift the mask mandate and predeparture testing requirements. We urge you to do so now, ” they said.
Earlier this month, the Transportation Security Administration extended the mask mandate for airplanes and public transit for at least another month,
through April 18
.
In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
relaxed its mask guidelines
, saying that most healthy people do not need to wear masks indoors anymore. The CDC recommendation did not apply to airplanes or public transit, but the agency has reportedly
been working on a revised policy
for how much longer masks should be required for travelers.
While the number of U.S. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have plunged from the peak of omicron earlier this year,
global numbers are on the rise again
as the BA.2 subvariant spreads. A top World Health Organization official said this week that European countries
lifted COVID restrictions too quickly
and are paying for it now with the current surge. | business |
Moderna seeks regulatory nod for COVID vaccine in very young children, and WHO reports second straight week with cases rising globally | Moderna Inc. will seek an emergency-use authorization from regulators in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere for its COVID-19 vaccine in babies, toddlers and preschoolers, after a late-stage trial found it produced virus-fighting antibodies that were just as strong as in young adults.
If regulators give it the go-ahead, young children could start getting their shots by summer,
as the Associated Press reported.
Moderna
MRNA,
-4.28%
said in the coming weeks it would ask regulators in the U.S. and Europe to authorize two small-dose shots for youngsters under 6. The company also is seeking to have larger-dose shots cleared for older children and teens in the U.S.
The nation’ s 18 million children under 5 are the only age group not yet eligible for vaccination. Competitor Pfizer
PFE,
-1.60%
currently offers kid-sized doses for school-age children and full-strength shots for those 12 and older.
But parents have been waiting for news on shots for very small children and disappointed by setbacks. Pfizer is testing even smaller doses for children under 5 but had to add a third shot to its study when two didn’ t prove strong enough. Those results are expected by early April.
Vaccinating the littlest kids “ has been somewhat of a moving target over the last couple of months, ” Dr. Bill Muller of Northwestern University, an investigator in Moderna’ s pediatric studies, told the AP in an interview before the company released its findings.
Late last week, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data
showing that children were hit especially hard by the omicron variant that was first detected in November and were hospitalized at five times higher rates than during the delta surge.
About 400 children below the age of 5 had died from COVID since the start of the pandemic.
See now:
Two years of COVID-19: How the pandemic changed the way we shop, work, invest and get medical care
COVID-19 vaccines don’ t prevent infection with the omicron mutant as well as they fended off earlier variants — but they do still offer strong protection against severe illness.
Moderna reported that same trend in the trial of children under 6, conducted during the omicron surge. While there were no severe illnesses, the vaccine proved just under 44% effective at preventing any infection in babies up to age 2, and nearly 38% effective in the preschoolers.
The news comes as COVID cases are starting to climb again in Europe and in parts of the U.S. The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose for a second straight week, according to World Health Organization data, after falling consistently since the end of January, as the BA.2 subvariant continued its spread.
Cases rose 7% in the week through March 20 to more than 12 million cases, while deaths fell 23% to just under 33,000, the WHO said in its
weekly epidemiological update.
On a country-by-country basis, the highest numbers of new cases were in South Korea, Vietnam, Germany, France and Australia. The highest numbers of reported deaths were in Russia, the U.S, Brazil, South Korea and China.
Read:
The stock market hit its COVID low 2 years ago today — Here’ s how the performance stacks up
The WHO also said it is monitoring several recombinant variants of the virus, including
one that has been unofficially named deltacron
because it combines features of the delta and omicron variants.
“ Two Delta and Omicron recombinants and one BA.1 x BA.2 recombinant have now been given Pango lineage designations XD, XE and XF, ” the agency wrote, referring to the system used to name and track variants as they emerge.
However, “ none of the preliminary available evidence indicates that these recombinant variants are associated with higher transmissibility or more severe outcomes, ” said the WHO. Recombinant variants are a natural phenomenon and can be expected, it added.
U.S. COVID numbers, meanwhile, continue to decline, and the country is now averaging 29,288 new cases a day,
according to a New York Times tracker,
down 26% from two weeks ago.
The average daily number of hospitalizations stands at 20,984, down 41% from two weeks ago. Deaths are averaging 1,009 a day, down 30% from two weeks ago, but still an undesirably high number.
See now:
European countries lifted COVID restrictions ‘ too brutally,’ says WHO regional head, allowing BA.2 variant to spread
Other COVID-19 news you should know about:
• Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday she has tested positive for COVID-19 with “ mild ” symptoms,
the AP reported.
On social media, the former Democratic presidential candidate said she was “ feeling fine ” and that her husband, former president Bill Clinton, had tested negative and was quarantining until their household was fully cleared. The former secretary of state and first lady, 74, said she was “ more grateful than ever for the protection vaccines can provide against serious illness ” and urged people to get vaccine and booster shots.
• South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said restrictive COVID-19 regulations that have weighed on the nation’ s struggling economy for two years would be removed on Wednesday, with the national state of disaster also to end soon,
Reuters reported.
The state of disaster has been in place since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. Its extension last week until April 15 drew criticism from businesses hard hit by its measures.
Read also:
Moderna’ s stock, down 60% since the summer’ s delta wave, is rising again as COVID-19 cases increase
Hong Kong, which has faced a record surge in Covid-19 cases and the world’ s highest death rate, has been under strict restrictions. WSJ’ s Diana Chan reports on how everyday life has changed in the city, from panic buying to an exodus of residents. Photo: Emmanuel Serna/Zuma Press
• New Zealand will scrap vaccine mandates for a number of sectors, including teachers and the police, from April 4, as the current COVID-19 outbreak nears its peak,
ABC News Australia reported.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said only those working with vulnerable people, such as in the aged-care and health sectors and border workers, would need to be vaccinated from April 4, and passes would no longer be required for restaurants and other public places.
• The South Korean government has asked crematories to increase their burning capacity and funeral homes to secure more refrigerators as the nation continues to suffer from the highest death rate from COVID in the world,
the New York Times reported.
COVID deaths rose 45% in the week through March 19 from the previous week and totaled 429 on Thursday, according to government data, the most in a single day since the start of the pandemic.
Here’ s what the numbers say
The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 474.6 million on Tuesday, while the death toll rose above 6.1 million,
according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University
.
The U.S. leads the world with 79.8 million cases and 973,787 fatalities.
The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’ s tracker
shows that 217.1 million people living in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, equal to 65.4% of the population. But just 96.7 million are boosted, equal to 44.6% of the vaccinated population. | business |
Tape Measure market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2021 | This site uses cookies, including third-party cookies, that help us to provide and improve our services.
FMI delivers personalised research services by deploying a broad spectrum of research databases, resources, and methodologies. We offer customised research reports for various industry verticals and regions.
The tape measure market is set to witness steady growth during 2021-2031, with a CAGR of around 4.5-5.0%. A tape measure is a portable device used to measure the size of an object up to 10m or more. The scale is a flexible strip composed of steel or carbon steel.
The growing and expanding construction industry globally is likely to keep the sales of tape measures running. Moreover, other sectors such as woodworking and furniture designing are estimated to drive the market.
Evolving end-user demand for compact size and lightweight and innovation in the design of a tape measure that improves the convenience of daily carrying are driving the demand for a tape measure. Moreover, with the help of innovation in machinery, tape measures have become a very simple device to operate. Additionally, the growing packaging industry and its applications continue to be a lucrative avenue for tape measure manufacturers.
The growing interest of customers, especially the women, who are more likely to get their designer clothes and dresses stitched, instead of purchasing ready-made ones are projected to grow the demand for tape measures in the clothing industry.
However, the outspread of the COVID-19 had severely impacted the working of industries as the regional government had implemented strict regulations thus, shutting down everyday activities. Moreover, the decline in the sale of the construction industry had majorly impacted the tape measure market, thus, negatively impacting the growth.
The rapid urbanization has resulted drastically to fuel the pace of the construction industry thus, is followed by the growing demand for innovative, convenient, and reliable products. The addition of a self-locking feature in tape measures with the help of a hook allows easy and simplified measurement, and the retractable design is very convenient to use.
In addition, the rolling unit of the tape measure is a hard shell that makes the tape measure highly resistant to knocking and falling. Moreover, the finely polished surface of the steel strip is very safe for the user's hand. The steel scale consists of groovings and paint sprayings that help users to measure accurate and clear reading.
At present, innovation is a key factor that helps the demand for a product or service to grow. In the case of tape measures, manufactures are investing in the R & D facilities to innovate the product such as the introduction of an electronic LCD that reads the length of the object measured. Such innovation helps users record accurate observations and reduce the chances of making an error to a minimum.
North America is one of the largest markets for tape measure globally due to the growing interest of individuals in interior designing in residential sectors. In addition, the supporting government intends to invest in the development of infrastructure that is likely to fuel the demand for tape measures.
Demand for tape measures in U.S. and Canada will be led by the construction sector. The US construction sector faces a challenging year, however, the change in the mortgage rates tends to help recover the industry by early 2022. The momentum is likely to hold ground, which will provide an impetus to a range of construction materials, including tape measures.
The evolving mindset of players and manufacturers in various industries in Europe and the significant growth in the number of manufacturing industries has changed the outlook of the European market for all products and services, therefore, creating new growth opportunities for all including the tape measure industry.
Moreover, the rise in the adoption rate of the internet and smartphones are likely to help the tape measure industry to grow with the help of online retailers that have a huge market and customer base. Additionally, online retailers provide additional warranties and various offers that are highly attractive to customers thus, creating a new growth opportunity for the tape measures industry.
The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.
Note: Although care has been taken to maintain the highest levels of accuracy in reports, recent market/vendor-specific changes may take time to reflect in the analysis.
A key factor for our unrivaled market research accuracy is our expert- and data-driven research methodologies. We combine an eclectic mix of experience, analytics, machine learning, and data science to develop research methodologies that result in a multi-dimensional, yet realistic analysis of a market.
Copyright © Future Market Insights. All Rights Reserved
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Tray Liners market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2021 | This site uses cookies, including third-party cookies, that help us to provide and improve our services.
FMI delivers personalised research services by deploying a broad spectrum of research databases, resources, and methodologies. We offer customised research reports for various industry verticals and regions.
According to latest research by Future Market Insights, tray liners market is set to witness steady growth during 2021-2031. Tray liners are placed in the base of the trays to prevent direct contact of tray and the content which is placed in it.
Tray liners have the ability to absorb almost twice as much water per unit weight as their replacement, cotton towels and five times their own weight which makes them a better choice for multiple applications in the packaging industry.
The global tray liners market is anticipated to grow positively during the forecast period. As a result, the tray liners market is set to witness a CAGR of 5.1% -5.9%.
Manufacturers of tray liners are constantly innovating their product range to provide convenient packaging solutions to meet consumer demands. Industries such as pharmaceutical & healthcare and food have witnessed an increased consumption of trays which have led in increased the sales of tray liners.
Moreover, due to the escalating pharmaceutical industry, the tray liner market is propelling in the emerging economies. While in the developed nations the meat, poultry and seafood packaging the industry is fueling the demand for tray liners in the market.
However, with the spread of covid-19 pandemic, most countries stopped unessential movements and declared health emergency, thereby impacting heavily on the supply chain of tray liner products.
Tray liners in pharmaceuticals are setting industry standards for quality and reliability in medical services. Due to the need and demand for these products from the healthcare industry, tray liners manufacturers are concentrating on the production and development of pharmaceutical tray liners.
Furthermore, tray liners in pharmaceuticals are available in a variety of materials and additives, depending on the application. Tray liners are available in a variety of sizes and materials. Tray liners are light in weight and can absorb more than five times their own weight in moisture.
Further, tray liners with advanced features such as anti-skidding properties and cost-efficiency are being developed by the majority of manufacturers. Moreover, these tray liners are expected to be used in a variety of industries, including chemical research facilities. Further, tray liners are becoming more popular among dental clinics which is driving the demand for the product.
In the U.S, the tray liners market is booming over the past few years and is expected to rise due to awareness about hygienic treatment and healthcare in hospitals and clinics, the tray liners market is expected to witness growth during the forecast period.
The demand for tray liners market in the European market is estimated to grow significantly in the upcoming years.
Manufacturers prefer tray liners as these tray liners absorb the fluids which are released by the meat and keeps it fresh in the cold storage for a longer time. This increases the shelf life of the packaged food which helps in reducing wastage.
Also, usage of these trays makes the disposal process of spoiled meat convenient and hence is preferred by the European region due to large presence of food chain in the region.
This is translating into higher demand of tray liners which are mainly used to protect the inner lining of the trays. These factors are expected to further increase the demand for tray liners in the European region during the forecast period.
The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain.
The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.
Note: Although care has been taken to maintain the highest levels of accuracy in reports, recent market/vendor-specific changes may take time to reflect in the analysis.
A key factor for our unrivaled market research accuracy is our expert- and data-driven research methodologies. We combine an eclectic mix of experience, analytics, machine learning, and data science to develop research methodologies that result in a multi-dimensional, yet realistic analysis of a market.
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The stock market hit its COVID low 2 years ago today. Here's how its performance since then stacks up. | It’ s the second anniversary Wednesday of the lows set in the U.S. stock-market plunge triggered by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.
Stocks have stumbled thus far in 2022, but the S & P 500
SPX,
-1.23%
has more than doubled, rising 101.65% through Tuesday’ s close, since the March 23, 2020, pandemic bottom at 2,237.40 — its best two-year rolling performance since 1937, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-1.29%
is up 87.22% from its low of 18,591.93 hit on the same day, while the Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
-1.32%
has risen 105.65% from its low of 6,860.67, the data show. The Dow’ s performance since the bottom marks its best two-year rolling performance since 1987.
The market’ s performance “ reminds us how volatile emotional investing decisions can be, particularly as we consider how the markets have unexpectedly doubled in two years despite COVID-19 lockdowns, historic levels of inflation and war in Ukraine, ” said Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide, in a note.
The S & P 500 closed at a record on Feb. 19, 2020, but stocks
soon began to slide
as alarm rose over the spread of COVID-19. The selloff soon accelerated into a white-knuckle panic that took the S & P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-1.29%
,
which had both traded at all-time highs in early February, into a bear market — a decline of 20% or more from a recent peak — at record speed. At the March 23, 2020, closing bell, the S & P 500 had dropped nearly 34% from the record close set a little more than a month earlier.
The chaos wasn’ t confined to stocks. The Treasury market
nearly seized up
. The U.S. dollar
DXY,
+0.18%
soared amid a global scramble
for the world’ s reserve currency. The Federal Reserve moved quickly to
backstop credit markets
and worked with other central banks to expand or establish dollar swap lines, moves that were credited with helping to steady the ship. Those moves were in addition to the Fed’ s extraordinary monetary-policy easing measures and fiscal stimulus from Congress.
The stock-market bottom didn’ t spell the end of volatility across markets. A soon-to-expire oil futures contract in April 2020 traded, and closed, in negative territory for the first time ever, for example.
The S & P 500’ s rise from the low has been led by the energy sector, which has soared in 2022 as crude prices
CL.1,
-0.39%
BRN00,
-0.07%
surged toward 14-year highs in response to Russia’ s invasion of Ukraine. Since March 23, 2020, energy-sector stocks rose nearly 220% through Tuesday’ s close, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Among individual stocks, Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
+0.52%
led the way higher, up 1,044% over that stretch. The next closest gainer was Devon Energy Corp.
DVN,
+1.72%
with a gain of 881% ( see table below).
Dow Jones Market Data
The pandemic, meanwhile, has taken a huge toll on lives while amplifying political divisions in the U.S. and other countries. Shock waves continue to reverberate through the global economy. The Fed and most other major central banks are now moving to rapidly unwind the extraordinary easy money measures put in place as they deal with a surge in inflation fueled in part by pandemic-related supply-chain bottlenecks.
While the underlying economic picture in the U.S. remains strong, Russia’ s invasion of Ukraine last month has contributed to a surge in commodity prices, which has stoked fears of a possible return of stagflation — a pernicious combination of high inflation and stagnant economic activity.
The Nasdaq Composite slumped into
a bear market
earlier this month, while the Dow and S & P 500 have
entered correction territory
— defined as a drop of 10% from a recent peak. Stocks have since bounced from recent lows, however, with the S & P 500 trading less than 6% away from its all-time high. | business |
UK announces urgent fuel tax cut to fight cost of living crisis | LONDON — U.K. Finance Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday announced an immediate cut to fuel taxes and a longer-term tax reduction for workers in a bid to mitigate the country's historic hit to living standards.
In his Spring Statement, Sunak announced that fuel duty will be reduced by 5 pence per liter for 12 months, a cut he told Parliament will be worth £5 billion ( $ 6.6 billion), starting from 6 p.m. U.K. time on Wednesday. The government hopes the cut will reduce the cost of gasoline at the pumps amid a surge in global oil prices.
The level of fuel duty, a substantial contributor to British public finances, has been frozen at 57.95 pence per liter since 2011.
Sunak also revealed plans to double the government's household support fund to £1 billion for those affected by higher energy costs.
Solar pumps, heat pumps and other similar measures will be subject to zero value-added tax ( a tax on goods and services), down from 5%.
The pressure had been on Sunak to address the spiraling cost of living crisis in the U.K., with households facing record rises in energy bills and inflation running at multi-decade highs and expected to worsen as the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine conflict intensifies.
U.K. inflation came in at 6.2% in February, new figures showed on Wednesday, its highest since March 1992 and well ahead of consensus expectations among economists.
The Bank of England expects inflation to reach 8% in the second quarter, and has cautioned that double-figure prints are not inconceivable before the end of the year if Russia's assault on Ukraine and subsequent global supply shortages persist.
A planned 10% increase to National Insurance ( a tax on earnings) kicks in for many workers in April, while at the same time the U.K.'s energy price cap soars 54% to accommodate higher costs of oil and gas, exacerbating the squeeze on household income as consumer prices continue to head north.
In Wednesday's speech, Sunak announced that he would be raising the threshold at which workers begin paying national insurance by £3,000.
He also vowed to cut the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 19% in 2024, telling Parliament that this represented a `` £5 billion tax cut over over 30 million people. ''
During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Sunak launched a series multi-billion pound economic support packages, fueled by the country's largest peacetime borrowing levels in history.
In interviews over the weekend and in his annual Mais lecture given last month, however, Sunak has indicated that ever-expanding fiscal accommodation is not a strategy he wishes to sustain.
The U.K.'s Office for Budget Responsibility projects that for the fiscal year 2022/23, the underlying public debt to GDP ratio will be 83.5%, an improvement on October's forecast of 85.4%. The U.K.'s budget deficit is projected to reach 5.4% of GDP in 2021/22 before tapering off to 3.9% in 2022/23, 1.9% in 2023/24 and 1.3% in 2024/25.
The country's debt interest bill will reach £83 billion in 2022/23, Sunak cautioned.
The OBR also slashed its GDP growth forecast for this year from 6% to 3.8%
`` The Chancellor probably managed to avoid being tagged with the phrase 'talking a good game on tax cuts ' by moving to increase the threshold on National Insurance and promising that the basic rate of tax will be cut in 2024, '' said Neil Birrell, chief investment officer at Premier Miton Investors.
`` However, middle earners will still feel the squeeze. The reduction in growth forecasts and inflation predictions are probably not that reliable for this year given the uncertainty abounding, but the direction of both is clear; growth is going lower and inflation is going higher. ''
Although Sunak set forth a number of measures to help households weather the cost of living crisis, these `` likely will not go far enough '' to protect consumers given how drastic the outlook has become, according to Richard Carter, head of fixed interest research at Quilter Cheviot.
Carter said the rise to the national insurance threshold and basic income tax may `` put more pounds in the pockets of voters ahead of the next general election, '' but may do little to help in the here and now as the war in Ukraine continues to push up oil prices, utility bills rise sharply in the spring and inflation begins to bite for businesses and households.
`` While the unemployment rate is expected to be unaffected by the slowing of economic growth, it does feel as if we are entering a stagflationary period, '' Carter said.
`` It will be difficult for the economy to emerge from this without some additional stimulus, but with interest rates on the rise it is a tricky balancing act for the government and the Bank of England. ''
Carter said the government will be hoping the improvement in public finances is not blown off-course by geopolitical events. However, he added the uncertain outlook `` could get even foggier in the months ahead. '' | business |
How will the war in Ukraine affect the global economy and globalisation? | WHAT IMPACTS will the war in Ukraine have on the world economy and globalisation? Will it reshape the existing economic order built over decades? Host Rachana Shanbhogue asks Gita Gopinath, the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. And how will geopolitics, further disruptions to supply chains and an upswing in covid cases affect China’ s economy? The Economist’ s China economics editor, Simon Cox, and China business and finance editor, Don Weinland, assess whether China ‘ s determination to follow a zero-covid policy will hamper its prospects. Runtime: 31 min
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A guide to your next business trip | SHARP ATTIRE and a purposeful stride. The left-hand turn on the plane away from the cheap seats. Skipping the in-flight film to refine a presentation. Over the past two pandemic years these obvious giveaways of the globetrotting executive became a rare sight. According to the Global Business Travel Association ( GBTA), a trade body, worldwide spending on flights, hotels, car hire, restaurants and other expensable services fell from $ 1.4trn in 2019 to $ 660bn in 2020 as a result of covid-19 lockdowns and tough limits on cross-border movement.
Despite fresh disruptions, from coronavirus outbreaks and a tragic plane crash in China to Russia’ s war in Ukraine, many places are relaxing travel restrictions. America and Europe are mostly open for business. On March 21st Hong Kong said it would admit vaccinated arrivals from nine countries, including America and Britain, from April 1st and relax onerous hotel-quarantine requirements. Business travellers are once again visible at airports, on aeroplanes and in hotels. The GBTA expects corporate travel to rebound sharply this year and return to its pre-pandemic peak by 2024 ( see chart 1).
That is a relief to full-service airlines, which counted on business travellers for 30% of revenues and a higher proportion of profits, and big global hotel chains, which earned two-thirds of their sales from executive guests. For corporate road-warriors the news is more mixed. Remaining covid-19 measures, readjusted travel budgets, changing work patterns, heightened risk awareness by companies and individuals: all are changing business travel in profound ways. Some of the changes will make travelling for work a more pleasant experience. Others will not.
Throwing your laptop, mini-toiletries and clothes into a wheelie bag used to be a pretty universal corporate ritual. Henceforth whether or not you do will depend more on whom you work for, your role, where you are going and the purpose of your trip. Scott Davies, boss of the Institute of Travel Management, another industry body, explains that overall travel budgets used to be set annually, often against broad commercial objectives. As they are rebuilt after the covid lull, he expects many trips to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Many marginal jaunts won’ t clear the hurdle ( see chart 2), especially as companies get serious about reducing their carbon footprints, which swell with every air mile.
Some trips will be quick to return. Indeed, even at the height of the pandemic essential business travel continued; managing and maintaining remote oil wells, large infrastructure or factories far from the head office is impossible over the internet. The share of travel spending by manufacturing, utilities or construction firms edged up from 48% in 2019 to 51% in 2020, according to the GBTA. Companies for which face-to-face client meetings are desirable to maintain relationships and vital to drum up new business, such as finance and professional-services firms, have been swift to get workers back on the road. Anecdotal evidence suggests that as soon as one company heard that a competitor was out pressing the flesh ( or at least bumping fists) it followed suit.
If you do pack that suitcase, your destination is likelier to be domestic. As with leisure travel, long-haul trips for work are recovering more slowly. A poll of over 450 companies by the GBTA in February found that two in three had restarted domestic trips but fewer than one in three had done so for cross-border journeys.
Domestic trips in America, which accounted for nine in ten American corporate excursions in 2019, according to Bernstein, a broker, will increasingly go ahead. So will short-haul hops between European cities, which in 2018 made up two-thirds of EU business trips. Until the latest covid flare-ups the same looked true for flying in China, where business-travel spending fell by far less than the global average in 2020 and was recently forecast to grow by double the global average in 2021 ( though Chinese borders remain impregnable to most outsiders).
Your fellow passengers will disproportionately work for smaller companies. American Airlines reckons that travellers from smaller firms are back to 80% of their pre-covid numbers. The comparable figure for big firms is 40%. One reason is that small businesses mostly send people on those popular domestic routes. Another is that they may be a bit more relaxed about their workers’ wellbeing. Vik Krishnan of McKinsey, a consultancy, says that the pandemic has prompted travel managers at big companies to feel a heightened sense of their duty of care to employees.
Getting a trip approved is, then, getting harder than before. A recent survey of 170 North American corporate-travel managers by Morgan Stanley, a bank, shows that budgets in 2022 are expected to be 31% below the level of 2019. In the short run approval may get harder still. On March 15th Ed Bastian, chief executive of Delta Air Lines, told the Financial Times that the war-induced spike in the oil price “ will no question ” raise ticket prices on both domestic and international routes. Other airline bosses doubtless have similar designs.
Even if your supervisor signs off on your trip, you will find it harder to plan. The world’ s airlines are running at around two-thirds of their pre-covid capacity. That means less choice on times and fewer direct flights, notes Richard Clarke of Bernstein. The problem is not confined to flying. The scrapping of the 5.40am Eurostar train from London to Paris forces executives to arrive the night before in order to strike that morning deal over a croissant and café au lait.
Once on the road, the experience isn’ t what it used to be, either. With many executive lounges yet to reopen, the weary manager must seek refuge at a noisy restaurant—or worse, since plenty of eateries, too, remain shut, on a bench in the concourse within earshot of a disaffected infant. At many airports you will also still need to wear a mask. Although London’ s Heathrow and a few other airports have lifted mask requirements, America’ s federal mask mandate has been extended until at least April 18th. In the past year the Transportation Security Administration has fined nearly 1,000 unmasked travellers, so you ignore the rule at your peril ( and good luck expensing that fine).
On board the plane you may find yourself in economy class more often, and not merely because of the rising air fares. Some climate-conscious airlines are already reconfiguring planes with fewer business-class seats ( whose emissions per occupant are three times those of an economy seat). CEOs of large companies will be sad to hear that first-class seats, which are even dirtier, may disappear for good.
In the air, expect to be served by cabin crew draped in personal protective equipment ( especially in Asia, which remains more concerned than the West about hygiene). You, too, must keep your mask on, unless you are consuming food or drink ( of the non-alcoholic variety on American Airlines, which will only restart in-flight booze sales in mid-April). At least hot meals are back; as recently as last month even first-class passengers on American and Delta had to do without such sustenance on domestic flights.
Over the longer term, the news for the itinerant executive isn’ t all bad. The introduction of touchless technology and online check-in for flights and hotels should speed up travel a little ( at least once pandemic paperwork such as passenger-locator forms and vaccine certificates no longer needs verifying). With many planes sitting idly on the tarmac as a result of covid-related cancellations, some airlines used the opportunity to spruce them up. Australia’ s Qantas has, for example, modernised its fleet of A380 superjumbos by installing comfier seats for premium passengers. Singapore Airlines has updated the cabins on some of its short-haul fleet.
The few who get to hitch a ride on a corporate jet are also becoming a bit less select. Business-jet traffic has recovered much more swiftly than commercial aviation. According to WINGX, a consultancy, January was the busiest month ever, with the number of flights 15% higher than in January 2019. In a survey by Morgan Stanley, 11% of respondents said their firms would be more liberal with the use of business jets in 2022 than they were in 2021.
Chronic jet-lag may become a thing of the past. With long-haul travel still constricted, firms are reportedly opting to send executives on fewer trips that stretch to more days. Unseemly displays of corporate machismo, such as flying half way across the world for one short meeting, may never return, no doubt pleasing everyone concerned.
And many of those longer trips are combining work and play. Morgan Stanley sees evidence at American hotel chains that Thursdays and Sundays are becoming more popular with guests, suggesting that some workers may be moving trips towards the start of the week or its end, to blend work with pleasure. Such trips have become common enough to earn an ugly moniker, “ bleisure ”. Danny Finkel of Trip Actions, a firm which helps others manage business travel, says this could appeal to those who approve expenses, too: weekend flights are often much cheaper, offsetting the cost of extra nights at a hotel.
Perhaps the best news for the bedraggled business traveller is that some trips simply won’ t happen. Jarrod Castle of UBS, a bank, notes that 40% of business trips are to meet clients and another 40% involve internal meetings. Conferences, exhibitions and the like make up the rest. He reckons that perhaps half of the intra-company jaunts, especially for training or get-togethers between non- C-suite executives, are expendable. That means a fifth fewer trips overall. No grumbling there. ■
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Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
Rishi Sunak wants to be known as a tax-cutting chancellor | WITH BRITISH households facing a cost-of-living crunch, the “ spring statement ” on March 23rd, an occasion for the chancellor to course-correct between autumn budgets, offered several eye-catching giveaways. Fuel duty will be cut immediately. From July national insurance, a payroll tax, will kick in at a higher income threshold. And in 2024 the standard rate of income tax, paid by 30m Britons, will fall by one percentage point. As Rishi Sunak spoke at the despatch box, Conservatives brayed their support. But the measures add up to less than billed.
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Alongside the spring statement came a new set of forecasts for the public finances, produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility ( OBR), an official fiscal watchdog. Those supported the case for some kind of relief for hard-pressed households. Since October, when such figures were last published, inflation had increased by more than expected, eating into household budgets. As incomes fell behind rising prices, the OBR predicted that disposable income per person would fall by over 3% in real terms over the coming year, unless policies changed to mitigate the impact. That would have constituted the biggest annual drop since records began in 1956.
The worsening economic outlook has not pinched the public finances, however. Revenues from taxes on incomes and corporate profits have been buoyant. This is partly because in March 2021 Mr Sunak froze income-tax thresholds. Since then earnings have risen faster than expected in cash terms. The resulting fiscal drag means that more people are paying tax, and at higher rates. Last October the OBR expected that 0.9m more people would be caught by the higher 40% marginal rate in the 2023-24 fiscal year; it now thinks that 1.3m will.
As revenues have risen, public spending has not kept pace. Economic developments such as higher inflation have pushed up projected spending at the end of this parliament by only about two-thirds of the expected rise of £37bn in revenues. Most of that is higher benefits and debt-interest payments. ( More than a fifth of government gilts are linked to the retail-price index, a measure of inflation.) A change to the terms for student loans announced in February will save around £5bn in the same year. Costs have also been contained by Mr Sunak’ s refusal to increase the budgets of government departments beyond what was agreed last October, even though they will be pummelled by rising energy costs, just as households will. In times of high inflation, chancellors are able to make stiff spending cuts by stealth.
Had Mr Sunak chosen to do nothing, then, expected borrowing would have been about £20bn lower in 2024-25 than previously forecast. Instead he opted to cut taxes—compared with what had previously been pencilled in, that is. He soothed motorists upset about rising petrol prices by lowering fuel duty from £0.58 to £0.53 per litre. In three months’ time the threshold for starting to pay national-insurance contributions will be aligned with that for paying income tax—a welcome simplification and a political promise fulfilled. The marginal standard rate of income tax will fall from 20% to 19% in April 2024. The more immediate of these measures should offset around a third of the expected hit to incomes in the fiscal year starting in April 2022, limiting it to a drop of 2.2% ( see chart 1).
The moves placated the right wing of the Conservative Party, which has fretted about Mr Sunak’ s tax-and-spend ways, such as a big planned increase in the rate at which workers and employers pay national insurance, which is intended to help fund social and health care. But if what matters politically is the gap between voters’ incomes and outgoings, they should wait before cheering. In 2024 the fact that income-tax thresholds have been frozen for years will offset the gains of a lower income-tax rate for anyone earning less than £49,000 a year. More broadly, the policies revealed on March 23rd offset only around a sixth of previously announced increases in tax as a share of GDP between 2019-20 and 2026-27. Even after taking them into account, the tax take as a share of GDP is expected to increase by 3.3 percentage points, bringing it to 40.1% by the end of that period, the highest in four decades.
Mr Sunak will doubtless face further calls to keep shaving away at planned tax increases. But some caution is warranted when it comes to the public finances. Fallout from the conflict in Ukraine could start to erode tax revenues, if a sustained increase in energy prices drags down GDP. The OBR noted that a new vaccine-resistant strain of covid-19 could yet emerge, which could damage the economy and push borrowing higher.
The decision not to do more to soften the blow of rising living costs for the poorest voters is itself a gamble, however. Of every £3 in extra support the chancellor announced, £2 will go to the richest half of households, according to analysis by the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank ( see chart 2). Households reliant on benefits will be pinched by incomes that increase by just 3.1%, even as inflation rips above 7%. The real value of benefits is expected to fall by £11bn in the coming year, meaning that an extra £500m in the Household Support Fund, a pot of money from central government that councils can use to help people who are struggling, will not go far.
Mr Sunak appeared resolute, making it clear that any further giveaways would go on lower taxes, not higher spending. He promised that this autumn he would increase incentives for business investment. Perhaps he is hoping to fight the next election ( one is due in 2024) vindicated, and crowned the king of tax reliefs. But with such a large hit to incomes looming—and such big tax increases still to come—that seems optimistic. ■
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
AstraZeneca takes stake in health tech start-up Huma | In this article
LONDON — AstraZeneca said Wednesday it has invested in Huma, a U.K.-based medical technology start-up, as part of a broader commercial tie-up between the two firms.
The British pharmaceuticals giant has taken a roughly £25 million ( $ 33 million) stake in Huma, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person preferred to remain anonymous discussing commercially sensitive information.
As part of the deal, Huma will also acquire AMAZE, a disease management platform developed by AstraZeneca for asthma and heart failure patients, the person said.
AstraZeneca and Huma declined to comment on the financial terms of their agreement.
`` AstraZeneca will become a shareholder of Huma continuing its mission to build strategic partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem, '' an AstraZeneca spokesperson told CNBC.
`` We will collaborate closely to scale AMAZE across multiple projects driving our shared ambition to improve clinical outcomes through digital health solutions that bridge the gap between patients, clinicians, and researchers. ''
Huma develops applications that let doctors monitor a patient's symptoms and vital signs remotely. It also collects health data using smartphones, wearables and other devices to help clinicians with conducting medical research involving patients.
AstraZeneca already works with Huma on carrying out clinical trials virtually by using the company's technology. With its new partnership, Huma aims to become the `` extended digital health arm '' of AstraZeneca, CEO and co-founder Dan Vahdat told CNBC.
`` On the research side, digital tools are becoming the standard, '' Vahdat said in an interview. `` We are well positioned with the network of patients we already have, and the simplicity of our technology. ''
Vahdat said the progress of Huma's virtual clinical trials was `` accelerated '' by the coronavirus pandemic. He believes the technology has the potential to cut the cost and time involved in completing drug trials dramatically. Whereas it would normally take 12 years and cost around $ 1.5 billion to get a drug clinically approved, virtual trials can reduce that by two years and `` a few $ 100 million, '' he said.
The move will also help Huma pursue further expansion in the U.S., where AstraZeneca has partnerships with the likes of Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford University, Vahdat said.
It marks a rare start-up investment for AstraZeneca which, alongside Pfizer and Moderna, is one of the largest manufacturers of Covid-19 vaccines globally.
In a statement Wednesday, Karan Arora, AstraZeneca's chief commercial digital officer, said the tie-up marked `` a first for AstraZeneca in the digital space. ''
`` With Huma, we are accelerating AstraZeneca's ambition to achieve earlier diagnosis and treatment for patients with chronic diseases so they can lead better, more fulfilling lives, '' Arora said.
Founded in 2011 as Medopad, Huma has raised a total of more than $ 200 million in venture capital funding to date from investors including Bayer, Samsung and Sony. | business |
Bond-Index Replication While Navigating Volatility | The costs of transacting in the bond market can be high, especially during volatile periods. Portfolio managers aiming to track a benchmark might find that trying to buy every bond in proportion to its weight in the benchmark could result in excessively high transaction costs.
In the most extreme case, it simply may not be possible to buy a specific bond — for example, if the portfolio manager is seeking a bond held in an insurance company’ s buy-hold portfolio, which allows only limited trading. This could create a mismatch in portfolio and benchmark weights that, combined with spread and rate volatility, will contribute to tracking error.1
An alternative is to buy fewer bonds in the portfolio than in the benchmark and allow portfolio weights to differ from the benchmark’ s. But what is a potential way to do so that balances transaction costs and tracking error?
We employed optimization techniques to construct transaction-cost-aware portfolios that track the MSCI USD Investment Grade Climate Change Corporate Bond Index. In our methodology, turnover times bid-ask generates transaction costs.2 We used a “ smart turnover ” approach designed to lower transaction costs by controlling purchases and sales and keeping portfolio risk close to the benchmark’ s.
Liquidity is multidimensional, of course. Using bid-ask only is an imperfect measure of liquidity, as it doesn’ t assess the tradability of a bond. To address this, we incorporated S & P Global Market Intelligence’ s parsed dealer-quote-depth data in the portfolio-construction process. Specifically, we allowed only buys and sells of bonds that had at least six unique dealers quoting the bond during the prior month.3
Market makers are an integral part of a functioning corporate-bond market, and the quotes they send to their clients may provide a gauge of a bond’ s tradability. Dealers’ willingness to provide quotes often depends on their dual roles as principal and agent. As a principal, their desired inventory partly reflects their ability to hedge and views on relative value. As an agent, their willingness to serve client flows with bid-ask depends on their ability to source buys and sells.
We constructed three hypothetical portfolios, each subject to a different penalty for allowing tracking-error volatility ( TEV).4 We backtested these portfolios between December 2018 and February 2022, using monthly rebalancing.5 The number of bonds in the benchmark ranged from 2,100 to 3,300 over the period of our analysis. The number of bonds in the portfolios was constrained to be close to 500.
Portfolio 1 had the lowest TEV relative to the investment-grade benchmark, but also the highest cumulative transaction costs. Nevertheless, it was still 4 basis points ( bps) below the benchmark’ s calculated transaction costs. Portfolio 2 resulted in transaction costs that were 9 bps lower than the benchmark’ s, but at a “ cost ” of greater TEV. Portfolio 3 came in almost 20 bps below the benchmark’ s transaction costs, but had the greatest TEV. All portfolios had approximately the same effective duration, spread duration and option-adjusted spread as the benchmark. The portfolios also had less than 200 issuers each, compared with an average of 360 issuers in the benchmark.
Returns were adjusted to include transaction costs. Tracking-error volatility was computed using exponential time decay with weekly return intervals and a half-life of one year.
The portfolios consistently had lower bid-ask than the benchmark. In the months after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was significant index turnover, primarily triggered by high levels of bond-market issuance. The portfolios also experienced spikes in turnover, but less than that of the benchmark.
Index rules generate turnover with the addition of new bonds or the removal of existing ones. In contrast, transaction-cost-aware index-replication approaches may be able to reduce transaction costs by having reduced turnover ( “ smart turnover ”) with bonds that have tighter bid-ask spreads. These approaches may have even greater effect on transaction costs in volatile periods with sharp changes in index composition. In addition, such approaches may help investors navigate the rapid integration of climate and ESG considerations into the investment process by reducing the cost of benchmark conversions.
1Tracking-error volatility ( also known as active portfolio risk) is the projected annualized volatility of the difference in returns between the portfolio and the benchmark.
2Published returns on the benchmark do not include transaction costs. In our analysis, we adjusted index and portfolio returns to include transaction costs using the same methodology for both.
3Aggregated dealer-quote depth by month that includes round-lot ( > =USD 1 million size) dealer quotes ( bids, offers, two-markets) from the top 12 U.S. corporate-bond broker-dealers. The data counts the number of unique dealers that quoted a bond during a month.
4Specifically, we used MSCI’ s Barra® Open Optimizer, the short-term version of the MSCI Multi-Asset Class Factor Model, MSCI’ s Bond Liquidity Measure of bid-ask and S & P Global Market Intelligence’ s parsed dealer-quote-depth data. For each portfolio, the optimization goal was to minimize transaction costs subject to a different penalty for allowing tracking-error volatility. All portfolios were also constrained to have approximately 500 bonds; weights within each sector to be within 10% of the benchmark’ s; duration times spread within each sector to be within 20% of the benchmark’ s; key-rate durations within 20% of the benchmark’ s; a maximum 3% weight by issuer; and a maximum.4% weight and a minimum.01% weight by bond. All bonds in the portfolios were required to belong to the benchmark. Buys and sells were allowed only for bonds that had at least six unique dealers quoting the bond during the prior month.
5There are frequently material differences between backtested or simulated performance results and actual results subsequently achieved by any investment strategy. Past performance — whether actual, backtested or simulated — is no indication or guarantee of future performance.
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WEX Hosts 2022 Virtual Investor Day and Outlines Strategy for Growth | WEX Inc. ( NYSE: WEX), the global commerce platform that simplifies the business of running a business, will host its virtual Investor Day today beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET.
Melissa Smith, WEX’ s Chair and Chief Executive Officer, and other members of the executive leadership team will provide an update on the Company’ s strategy to drive long-term growth and create value for shareholders.
“ I am pleased to announce today that we are reaffirming our ambitious and achievable growth targets over the next five years, ” said Smith. “ Today, WEX is better positioned than ever before as a market leader in each of our businesses, with proven product differentiation, deep expertise, data driven insights, and a platform that is both reliable and scalable. Leveraging strong secular tailwinds, we will continue to expand our addressable revenue opportunity by introducing new products, entering new customer segments and extending our geographic reach. Our commitment to our shareholders remains to deliver strong shareholder value by harnessing our leading technology, cultivating customer relationships and people, and continuing to help our customers simplify the business of running a business. ”
In conjunction with today’ s event, WEX reaffirmed its long-range financial targets. Assuming stable foreign exchange rates and fuel prices, over the next five years the Company expects to achieve:
The Investor Day will be held virtually via webcast. The webcast and accompanying slide presentation will be available on the Investor Relations section of the WEX website at http: //ir.wexinc.com, or through the following address: https: //event.on24.com/wcc/r/3656265/57BD9C6D4E1EFED4E800FF9C45674673. A replay will also be available online for one year following the event.
WEX ( NYSE: WEX) is the global commerce platform that simplifies the business of running a business. WEX has created a powerful ecosystem that offers seamlessly embedded, personalized solutions for its customers around the world. Through its rich data and specialized expertise in simplifying benefits, reimagining mobility and paying and getting paid, WEX aims to make it easy for companies to overcome complexity and reach their full potential. For more information, please visit www.wexinc.com.
Organic revenue includes all sources of revenue growth in a given year, except for all revenue associated with companies acquired for a period of one year following the date of the acquisition. The Company's adjusted net income, which is a non-GAAP measure, excludes unrealized gains and losses on financial instruments, net foreign currency gains and losses, changes in fair value of contingent consideration, acquisition-related intangible amortization, other acquisition and divestiture related items, legal settlement, stock based compensation, other costs, gains and losses on divestitures, impairment charges, debt restructuring and debt issuance cost amortization, similar adjustments attributable to our non-controlling interests and certain tax related items. We are unable to reconcile our adjusted net income long range target to the comparable GAAP measure without unreasonable effort because of the difficulty in predicting the amounts to be adjusted, including, but not limited to, foreign currency exchange rates, unrealized gains and losses on financial instruments, acquisition and divestiture related items and adjustments to the redemption value of a non-controlling interest, which may have a significant impact on our financial results. For 2021, the reconciliation of this non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is included in our latest earnings press release dated February 10, 2022 available on our website.
This release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding: assumptions underlying the Company's future financial performance, future operations; future growth opportunities and expectations; expectations for future revenue performance, future impacts from areas of investment, expectations for the macro environment; and, expectations for volumes. Any statements that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. When used in this release, the words “ anticipate, ” “ believe, ” “ continue, ” “ could, ” “ estimate, ” “ expect, ” “ intend, ” “ may, ” “ plan, ” “ project, ” `` will '' and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain such words. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including: the extent to which the coronavirus ( COVID-19) pandemic and measures taken in response thereto impact the Company’ s employees, business, results of operations and financial condition in excess of current expectations, particularly with respect to demand for worldwide travel; the impact of fluctuations in fuel prices, and fuel spreads in the Company’ s international markets, including the resulting impact on the Company’ s revenues and net income; any impacts on our business from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, including the rapid increase in the price of fuel among other things; the failure to maintain or renew key customer and partner agreements and relationships, or to maintain volumes under such agreements; breaches of, or other issues with, the Company’ s technology systems or those of its third-party service providers and any resulting negative impact on its reputation, liabilities or relationships with customers or merchants; the actions of regulatory bodies, including banking and securities regulators, or possible changes in banking or financial regulations impacting the Company’ s industrial bank, the Company as the corporate parent or other subsidiaries or affiliates; the failure to comply with the applicable requirements of Mastercard or Visa contracts and rules; the effects of general economic conditions, including a decline in demand for fuel, travel related services, or healthcare services, and payment and transaction processing activity; failure to expand the Company’ s technological capabilities and service offerings as rapidly as the Company’ s competitors; changes in interest rates and the rate of inflation; the ability to attract and retain employees; limitations on or compression of interchange fees; the impact and size of credit losses; the success of the Company’ s recently announced Executive Leadership Team and strategic reorganization; the effects of the Company’ s business expansion and acquisition efforts; the failure of corporate investments to result in anticipated strategic value; the failure to comply with the Treasury Regulations applicable to non-bank custodians; potential adverse changes to business or employee relationships, including those resulting from the completion of an acquisition; competitive responses to any acquisitions; uncertainty of the expected financial performance of the combined operations following completion of an acquisition; the failure to complete or successfully integrate the Company’ s acquisitions or to realize anticipated synergies and cost savings from such acquisitions; unexpected costs, charges, or expenses resulting from an acquired company or business; the impact of changes to the Company’ s credit standards; the impact of foreign currency exchange rates on the Company’ s operations, revenue and income; the impact of the future transition from LIBOR as a global benchmark to a replacement rate; the impact of the Company’ s debt instruments on the Company’ s operations; the impact of leverage on the Company’ s operations, results or borrowing capacity generally, and as a result of acquisitions specifically; the impact of sales or dispositions of significant amounts of the Company’ s outstanding common stock into the public market, or the perception that such sales or dispositions could occur; the possible dilution to the Company’ s stockholders caused by the issuance of additional shares of common stock or equity-linked securities, whether as result of the Company’ s convertible notes or otherwise; the incurrence of impairment charges if the Company’ s assessment of the fair value of certain of its reporting units changes; the uncertainties of litigation; as well as other risks and uncertainties identified in Item 1A of our annual report for the year ended December 31, 2021, filed on Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 1, 2022. The Company's forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential future impact of any alliance, merger, acquisition, disposition or stock repurchases. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release and undue reliance should not be placed on these statements. The Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
News media: WEX Inc. Jessica Roy, 207-523-6763 Jessica.Roy @ wexinc.com
Investors: WEX Inc. Steve Elder, 207-523-7769 Steve.Elder @ wexinc.com
View source version on businesswire.com: https: //www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220321005918/en/
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How the “ independent state legislature ” doctrine could transform American elections | WHEN AMERICANS elect a new House of Representatives in November, around 90% of the 435 races will be foregone conclusions. Owing in large part to aggressive gerrymandering by state legislatures—a process by which politicians draw electoral lines to favour their own party—only about 40 districts will see competitive races, while some 400 “ safe ” districts will produce a predictable winner. When supercharged gerrymandering came under review by the Supreme Court in 2019, a 5-4 majority decided that policing electoral maps was not the job of federal courts. But that decision, Rucho v Common Cause, did not “ condone ” gerrymandering or close off other avenues to curtail it. The majority noted that state courts, vindicating rights in state constitutions, could crack down on state legislatures that draw overly distorted maps.
Courts in states like North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania have risen to that task this year. Take North Carolina, which is closely split between Republican and Democratic voters. ( In 2020 Donald Trump carried the state by 1.3 percentage points.) In November 2021 the state’ s Republican-held legislature drew a congressional map giving Republicans a virtual lock on 10 of the state’ s 14 House seats, a proportion that the state’ s supreme court found inconsistent with several clauses in North Carolina’ s constitution, including the guarantee of “ free elections ”. The court enlisted experts to draw fairer lines. But Republicans, seeking to preserve their lopsided map, asked the Supreme Court to step in. North Carolina’ s high court, they said, was not authorised to question a map that the legislature had duly adopted. But what is the basis of the “ independent state legislature ” doctrine that prompted the GOP’ s plea?
Article I of America's constitution provides that the “ times, places and manner of holding elections ” for Congress “ shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof ”. Advocates of the independent state legislature doctrine say this clause assigns sole responsibility for redistricting to the state legislature; other branches of the state government, including the courts, must watch from the sidelines. In 2000, a concurring opinion by three justices in Bush v Gore drew on this notion pegged to a similar clause in Article II. Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas cited that concurrence in 2020 when they suggested that legislatures are in charge of setting the rules for presidential elections. They frowned on state courts interpreting their state constitutions to require more expansive voting opportunities during the covid-19 pandemic, including the extension of absentee-ballot deadlines.
On March 7th the Supreme Court declined to reinstate the Republican-drawn map in North Carolina and denied a similar request from Republicans in Pennsylvania. But in the North Carolina case, Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented, thereby throwing their support behind the independent state legislature doctrine. The dissent read that the constitution “ specifies a particular organ of a state government ”, the legislature, to determine the contours of elections, “ and we must take that language seriously. ” A fourth justice, Brett Kavanaugh, agreed in spirit with the dissenters and said that the court should take up the question soon in an appropriate case. But Justice Kavanaugh did not join his conservative colleagues—and voted against the Republicans’ request—out of respect for the so-called Purcell principle concerning last-minute changes to election rules. It is “ too late ”, he wrote, “ for the federal courts to order that the district lines be changed for the 2022 primary and general elections. ”
With four apparent supporters on the Supreme Court, the independent state legislature doctrine is one vote away from upending more than 200 years of election law in America. Chief Justice John Roberts is an unlikely candidate to supply a fifth vote: he wrote the opinion in Rucho inviting state courts to do what the doctrine insists they can not. But Justice Amy Coney Barrett has remained mum on the question. If she were to join her four colleagues, the implications could be momentous. Liberating legislatures to gerrymander with impunity is a serious-enough concern. But even presidential elections could ultimately be affected. Although all states currently allocate their electoral votes by consulting their state’ s popular vote, nothing in the constitution explicitly requires this. Were legislatures to become supreme and unfettered, they could even select alternative slates of electors and thwart the will of the voters, without oversight from governors or state courts. Such a usurpation of democracy may seem far-fetched. But it would be a theoretical possibility if a Supreme Court majority gets behind an idea that makes legislatures autonomous actors in the realm of election law.
Finding evidence of war crimes is easy. Bringing the perpetrators to justice is much harder
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
FTSE Rises, Pound's Modest Reaction to Inflation Data Suggests Strong Reading Was Expected | February's strong U.K. inflation print showing annual CPI rising to 6.2% was expected judging by the pound's limited reaction to the data, IG says. The acceleration in inflation highlights the U.K.'s cost of living issue and some of the caution in sterling probably reflects investors waiting to see whether U.K. Treasury chief Rishi Sunak offers support to households in his new spending plans, IG analyst Chris Beauchamp says in a note. Sunak unveils his spring statement at 1230 GMT alongside the Office for Budget Responsibility's new growth forecasts. `` Growth forecasts are likely to be conservative, providing little reason to chase the recent bounce in the pound, '' Beauchamp says. GBP/USD falls 0.2% to 1.3239 but EUR/GBP is flat at 0.8317.
Ultra Electronics Holdings PLC said Wednesday that revenue and pretax profit fell in 2021 due to a stronger pound against the dollar and a one-off loss on the disposal of two small loss-making noncore businesses.
Saga PLC reported on Wednesday a significantly narrowed pretax loss and a material increase in revenue for fiscal 2022, and said it continued to apply its turnaround strategy amid a challenging Covid-19 backdrop.
Petrofac Ltd. said Wednesday that its pretax loss widened in 2021 on a fall in revenue.
Dignity PLC said Wednesday that it swung to 2021 pretax profit after booking lower costs, and that its new strategy will lead to lower profits in the short term.
Halma PLC said Wednesday that fiscal 2022 adjusted pretax profit is expected to be in line with market expectations due to increased demand across the group, but warned that a strong sterling could have a negative impact on its profit.
RWS Holdings PLC said Wednesday that it expects fiscal 2022 results to be around the lower end of the range of current market expectations.
James Cropper PLC said Wednesday that it will miss adjusted pretax profit market expectations for fiscal 2022 due to the rise in wholesale gas prices over the latest quarter, which has hurt its paper unit.
Pendragon PLC said Wednesday that it swung to a pretax profit on increased revenue in 2021 after booking strong performance in all parts of the business, but warned that the Ukraine conflict may hit new vehicle supply.
Henry Boot PLC said Wednesday that 2021 pretax profit more than doubled on a strong performance from residential land sales, industrial development, investment property revaluation gains and returns from joint ventures.
AB Dynamics PLC said Wednesday that its performance for the first half of fiscal 2022 is in line with management expectations, adding that it has been able to mitigate the effects of inflationary cost pressures by rising its prices for new orders.
Quartix Technologies PLC said Wednesday that it expects first-quarter performance to meet market expectations, with a 25% on-year increase in new installations and a gain in annualized recurring revenue that was significantly ahead of the growth rate a year earlier.
1018 GMT - Shares in Halma rise 0.9% after the FTSE 100-listed safety-equipment supplier forecast 2021/22 adjusted pretax profit in line with market expectations due to increased demand, but warned that strong sterling could weigh. The trading update for the year to the end of March was robust, Jefferies says. Lack of detailed guidance for the year ahead may disappoint investors, though the company said orders have continued to track ahead of revenue and ahead of last year, the brokerage says. `` One item of interest for us is the drop-off in M & A to GBP55 million in 2H22 from GBP111m in 1H22, though the company does say the pipeline remains 'healthy ', '' Jefferies says.
1017 GMT - Auto Trader should be able to grow the market share of its recent acquisition Autorama and do so at a lower operating cost base, Jefferies says. `` The extent to which leasing takes a greater share of overall car ownership is up for debate, but as a platform that's systematic to car buying in the U.K., it's obvious to us that Auto Trader would want to position itself for inevitable secular changes as we move deeper into the transactional era, '' it says. Jefferies has a buy rating on the car-listing publisher's stock, with a price target of 870 pence.
1012 GMT - Trustpilot's new 2022 guidance to accelerate bookings growth on increased costs made its shares drop 17% on Tuesday, bringing its year-to-date fall to 60%, Berenberg says. The German brokerage expects the company to be Ebitda-loss-making in 2022-24 and says it sees the path to profit as uncertain. While it sees that higher costs will be affecting its 2022 margins, it said booking trends seems robust and Trustpilot's core economics are strong. Berenberg reiterates a buy rating on the stock, but reduces its price target to 200 pence from 440 pence. Shares are up 3.4% at 142.5 pence.
0944 GMT - Pendragon's 2021 was a record year for profit and there is clear evidence of strategic progress being made, Jefferies says. Scaled omni-channel operators are looking increasingly relevant to the U.K. motor industry, the U.S. bank says, adding that, notwithstanding industry tailwinds, Pendragon's strategic agenda is clearly being executed -- operating costs now being GBP110 million lower than in 2019. Although margins for new and used cars should normalize in 2022, growth in the latter category should broadly offset this impact, it says. Jefferies has a buy rating on the stock with a target price of 33 pence.
0928 GMT - KRM22's 2021 results met forecasts, but more importantly demonstrated the opportunity for future growth, finnCap says. The U.K. technology and software investment company's suite of tools are well-placed to offer capital markets risk visualization, prioritization and remediation support, according to finnCap. KRM22's reinforced balance sheet at year-end, with gross cash up to GBP5.4 million from GBP2.0 million in 2020, will be used to invest in marketing, sales, and development to exploit the expanding demand for regulatory risk management tools, especially given current volatile macroeconomic circumstances, the U.K. investment bank says. `` The story remains as powerful as ever, and enthusiasm will derive from proof of execution, '' finnCap says. Shares are up 2.1% at 48.0 pence.
0926 GMT - Petrofac's 2021 results brought no particular surprises other than confirming how few contracts have been awarded since its last update, Jefferies says. The provider of services to the energy industry reported a backlog of $ 4.0 billion, unchanged from November 2021, the U.S. bank says. The $ 37 billion 2022 award pipeline is also down 8% on the $ 40 billion in the last update, Jefferies says. Petrofac has also said that revenue and margins will inevitably remain subdued in the near-term, though it is confident it will start to rebuild the backlog in 2022 and deliver strong growth thereafter, Jefferies says, retaining its buy rating and price target of 130.0 pence on the stock. Shares are down 2.1% at 115.8 pence.
0918 GMT - After securing distribution deals in major parts of Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, including with Menarini's South Korean subsidiary, Futura Medical's erectile-disfunction treatment looks set for more sales in Europe, Liberum says. The U.K. brokerage expects more deals in the coming months, as Europe has already approved the treatment, while it is in final studies in the U.S. `` According to IQVIA South Korea is the 9th largest erectile dysfunction market by value, similar in size to the U.K. market, '' it adds. Liberum has a buy recommendation on the stock and a target price of 102.1 price. Shares are up 12% at 27.6 pence.
Contact: London NewsPlus, Dow Jones Newswires; Write to Sarka Halas at sarka.halas @ wsj.com
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‘ We’ ve been left out in the cold’: My mother named my sister beneficiary of her estate, but wrote a letter wishing to divide it among her 3 children. What now? | Dear Quentin,
My mother passed away recently. She had bank and investment accounts and a good deal of land that had one of my siblings as a joint owner ( not just an authorized signer). In the last decade of her life, mom had given this same sibling her financial power of attorney, and their spouse medical power of attorney. The land had a “ transfer on death ” completed five years ago that lists an order of succession — my sibling, their spouse, then me. Mom had no debts.
My question is whether or not, given the joint ownership and the TOD with my sibling, there is anything from my mom’ s estate that will be divided between me and mom’ s other remaining children ( there are three of us). My sibling who is the owner of the accounts has said there is no will and no trust; conversations with my mother prior to her death seem to confirm this. Has everything just been left to one sibling, while the other two of us were left out?
There is a house on the land — does that and everything in it go to my sibling based on the “ transfer on death ” deed? What about the bank and investment accounts? In a letter to all of her children several years ago, mom specifically indicated that she wanted portions of the land signed over to the remaining children within a few years. We’ re left out in the cold. How do I know if that will happen?
Do we have any recourse?
Left Out
Dear Left Out,
Your mother seemed to be confused or conflicted about her intentions: arranging a transfer-on-death deed for some of her assets, and writing a letter expressing her wish to divide her real estate among her kids. Sometimes parents leave too much up to the kindness and/or trustworthiness of their children, not realizing that they have not left their estate in safe hands or properly stated how it should be divided. That could work to your advantage here, or not.
The law pertaining to transfer-on-death deeds varies by state. The District of Columbia allows such deeds to be used for real estate. Michigan and New York, among other states, do not. In Michigan, Florida and Texas, a “ lady bird deed ” is similar, allowing people to transfer the assets to a beneficiary upon their death, while avoiding probate and allowing the beneficiary to live in the property for their lifetime. It can be useful in some states for those who wish to qualify for Medicaid.
It’ s not clear from your letter how much of your mother’ s estate was included in the transfer-on-death deed, and how much of it was eligible for such a transfer. Again, it depends on where you live and the deed itself. Whatever remains of her probated estate, assuming she did not leave a will, should be divided by the probate court in accordance with the state law. Assuming your father has passed on, her direct descendants would be her three children.
If your sister was a co-owner rather than a co-signer of your mother’ s bank accounts, she will likely inherit those accounts upon her death. I am reminded of a
letter I received last year
from a woman who was made co-owner of her mother’ s bank accounts, and wondered whether she had an obligation to tell her sisters after their mother’ s death. I told her that yes, transparency is always the preferred option, but I also wondered whether her mother fully understood the arrangement.
Another possible wrench: The kind of the deed on the land on which your sister is listed will determine whether or not she automatically inherits it. Firstly, a transfer-on-death deed is usually only valid if it was recorded properly with the county clerk or recorder’ s office. Given what you have told me, it would be folly to assume that was done properly. Secondly, for tenancy in common, a co-owner can bequeath anyone their share and/or simply allow it to go through probate.
So where does all this leave you? It would be wise to consult an estate attorney. I don’ t know your family’ s history, but leaving her entire estate to one child would be relatively rare. Your sister’ s power of attorney lasts only for the duration of your mother’ s lifetime. If there is no will, you could
petition the probate court
to become administrator of your late mother’ s estate so you have a seat at the table. At the very least, appoint an independent third party to oversee the process.
This story has three hard-won lessons. For elderly parents: Always be clear about your intentions. It’ s too late for that now in your case, of course. For the beneficiaries: Never assume that everything has been settled correctly, and the word of one family member is gospel. Act now before the probate is completed, the estate is wrapped up and — crucially — the statute of limitations for contesting the estate settlement has expired.
And finally: A power of attorney has a fiduciary duty to act in good faith and in the best interests of the other person, in this case your late mother. In most states, a power of attorney who wishes to transfer assets to his/herself must have those terms spelled out clearly in the original power of attorney document to avoid self-dealing. It may ( or may not) be that your sister breached her fiduciary duty in this case. Your attorney will no doubt wish to look into that too.
Yo
u
can email The Moneyist with any financial and ethical questions related to coronavirus at qfottrell @ marketwatch.com, and follow Quentin Fottrell on
Twitter.
Check out
the Moneyist private Facebook
group, where we look for answers to life’ s thorniest money issues. Readers write in to me with all sorts of dilemmas. Post your questions, tell me what you want to know more about, or weigh in on the latest Moneyist columns.
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•
‘ I’ ve felt like an outsider my whole life’: My father died without a will, leaving behind my stepmother and her 4 children. Do I have any rights to his estate?
•
‘ He was infatuated with her’: My brother had a drinking problem and took his own life. He left $ 6 million to his former girlfriend who used to buy him alcohol
•
‘
She had a will, but it was null and void’: My friend and her sister are fighting over their mother’ s life-insurance policy and bank account. Who should win out? | business |
Water Color market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2021 | This site uses cookies, including third-party cookies, that help us to provide and improve our services.
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The watercolor market is set to witness steady growth during 2021-2031, with a CAGR of around 3.5-4.5%. The watercolor market is likely to grow demand based on the fact that more than 50% of the chemical in colors are removed and instead, water is used.
This not only reduces the hidden danger of flammability of colors but also, has no major adverse effect on the user while painting or spraying colors and also, causes minimal pollution to the environment while in consumption.
With the advancing industries and growing demand of customers for low volatile natural ingredients in water colors, various industries continue to grow the demand. Additionally, the growing interest of customers in the packaging and labeling industry and its application remain to be the major reason driving the demand.
Further, the sales of watercolors are projected to become attributable to the rising demand for environment-friendly and practical products that offer usability on a large scale basis. Besides, the evolving printing industry is another major factor advancing the deals of the water colors industry.
The COVID-19 pandemic had severely affected the global economy by shutting the industrial sectors and growing the amount of unemployment. Moreover, the changing preferences of individuals consisted of essential items thus, hindering the growth of the water colors industry. Therefore, the water colors industry is likely to consume considerable uptime to recover from the crisis.
In the case of water-based colors, the density of the liquid is comparatively lower than the others and thus, has a reduced overall weight. Further, the water colors become easy to handle and thus, help in growing the customer base. Due to the presence of fewer chemicals, the water colors are more versatile and durable, and also usable by kids as well.
The growth in a number of extra recreational activities in educational institutes also increases the demand for safe painting products thus, growing the volume of sales of water colors. Moreover, the rapidly expanding advertisement and textile market are creating a lucrative market for water colors in the future. Better printing quality and effects at an affordable price are also encouraging the usage of water colors.
North America is one of the largest markets for water color globally due to the fact that parents are very keen on making their kids participate in activities that are separate from the daily curriculum. Thus, high demand for organic and safe colors that are not hazardous are likely to create new growth opportunities for water color market.
In addition, the rapid urbanization and growth in the construction industry are promoting the use of cost-effective, convenient, and reliable products thus, is also encouraging global investment in the industry. Moreover, the recovering industries and commercial sectors are likely to provide a large range of expansion rate and usability of water colors, thus, growing the volume of sales.
The world-famous painters present in the countries of Europe majorly drive the global painting business. Thus, the innovation in types of colors present in the market will be directly be influenced and the sales are projected to grow.
Moreover, the high rate of adoption of smartphones and online shopping is likely to help the color industry to expand their customer base drastically as online retailers tend to supply products at a global range.
The growth in the number of manufacturing plants and industries and less reliability on other countries to conduct trading of materials for the production of various products is likely to create an evolving and growing market for the water color industry.
The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain.
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Tencent Posts Slowest Revenue Growth Since Going Public — Update | Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s fourth-quarter revenue growth slowed to its weakest pace in nearly two decades, the latest sign of a severe slowdown in China's technology sector amid the country's weakening consumption and a yearlong regulatory crackdown.
The world's largest videogame developer's revenue rose 7.9% to 144.19 billion yuan ( $ 22.65 billion). The result missed expectations of analysts polled by FactSet and marked the company's worst top-line growth since it went public in 2004.
Net profit jumped 60% to CNY94.96 billion, mainly driven by about CNY86 billion of disposal gains, including CNY78.0 billion from Tencent's recent sale of its stake in e-commerce company JD.com Inc.
The slowdown was mainly because growth weakened to 1% in Tencent's domestic games revenue, one of the tech giant's largest income streams. Revenue from another key business segment, online advertising, fell 13%, as China's wide-ranging regulatory actions last year hurt demand from advertisers across industries, particularly those in the after-school-tutoring and internet-services sectors.
The company said it expects its advertising business to resume growth in late 2022, while the gaming business could `` fully digest the impact of minor protection measures '' in the second half of the year.
For its cloud business, which has served as a key growth engine amid softness in other operations, Tencent said it is shifting the focus to margins and quality of growth from `` revenue growth at all costs. ''
Tencent's muted results add to a host of emerging troubles for the company. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the company is facing a potential record fine for violations of anti-money-laundering rules and some central bank regulations. The Journal this week reported on the company's plan to lay off thousands of employees, including about a fifth of the staff at its cloud unit, its fastest-growing business.
Chinese tech giants ' earnings momentum has faltered across the board since the later half of 2021 as a tighter regulatory landscape took its toll on financial performance, while China's economic recovery also slowed after a series of Covid-19 outbreaks since last summer. In the December quarter, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. posted its slowest revenue growth since it went public in 2014, while its rival JD.com swung to a loss due to weaker top-line growth and higher expenses.
Beijing last year released a raft of regulations targeting sectors including gaming, internet platforms, entertainment, education and finance. Tencent has been particularly hit by more-stringent rules on minors ' videogame play time, released last August.
Write to Yifan Wang at yifan.wang @ wsj.com
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Who are the Lapsus $ hackers and what do they want? | A hacking gang has claimed Microsoft and Okta among recent victims - but who are they? Here's what we know so far.
Danny Palmer is a senior reporter at ZDNet. Based in London, he writes about issues including cybersecurity, hacking and malware threats.
A prolific hacking gang has been making a name for itself with a string of cyber attacks against a range of high-profile targets. In the space of just a few days, a group known as Lapsus $ revealed that it has stolen data from big-name organisations including Microsoft and Okta.
The aim of the Lapsus $ campaign appears to be soliciting ransom payments, with threats to leak stolen information if its extortion demands aren't met. While this tactic is a familiar one, often used by ransomware gangs as extra leverage to force victims to pay a ransom for a decryption key, in the case of Lapsus $, there's no sign that ransomware is part of the attacks because no data is encrypted.
But that doesn't mean that the attacks aren't damaging: Microsoft Security notes that there's evidence of destructive element to the attacks for victims which won't give in to extortion demands.
Enterprise identity and access management provider Okta is one of the biggest victims of Lapsus $, in an incident in which the company says attackers may have managed accessed information of around 2.5% of Okta customers – a figure which the company says represents 366 organisations.
Okta disclosed the breach on March 22, and the company said it `` contained '' an attempted security breach in January. However, Lapsus $ has since claimed that is was able to access a support engineer's laptop and have posted screenshots claiming access to systems. In a blog post, Okta says the laptop belonged to a support engineer working for a third-party provider and that Okta itself hasn't been compromised. However, the company says it has contacted those affected.
Microsoft has also confirmed that it was compromised by Lapsus $. While the company says the attackers gained limited access, the hackers have posted a torrent file claiming to hold source code from Bing, Bing Maps, and Cortona.
While claiming Okta and Microsoft as victims has drawn eyes to Lapsus $, the group isn't brand new, having been active since at least December 2021 and claiming a number of victims in recent months.
One of the first victims of the group was the Brazilian Ministry of Health, which saw over 50TB worth of data stolen and deleted from its systems. Among it was data relating to the Covid-19 pandemic including data on cases, deaths, vaccinations and more. It took a month before systems were up and running again.
Other victims of Lapsus $ attacks in recent months include a number of technology and gaming companies. In February, Nvidia fell victim to a cybersecurity incident that was attributed to Lapsus $. The group claims to have stolen over 1TB of data from the microchip manufacturer, including employee passwords.
Another high-profile victim of Lapsus $ is Samsung, which confirmed that data had been breached in an attack, including source code relating to Samsung Galaxy smartphones. Samsung says no personal information was stolen in the attack.
Lapsus $ also claims to have compromised video game developer Ubisoft. The company said it fell victim to a `` cybersecurity incident '' which forced password refresh across the organisation.
Not much is known about Lapsus $ itself, other than that it's a cyber criminal gang - believed to operate out of South America - that hacks into the networks of large organisations to steal data and extort payments.
Unlike ransomware gangs, which use dark web websites to publish stolen data, Lapsus $ uses a Telegram channel to share information about its attacks – and information stolen from its victims – directly with anyone who is subscribed to it.
When it comes to conducting attacks, Lapsus $ appears to be the same as many other cyber criminal operations, exploiting public-facing Remote Desktop Protocol ( RDP) and deploying phishing emails to gain access to accounts and networks. The group also buys stolen credentials from underground forums and searches public dumps of usernames and passwords for credentials that can be exploited to gain access to accounts.
Lapsus $ also uses its public-facing Telegram channel to post messages, encouraging potential malicious insiders to come forward offering Virtual Private Network ( VPN), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure ( VDI), or Citrix credentials in exchange for an unspecified payment in an undisclosed currency.
It's unlikely the attacks will suddenly stop – the group may even be emboldened after claiming several high-profile victims – but there are steps businesses can take to help avoid falling victim to cyber attacks by Lapsus $, or other criminal hacking groups.
This includes securing remote-working tools like VPN and RDP with strong, difficult to guess passwords and bolstering that defence with multi-factor authentication. In addition, any users who think their account has been compromised should change their password immediately. Businesses should also train staff to identify and report phishing emails.
A Microsoft employee quit. Then the company completely broke the rules
Microsoft asked 31,000 people what's changed about work. One result was startling
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FTSE Edges Higher, Cautious Fiscal Spending Plans Would Likely Hold Back Sterling | U.K. Treasury chief Rishi Sunak's new fiscal spending plans may offer less support for households than expected and that could hold back sterling, MUFG Bank says. Sunak may argue for prudence given the prospect of rising costs for servicing government debt as market rates rise, MUFG says. Less-than-expected fiscal support would reinforce the risks to economic growth stemming from the cost of living crisis that looks set to worsen, the Japanese bank says. `` While the pound has performed well in recent days, we remain sceptical of any sustained move higher from here and caution from Sunak today would only reinforce our view, '' it says. Sunak is set to unveil his spring statement at 1230 GMT.
Ultra Electronics Holdings PLC said Wednesday that revenue and pretax profit fell in 2021 due to a stronger pound against the dollar and a one-off loss on the disposal of two small loss-making noncore businesses.
Saga PLC reported on Wednesday a significantly narrowed pretax loss and a material increase in revenue for fiscal 2022, and said it continued to apply its turnaround strategy amid a challenging Covid-19 backdrop.
Petrofac Ltd. said Wednesday that its pretax loss widened in 2021 on a fall in revenue.
Dignity PLC said Wednesday that it swung to 2021 pretax profit after booking lower costs, and that its new strategy will lead to lower profits in the short term.
Halma PLC said Wednesday that fiscal 2022 adjusted pretax profit is expected to be in line with market expectations due to increased demand across the group, but warned that a strong sterling could have a negative impact on its profit.
RWS Holdings PLC said Wednesday that it expects fiscal 2022 results to be around the lower end of the range of current market expectations.
James Cropper PLC said Wednesday that it will miss adjusted pretax profit market expectations for fiscal 2022 due to the rise in wholesale gas prices over the latest quarter, which has hurt its paper unit.
Pendragon PLC said Wednesday that it swung to a pretax profit on increased revenue in 2021 after booking strong performance in all parts of the business, but warned that the Ukraine conflict may hit new vehicle supply.
Henry Boot PLC said Wednesday that 2021 pretax profit more than doubled on a strong performance from residential land sales, industrial development, investment property revaluation gains and returns from joint ventures.
AB Dynamics PLC said Wednesday that its performance for the first half of fiscal 2022 is in line with management expectations, adding that it has been able to mitigate the effects of inflationary cost pressures by rising its prices for new orders.
Quartix Technologies PLC said Wednesday that it expects first-quarter performance to meet market expectations, with a 25% on-year increase in new installations and a gain in annualized recurring revenue that was significantly ahead of the growth rate a year earlier.
1135 GMT - U.K. drinks company Diageo needs to make sure that consumers understand well that its Smirnoff vodka brand isn't Russian or produced in Russia, Jefferies says. The U.S. bank notes that Smirnoff -- which represents 7% of the group sales -- had a spike in consumer interest on social media following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, making it important that the `` not Russian '' message be well understood to avoid a consumer backlash. Jefferies sees Diageo as well-positioned to face higher cost-of-goods-sold and says its growth model is working. Jefferies has a buy recommendation on the stock with a price target of 4,100.0 pence.
1118 GMT - Although Judges Scientific delivered a good 2021 performance, analysts at Shore Capital note some tailwinds in the form of tax and capitalized development expenses in the published EPS performance. Nevertheless, momentum for the precision-instruments maker is evident with six of the portfolio businesses showing a record performance in the year and others recovering from the pandemic with benefits from this still to come in 2022, Shore says. Analysts say they are aware of the uncertainties stemming from the war in Ukraine and note that inflationary trends on costs and stiff supply chains have to be managed. `` We confidently hold our current forecasts at this juncture, but would otherwise expect to upgrade later in the year reflecting the order book, '' Shore says.
1113 GMT - A bigger-than-expected increase in U.K. consumer prices in February is likely to add further pressure on the Bank of England to keep tightening monetary policy, says social investment network eToro. Official data showed the annual rate of inflation rose to 6.2% in the month, beating expectations for a 6% increase, according to a WSJ survey of economists. `` It will get worse before it gets better, with inflation set to rise to over 8% next month, under the twin impact of the 50% rise in the household energy cap and further fuel price rises, '' it says. This piles pressure on the BOE to continue raising interest rates to contain inflation, it says.
1110 GMT - Pendragon's 2021 results were slightly ahead of company guidance and takeover talk is a key focus for the U.K. motor dealership following reports on Saturday that its largest shareholder Hedin Group previously made a 28 pence-a-share offer, Berenberg says. `` Pendragon's share price has risen by 24% since the reports, and any further developments will of course likely be material for the share price, '' the German bank says, adding that Hedin was said to be considering a further offer. Elsewhere, continuing margin support from supply-chain constraints, coupled with increasing confidence in underlying improvement delivery, leads Berenberg to raise its estimate of Pendragon's 2022 EBIT by 16%. Berenberg has a buy rating on the stock and raises its target price to 36 pence from 30 pence.
1058 GMT - Nickel prices gain at the London Metal Exchange after trading was finally successfully rebooted on Tuesday -- at the fifth attempt, Commerzbank says. Benchmark nickel prices are up 13.2% according to FactSet, to $ 32,240 a metric ton. The metal had hit daily lower limits on four consecutive trading days from March 16, having been previously suspended in trading from March 8 after a short-squeeze sent prices surging as high as $ 100,000 a ton. Following a rapid slump in prices at the start of Tuesday's trading, which saw the lower limit narrowly missed, prices picked up again and were down 10.3% at the end of the day's trading, Commerzbank says. `` Whether trading settles back into more normal patterns will become evident over the next few days, '' it adds.
1018 GMT - Shares in Halma rise 0.9% after the FTSE 100-listed safety-equipment supplier forecast 2021/22 adjusted pretax profit in line with market expectations due to increased demand, but warned that strong sterling could weigh. The trading update for the year to the end of March was robust, Jefferies says. Lack of detailed guidance for the year ahead may disappoint investors, though the company said orders have continued to track ahead of revenue and ahead of last year, the brokerage says. `` One item of interest for us is the drop-off in M & A to GBP55 million in 2H22 from GBP111m in 1H22, though the company does say the pipeline remains 'healthy ', '' Jefferies says.
Contact: London NewsPlus, Dow Jones Newswires; Write to Sarka Halas at sarka.halas @ wsj.com
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Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process. | business |
Mini Washing Machine Market Forecast, Trend Analysis & Opportunity Assessment 2021-2031 | This site uses cookies, including third-party cookies, that help us to provide and improve our services.
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Mini washing machines are small clothes washing machines. They are built in such a way that customers can easily carry them from a storage place to a bathroom or kitchen sink, where they can fill them with water, drain the water, and begin washing clothing.
Despite the fact that small washers are utilized in places where a full-sized machine isn't possible, they function in the same way as a regular machine. As a result, leading market participants are focused on developing more portable washing machines with innovative ideas. The market is set to witness a CAGR of 5.9% during 2021-2031.
The market is expanding as the number of working women around the world increases, as does spending on high-end household appliances. The market is likely to experience increased demand due to their ease of use and portability.
Mini machines perform the same functions as full-sized versions, but prioritize space and convenience with the help of caster wheels, compact dimensions, and hand-powered agitators. Consumers, particularly women, are attracted to such benefits because they demand more portable and compact household appliances.
A prominent trend in the market is the rapidly increasing innovations in the appliance industry. Small washing machines are right up there with smartphones and personal computers as transformative inventions of the twentieth century. A load of laundry that had previously taken more than four hours to clean was reduced to a 40-minute automated operation with the push of a button.
The players in the market are highly investing in innovation & technology to provide their customers with highly innovative appliances. For instance, Costway washing machine with spin dryer, is portable and compact. It is perfect for the limited space such as dorms, apartments, motor homes, RV's, camping and more.
And the light weight makes it easy for moving. Furthermore, in 2020, LG Electronics ( LG) has unveiled its most advanced laundry innovation, which uses artificial intelligence to deliver precision washing with no guesswork. LG's smartest washer can recognize a mixed load of t-shirts and pants ( as opposed to bedding, delicates, or other fabric combinations) and personalize the wash cycle with specific motions, temperatures, and timings.
As a result, in the projected term, utilizing more innovations and customizing the machines according to the needs of the consumers is predicted to enhance sales.
The effect of COVID-19 on the global home appliances industry was immediate. The COVID-19 pandemic had a direct impact on home appliance manufacturers.
To prevent the virus from spreading further, governments in a number of countries had placed a lockdown. As a result of the shutdown of production plants and trade sanctions, the supply chain was disrupted.
US is considered as the lucrative market for washing machine market globally. The U.S. currently leads the global market.
North America's market is driven by rising demand for energy-efficient appliances in the United States. The growing awareness of licensed energy-efficient products boosts US development.
Furthermore, the national industry is expected to increase greatly due to the necessity to replace traditional washing machines with smart and portable washing machines. Aside from that, customers in the United States and Canada have a strong preference for high-quality, electric appliances.
Europe is considered as a tech savvy region as Germany been the hub for technological advancements. Due to the increasing demand for major appliances, there is a growing demand for household devices such as washing machine in the European market.
The consumers have now started utilizing modern and technically advanced devices due to the associated convenience and time-saving. As a result, the factors responsible for this growth could be due to the improving lifestyles of consumers, improvement in the purchasing power, and migration of rural population to the urban areas.
Furthermore the players in the market are focusing expanding their business and even focused on innovations. For instance, Robert Bosch GmbH plans to expand its operations and presence though connecting 25 million devices by 2019. It believes on partnership and strategic alliance in the areas of connected manufacturing. As a result, it partnered with IBM in 2017.
The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.
NOTE - All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in reports are those of the respective analysts. They do not necessarily reflect formal positions or views of the company.
A key factor for our unrivaled market research accuracy is our expert- and data-driven research methodologies. We combine an eclectic mix of experience, analytics, machine learning, and data science to develop research methodologies that result in a multi-dimensional, yet realistic analysis of a market.
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Instacart makes a new detour in its long route to Wall Street | As Wall Street waits for Instacart to go public, the company’ s new executive team is looking to build on the delivery-app company’ s own side hustle: software and other services for grocery stores.
Instacart announced Wednesday that it’ s doubling down on a lesser-known part of its operations, which is providing tech solutions to grocery chains like Publix and Aldi. Now, the company is expanding its software offerings to grocers that want to compete with the likes of Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
-0.90%
,
and opening its own warehouses in partnership with grocers to compete with younger delivery startups that are promising ultrafast delivery, such as Gopuff and Gorillas.
Instacart’ s chief financial officer, Nick Giovanni, told MarketWatch in a Wednesday interview that the COVID-19 pandemic helped double the online-grocery market from 5% penetration five years ago, and that the industry expects 20% to 30% penetration in the next decade or so. Because of that, he said retailers will need more sophisticated tech tools, and Instacart hopes to provide them.
“ That’ s what it’ s about, planning for the next decade of growth again, ” Giovanni said. “ The last 10 years was about getting online. The next 10 years is about helping digital transformation. ”
The shift in consumer habits during the pandemic led to huge growth in demand for online delivery, helping DoorDash Inc.
DASH,
+2.78%
complete a long-awaited initial public offering
. It also helped Uber Technologies Inc.
UBER,
-0.87%
offset a steep decline in ride-hailing with a surge in delivery revenue. Instacart had been expected to go public with the benefit of pandemic growth trends, especially after the hiring of Giovanni early last year.
For more:
The pandemic has more than doubled food-delivery apps’ business. Now what?
Giovanni, a Goldman Sachs veteran,
joined Instacart as CFO
months before the company
also changed its chief executive, hiring former Facebook Inc.
FB,
-1.47%
executive Fidji Simo. In the announcement of Giovanni’ s hiring, the company highlighted his extensive experience in advising companies as they go public, including the initial public offerings of Airbnb Inc.
ABNB,
-1.37%
,
DoorDash Inc.
DASH,
+2.78%
,
Twitter Inc.
TWTR,
-1.12%
,
Dropbox Inc.
DBX,
-0.60%
and eBay Inc.
EBAY,
-0.27%
,
as well as the direct listings of Slack Technologies Inc. ( which has since been bought by Salesforce.com Inc.
CRM,
-3.25%
) and Spotify Technology SA
SPOT,
+0.75%
.
Yet when asked Wednesday about the timeline for the company’ s Wall Street arrival, Giovanni declined to comment. And when asked for information on the company’ s growth during the pandemic, Giovanni would not say any more about Instacart’ s consumer business beyond a company statement that orders grew 30% year over year in 2021, and Instacart maintained the new customer base it gained during the pandemic.
What Giovanni did want to talk about is the company’ s goal to become grocers’ go-to platform provider, by expanding offerings for e-commerce, fulfillment, advertising, in-store and data solutions for grocers. That would include deals like a partnership the company has struck with Publix to provide ultrafast deliveries from fulfillment centers that Instacart is calling Carrot Warehouses.
The test, which will involve Instacart-owned warehouses and Publix’ s inventory, will launch in Atlanta and Miami in the next few months, and will aim for deliveries in 15 minutes or less. Giovanni would not share how many warehouses the company is envisioning to open, but he did say it would depend on partnerships with retailers.
See also:
DoorDash jumps into ultrafast delivery — and directly employing delivery worker
s
He called the warehouses a complement to groceries, and said it’ s just one part of the company’ s broader goal of connecting retailers to consumers.
“ This will help retailers go head-to-head with Gopuff and Gorillas, ” Giovanni said.
Instacart was founded in 2012 and has raised $ 2.9 billion in 20 rounds of venture capital, according to Crunchbase. The most recent funding round valued the San Francisco-based company at $ 39 billion last year, but some large investors have since marked down their stake in the company,
suggesting a valuation of less than $ 32 billion
. | business |
McDonald's McPlant sandwich, created with Beyond Meat, is 'underperforming ' franchisee sales expectations, analysts say | BTIG analysts conducted channel checks at locations that are participating in the McDonald’ s Corp. test of the McPlant sandwich and say the plant-based sandwich, created in partnership with Beyond Meat Inc., isn’ t meeting expectations.
“ [ F ] ranchisee sentiment on the sales performance was underwhelming, ” wrote analysts led by Peter Saleh in a note.
“ Their assessment was that they don’ t see enough evidence to support a national rollout in the near future and that lower sales volumes were slowing down service times, as the product was being cooked to order. ”
See:
McDonald’ s bringing back Szechuan sauce on its app for a limited time starting March 31
Analysts say the McPlant was designed to be cooked and held for 15 minutes, like other items on the McDonald’ s
MCD,
+0.55%
menu. But the lower sales volume means the item is now being cooked when a customer requests it, which is creating longer wait times at the drive-through.
The test for the McPlant was expanded to 600 locations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Dallas-Ft. Worth area on
Feb. 14
. At the time of BTIG’ s channel checks, the test was six-to-eight weeks into the limited-time offer.
BTIG’ s analysis suggests restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area and Dallas Ft. Worth locations are selling 20 McPlant sandwiches per day, while three to five sandwiches are sold per day in more rural East Texas. In the initial eight-store test, 70 sandwiches were sold per day. For this test, franchisees were expecting 40 to 60 sandwiches sold per day, BTIG said.
“ We believe McDonald’ s may continue to test and even offer McPlant in higher income, urban markets that appear more receptive to plant-based meat offerings, but a wide-scale launch seems a ways off at this point, ” the note said.
Analysts expect both companies to continue to “ tweak ” both the product and the messaging to gain wide appeal. Feedback BTIG received to
Dunkin Brands
‘ plant-based sandwich years ago found that it had the most appeal with affluent women customers.
Analysts suggest that the price of the McPlant needs to come down to be more competitive with traditional burgers, and the sustainability benefits should be played up more.
Also:
Keurig Dr Pepper downgraded as at-home coffee consumption expected to fall
Don’ t miss:
Beyond Meat and PepsiCo launch first product from Planet Partnership joint venture, Beyond Meat Jerky
In its most recent earnings report, Beyond Meat
BYND,
-3.86%
cited the McPlant as one of the recent launches that would boost U.S. sales.
The company reported
a wider year-over-year loss and a 1% revenue decline. The company’ s 2022 revenue outlook fell short of analyst expectations.
BTIG expects that sales growth in the food-service channel could take time as restaurants manage the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and seek out efficiencies.
BTIG rates Beyond Meat stock neutral.
Beyond Meat shares have plunged 61.7% over the past year. McDonald’ s is up 6.9%. And the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.44%
is up 6.7% for the period. | business |
Nightmare on the Dover Straits as P & O shocks with ‘ brutal’ job cuts | What were they thinking? The debacle is a PR disaster not just for P & O Ferries but DP World and shipping in Brexit Britain
P & O Ferries has handed the public relations industry a textbook example of how to damage a corporate reputation in double-quick time.
The extraordinary sight of hi-viz-jacketed security staff coming aboard vessels to force a dumped crew to leave ship is ugly to behold.
This is Brexit Britain — the island nation — where what some might think of as a national flag carrier has just laid off 800 British seafarers without notice. French and Dutch crews have apparently been spared. Mobile phones captured a manager on a Zoom call to staff reading from a script in a monotone voice — changing people’ s lives.
What was P & O thinking of? Many may say this happens all the time in shipping — but if so, it is out of sight and out of mind in the deepsea sector.
It was clearly enough to shock Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng into quick condemnation of the company’ s action.
Opposition political parties and unions such as the Brexit-supporting RMT are outraged, holding protests and promising legal action.
As I write this piece, the P & O Ferries website says Dover to Calais sailings “ remain cancelled ” and it is advising travellers to use services run by rival DFDS.
Services from Cairnryan in Scotland to Larne in Northern Ireland are also “ suspended ” — as is the connection between Hull in north-eastern England and Rotterdam.
The ferry website says: “ Got a PR Related Quesion [ sic ] ” and gives a mobile number to call. It rings until a voice says “ this is an incorrect number ”.
It looked at first sight as though P & O walked into this chaos completely unprepared and is now struggling to react and retrospectively explain.
Formal statements from the company early on said it had run up £100m ( $ 132m) in losses and continuing with this state of affairs was simply “ unsustainable ”.
Clearly, a combination of Covid and Brexit has caused problems for all ferry operators — not just ones based in the UK, such as P & O, which handles around one-third of the seaborne trade between England and France.
In initial formal statements, P & O chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite described it as a “ difficult but necessary decision ”.
But carried out like this? The company’ s website talks about its commitment to corporate social responsibility and how it has a vision to “ lead the industry in setting standards for best practise in wellbeing ”.
The redundancies have not just hurt the P & O brand — once the equivalent of royalty in the British maritime industry.
It has also scarred the image of its Middle East-based owner, DP World, which has major container terminals in the UK and whose suitability to be an investor in a series of planned British freeports is now being questioned.
The normally staid business bible, the Financial Times, called the sackings “ brutal ” and said DP World risked reputational damage for a “ cynical ” manoeuvre.
Were peremptory decisions on the ferry business taken in Dubai?
Calls to DP World failed and an email to the relevant person in Dubai bounced back. But finally, a UK PR agency working for P & O sent over a new statement on Tuesday.
This indicated that the decision to dismiss staff without consultation or warning was deliberate — an attempt to avoid what P & O thought would be a long period of disruption from industrial action.
The statement read: “ We also took the view, in good faith, that reaching agreement on the way forward would be impossible and against this background, that the process itself would be highly disruptive, not just for the business but for UK trade and tourism. ”
The company insists it has offered financial recompense to make up for the lack of warning and did everything possible to contact individual employees.
It said it was losing £1m a day while the vessels are not moving but hoped to have services back in action soon, probably using agency seafarers.
The P & O statement insisted that security staff handled their job with “ appropriate sensitivity ” and were not told to use force or handcuffs, as some have alleged.
Still, the whole thing is a mess: for P & O, for DP World and for the image of British shipping. Someone from the UK Chamber of Shipping should analyse what went wrong and how to avoid this Dover debacle from happening again. | general |
U.K. annual inflation hit 6.2% in February, a fresh 30-year high | Inflation in the U.K. reached a new three-decade high in February, accelerating to a 6.2% annual rate, and is expected to rise further in the coming months on higher energy and other commodity prices.
This is the highest rate since March 1992 — when prices rose at an annual pace of 7.1% — and beats the 6.0% rate expected by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal. In January, consumer prices increased 5.5% on year, according to the data from the Office for National Statistics.
The pick-up in inflation was led by higher prices of food, clothing, and furniture and household equipment, as Covid-19 lockdowns meant that price changes were unusually weak in February 2021.
The core price index, which excludes volatile categories such as energy costs and food, rose 5.2% in February on year, accelerating from the 4.4% increase registered in January.
Economists expect inflation to keep rising in the months ahead, as the jump in energy prices feeds through households’ utility bills, and with the war in Ukraine exacerbating price pressures.
The Bank of England has already raised its policy rate three times in recent months to tame price growth. The central bank expects the inflation rate to be around 8% in the second quarter, and perhaps even higher later this year.
Write to Xavier Fontdegloria at xavier.fontdegloria @ wsj.com | business |
Egypt caps bread prices as shockwaves of Ukraine war hit Middle East | `` This crisis may be significantly more severe than the coronavirus crisis, '' said Egyptian prime minister Mostafa Madbouly during a cabinet meeting Monday, referring to the economic impact of Russia's war in Ukraine.
Ukraine's neighbors have had more than three-and-a-half million refugees cross into their territories since Russia's late February invasion. But the impact of the war has extended much further afield, with global oil prices rising to almost-decade highs and grain prices soaring amid a shortage from a region that is often referred to as the breadbasket of Europe.
Particularly hit are Middle East countries that rely on both Russia and Ukraine, two of the world's top grain exporters, for the bulk of their grain imports.
For Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations grappling with the ripple effects of the war, that's a cause for concern. Just 10 years ago, revolutions across the region toppled longtime dictators partly because of a rise in the price of commodities. `` Bread, freedom, social justice! '' was among the most popular chants on the streets of Egypt during Arab Spring protests.
Food prices in Egypt rose 4.6% month-on-month in February, and core inflation rose to 7.2% year-on-year in from 6.3% in January. By the end of February, as the Russian military was mobilizing at Ukraine's border, global wheat prices jumped to their highest level since 2012.
In the three weeks since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the price of unsubsidized bread in Egypt jumped by as much as 25% in some bakeries. Cairo on Monday fixed the price of unsubsidized bread to limit the inflationary impact.
Ukraine has banned the export of some grains to keep supplies for the domestic market. The nation's Black Sea ports also face a blockade by Russian forces, preventing grain exports.
Egypt is the world's largest buyer of wheat and approximately 80% its wheat imports came from Russia and Ukraine in 2021, according to Reuters.
`` Food insecurity absolutely can result in greater political unrest, '' Lama Fakih, the Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, told CNN. `` These are a number of countries that have already been suffering from conflict [ and ] from political upheavals. ''
On Monday, the rights watchdog issued a report calling for regional governments to ensure that the conflict in Ukraine doesn't worsen the food crisis and warned them against removing or reducing food subsidies, as some had planned to do.
Discontent has already manifested in the form of a protest in Iraq, where a relatively small March 9 rally in the central city of Nasiriyah against a rise in food prices was attributed by the government to the Ukraine war. The government later announced a support package for citizens which included one-time grants to those in need and reviewing the ration card budget ahead of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
`` We are nearing the month of Ramadan and are worried about price increases, '' said Mohamed Ali, a 42-year-old Iraqi day laborer living in Baghdad. `` There is an increase in most food prices, especially cooking oil. ''
Much of the region had already been suffering from poverty and food insecurity, but the war in Europe is only aggravating the situation, said Timothy Kaldas, a fellow at Cairo's Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
`` The 2011 [ Egyptian ] uprising came after a decade of rising levels of poverty, '' Kaldas told CNN. `` And in 2019 when Egyptians protested in multiple cities across the country, the regime found that the people they arrested... were primarily driven by economic grievances. ''
On Monday, the Egyptian pound dropped 14% against the dollar after Russia's invasion of Ukraine prompted foreign investors to pull billions of dollars out of Egyptian treasury markets. The central bank also spiked overnight interest rates by one percentage point and the government announced a 130 billion Egyptian pound ( $ 7.05 billion) economic relief package.
`` Countries that are already suffering from widespread food insecurity are the ones that have been hardest hit, '' said Fakih, `` And these include Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria. ''
The needs of Yemen, which is facing from one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, are reaching what Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths called `` alarming heights. '' Yemen imports at least 27% of its wheat from Ukraine and 8% from Russia, said Human Rights Watch.
Lebanon last month said it had wheat reserves sufficient for only one month. It imports nearly 60% of its wheat from Ukraine.
Hend Zaki, a 38-year-old Egyptian mother-of-five who runs a food business from home, said she has lost clients since she raised her meal prices two weeks ago.
`` I practically pay double now for everything, '' she told CNN. `` We are greatly harmed... there are some very poor people [ here ]. ''
With additional reporting from Adam Pourahmadi and Aqeel Najim, CNN
Other top Middle East news
Egypt, Israel and the UAE leaders hold trilateral talks amid Iran concerns
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Monday, official reports said on Tuesday. The meeting focused on global developments `` especially regarding energy, market stability and food security, '' Egypt said.
Background: The meeting in Egypt comes just days after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a landmark trip to the UAE, his first to an Arab nation since the start of the Syrian uprising in 2011. It also comes as nuclear talks between Western powers and Iran reach an advanced stage.
Why it matters: Israel has repeatedly expressed concern over Iran's growing influence in the region. In recent days, Bennett said he is `` very concerned '' that the US is considering removing Iran's Revolutionary Guards from its terrorism blacklist. The State Department has not confirmed its intentions to do so.
Judge charges Lebanon's central bank governor with illicit enrichment
Lebanese central bank governor Riad Salameh and his brother Raja were charged with illicit enrichment on Monday, Lebanese Judge Ghada Aoun told CNN. She ordered Raja's detention on Thursday `` for the role he played in helping Riad to launder money through purchasing property in France, '' she said. The governor did not respond to CNN's request for a comment, but in a previous statement acquired by Reuters, Governor Salameh said `` not a single penny '' was used from public funds to pay fees to a company owned by his brother. Last week, Raja Salameh's lawyer said allegations of illicit enrichment and money laundering against his client were unfounded. He called the evidence `` media speculation without any evidence, '' reported Reuters. CNN wasn't able to reach Raja Salameh.
Background: Salameh's tenure has faced increased scrutiny since the financial system imploded in 2019, the most destabilizing crisis since Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war. In February, Judge Aoun issued a subpoena for him after he failed to attend three hearings as a witness in investigations into his alleged misconduct at the central bank. Reuters reports that court security was unable to locate him.
Why it matters: This is the first charge brought against the governor who has held his position for almost 30 years. His wealth is also being investigated by authorities in France and Switzerland. The charge may exacerbate political tensions between Salameh's powerful backers and opponents.
Saudi Arabia emphasizes 'essential role ' of OPEC+ oil accord
Saudi Arabia's cabinet emphasized on Tuesday `` the essential role '' of the OPEC+ agreement in bringing balance and stability to oil markets.
Background: Several major consuming nations, including the United States, have called on producers to raise their output at a faster rate to help calm crude oil prices, which have soared on the back of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The alliance has been raising output by 400,000 barrels per day each month since August to unwind cuts made when the Covid-19 pandemic hit demand.
Why it matters: The statement, a little over a week before OPEC+ is scheduled to meet, indicates little chance the grouping will decide to raise oil output at a faster pace. OPEC+, which groups the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia, has so far resisted calls to increase supply. It will hold its next meeting on March 31.
What we're watching
The Gulf states ' relations with the US have been under stress of late, most recently being tested when the Biden administration requested asked Saudi Arabia and the UAE to help reduce oil prices by ramping up production. That request was rebuffed. Becky Anderson dissects the fissure between the allies.
Around the region
Meet Stan, the world's most complete and most expensive tyrannosaurus rex. Named after the paleontologist who unearthed him, the 67-million-year-old artifact was excavated in 1992. With
188 bones, it is one of the best-preserved and most studied T-Rex skeletons. For years, it remained behind closed doors at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City,
South Dakota. But now, it has a new home.
In 2020, the 11-meter-long and 4-meter-high T-Rex was auctioned for $ 31.8 million, setting a world record for any skeleton sale. At first, the buyer was anonymous, but a recent announcement by Abu Dhabi's Department of Culture and Tourism ( DCT) has revealed Stan's owner and a new development in the region: the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi.
Set to open in 2025, the museum is a part of the city's plan to transform Abu Dhabi into an international cultural hub. Chairman of DCT Abu Dhabi, Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, told
CNN's Becky Anderson why Stan was worth every penny: `` It's going to be worth everything when visitors come and just look up at this amazing specimen... the last thing we want is these amazing objects to be sitting in private hands for nobody to view. ''
Stan is well known in paleontology circles. Now, his presence is set to be a part of the Natural History Museum's 13.8-billion-year journey through time and space. The T-Rex is set to showcase alongside other specimens, including the 7-billion-year-old Murchison Meteorite, which crash-landed in Australia more than 40 years ago.
By Tasmiyah Randeree, CNN
Tweet of the day
`` Cash is trash, '' tweeted Jassim Alseddiqi, one of the UAE's top investors. Alseddiqi is the CEO of Shuaa Capital, a Dubai-based asset manager and investment bank that manages $ 14.1 billion in assets. Investors, including billionaire Warren Buffet, have long warned against holding on to cash during a major war. Cash only loses value during war, they say. Alseddiqi is also the chairman of Bahrain-based GFH Financial Group, Eshraq Investments and Khaleeji Commercial Bank. He sits on the board of the UAE's biggest bank, First Abu Dhabi Bank.
Photo of the day
| business |
One in three children with disabilities globally have experienced violence in their lifetimes, study finds -- ScienceDaily | Young people with mental illness and cognitive or learning disabilities ( e.g., attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism) are especially likely to experience violence, and overall, children with disabilities are more than twice as likely to experience violence compared to those without disabilities, which can have a serious and long-lasting impact on their health and wellbeing.
The findings highlight the urgent need for collaborative efforts by governments, health and social care workers, and researchers to raise awareness of all forms of violence against children with disabilities and to strengthen prevention efforts, according to the authors.
`` Children with disabilities face unacceptably high levels of violence worldwide, '' says Dr. Ilan Cerna-Turoff in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, who co-led the study. `` Governments face a challenging time in which resources are spread thin in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic and social change. We know that violence prevention leads to better development indicators for our societies. Now, more than ever, violence prevention is a worthy and important investment to secure a better future. Moreover, all people deserve the right to live in a world in which they are safe from violence. Protecting children with disabilities from violence is a fundamental aspect of social justice and equity. ''
An estimated 291 million children and adolescents have epilepsy, intellectual disability, vision impairment, or hearing loss -- representing about 11 percent of the total child and adolescent population globally. Many more have other physical and mental disabilities. The vast majority of children with disabilities -- more than 94 percent -- live in LMICs where multiple risks converge. Inadequate systems of social protection and access to support, stigma, discrimination, and a lack of information about disability contribute to the higher levels of violence experienced by children with disabilities. This can be further exacerbated by poverty and social isolation. The unique challenges faced by children with disabilities, such as the inability to verbalise or defend themselves, can also make them a target of violence.
In 2012, a systematic review published in The Lancet estimated that more than a quarter of children with disabilities in high-income countries experienced violence and that their odds of experiencing violence were more than three times higher than their non-disabled peers.
This new analysis includes a larger number of studies from a wider geographical area, more types of violence ( e.g., peer bullying and intimate partner violence), and a wider range of disabilities ( physical limitations, mental disorders, cognitive or learning disabilities, sensory impairments and chronic diseases), as well as using updated methods. It provides current global estimates of violence against children with disabilities, up to September 2020. The new estimates suggest that one in three children with disabilities are survivors of violence and that they are twice as likely to experience violence as non-disabled children.
The researchers did a systematic review and meta-analysis of all observational studies measuring violence against children with disabilities published in 18 English language databases and three regional Chinese databases between 1990 and 2020. Data were analysed for 98 studies involving over 16.8 million children ( aged 0-18 years), including 75 studies from high-income countries and 23 studies from seven low-income and middle-income countries.
Analysis of data from 92 studies looking at prevalence found that the overall rates of violence varied by disability and were slightly higher among children with mental disorders ( 34 percent) and cognitive or learning disabilities ( 33 percent) than for children with sensory impairments ( 27 percent), physical or mobility limitations ( 26 percent), and chronic diseases ( 21 percent).
The most commonly reported types of violence were emotional and physical, experienced by about one in three children and adolescents with disabilities. The estimates suggest that one in five children with disabilities experience neglect and one in ten have experienced sexual violence.
The study also draws attention to high levels of peer bullying, with almost 40 percent of children with disabilities estimated to have experienced bullying by their peers. In-person bullying ( physical, verbal, or relational acts, such as hitting and kicking; insults and threats; or social exclusion) is more common ( 37 percent) than cyberbullying ( 23 percent).
In general, children with disabilities living in low-income countries experienced higher rates of violence than those in high-income countries -- possibly as a result of limited access to prevention and support services, lower levels of legal protection, and attitudes and norms that stigmatize people with disabilities and lead to greater social tolerance for violence. A further challenge is that we continue to face gaps in information on low-income and middle-income countries, especially in Southeast and Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
`` Violence against children with disabilities is preventable. These children must be given the right life chances now, said co-lead author Dr. Zuyi Fang from Beijing Normal University in China. `` The UN Sustainable Development Goals aim to end all forms of violence against children by 2030. Achieving this will require political leaders, practitioners, and researchers to work together to implement what we already know works to prevent violence such as evidence-based parenting interventions, while developing and evaluating effective community, school-based, and on-line interventions that target specific forms of violence. ''
Writing in a linked Comment, Dr. Tania King from the University of Melbourne in Australia, who was not involved in the study, notes that it is possible that there has been an escalation in rates of violence against children with disability since the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that, `` Article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, endorsed by many countries around the world, enshrines the rights of children to be protected from violence. As the number of children with disability continues to grow worldwide, we must establish the systems and processes to protect them from violence. Better services and support for children with disability will reduce many of the risk factors that underpin their increased experiences of violence. The imperatives to act are many: they are economic, as the damage wrought by violence is costly. The imperatives are social -- society has much to gain by improving inclusion of those with disability. But importantly the imperatives are moral -- it is unacceptable for current society to tolerate such rates of violence among children with disability. ''
Other co-authors of the study are from the University of Oxford, UK, and the University of Leeds. | science |
Technology, health care, industrials are good long-term investing bets | The current stock market, highly volatile and trending lower this year, makes this a daunting time for individual investors seeking to identify companies with reasonable risk and good long-term growth potential.
Concerns about overall market performance — as of mid-March, the S & P 500 Index had had the fifth-worst start to a year since 1927 — means investors are acutely aware of various negative forces: the highest inflation in 40 years, an expected series of interest-rate increases that has already begun and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Thus far, these and other factors have made 2022 a year of great uncertainty.
Uncertainty muddies market waters, yet investors willing to wade in can do so more confidently with the informed vision to spot opportunities through the mud.
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Currently, three sectors — technology, health care and industrials — have relatively high concentrations of companies with low-risk characteristics, low valuations and good earnings growth projections.
There are low valuations in technology? The poster-child sector for growth stocks and the polar opposite of value investing? That is correct.
The sector's price-earnings ratios have declined significantly with falling prices this year. As of mid-March, at least 50 stocks in the Nasdaq Composite Index were down at least 50% from their highs, putting them well into bear territory. Also pushing prices down has been the market's anticipation of interest-rate increases, which tend to disproportionately punish growth stocks with high P/Es, a common tech characteristic.
Yet even before this year's slide, Nasdaq 100 P/Es were in a slow decline that started in mid-2020. The cumulative effect: As of March 17, the index's average P/E was 27, down from 35 in August 2021.
This trend has sharpened the existing contrast between quality, earnings-rich tech companies ( some even pay dividends) and earnings-challenged firms that, like Icarus in Greek mythology, perilously fly close to the sun with astronomical P/Es.
For example, in late March, negative earnings of high-fliers Zscaler and Snowflake meant they had no positive P/Es and ethereal forward P/Es of 400 and 1,356, respectively. But quality tech firms with real earnings are firmly rooted in terra firma. For example, Oracle and Qualcomm, in mid-March, had forward P/Es of 8 and 15, respectively, significantly lower than the S & P 500's forward P/E of 19.
The higher a company's P/E, the more investors pay for earnings and the less attractive it generally is, so high P/E stocks can drag indexes down. Thus, the widening P/E gap supports the case for investing actively by buying individual stocks rather than passively by buying index funds or ETFs.
The new category of low-valuation tech is heavily populated by companies in the semi-conductor industry, hardly surprising amid the current, unprecedented demand for chips, used in everything from cars to toasters — and even toilets.
In addition to relatively low P/Es, some chip stocks — Applied Materials, KLA Corp., Lam Research and Qualcomm, among them — have other fundamental characteristics indicating low risk, as well as projected average annual earnings growth well into double-digits over the next five years, according to Factset's average analysts ' projections.
Yet tech stocks with these characteristics aren't limited to the chip industry. Others include: Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Seagate Technologies, Skyworks Solutions and VMware Inc. ( Class A).
Health-care costs haven't increased as much as many items in recent months, but with or without inflation, people are going to seek it, especially now that virus fears have ebbed.
The big consumer group in this sector, of course, is baby boomers, many of whom are now in their late 60s and naturally seeking more care, including elective procedures they postponed during the pandemic. The return of elective surgery bodes well for medical and surgical device companies like Medtronic, and will have a follow-on effect for other types of health-care companies as these returning patients are prescribed more tests and medications.
Like technology, this is a sector where passive funds may not be the best way to invest these days. Average valuations are now fairly low but share price trends have been sharply divergent recently; this is a split sector.
As of mid-February, biotech company AbbVie, pharma company Bristol-Myers Squibb and various care-provision and services companies were at three-month relative highs. Meanwhile, many life-sciences tools and services firms were at three-month relative lows — among them, instrumentation and reagent supplier Thermo Fisher Scientific, medical/industrial conglomerate Danaher and medical data science firm IQVIA Holdings. The split pricing means that, in buying health-care funds, investors could be getting a lot of priced-up shares.
The price divergence probably reflects investor confusion over the sector's future in a generally uncertain market. This makes it all the more important to focus on fundamentals.
Health-care companies with relatively low trailing P/Es and good earnings projections include: Anthem, Cigna, CVS Health Corp., Danaher, HCA Healthcare, Humana,, Merck, Mettler-Toledo International and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
Industrials are hardly a sexy sector, but investors are keenly aware that industries need to make a lot of stuff to meet current demand.
As industrials crank up to supply manufacturers with equipment and services, they face higher input costs. But many of these companies have pricing power in an environment where demand for many items far outstrips supply.
This sector has declined less than most in recent weeks, but it didn't have as far to fall, as prices have been pretty flat for about a year for some companies and even longer for others. For example, in mid-March, Cummins, which manufactures commercial gasoline, diesel, and hydrogen-fuel-cell engines, was priced about where it was in 2018.
Supply chain problems remain, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, higher energy prices and Covid lockdowns in China. Yet, as the supply chain smooths out in the coming months, growth in this sector should pick up. And to the extent that materials and parts are available in the meantime, manufacturers will pay more for them.
Companies with lower risk profiles, reasonable P/E ratios, and good projected earnings growth include: Cummins, Deere & Co., Emerson Electric, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Norfolk Southern Corp., Parker-Hannifin, W.W. Grainger and United Parcel Service.
Of course, the same market forces have resulted in good opportunities in other sectors. Yet these three sectors currently stand out for their concentrations of attractive companies with good long-term potential.
— By David Sheaff Gilreath, chief investment officer/partner with Sheaff Brock Investment Advisors and Innovative Portfolios | business |
Good news for the economy: People are traveling and buying stuff | The Dow Jones Transportation Average ( DJT), a group of 20 stocks that includes major railroads, truckers, airlines and freight companies, is up about 7% this month and is flat for the year.
Meanwhile, the more widely-known Dow Jones Industrial Average, which includes blue chips like Apple ( AAPL), Coca-Cola ( KO) and Disney ( DIS), is down 5% in 2022, as investors grow nervous about rising interest rates and inflation.
When the Dow transports outperform the rest of the market, that is often viewed as a positive macroeconomic indicator.
It means consumers are buying lots of stuff from Amazon and Walmart that needs to be shipped to warehouses and retailers. And it's a sign that people are traveling again, for both leisure and business.
Rental car firm Avis Budget ( CAR), railroad Union Pacific ( UNP), trucking company JB Hunt ( JBHT) and the airlines Alaska Air ( ALK), Southwest ( LUV) and JetBlue ( JBLU) are among the top transportation stock performers this year.
The strength in transportation stocks is even more remarkable given the surge in energy prices. Oil has soared more than 50%, to around $ 115 a barrel in the United States.
Potential problems remain for the sector, of course. They include supply chain woes, trucker labor shortages and the resulting need to raise wages and a recent surge in Covid cases.
Economic headwinds but consumers still traveling and shopping
But many transportation firms have been able to withstand these pressures, as the economy's broad rebound in 2021 has offset much of the industry's challenges.
`` Demand for travel continues to move in the right direction, '' said Andrew Harrison, chief revenue officer and chief commercial officer for Alaska Airlines, on the company's January earnings call.
`` Spring and summer travel should be strong on the leisure side, and benefit from the further unlocking of business and international travel, '' Harrison added.
Americans also are buying more of everything, which is great news for railroads, truckers and other shipping firms.
`` Consumers are flush... they're financially healthy. So as long as their confidence isn't rattled, they seem to be postured to continue to purchase through the year, '' said Union Pacific CEO Lance Fritz on the company's earnings call with analysts in January.
`` A lot of my industrial peers feel pretty confident that their marketplaces look pretty good to them, '' Fritz added, saying that executives in the housing and construction markets remained upbeat about the 2022 outlook.
Trucking company JB Hunt is optimistic too, despite the difficulty in finding drivers. `` For our customers overall? I would say demand is very strong across all of our services, '' said chief commercial officer Shelley Simpson during the company's most recent earnings call in January.
Supply chain challenges aren't hurting shippers too much, either.
`` Consumption trends remain elevated and retail and e-commerce demand remains strong, '' said Matthew Cox, CEO of ocean freight and logistics company Matson, during a February earnings call with analysts.
Matson ( MATX) shares have soared 33% this year, making it one of the top performers in the Dow Jones Transportation Average.
Still, not all transportation companies are benefiting from the upswing. Shares of FedEx ( FDX) have fallen nearly 15% this year, making it one of the worst performers in the DJT. FedEx reported earnings last week that missed forecasts. The company has been hit by rising labor costs and higher fuel prices. | business |
Paul Manafort stopped from boarding plane to UAE over revoked passport | Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman in 2016, was denied the ability to travel by US Customs and Border Protection, according to detective Alvaro Zabaleta, the police spokesman.
`` His US Passport was revoked and he could not take his flight, '' the spokesman said, adding that there was `` no further incident. ''
Manafort intended to fly on Emirates flight 214i. The incident happened around 9 p.m. ET on Sunday.
CBP spokesperson Kris Grogan declined to comment. CNN has reached out to the State Department and Manafort's attorney for comment.
The Justice Department said in a 2017 court filing that Manafort had submitted 10 passport applications over the last decade and that he had three active US passports, each with a different identification number. This was `` indicative of his travel schedule, '' prosecutors said.
Manafort has spent decades as a high-paid consultant for political figures around the world, including countries like Ukraine, the Philippines and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The purpose of his planned travel to the UAE is unclear.
He made $ 60 million working for former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, the Kremlin-friendly leader who was ousted in a popular revolution in 2014. Manafort has always maintained that he tried to bring Ukraine closer to the West, but Yanukovych was seen as a Kremlin ally and took refuge in Russia after fleeing from Kyiv.
Special counsel Robert Mueller zeroed in on Manafort's dealings in Ukraine and charged him with a litany of crimes, including illegal foreign lobbying and money laundering. Manafort was convicted at a 2018 trial of eight counts, including bank fraud and filing false tax returns. He later pleaded guilty to a wide-ranging conspiracy involving his undisclosed lobbying for Ukraine.
Federal judges sentenced Manafort to serve seven and a half years in prison. He only spent about two years behind bars because he was released in 2020 due to concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic.
He was a key figure in the probe into potential Trump-Russia collusion -- largely because during the 2016 campaign, he was in regular contact with a Russian spy, was deeply indebted to a major Russian oligarch and indirectly passed internal Trump campaign data to the Russians.
But he never implicated Trump in any wrongdoing and always denied that any collusion took place. Trump rewarded Manafort with a pardon in December 2020, weeks before leaving office.
In a recent radio interview, Manafort weighed in on the Russian war against Ukraine, saying the US should give more weapons to Kyiv and that the Ukrainian people `` cherish their freedoms. '' | business |
Airline CEOs urge Biden to end mask mandate, testing requirements | In a new letter, industry group Airlines for America wrote, `` now is the time for the Administration to sunset federal transportation travel restrictions -- including the international predeparture testing requirement and the federal mask mandate -- that are no longer aligned with the realities of the current epidemiological environment. ''
The CEOs of Alaska Airlines, American Airlines ( AAL), Atlas Air Worldwide, Delta Air Lines ( DAL), FedEx Express, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways ( JBLU), Southwest Airlines ( LUV), United Airlines ( UAL), and UPS Airlines signed the letter.
Earlier this month, the White House moved the end of the transportation mask mandate to April 18. The White House said pertinent government agencies would consult with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on whether the mandate could expire sooner and under what circumstances it could be brought back.
The letter comes after CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday that the Omicron subvariant BA.2 does not appear to cause more severe Covid-19 but it is more transmissible than the original strain. | business |
Justice Clarence Thomas misses third day of oral arguments after being hospitalized | Thomas entered Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, DC, Friday after experiencing flu-like symptoms. He has been absent from the bench all week.
The court announced Thomas ' hospitalization on Sunday and has declined repeated requests for updates on his health since then. When asked Wednesday about his status, Patricia McCabe, the court's public information officer, said: `` No update. ''
In a statement on Sunday, McCabe said, `` He underwent tests, was diagnosed with an infection and is being treated with intravenous antibiotics. ''
At the time, she specified that Thomas does not have Covid-19 and said that his symptoms are `` abating, he is resting comfortably and he expects to be released from the hospital in a day or two. ''
Chief Justice John Roberts said in open court on Wednesday, as he has done since the beginning of the week, that Thomas would read briefs and transcripts of oral arguments. All nine justices are fully vaccinated and boosted against Covid-19. | business |
Moderna says its Covid-19 vaccine performs as well in children as it does in adults | The company said two 25-microgram doses of its Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months through 5 years old provided a similar immune response to two 100-microgram doses for adults ages 18 to 25, indicating that the benefit conferred to young adults is also conferred to young children.
The two doses of vaccine are given to children 28 days apart.
The data showed `` a robust neutralizing antibody response '' and `` a favorable safety profile, '' according to a company news release issued Wednesday.
Based on the data, Moderna said it will ask the US Food and Drug Administration to authorize the use of the vaccine in this younger age group in the coming weeks.
`` Given the need for a vaccine against COVID-19 in infants and young children we are working with the U.S. FDA and regulators globally to submit these data as soon as possible, '' Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said. `` We believe these latest results... are good news for parents of children under 6 years of age. ''
The vaccine was not all that effective at preventing Covid-19 infections caused by the Omicron variant, which predominated in the US during the study. For children ages 6 months through 1 year old, the efficacy was 43.7%. For children ages 2 through 5, the efficacy was 37.5%. Moderna said the lower efficacy was still statistically significant and consistent with how vaccinated adults have fared with the Omicron variant.
Moderna said it is preparing to evaluate the potential of a booster shot for all children 6 months and older, which would target the original strain of the virus as well as the Omicron variant.
The data is based on a group of 6,900 children ages 6 months through 5 years old. The majority of adverse reactions were mild or moderate, and were more frequent after the second shot. Moderna said no deaths and no cases of myocarditis or pericarditis were reported. Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle and pericarditis is inflammation of the heart lining.
Moderna also announced that it has initiated a submission to the FDA for emergency use authorization of the company's Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 6 through 11 years old. Children that age would get two shots of a larger 50-microgram version of the vaccine. Moderna also said it provided the FDA with additional follow-up data on its vaccine for children ages 12 to 17. Children that age would get two shots of a larger 100-microgram version of the vaccine.
Last month, the FDA postponed a meeting of its vaccine advisers to consider Pfizer/BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine for children younger than 5, and requested additional data on third doses. The companies have said they expect that data to be ready by early April. | business |
Moderna says its low-dose COVID shots work for kids under 6 | Moderna’ s COVID-19 vaccine works in babies, toddlers and preschoolers the company announced Wednesday — and if regulators agree it could mean a chance to finally start vaccinating the littlest kids by summer.
Moderna said in the coming weeks it would ask regulators in the U.S. and Europe to authorize two small-dose shots for youngsters under 6. The company also is seeking to have larger-dose shots cleared for older children and teens in the U.S.
The nation’ s 18 million children under 5 are the only age group not yet eligible for vaccination. Competitor Pfizer currently offers kid-sized doses for school-age children and full-strength shots for those 12 and older.
But parents have anxiously awaited protection for younger tots, disappointed by setbacks and confusion over which shots might work and when. Pfizer is testing even smaller doses for children under 5 but had to add a third shot to its study when two didn’ t prove strong enough. Those results are expected by early April.
Vaccinating the littlest “ has been somewhat of a moving target over the last couple of months, ” Dr. Bill Muller of Northwestern University, an investigator in Moderna’ s pediatric studies, said in an interview before the company released its findings.
There’ s still, I think, a lingering urgency to try to get that done as soon as possible. ”
The younger the child, the smaller the dose being tested. Moderna said a quarter of the dose it uses for adults worked well for youngsters under age 6.
Moderna enrolled about 6,900 tots in a study of the 25-microgram doses. Early data showed after two shots, youngsters developed virus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as young adults getting regular-strength shots, the company said in a press release.
Moderna said the small doses were safe, and the main side effects were mild fevers like those associated with other commonly used pediatric vaccines.
Once Moderna submits the data to the FDA, regulators will debate whether to authorize emergency use of the small doses for tots. If so, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then will decide whether to recommend them.
While COVID-19 generally isn’ t as dangerous to youngsters as to adults, some do become severely ill. The CDC says about 400 children younger than 5 have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic’ s start. The omicron variant hit children especially hard, with those under 5 hospitalized at higher rates than at the peak of the previous delta surge, the CDC found.
COVID-19 vaccines in general don’ t prevent infection with the omicron mutant as well as they fended off earlier variants — but they do still offer strong protection against severe illness.
Moderna reported that same trend in the trial of children under 6, conducted during the omicron surge. While there were no severe illnesses, the vaccine proved just under 44% effective at preventing any infection in babies up to age 2, and nearly 38% effective in the preschoolers.
Moderna said also said Wednesday it will ask the Food and Drug Administration to clear larger doses for older children.
While other countries already have allowed Moderna’ s shots to be used in children as young as 6, the U.S. has limited its vaccine to adults. A Moderna request to expand its shots to 12- to 17-year-olds has been stalled for months.
The company said Wednesday that, armed with additional evidence, it is updating its FDA application for teen shots and requesting a green light for 6- to 11-year-olds, too.
Moderna says its original adult dose — two 100-microgram shots — is safe and effective in 12- to 17-year-olds. For elementary-age kids, it’ s using half the adult dose.
But the FDA never ruled on Moderna’ s application for teen shots because of concern about a very rare side effect. Heart inflammation sometimes occurs in teens and young adults, mostly males, after receiving either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Moderna is getting extra scrutiny because its shots are a far higher dose than Pfizer’ s.
The risk also seems linked to puberty, and regulators in Canada, Europe and elsewhere recently expanded Moderna vaccinations to kids as young as 6.
“ That concern has not been seen in the younger children, ” said Northwestern’ s Muller. | business |
Guyana’ s tiny population braces for a gusher of petrodollars | IT USED TO be a disused sawmill surrounded by fields of sugar cane. But since oil was discovered off Guyana’ s coast in 2015 the 52-hectare site in Georgetown, the capital, has been transformed into the biggest logistics hub in the country. From this waterfront spot, Guyana Shore Base serves ExxonMobil, an American oil giant, and other foreign firms drilling for oil off the Caribbean coast. At two big berths along the Demerara river ships pull up to offload equipment for maintenance and pick up supplies for hundreds of workers toiling away on offshore rigs.
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The buzz at the shore base hints at how a rush of petrodollars could transform one of South America’ s poorest countries. Autarkic policies introduced under socialist rule in the 1970s left Guyana struggling with unsustainable debts and sluggish growth. Many of the country’ s 800,000 people make ends meet doing the same things their grandparents did: farming rice, chopping timber or mining gold.
But since the discovery of light, sweet crude in its waters, Guyana’ s fortunes have begun to turn. The country has received a surge of foreign investment and built a sovereign-wealth fund to store its share of the oil money. As a result, it was the world’ s fastest-growing economy during the covid-19 pandemic. Now it stands to gain as the war in Ukraine sends oil prices soaring past $ 100 per barrel and countries that rely on Russian fuel scramble for alternatives.
The rising price of oil comes at an important moment for Guyana. The government could get its hands on the oil money for the first time in the coming weeks: it can withdraw a total of $ 600m from the sovereign-wealth fund this year. But it is unclear how the bonanza will affect the country. Will a sudden injection of petrodollars boost much-needed infrastructure and pull thousands out of poverty? Or will it be squandered or stolen?
ExxonMobil has found over 10bn barrels of recoverable resources in Guyana. Exploration could soon begin in other areas of the seabed. Even if all the new wells turn out to be dry holes, more than 1m barrels of oil per day will be gushing out of Guyanese seas by the end of the decade, says Schreiner Parker of Rystad Energy, a consultancy. That would make it one of the world’ s largest offshore producers. Relative to its population, its output will be colossal. Whereas Saudi Arabia pumps less than a third of a barrel, per person, per day, Guyana could be pumping nearly four times that by the end of the decade. The speed at which production has started is “ unprecedented ”, says Alistair Routledge, president of ExxonMobil Guyana.
Oil has already boosted Guyana’ s tiny economy. Multinationals are setting up shop. Local workers are making money driving taxis, working as waiters or toiling on building sites. The economy grew 20% last year and 44% in 2020 ( see chart). The current-account balance, which reflects whether a country is a net borrower or lender to the rest of the world, is expected to turn positive this year.
The government is talking big about channelling petrodollars into development. The latest budget, announced in January, promised to raise government spending 44% this year. There are plans to build roads, schools and hospitals. With a new pipeline and 300MW power plant, Guyana could use the gas produced offshore to reduce the cost of electricity and jumpstart manufacturing. New call centres promise to create jobs in the region’ s only English-speaking country.
However, Guyanese people need not look far to see how things could go wrong. To the west is Venezuela, where oil has bankrolled a corrupt socialist dictatorship that has impoverished its people. ( Indeed, oil exploration in Guyana was delayed for years by a territorial dispute with Venezuela, and anxious types still mutter that its despot might one day try to invade.) To the north, in Trinidad & Tobago, an oil boom brought social discontent and crime. Indeed studies show that, if a country has strong institutions, oil can foster growth, as in Norway and Canada. But a “ resource curse ” often blights countries with weak institutions, where rent-seekers gobble up the proceeds.
Ashni Singh, Guyana’ s finance minister, talks about economic “ diversification ”. But there is no doubt the country is growing dependent on one industry. By the government’ s own estimates, the economy will expand 48% this year. Take out oil, and it will grow by less than 8%.
It is far from clear how much of the oil money will reach ordinary people. Offshore oil rigs do not hire many workers. The drilling happens thousands of metres underwater; machines do most of it. The small number of maintenance staff on the oil platforms need special training. ExxonMobil employs just over 180 people in the country. The company reckons its operations have created jobs indirectly for about 6,000 more. About 60% of them are Guyanese. But not many Guyanese have the skills needed to run an offshore oil operation safely. High-skilled workers are being brought in from other oil-producing countries instead.
Local firms are not winning many big contracts. Only a few companies in the world can produce the pipes or widgets used on high-tech oil platforms. New rules pushed through parliament in December require energy companies to buy certain basic goods and services from Guyanese businesses, such as laundry and catering. But it is an uphill struggle. Multinational oil companies require internationally recognised quality and safety certifications, which few local firms have. ExxonMobil says it spent $ 220m with local suppliers last year—a large sum relative to Guyana’ s GDP, which in 2021 was $ 6bn. But it is small relative to the company’ s overall expenditure on the project in the period, which Rystad Energy reckons was over $ 900m.
Meanwhile the economy may be overheating. Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a business lobby, says local firms are losing their best workers to the oil industry and struggling to get hold of basic goods, like sand for construction. Global supply-chain problems and geopolitical instability have not helped. Consumer prices in Georgetown rose 1.5% in January alone, taking annual inflation to 5.8%, its highest in 20 years.
Perhaps the biggest risk is corruption. The two largest ethnic groups in Guyana are those of African and Indian descent. They do not trust each other much. Successive governments, under the largely Indo-Guyanese People’ s Progressive Party and the Afro-Guyanese People’ s National Congress Reform, have favoured their own. Cronyism is rife. Local businessmen complain it is only those with friends in high places who win big deals and top jobs in the oil industry. ( Presumably this is not true of jobs requiring technical skills that are hard to fake.) Analysts worry there is little transparency surrounding the sovereign-wealth fund, the rules that dictate how much the government can withdraw and where the money is spent. In February Vice News, a website, accused the vice-president of accepting kickbacks from Chinese businessmen. He denies this.
Outside the capital some remain sceptical of black gold’ s potential. Gary Grant, the 55-year-old estate manager at the Pomeroon Trading coconut farm, has been alive almost exactly as long as Guyana has been independent, and seen ethnic and political divisions repeatedly hold his country back. He is enraged by rising inflation and glaring inequality. “ When Guyana found oil I was optimistic, ” he says. “ But I’ m not so optimistic any more. ” ■
Published since September 1843 to take part in “ a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress. ”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved. | business |
5 things to know before the stock market opens Wednesday, March 23 | Here are the most important news, trends and analysis that investors need to start their trading day:
U.S. stock futures dropped Wednesday, one day after Wall Street rebounded from Monday's Federal Reserve-driven decline, which broke multiday winning streaks for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S & P 500 and the Nasdaq. The 10-year Treasury yield ticked up Wednesday, trading at nearly three-year highs around 2.38%.
Moderna's two-dose Covid vaccine was about 44% effective at preventing infection from the omicron variant in children 6 months to under 2 years old and about 38% effective for children 2 years to 5 years old, according to data released by the company Wednesday. None of the kids developed severe illness and the majority of breakthrough cases were mild. Moderna plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency use authorization for the vaccine for children under 6 years old as soon as possible.
One of the two black boxes from Monday's China Eastern Airlines plane crash has been found, Chinese state media said Wednesday. Officials said the black box was `` heavily damaged '' and it was hard to tell whether it was the one that records flight data or cockpit communications with air traffic controllers. A Boeing 737-800 jet carrying 132 people nose-dived Monday in a rural, mountainous part of the southern region of Guangxi. While China has not confirmed any fatalities, authorizes said late Tuesday that rescue workers haven't found any survivors.
Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday the administration was ready to dole out $ 2.9 billion in grants for state and local infrastructure projects, such as highway, bridge, freight, port and public transit expansions and repairs. The money is part of the bipartisan $ 1 trillion infrastructure bill that Biden signed into law four months ago.
The CEOs of American semiconductor giants Intel and Micron are set to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday to make the case for $ 52 billion in U.S. subsidies for chip manufacturing. A persistent industrywide shortage of chips has disrupted production in the automotive and electronics industries.
GameStop's stock, which surged nearly 31% on Tuesday, jumped another 12.5% in premarket trading Wednesday after the video game retailer's chairman, Ryan Cohen, bought another 100,000 shares. The purchase bring his ownership to 11.9% as the activist investor, who also co-founded online pet retailer Chewy, tries to move GameStop into e-commerce. Two weeks ago, Cohen revealed a big stake in Bed Bath & Beyond and pushed for a turnaround there. Both Bed Bath & Beyond and GameStop have seen sharp gains and losses in the meme stock craze over the past 15 months or so.
— CNBC reporters Yun Li, Thomas Franck, Spencer Kimball and Evelyn Cheng as well as The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
— Sign up now for the CNBC Investing Club to follow Jim Cramer's every stock move. Follow the broader market action like a pro on CNBC Pro. | business |
‘ All you hear about is the bad stuff’: Ephram Lahasky has a new investment model for America’ s nursing homes. Regulators have questions. | In a bland brick office building across the street from a King Kullen supermarket in New York’ s Long Island, nursing home magnate Ephram “ Mordy ” Lahasky is tallying up his latest deals. It’ s a Friday afternoon in early February, and Lahasky has recently picked up 17 facilities in Ohio, he says, a couple in Massachusetts, and has his eye on five more in the south. He scribbles notes about his facilities on his office whiteboard and sifts through the piles of paper covering his desk—some of them chord sheets for songs he’ s rehearsing with his garage band. By mid-month, he expects to take over another seven or eight nursing homes in Pennsylvania.
His typical shopping list, Lahasky says, includes facilities that are bleeding cash or have lots of compliance problems—or both. “ We don’ t mind problems, ” he says. “ We like problems. ”
The 56-year-old Lahasky, who has shaggy gray hair and a penchant for improv comedy and acoustic guitar, has seen his share of problems. Over the past decade, he has built a complex nursing-home network that involves about a dozen different operating companies and roughly 200 facilities in two dozen states, where he or his wife own some or all of the operations, the real estate, or both. MarketWatch combed through business and regulatory filings, property records, and data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to identify Lahasky’ s holdings. Some of the nursing homes in his portfolio have been the subject of regulatory and law enforcement scrutiny, including Federal Bureau of Investigation raids on two facilities, a former administrator’ s indictment on charges of falsifying staffing records, and Department of Labor allegations of failure to pay overtime to nursing staff and other workers, records show. Lahasky and his wife have not personally been accused of wrongdoing in any of the regulatory or law-enforcement actions.
Lahasky’ s fast-growing nursing-home portfolio highlights the industry’ s drift toward more complicated, fragmented and less transparent ownership as chains that were previously public or controlled by major private equity firms are split up or sold off. Going into the pandemic, there were four publicly traded nursing-home chains. Lahasky, who has largely avoided reporters for years and declines to be photographed, scored one of his biggest deals last year when he acquired one of those chains, Diversicare Healthcare Services, which operates 61 nursing homes in eight states.
Separately, Genesis HealthCare, which was owned by private equity firms Formation Capital and JER Partners before a 2015 merger with a public company, delisted its stock last year as part of a restructuring that gave an ownership stake to an affiliate of a small outfit headed by New York nursing-home investor Joel Landau.
The latest deals are a new twist on a trend that emerged roughly 20 years ago, when major private equity firms started making big bets on nursing homes. But with Washington politicians criticizing their tactics and easy wins hard to come by, some private equity funds backed by institutional capital have retreated from the industry, and a new wave of smaller private investors, like Lahasky, now control some of the biggest nursing home operations. Private investors often use complex ownership structures and webs of related entities that pose challenges for regulators trying to keep tabs on nursing home owners and ensure quality care, researchers and resident advocates say. They add that the opacity often confounds residents and families
seeking accountability
for COVID catastrophes and policymakers assessing how much taxpayer money should go to nursing homes.
The nursing-home industry “ promotes a narrative that they’ re underpaid, ” particularly by Medicaid, the government program that covers more than 60% of nursing-home residents, says David Stevenson, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. But it’ s hard to assess the merits of that argument, he says, given “ the convoluted ownership structures where you can’ t track the flow of dollars. ”
The White House in late February announced a
nursing-home reform package
designed in part to make facility ownership more transparent, calling for a new federal database to track owners and operators across states, among other measures.
Lahasky does not maintain a corporate web site. Although federal data don’ t present the full picture of Lahasky’ s nursing-home affiliations, the 97 facilities for which CMS officially listed him as an owner as of February show a pattern of understaffing and subpar quality. Just two of the 97 facilities have the top overall five-star rating from CMS, compared with 23% of all nursing homes, while more than two-thirds of the facilities where Lahasky has an ownership stake have one- or two-star ratings, indicating lower quality. Only 3% of the Lahasky-owned facilities meet the federal government’ s recommended staffing level of 4.1 total nurse staffing hours per resident day, compared with more than a quarter of all nursing homes. Lahasky points out that many of his facilities are “ major turnarounds ” taken over from deeply distressed chains such as Skyline Healthcare, which collapsed in 2018.
Lahasky acquired many of his nursing homes in “ very hairy deals, ” he says. “ It can take two or three years to turn around a reputation. ”
For 20 years, Ephram Lahasky worked for the Long Island Rail Road. Now, he’ s one of the nation’ s biggest owners of nursing home operations.
Bryan R. Smith/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Driving along rainy streets of suburban Hewlett, N.Y., in an SUV emblazoned with the logo of an ambulance service–one of his longtime side businesses–Lahasky takes a detour around stalled traffic. He has just left his office, and his mind is on his lifetime of work. As a kid in Queens’ Far Rockaway neighborhood, just a few minutes’ drive away, he’ d go down to the beach—not to splash in the surf, he says, but to sell sodas to parched beachgoers for 35 cents each.
Long-term care of seniors wasn’ t Lahasky’ s first—or second—career. After studying math and computer science in college, he spent 20 years as a computer programmer with the Long Island Rail Road, he says, working on payroll and timekeeping systems—skills that would later prove critical in his nursing home operations. Having driven a taxi during college, he launched his own transport company on the side. He started with a couple of vans taking kids to school and eventually expanded into ambulance services, a business that gave him connections in the nursing-home world. Along the way, Lahasky says, he spent years working on his improv comedy, studying with the comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade.
Lahasky first got into the nursing home business in 2012, he says, with the help of Benjamin Landa, then head of New York nursing home company SentosaCare. In a 2019 ruling in a class action lawsuit that did not involve Lahasky, a federal judge in Brooklyn found Landa and affiliated entities liable under human-trafficking law in connection with the recruitment of Filipino nurses working in nursing homes. Landa and the other defendants denied the allegations in court. The parties have asked for the court’ s approval of a $ 3 million settlement that also seeks to vacate the court’ s finding of liability under human-trafficking law.
“ Maybe they did some wrong things, but it doesn’ t sound like such a terrible thing, ” Lahasky says. He and Landa remain co-owners of more than 20 facilities, according to federal data. “ He helped me out. I’ m not going to leave him high and dry, ” Lahasky says of Landa. “ I kept doing deals with him—to a point. ” The sticking point, he says, was not Landa’ s legal trouble but Lahasky’ s compensation. “ If I’ m doing the work, I need to be compensated for doing the work, ” he says. Mark Weiss, a spokesman for Landa, said Landa is a “ passive investor ” in the facilities co-owned with Lahasky and is looking to unwind such investments where he doesn’ t control facility management.
In his early years in the business, Lahasky invested in several facilities operated by Continuum Healthcare, including the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, N.J., which housed a pediatric unit. In 2018, while still under Continuum’ s management, 11 children died in an adenovirus outbreak at the facility, and state inspectors found “ egregious deficient practices in infection prevention and control. ” Lahasky says he was a less than 3% owner in the Wanaque real estate and had no involvement with the facility’ s operations. “ I was purely an investor, ” he says. A spokesperson for Continuum declined to comment on the outbreak and inspection findings but said that the Wanaque Center was acquired by another ownership group in 2019.
“
The nursing-home industry promotes a narrative that they’ re underpaid, particularly by Medicaid. But it’ s hard to assess the merits of that argument given the convoluted ownership structures where you can’ t track the flow of dollars.
”
— David Stevenson, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Meanwhile, payroll questions emerged at other Lahasky-affiliated facilities. The Department of Labor in 2018 filed suit against CHMS Group, a Lahasky-affiliated provider of payroll and other back-office services, and 14 Pennsylvania facilities co-owned by Lahasky, alleging a failure to compensate employees for all the overtime hours they worked. “ There were definitely errors, and they’ ve been corrected, ” Lahasky says, although he disputes some of the Labor Department’ s allegations regarding pay for employees working through meal breaks. CHMS denied the allegations in court, saying employees were properly compensated, and the case is ongoing.
In 2019, Waterbury Gardens Nursing and Rehab, a Connecticut facility co-owned by Lahasky, entered a court-ordered receivership. The facility had insufficient funds for “ payroll, food, medical supplies and other necessary expenses, ” the state Commissioner of Social Services said in a court filing. In the years leading up to the receivership, the facility had paid sharply increasing amounts of rent to a related party, according to cost reports filed with the state. In the year ended September 2018, the facility reported paying over $ 1.1 million in rent, up from $ 633,000 a year earlier, to Waterbury Gardens Holdings LLC, a Connecticut company where Lahasky is a principal, according to state business filings. Such related-party transactions are not illegal but are often criticized by resident advocates, who say they allow owners to vacuum money out of facilities that would be better spent on patient care and create the impression that facilities are struggling financially, bolstering operators’ push for higher Medicaid reimbursement.
Asked about the rent paid to the related party, Lahasky said, “ that doesn’ t seem accurate to me, ” but declined to review the cost reports for accuracy. “ If you own the real estate and the operations, you’ re allowed to charge yourself whatever you want in rent, ” he says. “ I never got a dollar from that facility, ” he says, adding that the nursing home’ s financial problems were due to issues with the Medicaid reimbursement rates.
The early private equity nursing home investors often focused on chains that owned most of their facilities, looking to unlock the value of the real estate, according to research co-authored by Stevenson, the Vanderbilt health policy professor. They’ d then separate the real estate from the nursing home operations, with the operator typically paying rent as well all the property-related expenses such as property taxes, an approach that also helped limit potential legal liabilities. In 2011, major nursing-home chain HCR ManorCare sold most of its real estate in a $ 6.1 billion deal that benefited its private equity owner, Carlyle
CG,
-1.60%
.
Over time, HCR ManorCare could no longer afford the new rents associated with the facilities, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2018. Carlyle, which manages $ 300 billion of institutional capital, hasn’ t owned any U.S. nursing homes since 2018. Some of the former ManorCare facilities, as well as some former Golden Living facilities previously owned by private equity, are now in Lahasky’ s portfolio.
It’ s now common for nursing homes, including those affiliated with Lahasky, to pay not only rent, but also management fees and other service fees to related entities. Following private equity buyouts, nursing homes’ management fees and lease payments tended to increase sharply, according to a 2021 study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and the University of Chicago, while cash on hand decreased. Going to a private equity owned nursing home raised the short-term risk of dying by 10% for Medicare patients, the study found, while raising taxpayer spending by 11%, compared with facilities not owned by private equity.
Lahasky says that when his facilities pay management fees to related parties, those services are typically provided at cost, although rent that his facilities pay to related parties is “ a profit center, absolutely. ” He likes to have stakes in both the operations and the property company, he says, and “ it’ s in my best interest that the facility perform well on both sides. ”
As Waterbury Gardens headed into receivership, Lahasky had his eye on Diversicare, the Brentwood, Tenn., based chain of 61 nursing homes. Through his company MED Healthcare Partners, Lahasky initially approached Diversicare about a deal in spring 2019, according to securities filings. The Diversicare board said it wasn’ t interested, according to the filings—but the pandemic would change everything.
Many of the nation’ s nursing homes, including some co-owned by Lahasky, struggled to keep their elderly residents safe during the pandemic.
Justin Heiman/Getty Images
The pandemic was swift to strike Lahasky, personally and professionally. In March 2020, when New York hospitals were overrun, he had a severe case of COVID-19 and was nursed by his wife at home, with an IV running from his coat rack, he says.
The scene was far more chaotic in some facilities co-owned by Lahasky. By late May 2020, Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center in Beaver, Penn., had 335 occupied beds, and 76 residents had died of COVID-19, at the time one of the country’ s deadliest nursing home outbreaks, according to CMS data. An inspection that month found that facility staff hadn’ t been adequately trained in infection control procedures.
Lahasky notes that the facility is one of the state’ s largest, and that some other large facilities had even more deaths.
Even while he was sick with COVID, “ he was on the phone constantly, yelling at everyone to wear masks and sourcing PPE, ” says his assistant, Ann Morhaime.
But the problems in Pennsylvania were just beginning. In August 2020, the state’ s attorney general said that Brighton Rehab was a subject of criminal investigations into nursing home neglect during the pandemic. A few weeks later, agents from the FBI and the Pennsylvania attorney general’ s office raided Brighton Rehab, as well as Mt Lebanon Rehabilitation and Wellness Center outside of Pittsburgh., another facility co-owned by Lahasky. The former administrator of Mt Lebanon was indicted in Feb. 2021 on charges of defrauding the government in connection with allegedly falsified staffing records at the facility. She pleaded not guilty.
The day after the indictment, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
published an opinion
piece by Lahasky that said the federal government was threatening people affiliated with Brighton Rehab with indictments “ if they do not offer evidence in support of the federal government’ s theory about what happened at Brighton. ” Lahasky also set to work investigating the Mt. Lebanon staffing situation himself, he says. While he found one employee who was getting paid for hours he didn’ t work, he says, he found no evidence that the former administrator had anything to do with it.
Asked about Brighton Rehab and related investigations, the Pennsylvania attorney general’ s office said in mid March that the investigations are ongoing.
As the scrutiny was building in Pennsylvania, Lahasky and his partners were looking to buy a group of Genesis nursing homes in Vermont. In July 2020 emails to Vermont regulators obtained by MarketWatch through an open records request, the attorney who represented the purchasing group, Shireen Hart, initially identified Lahasky, along with Akiva Glatzer and David Gamzeh, co-owners of the Lahasky-affiliated operator Priority Healthcare Group, as the purchasers of the Genesis facilities. But when the purchase of the facilities’ real estate was completed in October 2020, the month after the raids in Pennsylvania, it was Lahasky’ s wife Akiko Ike, rather than Lahasky himself, who was listed as co-owner. A local newspaper was
first to report
Lahasky’ s involvement in the Vermont deal. The new ownership group entered agreements to manage the facilities, even as Genesis affiliates retained the licenses to operate them. A few days later, the group filed an application with Vermont regulators to become the licensed operators. The new management changed the facilities’ phone and computer systems and started operating the homes under new names—without having licenses for the facilities, says Alice Harter, a Vermont long-term care ombudsman. “ It’ s like putting the cart before the horse, ” she says.
Regulators had trouble keeping up with who exactly was buying the facilities. In March 2021, an official with the Vermont Agency of Human Services, which oversees nursing home ownership changes in the state, asked Hart, the attorney, to clarify whether the third purchaser, in addition to Gamzeh and Glatzer, was Ike or Lahasky. The official noted that Ike had been identified as the third purchaser, but Lahasky’ s name was on the loan documents and other key places in the application. Hart told the official in a July 2021 email that the group was removing Ike from the application, leaving only Gamzeh and Glatzer as the prospective buyers. “ We were willing to walk away, ” Lahasky says. “ We didn’ t want to lose the deal for my partners. ” Ike did not respond to requests for comment.
“ For some reason, the state of Vermont looks at the application and says, ‘ Mordy Lahasky’ s involved. He’ s got all these problems in Pittsburgh,’ ” Lahasky says. “ Aren’ t you innocent until proven guilty? ” He acknowledges that his name was on the loan documents. “ The bank wanted my guarantee. I gave them a guarantee. So what? ” he says.
But Lahasky’ s problems went far beyond Pittsburgh. In June 2021, he was named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by the Service Employees Pension Fund of Upstate New York against the Pearl Nursing Center of Rochester, alleging that the nursing home operator and Lahasky had failed to make correct and timely contributions to the pension fund. Pearl and Lahasky replied in court that they’ d already made a contribution to cover most of 2020 and had made monthly contributions from January 2021 forward. The case settled late last year after Pearl made additional contributions related to covered employment, interest and attorneys’ fees.
The pension fund “ doesn’ t set aside resources to litigate month after month with a recalcitrant employer, ” says Daniel Kornfeld, an attorney representing the fund. It was “ unusual and very discouraging, ” he says, that the employer took so long to live up to its obligations.
“ I was never technically the operator of the home, ” Lahasky says, although he did invest in the real estate. “ I was involved, ” he adds, “ trying to keep them from falling apart. ” As for the pension contribution issue, he says, “ I believe it’ s been fixed. ”
The pension fight is part of a broader effort to ensure workers are correctly compensated, according to workers and officials at 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, a union representing staff at Pearl as well as Comprehensive Rehab and Nursing Center at Williamsville, which is co-owned by Lahasky. Eight months pregnant, Tania Green worked over the Christmas and New Year holidays at the Williamsville facility to earn a little extra cash, she says, but she didn’ t get all the holiday pay she was owed. “ I’ ve got kids, and I don’ t want to work every holiday, ” says Green, 30, a nursing assistant. But “ bills have to be paid, and I’ d expect them to give me the time and a half. ”
“ When it comes to holiday pay in our contract, or any type of pay that our members are due, I’ m forced to file grievances, go have meetings, and it may take more than one meeting just to get people’ s pay right, ” says Darlene Gates, an 1199SEIU organizer.
“ I’ m not familiar with that, ” Lahasky says, when asked about the union’ s concerns, adding that he’ s “ not made aware of every grievance. ”
By early 2021, Diversicare’ s board had reflected on the nurshing home chain’ s potential COVID-related liabilities, reimbursement rates and regulatory issues and decided to reexamine a potential deal, according to securities filings. In November, a Lahasky vehicle acquired the company in a $ 70 million leveraged buyout backed by Canadian bank CIBC. Lahasky says his investor group contributed $ 40 million in equity to the deal. Although the FBI raids had “ freaked out my banks, ” Lahasky says, the bankers at CIBC “ know me and know this is nonsense. ” CIBC declined to comment.
In contrast to the scrutiny in Vermont, nursing-home regulators in the eight states involved with the Diversicare deal generally didn’ t give Lahasky a hard time, he says. In Missouri, which is home to three Diversicare facilities, the Department of Health and Senior Services wasn’ t aware of the Diversicare acquisition before receiving questions from MarketWatch, says agency spokesperson Lisa Cox. The department was working with Diversicare in January for submission of documents needed to update the licensure records, Cox said. Some states didn’ t require advance notice because the licensed entities directly operating the nursing homes didn’ t change. Diversicare said in a statement that “ notice was provided in advance of the transaction in all states that required notice ” and that it continues to communicate with regulators to ensure filings “ are completed to the regulators’ full satisfaction. ”
In Maryland, Lahasky’ s interest in a single facility unrelated to Diversicare triggered more scrutiny from regulators. Late last year, Lahasky, his wife and other investors were involved in the purchase of North Oaks, a continuing care retirement community in Pikesville, Md. In reviewing the transaction, the Maryland Health Care Commission noted the indictment of the former Pennsylvania nursing home administrator and that 10 out-of-state facilities owned in part by Lahasky had been flagged by CMS for having recent incidents of abuse or neglect cited in inspection reports or had a “ special focus facility ” designation, meaning they have several years’ worth of serious quality issues.
But ultimately, there was little regulators could do, says Ben Steffen, executive director of the Maryland Health Care Commission. Under state law, he says, “ our ability to not approve an acquisition based on poor performance is very, very limited. ” The Commission has more power, he says, when buyers are looking to open a new nursing home or expand an existing one. In a December letter Steffen wrote to the North Oaks buyers, he said that they “ would be likely to fail to meet the Quality Rating standard ” required to establish or expand a nursing home in the state. In the case of the Pikesville, Md. facility, Lahasky says, “ according to the regulations, there was no reason to deny the application, and they did the right thing and didn’ t make anything up. ”
‘ They don’ t have blankets and pillows for people’
A few days before Christmas, a Burlington, Vermont nursing home resident sat in a wheelchair, covered in feces. “ I asked over an hour ago for someone to come in and help me, ” the resident told a state inspector, according to the inspection report. “ This is my life, every day, and they don’ t seem to care. I sit like this for hours until someone decides I am deserving of their help. ”
When the inspector asked the resident’ s assigned nurse to come see the resident, the nurse put out his or her arms and said, “ What? Do you want me to go clean [ the resident ] up now? ” according to the report. After the inspector spoke with the director of nursing, staff started cleaning up the resident 90 minutes after the inspector first noticed the resident’ s condition, according to the report.
The resident was on a hunger strike, aiming to bring awareness to conditions at the facility, according to the report. “ I worry about those that can’ t speak for themselves, ” the resident told the inspector.
The resident lives in a facility known as Queen City Nursing and Rehabilitation. So far as state and federal regulators are concerned, Queen City doesn’ t exist—it’ s just a moniker given to the facility by the Lahasky-affiliated group that started managing the nursing home in late 2020 but never had a license to operate it. In December 2021, the group withdrew its application for the licenses for that facility, officially known as Burlington Health and Rehab, and four other facilities officially licensed to Genesis.
Asked about the details in the inspection report, Lahasky said, “ that building has been a problem for a long time. ” The application had to be withdrawn because if it wasn’ t, it would have been denied, he says.
Gamzeh and Glatzer, co-owners of the group that started managing the facility in late 2020, said in a statement provided by Hart, their Vermont attorney, “ we are focusing on the future and continuing to work collaboratively with Genesis to resolve the future of the Vermont facilities as expediently as possible. ” Genesis spokesperson Lori Mayer said the care and safety of residents at the five facilities “ remains our number one priority, ” and that the licensed Genesis affiliates “ are working to ensure that the centers are in compliance with state and federal regulations. ”
On a Sunday in January, when Jodi Gill visited her father at Brighton Rehab in Pennsylvania, conditions there were still unbearable, she says. “ They don’ t have blankets and pillows for people, ” says Gill, who is among a group of residents and family members suing Brighton over its handling of the pandemic. In court filings, Brighton has said it used testing, screening, protective gear and other measures to fight the virus and claimed immunity from the claims in the lawsuit under the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act. “ I’ m not asking for the world, ” says Gill, who moved her father to another facility in February. “ I’ m asking for basics. I want to know my dad is warm. ”
“ There’ s budgets. Every facility has to control its usage. Otherwise things are through the roof, ” Lahasky says. “ It’ s not like they don’ t have blankets in nursing homes. ”
“ All you hear about is the bad stuff, ” he says a moment later. “ Nobody hears about the average facility—you go in, and the facility’ s clean and the patients look good and they’ re getting what they need, ” he says. “ I don’ t know why we get beat up as bad as we do. ” | business |
Dow industrials see worst day in 2 weeks as oil prices spike, more Fed officials call for half-point rate hikes | U.S. stocks finished near session lows on Wednesday, as investors weighed hawkish comments from Federal Reserve officials, another spike in oil prices, and President Joe Biden’ s looming visit to Europe to discuss the Ukraine crisis with allies.
How did stock indexes perform?
The Dow Jones Industrial Averages
DJIA,
-1.29%
fell 448.96 points, or 1.3%, ending at 34,358.50, marking its worst daily percentage decline since March 7, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
The S & P 500
SPX,
-1.23%
dropped 55.37 points, or 1.2%, to finish at 4,456.24.
The Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
-1.32%
declined 186.21 points, or 1.2%, closing at 13,922.60, its worst daily percentage drop since March 14.
On
Tuesday
, the Dow climbed 254.47 points, or 0.7%, to close at 34,807.46, the S & P 500 rose 1.1% to finish at 4,511.61, and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 2% to end at 14,108.82.
What drove the market?
U.S. stocks tumbled further into the closing bell, after oil prices jumped, new home sales dipped in February, and more Fed officials warned that interest rates could be more aggressively increased this year to help cool inflation.
U.S.
CL00,
-0.27%
and Brent crude
BRN00,
+0.07%
rose more than 5% each, with the U.S. benchmark settling at $ 114.93 a barrel,
its highest finish
since March 8.
Oil prices likely were “ at least partially responsible for yesterday’ s strength [ in U.S. stocks ] and today’ s weakness, ” said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at Schwab Center for Financial Research.
“ Crude oil and the SPX have a rather visible inverse correlation year-to-date, ” Frederick said.
Meanwhile,
Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester
said Wednesday that the central bank will need to do “ some ” 50 basis point rate hikes this year, but that markets also can handle higher rates and the start of balance sheet reduction at same time. Mester and
San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly
backed up earlier hawkish remarks this week by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who said interest rates may be increased by more than a quarter percentage point, if needed to rein in inflation.
“ While everybody has been focused on the Fed, I think the real milestone for equity investors comes in three week’ s time, when we start getting first quarter earnings reports, ” said Wayne Wicker, chief investment officer at MissionSquare Retirement, by phone.
“ It will give you some estimates of the damage done in terms of growth estimates for Corporate America, ” Wicker said, pointing to the potential impact of labor shortages, higher wage costs, and elevated commodity prices on earnings. “ That’ s the next point for investors to assess whether or not valuations for stocks are reasonable. ”
U.S. new-home sales
fell 2% to an annual rate of 772,000
in February, Census Bureau said Wednesday. Economists polled by MarketWatch expected new-home sales in February to drop to an annual rate of 805,000.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
2.384%
fell 5.5 basis points to 2.32%, after hitting the
highest levels since mid-2019
. U.S. stocks have shrugged off the fresh spike in yields seen over the past two weeks, “ suggesting that the Fed is still badly behind the curve if its intention is a significant tightening of financial conditions, ” said the Saxo Bank strategy team in a note to clients.
The central bank and the market may be “ locked into a dangerous battle, with the Fed prepared to continue turning the screws until something ‘ breaks, ' ” the analysts said.
Investors also were watching
the four week war in Ukraine
where Russia is increasingly bogged down in a costly and uncertain military campaign, with untold numbers of dead, encircled by western sanctions that are biting hard on its economy and currency.
President Biden is headed to Europe for four days to attend meetings of NATO, the G7 and the EU in Brussels and Warsaw this week and to strategize on how to keep Russia’ s Ukraine invasion from spiraling into an even larger crisis. He’ s also expected to announce
more sanctions to punish Russia
, and ways to continue pressuring China from coming to that country’ s aid.
Which companies were in focus?
GameStop
GME,
+14.50%
’ s
chairman Ryan Cohan has
bought 100,000 more shares
in the meme stock, pushing his holding up to 11.9%, according to a regulatory filing late Tuesday. The company’ s shares rose 14.5% Wednesday, a day after
jumping 30.7%
.
Medical marijuana company
Cresco Labs
CRLBF,
-7.51%
reached an agreement
on Wednesday to acquire Columbia Care
CCHWF,
-1.92%
,
a fellow Canadian cannabis company, for $ 2 billion. The companies said the deal will create the largest U.S. multi-state operator in the U.S based on pro-forma revenue.
Moderna
MRNA,
-4.28%
’ s
COVID-19 vaccine
works for kids under 6 years old
, the company said Wednesday. The company will seek an emergency use authorization from regulators in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere for the vaccine in babies, toddlers and preschoolers, it said. Moderna’ s shares dropped 4.3%.
How did other assets fare?
The ICE U.S. Dollar Index
DXY,
+0.20%
,
a measure of the currency against a basket of six major rivals, rose 0.2%.
Gold futures
GC00,
+0.27%
settled higher, with gold for April delivery
GCJ22,
+0.27%
rising 0.8% to $ 1,937.30 an ounce, near its 1-week high.
Bitcoin
BTCUSD,
+1.41%
turned negative, down 0.3% to trade around $ 42,285.
In European equities, the Stoxx Europe 600
SXXP,
-0.23%
shed 1%, while London’ s FTSE 100
UKX,
+0.11%
declined 0.2%.
In Asia, the Shanghai Composite
SHCOMP,
-0.63%
closed 0.3% higher, the Hang Seng Index
HSI,
-0.94%
jumped 1.3% in Hong Kong and Japan’ s Nikkei 225
NIK,
+0.25%
gained 3%.
—
Barbara Kollmeyer contributed reporting | business |
Why is the great resignation happening? — Quartz | All of a sudden the US is a nation of quitters. From exhausted healthcare workers to CEOs deciding to spend more time with their families, American workers have been resigning at record rates. In 2021, an estimated 47 million of them left their jobs—many to change careers, some just to take breaks.
Neither innovative employee benefits—carrot—nor the horizon of health insurance loss—stick—have done much to curb the exodus. Workers have given various reasons for their decisions to quit, such as low pay, lack of respect in the workplace, issues with child care, and work overload.
Workplace experts have branded this the Great Resignation, and have been looking for ways to tackle it as a talent retention crisis. But what if it isn’ t? What if mass quitting is a symptom, and a warning to heed, not so much about the workplace, but about the state of American mental health? Millions have had the opportunity to quit their jobs, but many have not and are just as exhausted, running on fast-depleting psychological resources. The pandemic has heightened, and made more visible, a crisis in wellbeing that may well last for years to come, with potentially dramatic consequences.
We can’ t predict the future, but we can look at patterns of human behavior in the face of trauma. To grasp the impact of covid-19 on mental health it may be helpful to look at the last time humanity faced a similar situation: The influenza pandemic of 1918-1920.
Until 1920, the US didn’ t have a standardized taxonomy of diseases for monitoring purposes, nor did it collect mental health data. It did, however, record deaths by suicide, which can be taken as a proxy for mental wellbeing—or lack of thereof. A look at the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC) shows an increase in suicides just after that pandemic.
Rates declined between 1918 and 1920, going from 14.7 per 100,000 deaths in 2017 to 11.3 in 2020, only to shoot back up to 13.9 in 1921.
What data we have so far about the covid-19 pandemic are similar. Suicide rates declined during the first year, going from 13.9 ( 47,511 deaths) in 2019 to 13.5 ( 45,855 deaths) in 2020. Estimates put the US suicide rate in 2021 at 15.1. This is consistent with literature about mental health effects following large-scale crises—such as the Fukushima disaster, or 9/11. The worst impact is usually felt about a year after the disaster, says Aki Nikolaidis, a scientist at the Child Mind Institute, who has been researching the effects of covid-19 stressors on mental health.
Of course, there are differences between the two pandemics. Influenza, for one, infected half a billion people, and killed 50 million—many more than covid-19 so far.
Further, people lived the influenza epidemic as a personal tragedy, without being aware of a global narrative akin to the one that has accompanied covid-19 since its beginning. At the time, a larger percentage of the population was rural, and most people weren’ t receiving news about influenza outbreaks that didn’ t affect them directly. This was especially true in Europe, where people often dealt with waves of influenza without realizing it was a pandemic, says John Eicher, a professor of modern European history who is conducting research on a body of about 1,000 letters written by survivors of the 1918-1920 pandemic.
Perhaps most importantly, the pandemic hit at the end of World War I, which had already killed 20 million people worldwide and wounded as many. Unlike the pandemic, the war had been lived as a collective tragedy, says Eicher, and the trauma was still showing its impact. Although past studies have shown a connection between the flu pandemic and the increase of suicides in the US, independently from the war’ s long tail, the war’ s influence still makes it somewhat difficult to compare the US situation post covid-19 to that of the US post influenza pandemic.
Unless we look at Norway. The Scandinavian country, which excelled in data collection even in the early 20th century, offers important insight when it comes to the effects of the pandemic on mental health—because it didn’ t fight in World War I.
Norway’ s data on suicides follows a pattern similar to the US. But the Norwegians’ mental health in the 1920s is unlikely to have been so significantly affected by the war.
The country remained a so-called “ neutral ally ” —external pressures made it a British sympathizer, but the kingdom stopped short of active military involvement. Although about 400 ships were sunk by German submarines, with a loss of around 1,000 lives, the direct impact of the war on the population was minimal compared to the rest of Europe.
The country suffered much larger losses due to the influenza pandemic, which killed between 13,000 and 15,000 people out of a population of 2.65 million, mostly in the first wave in 1918. Following it, Norway, too, experienced an increase in suicides.
“ The data is fairly stagnant between 1910 and all the way through 1913, with suicides averaging around 150 per year. But then in 1914, the suicide rates went well above 200, and a year after 240 or so. Then it continues, and by the time it was 1920, it was over 400, ” says Carla Hughes, a researcher at the OsloMet Centre for Research on Pandemics and Society. This translates to a suicide rate of about 15 deaths per 100,000 people, higher than the US at the time.
The magnitude of the mental health crisis in Norway, as indicated by the suicide numbers, might be even bigger than reported, says Hughes. Much of the data on deaths at the time was retrieved by parishes and churches, who might not have maintained accurate records of suicides, which were stigmatized and considered sins.
Suicides aren’ t the only indicator. Svenn-Erik Mamelund, a professor of demographics and the president of the Norwegian Demographic Society, collected data on asylum hospitalizations in the years following the pandemic, finding that first-time asylum hospitalizations went up by 7.2 times on average ( pdf) for the six years following the pandemic.
“ Spanish influenza survivors were reported to have problems with sleeping, depressions, mental distractions, low blood pressure, dizziness and to cope at work and with everyday life for weeks, months or even years after 1918-19, ” writes Mamelund. These numbers, too, are likely lower than the actual values, because, he writes, “ it is likely people affected by milder or temporary post influenza melancholia did not see a psychiatrist. ”
Similar symptoms were reported elsewhere, too. “ The flu left survivors with a variety of mental symptoms, many of them represented by physicians and the press in terms similar to those used to describe sufferers of shellshock coming out of the Great War, ” writes Susan Kent, a professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the author of The Global Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1920. In 1919, she writes, the medical journal The Lancet wrote that “ the depression which follows influenza is so constant that it ought to be regarded as part of the disease. ” Other scientific publications reported similar findings.
Some of the mental distress appeared to be caused by the illness itself, but some came from conditions of isolation, or seeing loved ones die. In one of the letters Eicher analyzed a woman went into a catatonic state after she witnessed the death of her sister and the rest of her family. Hughes, too, thinks some of the causes of distress could reside not in the direct exposure to the disease and death, but the experience of isolation and then socialization in bursts.
The mental health symptoms reported by influenza survivors appear similar to the issues that are pushing exhausted workers to quit their jobs. In fact, resigning from a job in the context of a pandemic can be seen as a coping mechanism to deal with loss of control, says George Kohlrieser, an organizational psychologist and a professor at the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. Making changes in our lives, he says, helps processing grief, and in this light the decision to leave a job could be an effective way to heal after the traumatic experience of covid-19.
But for every burned-out white-collar worker who decides to take a break from the rat race, there are many more hourly workers, low-wage employees, and single parents who can’ t afford losing income or health insurance.
Research on the impact of the pandemic on Latinx essential workers outside of healthcare during the first months of covid-19 showed that their mental health was worse even than that of healthcare workers, who were at higher personal risk of being exposed to the disease, says Dana Garfin, public health professor at the University of California, Irvin’ s School of Nursing. The reasons were often socioeconomic, and financial—such as loss of income, or lack of child care options.
Essential workers, too, were at higher risk of covid exposure. Transportation, logistics and facilities workers, followed by workers in agriculture and manufacturing experienced higher rates of death compared to workers in other, typically better paid, sectors, according to research by the University of California, San Francisco. The same study found that Latinx and Black workers in those sectors experienced the highest excess mortality per capita, which puts them at higher risk of experiencing trauma associated with the pandemic.
The research by Nikolaidis and his team found that those who are hit by the direct consequences of a collective trauma—for instance, seeing a loved one die—experience bigger threats to their mental wellbeing. Yet it’ s not these workers who are quitting en masse: Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on people who left their jobs shows that people working in transportation and manufacturing quit at a lower rate than people working in professional and business services, and below the overall private industry average. Among industries with lower wages, hospitality did see a high level of resignation and job changes, though the industry typically has very high turnover ( up to 70% to 80% yearly).
Hourly or low-wage workers by and large can not afford to quit without a backup plan. “ If you want to take even one shift off to take care of yourself, that’ s a choice you have to make, whether to lose your income to take care of yourself, ” says Sarah Qadri, a hospitality and event manager in Chicago.
Many continue running on empty without the opportunity to replenish, and that psychological distress only continues to accrue over time. “ It’ s palpable in the air, everyone is doing what they can but they are all exhausted, ” says Kristina Oak, a manager at a small coffee shop in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Nikolaidis’ s research shows that some of the strongest determinants of lower mood after covid-19 were external social circumstances, including income or economic distress, as well as the person’ s mental and socioeconomic conditions prior to the pandemic. People working in low-wage and hourly jobs have long expressed significant stress associated to their work, and their burnout epidemic arguably pre-dates covid-19.
If the issue of burnout isn’ t so much individual as it is social, it can’ t be solved by workplace changes alone. Adapting to more accommodating schedules, providing better benefits, and allowing more flexibility might do help some, typically more privileged, workers. But it will do nothing to address a simmering mental health crisis that was already emerging before the pandemic, with suicide rates going up by more than 35% between 1999 and 2018.
There are ways to address this as a society. Telehealth is making mental health support more easily accessible, and the reimbursement policies have changed during the pandemic so that insurance typically covers it.
Oak reports significant benefits from receiving direct financial support like the stimulus checks the US government sent to most Americans. “ The financial policies that were put in place for the first year of the pandemic improved me and my partner’ s financial situation so much that I was able to leave my second job, ” says Oak, who thanks to these interventions was able to stop working two hospitality jobs during the second year of the pandemic. “ I have been working in the service industry for 10 years and living paycheck to paycheck, as someone with $ 800 a month in student loans, and I was able to get a lot of things under control with the stimulus, ” she says.
The US administration seems aware of the looming crisis, and has proposed a mental health strategy with an overall budget of about $ 1 billion for 2023, to provide mental health services, recruit a mental health workforce, provide support to frontline health workers, and strengthen the role of community behavioral health clinics.
Yet measures that would bring relief to many families, such as the child tax credit, paid parental and medical leave, child care support, easily accessible free testing and treatment for covid-19 to uninsured patients have been rolled back from emergency pandemic interventions, or are struggling to go through the legislative process.
Some of the more dramatic consequences of the past two years of isolation and trauma, such as the record overdose deaths, have already shown themselves. The number of adults who report suffering from mental health issues is now close to 60 million, and the projected suicide rate is on track to set a record for this century. History suggests it might be but the beginning.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, in the US you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 24/7, for confidential support at 1-800-273-8255. For hotlines in other countries, click here. | tech |
Sri Lanka's economic misery is forcing an exodus to India — Quartz India | Sri Lanka’ s dire economic conditions, sparked by the covid-19 pandemic, are pushing its citizens off the cliff, forcing them to flee to Indian shores clandestinely to escape food shortages.
On March 22, up to 16 Sri Lankan nationals, including eight children, reached the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu in two batches on fishing boats, according to The Indian Express newspaper. They hailed from Sri Lanka’ s northern districts of Mannar and Jaffna. They were rescued by the Indian coast guard.
This, however, could only be the beginning. Intelligence officers in Tamil Nadu, the report said, have got information that “ around 2,000 refugees ” are likely to arrive over the next few weeks.
“ Construction workers and daily wagers are struggling due to inflation across the country…More people are likely to leave the country unless the economy stabilises, ” said Suresh Premachandran, who heads Sri Lanka ‘ s political outfit Eelam People’ s Revolutionary Liberation Front.
The meltdown highlights the poor policy response by the Sri Lankan government when its tourism sector took a beating due to the covid-19 pandemic two years ago.
In 2020, the pandemic skewered tourism, one of Sri Lanka’ s main foreign exchange-earners. This led to a dollar crisis in the Emerald Island.
Sri Lanka is heavily dependent on imports of essential items such as petroleum, food, paper, sugar, lentils, medicines, and transportation equipment. With the Central Bank of Sri Lanka’ s foreign exchange reserves dwindling to around $ 2.3 billion ( 17,536 crore rupees) now—nearly half of what it was a year ago—the country has barely any money to pay for these imports or to service its external debt.
Sri Lanka’ s dollar-denominated debt repayments due this year amount to more than $ 6 billion, including a sovereign bond of $ 1 billion maturing in July.
The effect is quite evident.
The government has had to cancel school examinations scheduled over the past weekend due to an acute shortage of printing paper. Its only fuel refinery ran out of crude oil in November 2021. Nearly 1,000 bakeries across the country shut down due to the unavailability of cooking gas—some shifted to kerosene, Reuters reported.
Consumer prices have risen by 15% in February, the fastest among 13 Asian economies.
India has, time and again, provided assistance on several fronts to its neighbour to tide over its economic crisis.
Since January, it has helped with $ 2.4 billion, including a $ 400-million currency swap and a $ 500-million loan deferment for two months. On March 17, Sri Lanka signed a $ 1-billion credit line with India for the procurement of food, medicines, and other essential items.
Historically, both countries have maintained a cordial and relatively stable relationship since their independence. In the post-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam era, India and Sri Lanka have aligned over key security and economic objectives, including freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean region and combating the threat of terrorism.
However, Sri Lanka has also increasingly sided with China over the past few years, which is a threat to India.
“ Sri Lanka’ s embrace of China largely stems from two factors. First, Sri Lankans continue to be suspicious about India’ s motives vis-a-vis the Tamil cause. Second, India’ s slow bureaucratic processes that delay approvals incite suspicions of India’ s commitment to Sri Lanka, ” a global think tank Observer Research Foundation said in a report.
Sri Lanka has had a chronic ethnic Tamil dissidence problem, which in the past has received moral and material support from sections of the Indian population. The southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, only a few miles across the sea from northern Sri Lanka, has strong ethnic, linguistic, and cultural connections to these disgruntled segments in the island nation. | tech |
Opinion: 2 state governors weigh in on how to boost America's chip supply and lower prices | Asa Hutchinson is the governor of Arkansas and chair of the National Governors Association. Phil Murphy is the governor of New Jersey and vice chair of the National Governors Association. The opinions expressed in this commentary are their own.
As Americans strive to emerge from the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, our reliance on products from outside the US has been on stark display. From a dearth of
new cars
to the increasing costs of
construction materials
to shortages of some household staples, supply chain constraints — due to Covid-related
factory shutdowns
and increased demand — have affected almost every American consumer. Our nation's reliance on manufacturing key products and components in China and other foreign nations has hampered our ability to make up for the production gaps.
These supply chain issues are not just inconveniences, but threats to both our economic and national security. So, as we work our way into the `` new normal, '' it has become abundantly clear that we must create the infrastructure here at home that allows us to reduce our reliance on foreign goods, particularly those produced in China.
This is why we believe Congress needs to pass bipartisan legislation that addresses vulnerabilities in our domestic supply chain by supporting science and engineering research and incentivizing homegrown semiconductor production. Transforming the US manufacturing sector could increase our Gross Domestic Product by up to $ 460 billion and add as many as 1.5 million jobs to our
economy
, according to a McKinsey Global Institute analysis of IHS Markit data. That is real economic progress at a critical time in our recovery from the pandemic.
Semiconductors
are the foundation of our 21st-century society. They power not just our smartphones, PCs and home electronics, but also our country's transportation, navigation and medical equipment. Reliance on foreign-made products presents an unacceptable threat to our economic security. Take our auto industry, which has been hobbled by the extreme shortage of chips. Without an adequate supply of semiconductors, many
automakers
were forced to shut down production. And, as a result, working and middle-class Americans are finding it harder to afford both new and used vehicles that get them to work.
New Ford F-Series pickup trucks are stored in a lot during a semiconductor shortage at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, Kentucky, US, on Friday, July 16, 2021.
Our reliance on foreign-made semiconductors is not only an issue of rising inflation and scarcity, but also our national security. Chips are used in everything from military weapons systems that keep us safe to equipment power plants, internet service providers and other areas of critical
infrastructure
.
Read More
As governors, we are acutely aware of the struggles we face in recovering from this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.
In Arkansas, we created the
Council on Future Mobility
to focus on innovation in moving goods and people. Some of the world's most successful transportation companies call our state home, and their work makes Arkansas a leader in transportation and logistics. The council will drive development of autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles and drone delivery. And as these technologies progress, prescription medicine, groceries and even coffee will be quickly and affordably delivered. And chips will be a central component, as they will operate and navigate the complex structures and data needed to run this integrated global network.
In New Jersey, we have also implemented policies to spur development — not just in our research and development labs, but also in advanced manufacturing facilities here at home. Last year, we broke ground on the
New Jersey Wind Port
, an offshore wind manufacturing facility that will reduce our dependence on foreign energy. We also enacted the
New Jersey Buy American Act
, which ensures that large infrastructure products in our state are using American iron and steel.
New Jersey and Arkansas are very different states, and we represent different parties and different political ideologies. Yet despite those differences, we have come together in bipartisan fashion and we urge Congress to do the same.
The federal minimum wage hasn't risen in almost 13 years and US workers are paying the price
Currently, Congress is considering various pieces of legislation, including the bipartisan
United States Innovation and Competition Act
in the Senate and the
America COMPETES Act
in the House, to boost US competitiveness and spur domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Although we may disagree on specific provisions of these bills, we believe that Congress can overcome these hurdles largely through good-faith compromises. Congress should reduce these bills to the core elements both parties can agree on and quickly pass this legislation for the good of our nation.
Focusing on domestic production is strong economic policy that will shore up our supply chains, bring down the cost of everyday products, decrease our reliance on China, and keep manufacturing facilities running. Our elected leaders in Washington must make American competitiveness — and its corresponding check on Chinese power — a priority. We urge them to unite on an agreement that spans both houses of Congress as well as ideologies across the spectrum — from the most conservative to the most progressive — and get a bill to President Biden's desk. | general |
‘ We’ ve been left out in the cold’: My mother named my sister beneficiary of her estate, but wrote a letter wishing to divide it equally among her 3 children. Do we have any recourse? | Dear Quentin,
My mother passed away recently. She had bank and investment accounts and a good deal of land that had one of my siblings as a joint owner ( not just an authorized signer). In the last decade of her life, mom had given this same sibling her financial power of attorney, and their spouse medical power of attorney. The land had a “ transfer on death ” completed five years ago that lists an order of succession — my sibling, their spouse, then me. Mom had no debts.
My question is whether or not, given the joint ownership and the TOD with my sibling, there is anything from my mom’ s estate that will be divided between me and mom’ s other remaining children ( there are three of us). My sibling who is the owner of the accounts has said there is no will and no trust; conversations with my mother prior to her death seem to confirm this. Has everything just been left to one sibling, while the other two of us were left out?
There is a house on the land — does that and everything in it go to my sibling based on the “ transfer on death ” deed? What about the bank and investment accounts? In a letter to all of her children several years ago, mom specifically indicated that she wanted portions of the land signed over to the remaining children within a few years. We’ re left out in the cold. How do I know if that will happen?
Do we have any recourse?
Left Out
Dear Left Out,
Your mother seemed to be confused or conflicted about her intentions: arranging a transfer-on-death deed for some of her assets, and writing a letter expressing her wish to divide her real estate among her kids. Sometimes parents leave too much up to the kindness and/or trustworthiness of their children, not realizing that they have not left their estate in safe hands or properly stated how it should be divided. That could work to your advantage here, or not.
The law pertaining to transfer-on-death deeds varies by state. The District of Columbia allows such deeds to be used for real estate. Michigan and New York, among other states, do not. In Michigan, Florida and Texas, a “ lady bird deed ” is similar, allowing people to transfer the assets to a beneficiary upon their death, while avoiding probate and allowing the beneficiary to live in the property for their lifetime. It can be useful in some states for those who wish to qualify for Medicaid.
It’ s not clear from your letter how much of your mother’ s estate was included in the transfer-on-death deed, and how much of it was eligible for such a transfer. Again, it depends on where you live and the deed itself. Whatever remains of her probated estate, assuming she did not leave a will, should be divided by the probate court in accordance with the state law. Assuming your father has passed on, her direct descendants would be her three children.
If your sister was a co-owner rather than a co-signer of your mother’ s bank accounts, she will likely inherit those accounts upon her death. I am reminded of a
letter I received last year
from a woman who was made co-owner of her mother’ s bank accounts, and wondered whether she had an obligation to tell her sisters after their mother’ s death. I told her that yes, transparency is always the preferred option, but I also wondered whether her mother fully understood the arrangement.
Another possible wrench: The kind of the deed on the land on which your sister is listed will determine whether or not she automatically inherits it. Firstly, a transfer-on-death deed is usually only valid if it was recorded properly with the county clerk or recorder’ s office. Given what you have told me, it would be folly to assume that was done properly. Secondly, for tenancy in common, a co-owner can bequeath anyone their share and/or simply allow it to go through probate.
So where does all this leave you? It would be wise to consult an estate attorney. I don’ t know your family’ s history, but leaving her entire estate to one child would be relatively rare. Your sister’ s power of attorney lasts only for the duration of your mother’ s lifetime. If there is no will, you could
petition the probate court
to become administrator of your late mother’ s estate so you have a seat at the table. At the very least, appoint an independent third party to oversee the process.
This story has three hard-won lessons. For elderly parents: Always be clear about your intentions. It’ s too late for that now in your case, of course. For the beneficiaries: Never assume that everything has been settled correctly, and the word of one family member is gospel. And finally: Act now before the probate is completed, the estate is wrapped up and — crucially — the statute of limitations for contesting the estate settlement has expired.
Yo
u
can email The Moneyist with any financial and ethical questions related to coronavirus at qfottrell @ marketwatch.com, and follow Quentin Fottrell on
Twitter.
Check out
the Moneyist private Facebook
group, where we look for answers to life’ s thorniest money issues. Readers write in to me with all sorts of dilemmas. Post your questions, tell me what you want to know more about, or weigh in on the latest Moneyist columns.
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More from Quentin Fottrell
:
•
‘ I’ ve felt like an outsider my whole life’: My father died without a will, leaving behind my stepmother and her 4 children. Do I have any rights to his estate?
•
‘ He was infatuated with her’: My brother had a drinking problem and took his own life. He left $ 6 million to his former girlfriend who used to buy him alcohol
•
‘
She had a will, but it was null and void’: My friend and her sister are fighting over their mother’ s life-insurance policy and bank account. Who should win out? | business |
Singapore moves to relax pandemic restrictions | Singapore next week will begin relaxing most of its COVID-19 restrictions, including by easing border controls, with the virus largely under control in the Southeast Asian nation.
Beginning March 29, the city-state will allow up to 75% of employees who can work from home to return to offices, as well as double the permissible size of groups to 10 people, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Thursday.
Cross-border travel will be eased “ substantially, ” with officials lifting most restrictions for fully vaccinated visitors to the country, Lee said. The use of masks will now be optional outdoors while remaining mandatory indoors.
“ Our fight against COVID-19 has reached a major turning point, ” Lee said. “ We are not quite yet at the finish line, though we are getting closer. ”
Lee added that the Omicron wave has crested in Singapore and is now subsiding, but the country is stopping short of a full end to COVID measures to allow conditions to further stabilize. He noted some countries that declared the pandemic finished “ are anxiously watching their infection and mortality numbers rising rapidly again. ”
The relaxation comes two years after the regional financial hub introduced mobility and gathering curbs to address the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According the country’ s health ministry, 93% of the total population in Singapore has received at least one vaccination dose, while 71% of the total population has received booster shots. | business |
US Covid-19: As BA.2 subvariant grows, experts look to other countries to predict its impact here | BA.2 caused about 35% of cases in the US last week, up from 22% the week before, according to new estimates from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which were posted on Tuesday.
At the same time, new Covid-19 cases are holding steady or increasing in about 19 states, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Some of the states seeing increases—New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Jersey are in northeastern regions where the CDC estimates that BA.2 is now causing more than half of new Covid-19 cases.
Health officials have warned that overall Covid-19 infections could rise across the US in a few weeks, parallel to trends in the UK and Europe.
`` I would not be surprised at all if we do see somewhat of an uptick, '' Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a live interview on Tuesday with the Washington Post. `` I don't really see, unless something changes dramatically, that there will be a major surge, '' he said.
In the UK, where BA.2 now accounts for 85% of new infections, cases have increased by 20% week-over-week. Hospitalizations are up about 22% compared to the prior week. Deaths recorded within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test are up about 17%, according to the most recent government numbers.
On Tuesday, the University of Washington's Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, said their model does not predict a new surge in Covid-19 cases `` similar to what we have seen in parts of Europe, '' said Ali Mokdad, a professor of global health at IHME, on Twitter. Instead, he said, their models suggests that after the end of March there would be a steady further decline in Covld-19 transmission in the US.
Highly contagious, but not more severe
BA.2 is technically classified as a part of the Omicron family of viruses, but genetically this strain is very different, with about 40 mutations separating it from its cousin, BA.1. That makes it about as distinct from the original Omicron as Alpha, Beta, and Delta were from each other.
It is more contagious than Omicron's BA.1, which was already an extremely contagious virus with a basic reproduction number, or R-naught, of about 8, according to William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which means that a single infected person could be expected to transmit the disease to an average of 8 others.
Adrian Esterman, an epidemiologist at the University of South Australia, pegged the basic reproduction number for BA.2 at around 12. `` That makes it pretty close to measles, the most contagious disease we know about, '' he wrote on Twitter on March 10.
Though BA.2 is more contagious, it does not appear to cause more severe disease. And though it escapes some of the immune protection created by vaccinations and prior infections, it doesn't seem to do so any more than BA.1.
Hanage says that at a population level, Omicron is much more manageable than Delta was, but it is not harmless.
`` The reason why Omicron BA.2 and BA.1 are a problem at all are the sheer numbers of infections they cause, '' Hanage said.
Will BA.2 cause a tidal wave or a ripple?
The contours of the BA.2 wave have looked very different in different countries. BA.2 has caused a spike in cases and deaths in Hong Kong, where many seniors were hesitant to be vaccinated, but in South Africa, where it arrived on the heels of that's country's large BA.1 surge, it barely made a ripple—causing cases to plateau rather than climb.
What the BA.2 may do in the US remains an open question.
The UK has offered some clues to the trajectory of variants in the past. But there are key differences.
Working in their favor, the UK is more highly vaccinated than the US. Among those ages 12 and older, 86% of the population has had two doses of a vaccine, while more than two-thirds have gotten a third or booster dose. In the US, 74% individuals ages 12 and older have had two doses of a vaccine, but just 46% have had a booster.
But the UK has its own challenges, too, says Dr. Carlos Del Rio, an infectious disease specialist and executive associated dean at the Emory School of Medicine. `` They have a much, much older population than we do, '' he says.
In the UK, 19% people are over the age of 65, according to a UK government report. In the US, seniors make up about 16% of the population.
Del Rio says that while it wasn't much fun at the time, `` The good news is that we got a huge Omicron surge in the US. Millions of people were infected, '' he says.
`` And between the number of people infected and the number of people who were already vaccinated, we estimate that about 73% to 75% of the population has some degree of immunity, '' he says.
Leaving about 25% of Americans vulnerable to the BA.2 virus either because they couldn't or didn't make antibodies.
`` So my guess is that we're going to have a surge, but it's not going to be a severe surge, '' Del Rio says, though he's still worried about the 25% of Americans that aren't protected.
Clues from Qatar
Other intriguing clues about the shape of a BA.2 wave come from the Middle Eastern country of Qatar, which has used roughly the same mix of vaccines as the U.S.
Qatar has been living with BA.2 as it's dominant virus since Christmas. They also saw a large Omicron surge that peaked around mid-January, followed by a sharp decline in cases.
In a string of recent studies, Laith Abu-Raddad and his co-authors at Qatar's Weill Cornell University, have been estimating the protection conferred by mRNA vaccines as well as by previous infections.
What they found is that two doses of the mRNA vaccines offer moderate protection against symptoms—in the range of 36% to 50%. But that protection only lasted for about four months. After four months, the protection became negligible, and after seven months, their studies found that vaccinated people were actually a bit more likely to get sick than unvaccinated people, perhaps because they had a false sense of security.
`` Vaccinated people don't behave the same ways as unvaccinated. You know, they think they are protected, so this could expose them, '' Abu-Raddad said.
Even though protection against infections faded pretty dramatically over time, people who were vaccinated continued to have good protection against hospitalizations and deaths, in the rage of 70% to 80%, he said, and it jumped to around 90% with a booster.
`` The best thing anyone can do right now is to get a booster, '' Abu-Raddad said. `` Boosters bring back the protection against infection to what it used to be about 60%, which is great, '' even though it wanes over time, he said. `` But really the amazing thing about booster effectiveness is that it virtually eliminates the risk of Covid-19 hospitalization and death, '' he added.
In a separate study, Abu-Raddad and his team also looked at protection of a BA.1 infection against BA.2. That protection was even stronger and more durable than two shots of an mRNA vaccine, in the range of 90%, he said.
`` So that is actually another reason to think that even if there will be a wave, it's not going to really be as bad as people may fear, '' he said.
Immunity after infection wanes much more slowly, he says. In a new study, where they followed people who were infected with Alpha and Beta variants, they still had 50% protection against Omicron reinfection up to a year later.
Abu-Raddad thinks that the difference is that immunity created by an infection remains in the tissues of the mouth and nose, while antibodies created by vaccination rise body-wide don't stay elevated for as long in these tissues that first encounter the virus.
Fourth doses coming for seniors?
One thing Abu-Raddad's research can't reveal is how well immunity holds up for older people. Qatar is a young country. Less than 10% of the population are over the age of 50, he says, so they couldn't tell if the vaccines continued to work as well for seniors as they did for younger people.
Del Rio suspects that the vaccine efficacy in seniors wanes farther and faster than it does for younger people.
`` I predict the CDC in the next week or two is going to recommend a fourth dose for people over 65. If you're 65, and you get infected, you could still have very severe disease despite being vaccinated, '' he said. | business |
Opinion: For Trump, the party's over | Just consider the current realities Trump faces.
His legal woes and their attendant distractions have not gone away. Investigations in New York and Georgia continue, and a court filing outlining potential evidence of criminal conspiracy by the January 6 House select committee also looms large. ( Trump denies wrongdoing in all.)
Meanwhile, Trump, once the master of social media with more than 88 million Twitter followers and 35 million on Facebook before the insurrection, has had disastrous results in creating his own online platforms. He terminated his blog, `` From the Desk of Donald J. Trump, '' after 29 days due to what aides describe as lack of readers and negative press. His recently announced social media network, Truth Social, has suffered from an inept rollout involving technical glitches and a 13-hour site outage.
Trump's standing among Republicans continues to weaken. A recent NBC poll shows a significant decline in his hold on the GOP. While previous surveys showed that up to 54% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters say they self-identified as supporters of Trump rather than the Republican Party, the new survey shows that 56% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents consider themselves supporters of the GOP. Only 36% consider themselves supporters of the former President -- a significant marker of Trump fatigue.
His behavior and inane remarks have likely contributed to the decline. For example, his early praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, using terms such as `` genius '' and `` pretty savvy, '' contrasts with President Joe Biden's recent branding of the Russian leader as `` a war criminal. '' A Quinnipiac University poll found that Americans are overwhelmingly pro-Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has a 64% approval rating. The same survey shows the depth of anti-Putin sentiment: 60% of Americans think that Putin is mentally unstable, again demonstrating how out of step Trump is with the public.
Trump's campaign of revenge against Republicans he deems insufficiently loyal, and his maniacal obsession in spreading the `` Big Lie '' about the 2020 presidential election, only serve as additional vehicles of alienation. Potential heavyweight rivals such as former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas all have broken with Trump recently on issues such as Ukraine, Covid-19 and crime.
Trump's endorsement may tip the balance in some important races this year, but it is far from determinative. His endorsed US Senate candidates in North Carolina ( Rep. Ted Budd) and Alabama ( Rep. Mo Brooks) are both struggling and may not win their party primaries. One of his top targets, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, is leading Trump's candidate, former US Sen. David Perdue, in the upcoming May primary. ( Editor's Note: Shortly after publication, Trump rescinded his endorsement of Brooks.)
The primary season will prove to be the height of Trump's influence in the GOP. As he has demonstrated over and again, he will claim credit for victory, even in the face of failure. The reality is that some, but not all his endorsed candidates, will win nominations. Some, but not all, will be elected in November. At best, the results for Trump will be mixed.
The period from March 2023 to July 2023 will likely seal Trump's fate as a has-been. It's the time when many presidential campaigns launch. During this period in 2015, more than a dozen Republican candidates, including Trump, announced their intention to seek the GOP presidential nomination.
Trump rivals such as Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, and former administration officials such as former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may wait for Trump to announce his 2024 intentions. But others such as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan may jump in before Trump's decision. And the entrance of Pence or DeSantis absolutely would force his hand -- Trump could not ignore such legitimate contenders.
The cumulative effect of all these factors will weaken Trump's resolve. But one major event will end his 2024 aspirations: Joe Biden's potential announcement that he will not seek the presidency again. While Biden has said he would run again if he's `` in good health, '' a Wall Street Journal poll this month finds that only 29% of Americans actually believe Biden will pursue a second term. Biden not running would upend all of Trump's calculations and motivation -- his intense desire for a revenge rematch and his belief that he would win.
Biden's withdrawal would result in a Democrat Party free-for-all, and Trump would not know which Democrat he would face. He may salivate over running against Vice President Kamala Harris, whose approval rating among voters has hovered below 50% since last June, but her nomination is far from certain -- and it may not be worth the risk for him.
As legendary NFL quarterback and broadcaster Joseph `` Dandy Don '' Meredith used to proclaim at the end of every contest: `` Turn out the lights. The party's over! '' | business |
Pandemic relief money spent on luxury hotel, ballpark renovations and ski slopes | WASHINGTON ( AP) — Thanks to a sudden $ 140 million cash infusion, officials in Broward County, Florida, recently broke ground on a
high-end hotel
that will have views of the Atlantic Ocean and an 11,000-square-foot spa.
In New York, Dutchess County pledged $ 12 million for renovations of a
minor league baseball stadium
to meet requirements the New York Yankees set for their farm teams.
And in Massachusetts, lawmakers delivered $ 5 million to pay off debts of the
Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate
in Boston, a nonprofit established to honor the late senator that has struggled financially.
The three distinctly different outlays have one thing in common: Each is among the dozens of projects that state and local governments across the United States are funding with federal coronavirus relief money despite having little to do with combating the pandemic, a review by The Associated Press has found.
The expenditures amount to a fraction of the $ 350 billion made available through last year’ s
American Rescue Plan
to help state and local governments weather the crisis. But they are examples of uses of the aid that are inconsistent with the rationale that Democrats offered for the record $ 1.9 trillion bill: The cash was desperately needed to save jobs, help those in distress, open schools and increase vaccinations.
Republicans are already balking at additional money for pandemic relief that President Joe Biden has requested, and programs that seem far removed from ones that directly combat the virus will probably add to the resistance in the GOP.
“ They need to give us an accounting, ” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who tried unsuccessfully to amend the Democrats’ bill last year to add more limits on how the money could be spent. “ Show us how you’ ve already spent the money Congress gave you, ” he said, adding, “ It’ s hard to imagine how a four-star hotel is helping to solve the pain of COVID. ”
Many of the projects identified by the AP echo pork-barrel spending disasters such as Alaska’ s $ 398 million “ Bridge to Nowhere, ” which was canceled in 2007 after a public uproar.
But with permissive Treasury Department rules governing how the pandemic money can be spent, state and local governments face few limitations. New Jersey allocated $ 15 million for upgrades to sweeten the state’ s bid to host the 2026 World Cup. In Woonsocket, Rhode Island, officials allocated $ 53,000 for a remodeling of City Hall.
“ Outrageous ” and “ just nuts ” is how Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., described some of the expenditures, which she said were an affront to responsible local governments.
“ Our hospitals were overwhelmed because of the pandemic and somebody now has a hotel somewhere? ” she added.
Included among the projects and expenditures identified by the AP:
— $ 400 million to build new prisons in Alabama, accounting for nearly one-quarter of the total aid the state will receive through the program.
—tens of millions of dollars for tourism marketing campaigns in Puerto Rico ( $ 70 million), Washington, D.C. ( $ 8 million) and Tucson, Arizona ( $ 2 million). The city of Alexandria, Virginia, also announced it would spend $ 120,000 to give its tourism website a makeover.
— $ 6.6 million to replace irrigation systems at two golf courses in Colorado Springs.
— $ 5 million approved by Birmingham, Alabama, to support the 2022 World Games. The event features niche sporting contests such as DanceSport, korfball and flying disc.
— $ 2.5 million to hire new parking enforcement officers in Washington, D.C.
— $ 2 million to help Pottawattamie County, Iowa, purchase a privately owned ski area.
— $ 1 million to pay off overdue child support in St. Louis. A city memo states that owing child support stops some people from looking for work because the overdue payments are garnished from paychecks; the program would “ empower individuals ” by paying down a portion.
— $ 300,000 to establish a museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, honoring Major Taylor, a famed Black bicycle rider from the turn of the 20th century known as the “ Worcester Whirlwind ” who died in 1932.
In Broward County, officials defended their planned 29-story, 800-room hotel, which will be owned by the county but operated by a private management group.
They also contest whether federal money is technically being used for the project. Broward County initially routed $ 140 million in federal coronavirus aid to the project, which ran against Treasury Department rules that generally bar spending the money on large capital projects.
To get around the prohibition, the county adopted a common workaround.
The agenda from a Feb. 22 county board meeting
details how: In a back-to-back series of unopposed votes, commissioners clawed back the federal money they had given to the hotel. They then transferred it to the county’ s general fund, describing it as a federal payment to cover lost tax revenue, which is an acceptable use. Then the cash was transferred from the general fund right back to the project.
County Administrator Monica Cepero insisted “ no federal funds will be used to pay any of the cost of developing the Hotel Project. ”
“ The County has reviewed the Treasury guidance and modified its use of ( the) funds, ” she said in a statement.
Some lawmakers in Congress, however, are nonplussed.
“ They are basically money laundering funding that is meant to help communities that are suffering, ” said Spanberger, who called for more oversight.
Local officials in New York’ s Dutchess County, home to the $ 12 million minor league stadium project, said in a statement that the expenditure was “ completely and absolutely consistent ” with Congress’ intent for the money.
“ It’ s ironic that this criticism emanates from the same congressional members who have brought back pork-barrel earmarks, ” said Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro.
The Edward Kennedy Institute did not respond to messages seeking comment on the $ 5 million in coronavirus aid received from Massachusetts. The institute operated at a $ 27 million loss between 2015 and 2019, according to tax filings from those years, the most recent that are publicly available.
Even in cases where local and state officials may have violated the spending rules, the sheer volume of money pumped out presents a challenge for government oversight offices that are often understaffed and poorly funded.
“ The amount of money that went out was so massive and so far beyond anything that has ever been spent in our country before, that our capacity to audit every dollar spent is clearly stretched, ” Romney said.
But groups that lobby on behalf of local governments in Washington say the spending rules were written permissively in order to give as much flexibility as possible.
“ Counties should be able to determine what’ s best for them, ” said Mark Ritacco, director of government affairs for the National Association of Counties. “ Their residents will decide whether that was appropriate or not at the ballot box. ”
The latest findings track closely with previous reporting by the AP, which found in October that states and large cities had spent just a tiny fraction of their relief funding six months after it was approved. That was despite their pleas for the emergency cash when Congress was still debating it.
Some school districts also had so much extra federal pandemic cash that they spent it on new sports stadiums, arenas and football turf. In other instances, states used discretionary funding to further school choice initiatives that they had failed to get through their legislatures.
Rich Delmar, the deputy inspector general for the Treasury Department, declined to say whether the office had any active investigations into uses of the state and local pot of money.
“ All projects are potentially subject to audit and investigation, ” Delmar said in an email, adding that “ we are actively engaging in oversight. ”
Biden, meanwhile, has said his administration urgently needs more money to pay for things that are directly related to the pandemic.
Without it, the White House says, the administration won’ t be able to replenish depleted stockpiles of vaccines and therapeutics. Republicans say winning their support will hinge on it being paid for with money that was already appropriated.
A deal that leaders struck this month would have been paid for by recouping some aid intended for states. But the agreement fell apart after several governors objected and rank-and-file House Democrats rebelled.
At least one Democrat sought to raise campaign cash off her opposition to clawing local money back.
“ We had a bit of a fight when they tried to take money away from Michigan, ” reads a fundraising email from Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell. “ I was not going to let the Midwest get harmed. We won. ” | business |
Moderna says its Covid-19 vaccine performs as well in children as it does in adults |
Moderna announced interim results of its Covid-19 vaccine for children younger than 6 on Wednesday.
The company said two 25-microgram doses of its Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months through 5 years old provided a similar immune response to two 100-microgram doses for adults ages 18 to 25, indicating that the benefit conferred to young adults is also conferred to young children.
The two doses of vaccine are given to children 28 days apart.
The data showed `` a robust neutralizing antibody response '' and `` a favorable safety profile, '' according to a company news release issued Wednesday.
Moderna seeks FDA authorization for second Covid-19 booster shot for all adults
Based on the data, Moderna said it will ask the US Food and Drug Administration to authorize the use of the vaccine in this younger age group in the coming weeks.
Read More
`` Given the need for a vaccine against COVID-19 in infants and young children we are working with the U.S. FDA and regulators globally to submit these data as soon as possible, '' Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said. `` We believe these latest results... are good news for parents of children under 6 years of age. ''
The vaccine was not all that effective at preventing Covid-19 infections caused by the Omicron variant, which predominated in the US during the study. For children ages 6 months through 1 year old, the efficacy was 43.7%. For children ages 2 through 5, the efficacy was 37.5%. Moderna said the lower efficacy was still statistically significant and consistent with how vaccinated adults have fared with the Omicron variant.
Moderna said it is preparing to evaluate the potential of a booster shot for all children 6 months and older, which would target the original strain of the virus as well as the Omicron variant.
The data is based on a group of 6,900 children ages 6 months through 5 years old. The majority of adverse reactions were mild or moderate, and were more frequent after the second shot. Moderna said no deaths and no cases of myocarditis or pericarditis were reported. Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle and pericarditis is inflammation of the heart lining.
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Moderna also announced that it has initiated a submission to the FDA for emergency use authorization of the company's Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 6 through 11 years old. Children that age would get two shots of a larger 50-microgram version of the vaccine. Moderna also said it provided the FDA with additional follow-up data on its vaccine for children ages 12 to 17. Children that age would get two shots of a larger 100-microgram version of the vaccine.
Last month, the FDA postponed a meeting of its vaccine advisers to consider Pfizer/BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine for children younger than 5, and requested additional data on third doses. The companies have said they expect that data to be ready by early April. | general |
Ashleigh Barty retires as the most dominant force in women's tennis |
On her day, Ashleigh Barty was an unstoppable force.
Her
sudden retirement
at the age of just 25 comes as a shock not only due to her age, but because she looked set to
dominate women's tennis
for the foreseeable future.
Barty's mixture of crushing groundstrokes and slice backhand, which is as near to a perfect shot as there has been, at times made her irrepressible.
This was never more apparent than at January's Australian Open -- the site of the last of Barty's three grand slam titles -- where she didn't drop a set on the way to becoming the tournament's first home champion since 1978.
With time on her side, the only question that remained immediately after her Australian Open win was: how many grand slams could she win?
Read More
World No. 1 Ashleigh Barty announces she's retiring from professional tennis
Despite her success, Barty said she had been thinking about retirement for `` a long time. '' In fact, she admitted her decision to retire was only solidified by her Australian Open and Wimbledon victories last year.
`` Wimbledon last year changed a lot for me as a person and for me as an athlete, '' Barty said in her retirement video. `` When you work so hard your whole life for one goal. To be able to win Wimbledon, which was my dream, the one true dream that I wanted in tennis, that really changed my perspective. ''
Barty becomes just the second woman in history to retire while ranked world No. 1, following Justine Henin in 2008, but it's not the first time she has walked away from the sport.
In 2014, four years after starting her tennis career, she took a 21-month break aged 18, saying at the time `` it was too much too quickly. ''
The Australian showed her prodigious talents were not limited to the court as she played cricket professionally for the Brisbane Heat in the Women's Big Bash League.
She is also a keen golfer and is apparently rather good at that, too. In 2020, Barty won the women's championship at the Brookwater Golf Club near Brisbane and 15-time major winner Tiger Woods once reportedly described her as having a `` great swing. ''
`` What's next for you? Grand Slam champion in golf?! '' former tennis world No. 1
Simona Halep asked on Twitter
.
Ashleigh Barty beats Danielle Collins to become first home Australian Open singles champion since 1978
The coronavirus pandemic during the 2021 tennis season presented previously unseen challenges, as travel restrictions in Australia meant Barty was unable to return home for most of the year.
Barty won Wimbledon during that time but realized -- even in achieving her lifelong goal -- there was something missing.
`` I just had that gut feeling after Wimbledon and had spoken to my team quite a lot about it, '' she said. `` There was just a little part of me that wasn't quite satisfied, wasn't quite fulfilled. There was a perspective shift in me in the second phase of my career, that my happiness wasn't dependent on the results. ''
There is no doubt her presence in tennis will be sorely missed.
At a time when the careers of some of the all-time greats -- such as the Williams sisters, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal -- are drawing to a close, Barty was at the forefront of the current group of stars looking to carry the sport forward.
But her departure opens the door for any number of players in the women's game to stake their claim to being the best in the world.
Iga Swiatek, the recent Indian Wells champion, is perhaps best placed to do so and will be bumped up to world No. 1 after Barty's departure. The 20-year-old is already a major champion, having won the French Open in 2020 to become the first Polish player in history to win a grand slam title.
Barty leaves tennis having dominated on every surface, winning Wimbledon, the French Open and the Australian Open, and with 15 career titles. She will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the sport's most gifted players.
`` I know how much work it takes to bring the best out of yourself, '' Barty said. `` I 've said it to my team multiple times, it's just I don't have that in me anymore.
`` I don't have the physical drive, the emotional want, and everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top of the level anymore, and I just know that I am spent. I just know physically, I have nothing more to give. That, for me, is success. '' | general |
US federal borrowers saved $ 200 billion during student loan pause — Quartz | An estimated $ 195 billion worth of US student loan payments has been waived since the federal government enacted a freeze in March 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a study today ( March 23) that shows some 37 million borrowers have not been required to make payments thanks to this freeze, and they’ re likely to struggle with loan repayments once they resume. US president Joe Biden is currently facing pressure from fellow Democrats to extend the pause, which is set to expire in May.
The $ 195 billion in waived payments is still a drop in the bucket of total student loan debt in the US, which is around $ 1.6 trillion.
Data analyzed by the NY Fed shows the vast majority of borrowers with direct federal student loans ( 97%) took advantage of the government policy granting automatic forbearance, with very few making voluntary payments over the last two years.
Those with loans that weren’ t covered by the freeze, including private and Federal Family Education Loan ( FFEL) borrowers, maintained roughly the same rate of forbearance or deferment—meaning their payments are suspended or reduced—as before the pandemic. Roughly 30% of these borrowers were in forbearance or deferment as of December 2021, compared to nearly all federal borrowers covered by the moratorium.
Direct loan borrowers hold most student debt in the US, totaling $ 1.3 trillion, while Americans with FFEL loans hold $ 133 billion and private loan borrowers have $ 95 billion worth of debt.
The NY Fed is pointing to trends in FFEL loans as an indicator about what will happen to direct federal borrowers once the freeze is over. During the pandemic the share of FFEL borrowers with increasing balances grew by 2%, either because these Americans elected to enter forbearance or missed payments that they had previously been making. This problem may be more acute for direct borrowers when their payments restart, the study said, particularly because this group tends to have higher debt balances and lower credit scores than FFEL borrowers, and to have made less progress toward paying off their student debt.
“ We believe that direct borrowers are likely to experience a meaningful rise in delinquencies, both for student loans and for other debt, once forbearance ends, ” the authors of the study wrote.
The president extended the student loan freeze in December and may do so once again before it expires on May 1. Earlier this month the Education Department instructed companies managing federal student loans not to send out notices to borrowers notifying them their payments would start once again, Politico reported.
Some Democrats, including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, have urged Biden to cancel student debt altogether, while other have simply asked for another extension on the moratorium while lawmakers work to reform the system. | tech |
What to Know About the Boeing 737 Crash in China | Rescuers head to the site of a plane crash in southern China on March 22, 2022.
STR/AFP via Getty Images
A
Boeing
737-800 carrying 132 passengers and crew members
crashed
in southern China on Monday.
As investigators continue to try to uncover how the crash occurred, investors need to keep a
close watch
on developments, given
Boeing
’ s
recent history.
What Happened?
Passengers were traveling to the southern city of Guangzhou, according to flight tracker
FlightRadar24
. The plane had achieved its cruising altitude and speed of about 457 knots, or about 525 miles an hour. The flight was about one hour out from its origin in Kunming when the plane lost about 26,000 feet of altitude in roughly four minutes, before falling off the radar.
No survivors were found by rescue teams, according to reports.
Why Are Investors Concerned?
Investors are worried mainly because of the history with Boeing’ s more recent 737 model, the MAX. Boeing ( ticker: BA) 737 MAX model jets were
grounded worldwide
between March 2019 and November 2020 after two deadly crashes within a five-month span. The MAX problems, along with Covid-19, have driven Boeing stock down about 57% from its all-time high set just before the second MAX crash.
However, plane that went down wasn’ t a MAX. The 737-800 was from an earlier 737 model, dubbed Next Generation, or NG. More than 7,000 NGs have been delivered since 1997. The plane’ s safety record is excellent—on par with competitive products and with other commercial aviation platforms through time. The
China Eastern Airlines
( CEA) 737-800 that crashed was delivered in 2015.
When Will We Know What Happened?
One of the flight data recorders
was recovered
Wednesday, according to reports. It isn’ t known yet if it is the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder. In either case, the data contained should mean that more details about the flight will emerge in a couple of days. Though a full investigation could take months?. Investigators will be looking at pilot actions, plane maintenance records, and plane design to help determine what happened.
Boeing has
expressed concern
in several statements and pledged to cooperate with investigations.
The National Transportation Safety Board has appointed a senior air safety investigator to look into the crash as well. Representatives from Boeing, the Federal Aviation Administration, and
General Electric
( GE) will serve as advisors.
The engines for the 737-800 model come from CFM International, a 50/50 joint venture between GE and
Safran
( SAF.France).
What Is Wall Street Saying?
Analysts have taken a
cautious approach
to the crash, writing they are waiting for details to emerge. No one has cut a price target or changed a rating on Boeing stock in response so far.
Overall, Boeing stock has been rising in popularity with analysts since early 2021. Wall Street has generally expected earnings and cash flow to recover as Boeing continues to emerge from MAX-related issues and Covid-related restrictions fade.
Currently, 75% of analysts covering shares rate them Buy. In early 2020, at the depths of the MAX and Covid crises, only 45% of analysts covering the stock had a Buy rating.
How Is Boeing Stock Responding?
Boeing stock closed this past Friday at $ 192.83. Shares traded as low as $ 180.61 Monday morning, down more than 6%, before closing Monday at $ 185.90, off about 3.6% for the session.
Since Friday’ s close, Boeing stock has fallen about 3%, as of Wednesday morning trading. The
S & P 500
is up about 1%, while the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
is down 1% over the same span.
Shares are trading at $ 186.28 in midday trading Wednesday.
Write to Al Root at
allen.root @ dowjones.com | business |
Intel CEO: Making semiconductors in U.S. is more important than oil reserves | Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on Wednesday likened semiconductors to oil, suggesting that computer chips will play a central role in international relations in the decades ahead.
`` Oil reserves have defined geopolitics for the last five decades. Where the fabs [ factories ] are for a digital future is more important, '' Gelsinger said in an interview on CNBC's `` Squawk Box. '' `` Let's build them where we want them, and define the world that we want to be part of in the U.S. and Europe. ''
Fabs is shorthand for fabrication plants, which are the factories where semiconductors are manufactured. The vast majority of chips are currently made in Asia, especially in Taiwan. That concentration has raised natural security concerns, particularly as China has scaled up its military presence near the democratically ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.
Semiconductors also have been in short supply during the Covid pandemic, as production disruptions clashed with surging demand for the chips that are used in electronics, ranging from smartphones to cars to washing machines.
Under Gelsinger's leadership, Intel has made an aggressive push to geographically diversify chip manufacturing. In recent months, Intel has announced massive investments to build new fabs in the U.S. and Europe. Intel also started work last year on two chip factories in Arizona.
The Santa Clara, California-based company — an influential firm in the early days of Silicon Valley — also has been pushing officials in both Washington and Brussels to support legislation that would include government money to assist in semiconductor production.
Gelsinger's comments Wednesday came ahead of his testimony before the U.S. Senate in support of a $ 52 billion subsidy plan.
The former chief of cloud computing company VMWare, Geslinger, is not the first person to compare semiconductors to oil. But his remarks take on increased salience because crude oil prices jumped this year due, in part, to the Russia-Ukraine war and fears of supply disruptions.
It's the latest instance of geopolitical tensions leading to elevated fuel prices and, in turn, concerns about their impact on American consumers. It's happened before, such as in the energy crisis of the 1970s.
Geslinger expressed concern for the humanitarian consequences of Russia's attack on Ukraine, while also pointing to economic implications.
`` While the Russia-Ukraine situation isn't central to any of the supply chains for semiconductors, it just reinforces the geopolitical instability and the urgency around building supply chains that are geographically balanced — U.S., Europe and Asia — and far more resilient for the digital future, '' he said.
`` Everything digital runs on semiconductors, and it is just essential that we build these fabs where we want them. '' | business |
EU seeks answers to energy supply crunch, U.S. LNG deal | The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Europe's top gas supplier, pushed already-high energy prices to records and has prompted the European Union to attempt to slash reliance on Russian fossil fuels by hiking imports from other countries and quickly expanding renewable energy.
In a draft of their summit conclusions seen by Reuters, the leaders will agree to `` work together on the joint purchase of gas, LNG and hydrogen '' ahead of next winter, and coordinate measures to fill gas storage.
The European Commission said on Wednesday it was ready to lead negotiations pooling demand and seeking gas ahead of next winter, following a similar model to how the bloc bought COVID-19 vaccines.
Leaders will discuss that plan - as well as a proposed law for countries to fill gas storage ahead of winter - on Friday.
Brussels is also aiming to strike a deal with U.S. President Joe Biden, who will attend the Brussels summit on Thursday, to secure additional U.S. liquefied natural gas supplies for the next two winters.
Russia supplies 40% of the EU's collective gas needs, 27% of its oil imports and 46% of coal imports.
U.S. exporters have shipped record volumes of LNG to Europe for three consecutive months, as prices have jumped to more than 10 times higher than a year ago. Europe is competing in global markets for tight LNG supply, and analysts have warned a jump in demand could inflate prices further and leave poorer nations struggling to afford supply.
Leaders may also discuss a demand from Moscow that countries pay in roubles for their Russian gas, a move some EU diplomats said could undermine existing EU sanctions by effectively unfreezing Russian assets.
Countries remain divided, however, on whether to sanction Russian oil and gas directly, a move already taken by the United States. An EU embargo would require unanimous approval from all 27 member states.
Poland and Latvia are among the countries seeking to halt the hundreds of millions of euros per day Europe pays Russia for fossil fuels. Germany, which receives 18% of Russia's gas exports, and Hungary are among those opposed, citing the economic damage an oil embargo would unleash.
Soaring energy prices have leapt onto the EU summit agenda, with Spain, Belgium, Italy, Greece and Portugal proposing price caps and measures to decouple the price of electricity and gas, to rein in consumer bills.
Other countries warn capping wholesale prices would cause problems and undermine efforts to shift to green energy. Some diplomats said any EU-wide decisions on this were likely to be delayed until a report due this month from energy regulators on possible EU electricity market reforms.
EU countries are largely responsible for their own energy policies. Governments have already poured billions into national tax cuts and subsidies to curb soaring energy bills in recent months.
( Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by John Chalmers)
By Kate Abnett | business |
What to watch today: Stock futures drop, a day after Wall Street had resumed its upswing | U.S. stock futures dropped Wednesday, one day after Wall Street rebounded from Monday's Federal Reserve-driven decline, which broke multiday winning streaks for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S & P 500 and the Nasdaq. The 10-year Treasury yield ticked up Wednesday, trading at nearly three-year highs around 2.38%. ( CNBC) * Mortgage refinance demand plunges 14%, as interest rates spike higher ( CNBC)
Investors are coming to grips with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's Monday comments signaling that bigger-than-typical interest rate hikes may be necessary to fight `` too high '' inflation Veteran investor Carl Icahn, expressing market concerns about inflation and Russia's war against Ukraine, told CNBC on Tuesday the U.S. economy could be heading into a `` recession or even worse. '' ( CNBC)
GameStop's ( GME) stock, which surged nearly 31% on Tuesday, jumped another 12.5% in premarket trading Wednesday after the video game retailer's chairman, Ryan Cohen, bought another 100,000 shares. The purchase bring his ownership to 11.9% as the activist investor, who also co-founded online pet retailer Chewy, tries to move GameStop into e-commerce. ( CNBC)
President Joe Biden is set to depart Wednesday for Europe to meet this week with key allies in Brussels and Warsaw, Poland, as world leaders try to prevent Russia's Ukraine attack from spiraling into an even greater catastrophe. There are fears that Russia could use chemical or nuclear weapons. Humanitarian challenges are growing as well. ( AP) * Zelenskyy says 100,000 people trapped in Mariupol; German leader says Putin destroying Russia's future ( CNBC's live blog)
Moderna's ( MRNA) two-dose Covid vaccine was about 44% effective at preventing infection from the omicron variant in children 6 months to under 2 years old and about 38% effective for children 2 years to 5 years old. None of the kids developed severe illness and the majority of breakthrough cases were mild. Moderna plans to ask the FDA for emergency clearance. ( CNBC) * Omicron ‘ stealth’ subvariant BA.2 could go ‘ wild’ in Europe, top epidemiologist says ( CNBC)
One of the two black boxes from Monday's China Eastern Airlines plane crash has been found, Chinese state media said Wednesday. Officials said the black box was `` heavily damaged. '' A Boeing ( BA) 737-800 jet carrying 132 people nose-dived Monday in rural, mountainous part southern China. While China has not confirmed any fatalities, authorizes said rescue workers haven't found any survivors. ( CNBC)
Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday the administration was ready to dole out $ 2.9 billion in grants for state and local infrastructure projects, such as highway, bridge, freight, port and public transit expansions and repairs. The money is part of the bipartisan $ 1 trillion infrastructure bill that Biden signed into law four months ago. ( CNBC)
The CEOs of American semiconductor giants Intel ( INTC) and Micron ( MU) are set to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday to make the case for $ 52 billion in U.S. subsidies for chip manufacturing. A persistent industrywide shortage of chips has disrupted production in the automotive and electronics industries. ( Reuters) * Supreme Court pick Ketanji Brown Jackson takes senators ' questions ( CNBC)
Starbucks ( SBUX) baristas at a Seattle location Tuesday unanimously voted to unionize, a first in the company's hometown. Only one location, in the Buffalo area, has voted against unionizing, giving Starbucks Workers United a win rate of 88%. ( CNBC) * Amazon union vote to begin in New York, which has challenged company in past ( WSJ)
General Mills ( GIS) gained 1.6% in the premarket after reporting better-than-expected quarterly earnings and raising its full-year outlook. The food maker earned an adjusted 84 cents per share, 6 cents above estimates, with revenue essentially in line with analyst forecasts. General Mills said demand for food at home continues to be elevated.
Winnebago ( WGO) reported adjusted quarterly earnings of $ 3.14 per share, beating the $ 2.94 consensus estimate, and revenue also topped Street forecasts. Results were helped by strong consumer demand and higher prices. However, the recreational vehicle maker's shares lost 2.4% in the premarket.
Adobe ( ADBE) beat estimates by 3 cents with adjusted quarterly earnings of $ 3.37 per share. The software maker's revenue was slightly above estimates. However, Adobe cut its forecast for a key subscription revenue measure, expecting a $ 75 million hit for existing business in Russia and Belarus. Adobe slid 2.7% in the premarket.
U.S.-listed marijuana stocks, including Tilray ( TLRY), Canopy Growth ( CGC), Aurora Cannabis ( ACB) and Sundial Growers ( SNDL) jumped in the premarket following news of two takeover deals in the industry.
Okta ( OKTA) said a preliminary investigation found no evidence of ongoing malicious activity, following news of a hacker breach. The digital authentication company said up to 366 customers may have been impacted by the breach, but noted hackers gained only limited access. Okta dropped 3.6% in premarket trading.
Private equity firms Brookfield Asset Management ( BAM) and Elliott Investment Management are considering raising their offer for Nielsen Holdings ( NLSN), Bloomberg reports. Nielsen had rejected a prior offer of $ 25.40 per share, saying it undervalued the company.
Poshmark ( POSH) slid 9.4% in the premarket after the operator of a new and used clothing marketplace gave weaker-than-expected guidance for the current quarter. Poshmark reported better-than-expected revenue for its most recent quarter, along with a slightly smaller-than-expected loss.
Top-ranked Ash Barty shockingly announced Wednesday that she's retiring from professional tennis. The Australian Barty, just 25 years old, said in an Instagram video, `` I am spent '' and it's time to `` chase other dreams. '' She won three women's Grand Slam singles titles. ( AP) | business |
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort removed from plane en route to Dubai from Miami | MIAMI ( AP) — Former Trump adviser Paul Manafort was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport before it took off for Dubai because he carried a revoked passport, officials said Wednesday.
Miami-Dade Police Detective Alvaro Zabaleta confirmed that Manafort was removed from the Emirates Airline flight without incident Sunday night but directed further questions to U.S. Border and Customs Protection. That agency did not immediately respond to an email Wednesday seeking comment.
President Trump’ s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison, with a U.S. district judge in Washington, D.C., taking into account lies he told to prosecutors after striking a plea deal. WSJ’ s Shelby Holliday explains why Manafort’ s lies matter in the Mueller investigation. Photo: AP
A lawyer who has represented Manafort did not immediately return a call and email seeking comment Wednesday.
Manafort, 72,
led Donald Trump’ s campaign for several months during the 2016 presidential race
but relinquished his formal role in August of that year after revelations about his business dealings in Ukraine.
“
Donald Trump issued a pardon of Paul Manafort in December 2020, the month after losing his re-election bid to President Joe Biden.
”
He was later indicted on a broad array of financial crimes as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’ s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Under his campaign and convention leadership, the 2016 party platform
removed a long-standing plank supporting an independent and democratic Ukraine
in opposition to clear Kremlin preference.
Manafort was also
accused of secretly sharing internal polling data
with a pro-Russian political consultant then operating from Ukraine and later identified as a Russian intelligence agent.
From the archives ( January 2019):
Manafort’ s lawyers accidentally reveal that former Trump campaign manager may have shared polling data with Russian spy
He was
convicted of tax and bank fraud by a jury in August 2018 and sentenced to serve 47 months in prison
and later pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington.
In May 2020, Manafort was released from a low-security prison where he was serving a more than seven-year federal sentence amid concerns about the risk posed to prisoners by the coronavirus causing the disease COVID-19. Although Manafort had not served long enough to be eligible for release under the guidelines, the Bureau of Prisons decided to free him because of his age and health vulnerabilities, a person familiar with the matter has said.
Trump pardoned Manafort in December 2020.
Manafort’ s removal from the Dubai flight was first reported by the aggregation and news website Knewz.com.
MarketWatch contributed.
Capitol Report ( September 2016):
Paul Manafort quits Donald Trump’ s campaign amid reports he received undisclosed cash payments from a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine | business |
Study: With masking and distancing in place, NFL stadium openings in 2020 had no impact on local Covid-19 infections | As with most everything in the world, football looked very different in 2020. As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded, many National Football League ( NFL) games were played in empty stadiums, while other stadiums opened to fans at significantly reduced capacity, with strict safety protocols in place.
At the time it was unclear what impact such large sporting events would have on Covid-19 case counts, particularly at a time when vaccination against the virus was not widely available.
Now, MIT engineers have taken a look back at the NFL’ s 2020 regular season and found that for this specific period during the pandemic, opening stadiums to fans while requiring face coverings, social distancing, and other measures had no impact on the number of Covid-19 infections in those stadiums’ local counties.
As they write in a new paper appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “ the benefits of providing a tightly controlled outdoor spectating environment — including masking and distancing requirements — counterbalanced the risks associated with opening. ”
The study concentrates on the NFL’ s 2020 regular season ( September 2020 to early January 2021), at a time when earlier strains of the virus dominated, before the rise of more transmissible Delta and Omicron variants. Nevertheless, the results may inform decisions on whether and how to hold large outdoor gatherings in the face of future public health crises.
“ These results show that the measures adopted by the NFL were effective in safely opening stadiums, ” says study author Anette “ Peko ” Hosoi, the Neil and Jane Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. “ If case counts start to rise again, we know what to do: mask people, put them outside, and distance them from each other. ”
The study’ s co-authors are members of MIT’ s Institue for Data, Systems, and Society ( IDSS), and include Bernardo García Bulle, Dennis Shen, and Devavrat Shah, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science ( EECS).
Preseason patterns
Last year a group led by the University of Southern Mississippi compared Covid-19 case counts in the counties of NFL stadiums that allowed fans in, versus those that did not. Their analysis showed that stadiums that opened to large numbers of fans led to “ tangible increases ” in the local county’ s number of Covid-19 cases.
But there are a number of factors in addition to a stadium’ s opening that can affect case counts, including local policies, mandates, and attitudes. As the MIT team writes, “ it is not at all obvious that one can attribute the differences in case spikes to the stadiums given the enormous number of confounding factors. ”
To truly isolate the effects of a stadium’ s opening, one could imagine tracking Covid cases in a county with an open stadium through the 2020 season, then turning back the clock, closing the stadium, then tracking that same county’ s Covid cases through the same season, all things being equal.
“ That’ s the perfect experiment, with the exception that you would need a time machine, ” Hosoi says.
As it turns out, the next best thing is synthetic control — a statistical method that is used to determine the effect of an “ intervention ” ( such as the opening of a stadium) compared with the exact same scenario without that intervention.
In synthetic control, researchers use a weighted combination of groups to construct a “ synthetic ” version of an actual scenario. In this case, the actual scenario is a county such as Dallas that hosts an open stadium. A synthetic version would be a county that looks similar to Dallas, only without a stadium. In the context of this study, a county that “ looks ” like Dallas has a similar preseason pattern of Covid-19 cases.
To construct a synthetic Dallas, the researchers looked for surrounding counties without stadiums, that had similar Covid-19 trajectories leading up to the 2020 football season. They combined these counties in a way that best fit Dallas’ actual case trajectory. They then used data from the combined counties to calculate the number of Covid cases for this synthetic Dallas through the season, and compared these counts to the real Dallas.
The team carried out this analysis for every “ stadium county. ” They determined a county to be a stadium county if more than 10 percent of a stadium’ s fans came from that county, which the researchers estimated based on attendance data provided by the NFL.
“ Go outside ”
Of the stadiums included in the study, 13 were closed through the regular season, while 16 opened with reduced capacity and multiple pandemic requirements in place, such as required masking, distanced seating, mobile ticketing, and enhanced cleaning protocols.
The researchers found the trajectory of infections in all stadium counties mirrored that of synthetic counties, showing that the number of infections would have been the same if the stadiums had remained closed. In other words, they found no evidence that NFL stadium openings led to any increase in local Covid case counts.
To check that their method wasn’ t missing any case spikes, they tested it on a known superspreader: the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which was held in August of 2020. The analysis successfully picked up an increase in cases in Meade, the host county, compared to a synthetic counterpart, in the two weeks following the rally.
Surprisingly, the researchers found that several stadium counties’ case counts dipped slightly compared to their synthetic counterparts. In these counties — including Hamilton, Ohio, home of the Cincinnati Bengals — it appeared that opening the stadium to fans was tied to a dip in Covid-19 infections. Hosoi has a guess as to why:
“ These are football communities with dedicated fans. Rather than stay home alone, those fans may have gone to a sports bar or hosted indoor football gatherings if the stadium had not opened, ” Hosoi proposes. “ Opening the stadium under those circumstances would have been beneficial to the community because it makes people go outside. ”
The team’ s analysis also revealed another connection: Counties with similar Covid trajectories also shared similar politics. To illustrate this point, the team mapped the county-wide temporal trajectories of Covid case counts in Ohio in 2020 and found them to be a strong predictor of the state’ s 2020 electoral map.
“ That is not a coincidence, ” Hosoi notes. “ It tells us that local political leanings determined the temporal trajectory of the pandemic. ”
The team plans to apply their analysis to see how other factors may have influenced the pandemic.
“ Covid is a different beast [ today ], ” she says. “ Omicron is more transmissive, and more of the population is vaccinated. It’ s possible we’ d find something different if we ran this analysis on the upcoming season, and I think we probably should try. ” | business |
Beijing hints at plan to ease `` covid zero '' as fatigue mounts — Quartz | In many countries, widespread outbreaks linked to the delta variant foiled covid-zero adherence. But China appears determined to stick with the policy of keeping cases as low as possible despite a surge in infections this month driven by an omicron variant.
On March 14, it registered 5,000 new infections, and this week saw its first covid deaths in more than a year. The government put “ China’ s Silicon Valley ” Shenzhen under a week-long lockdown after the city saw 75 new cases ( link in Chinese) on March 13. Northeastern Jilin province, the epicenter of the new outbreak, has also placed new restrictions on millions of residents. In Hong Kong ( shown above), which has also followed the covid-zero approach Beijing adopted early in the pandemic, cases and deaths have soared since January due to omicron.
China’ s stringent covid strategy has largely been successful, with the country reporting fewer than 5,000 deaths for the pandemic ( excluding Hong Kong), while nearly 1 million died in the US. But the policy is also facing growing frustration and fatigue from some Chinese citizens, who feel the sacrifice of their privacy and endurance of snap lockdowns is yielding fewer gains at this stage of the pandemic.
While it’ s still easy to find praise for China’ s approach online, more people are questioning the necessity of adhering to it quite so zealously as the country still is. Some internet users have coined the term “ pandemic prevention enthusiast ” for people who are seen as expressing an irrational level of support for covid zero, perhaps in part because economic privilege protects them from the most severe consequences of the policy faced by daily wage workers. The term refers to those who don’ t have to worry about their livelihood and who tend to analyze things from a birds-eye perspective and avoiding discussing the science behind decisions, wrote a Chinese columnist who comments on medical issues.
“ The emergence of this term is a reminder that people’ s attitude towards prevention of covid is quietly changing… [ They wonder ] when can the repeated torment end, ” wrote the columnist.
On China’ s Quora-like Zhihu, a post asking for people’ s thoughts on the term has received over 2.6 million views. One of the top answers under the post said civil servants are an example of this type of covid fundamentalist, as their earnings aren’ t affected by policies that restrict movement or force people to stay home. Yet some answers pointed out that local officials are often the first to be fired after an outbreak so the government can signal it’ s taking the situation seriously, incentivizing local authorities to react aggressively over a small number of cases, including locking down entire cities or residential areas. Commenters called for an end to such firings of local officials and hospital directors when new cases emerge.
This approach is “ hurting ordinary citizens who earn money with their blood and grassroots government workers who conduct the virus prevention measures, ” wrote the author of the answer, who is verified by the platform as a doctor of engineering from China’ s top think tank the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The fact that such complaints about the government’ s strategy can be found on popular platforms like Zhihu could suggest Beijing knows that the policy eventually has to change, and so is allowing some discussion of it could prepare for the future shift, assistant professor of journalism Fang Kecheng told Quartz. That’ s a stark contrast to mere months ago when a Chinese expert’ s mention of the need for China to find a path to living with covid led to a backlash from former health officials and internet users.
“ The posts show people’ s fatigue and frustration, especially due to the economic toll on small business, ” said Fang, who is at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Supporters of covid zero, however, point to China’ s relatively low vaccination rate among those aged over 80 as reason to continue the policy, particularly in light of events in Hong Kong, where low vaccination rates among the elderly have led to thousands of deaths in March alone.
In the mainland, only around half of those over 80 have received two vaccine doses, while just 20% have had a booster third shot, lagging behind the around 85% vaccination rate for the whole Chinese population. In addition, the country only uses vaccines produced by Chinese companies Sinovac and Sinopharm, which have been found to be less effective against omicron compared to mRNA vaccines based on preliminary research.
Although so far there are few signs that Beijing will reverse the policy completely, the country has moved to fine-tune some measures, such as allowing mild cases to recover at home rather than mandatorily going to a hospital. And more significant changes may be coming.
Earlier this month a top Chinese health official said in an internet post that China would release its roadmap for coexisting with covid “ in the near future. ” The country’ s vice premier Li Keqiang also this month said that the country will stick to the rules but they could be “ refined, ” while president Xi Jinping last week vowed to reduce the economic impact of covid prevention measures. | tech |
Modiv Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Results | Provides First Quarter 2022 Business Update
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- ( BUSINESS WIRE) -- Modiv Inc. ( “ Modiv ” or the “ Company ”) ( NYSE: MDV), an internally managed real estate investment trust ( “ REIT ”) that acquires, owns and manages a diversified portfolio of single-tenant net-lease real estate properties, today announced operating results for its fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2021. In addition, the Company provided a business update for the first quarter ending March 31, 2022.
Highlights for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2021:
Summary of recent property investments:
Lease
Term
Purchase Price
( years)
$
3,607,424
$
225,464
6.25%
7.09%
7.6
10.0%
$
11,460,000
$
762,200
6.65%
8.08%
20
2.0%
$
69,275,000
$
3,948,000
5.70%
7.30%
25
2.0%
$
8,079,000
$
565,530
7.00%
8.94%
20
2.5%
$
92,421,424
“ We are pleased with our 2021 results and the progress we have made on our operating strategy since the beginning of 2022, ” said Aaron Halfacre, Chief Executive Officer. “ Throughout 2021, beyond managing the portfolio during the pandemic, we were focused on our strategic repositioning. We ramped up investment activity in late 2021 and have since completed over $ 90 million of accretive acquisitions while at the same time increasing our weighted average lease term ( “ WALT ”), reducing our office exposure, renewing leases, and maintaining our strong credit quality. Following our public offering and NYSE listing in February 2022, we are even better positioned to continue to execute on our portfolio growth strategy while creating long-term shareholder value. ”
Business update for the first quarter ending March 31, 2022:
In January 2022, the Company invested $ 77.3 million in two properties at attractive weighted average cap rates as set forth in the above table. The acquisition of a KIA auto dealership property included the issuance of equity at $ 25.00 per share for approximately 47% of the purchase price and the refinancing of a $ 36 million mortgage on the property. On January 18, 2022, the Company obtained a $ 250 million credit facility from a syndicate of seven banks arranged by KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., BMO Capital Markets, The Huntington National Bank and Truist Securities, Inc.
In February 2022, the Company announced the pricing of an underwritten public offering of 40,000 shares of its Class C Common Stock at a price to the public of $ 25.00 per share. The shares of Class C Common Stock began trading on February 11, 2022, on the New York Stock Exchange ( “ NYSE ”) under the ticker symbol “ MDV ” and the Company’ s Series A Preferred Stock trades on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “ MDV.PA ”. Additionally, on February 18, 2022, the Company announced the authorization of up to $ 20 million in repurchases of the Company’ s outstanding common shares through December 31, 2022. During February 2022, the Company sold three office properties and one industrial property for aggregate net proceeds of $ 16.9 million.
As of March 23, 2022, Modiv’ s 36-property real estate investment portfolio is comprised of approximately 40% industrial, 21% retail and 39% office ( expressed as a percentage of annual base rent for the next twelve months). Office has been reduced 11% in the last three months and the Company believes it will be less than 20% of the portfolio within the next 12 months.
Financial review for the fourth quarter and full year ended 2021
Total Revenues
Total revenues were $ 7.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2021, a decrease of 11.7% from $ 8.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2020, reflecting the disposition of five properties during 2020 and five properties during 2021.
Total revenues for 2021 were $ 36.2 million, a decrease of 6.3% from $ 38.6 million for 2020, reflecting the dispositions described above, which were partially offset by the two acquisitions completed in the second half of 2021.
Operating Results
Net loss attributable to common stockholders was $ 3.1 million, or $ 0.41 per basic and diluted share, for the fourth quarter of 2021, as compared to net income of $ 3.0 million, or $ 0.37 per basic share and $ 0.32 per diluted share, for the fourth quarter of 2020.
Operating results include such items as gain or loss on dispositions of real estate and provisions for impairment, which can vary from quarter to quarter and impact net income and period-to-period comparisons. The fourth quarter of 2021 included a $ 3.8 million intangible assets impairment charge due to termination of the crowdfunding program for raising capital and a net gain of $ 3.3 million on dispositions of real estate. The fourth quarter of 2020 included a $ 2.4 million net gain on dispositions of real estate.
Net loss attributable to common stockholders for the year ended December 31, 2021 was $ 1.5 million, or $ 0.20 per basic and diluted share, as compared to a net loss of $ 49.1 million, or $ 6.14 per basic and diluted share, for the year ended December 31, 2020. Net loss for 2021 included an aggregate net gain on dispositions of real estate of $ 7.8 million and an intangible assets impairment charge of $ 3.8 million, as compared to an aggregate net gain on dispositions of real estate of $ 4.1 million and $ 34.6 million of impairment charges for goodwill and intangibles, and $ 10.3 million of real estate impairment charges for the same period in 2020.
Adjusted Funds from Operations ( AFFO)
AFFO increased 41% to $ 2.4 million, or $ 0.32 per basic share and $ 0.27 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2021, from AFFO of $ 1.7 million, or $ 0.22 per basic share and $ 0.19 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2020. AFFO for the year ended December 31, 2021 increased 20% to $ 11.4 million, or $ 1.51 per basic share and $ 1.30 per diluted share, from AFFO of $ 9.5 million, or $ 1.19 per basic share and $ 1.03 per diluted share, for the year ended December 31, 2020.
AFFO for the year ended December 31, 2021 rose primarily as a result of a decrease in interest expense, partially offset by the decrease in revenue during 2021 compared with 2020.
AFFO is a measure that is not calculated in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America ( “ GAAP ”). See the Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Measures later in this press release.
Dividend Information
As previously announced, Modiv declared a monthly cash dividend per common share of $ 0.09583 payable to common stockholders of record as of February 28, 2022, March 31, 2022, April 29, 2022, May 31, 2022 and June 30, 2022 which will be paid on or about March 25, 2022, April 25, 2022, May 25, 2022, June 27, 2022 and July 25, 2022, respectively. The current monthly dividend amount of $ 0.09583 per share represents an annualized dividend rate of $ 1.15 per share of common stock.
Real Estate Portfolio Highlights
Investment Activity
The Company spent the majority of 2020 and early 2021 focused on repositioning its portfolio and monitoring the potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In mid-2021, with portfolio stability achieved, Modiv began to deliberately ramp up its acquisition pipeline. During the second half of 2021, the Company originated $ 15.1 million of gross investments in two property acquisitions and in January 2022, the Company originated $ 77.3 million of gross investments in two property acquisitions. From July 1, 2021 through March 23, 2022, the Company originated $ 92.4 million of gross investments through four property acquisitions. The investments included two retail properties and two industrial properties at attractive weighted average cap rates as set forth in the above table.
The Company defines “ initial cap rate ” for property acquisitions as the initial annual cash rent divided by the purchase price of the property. The Company defines “ weighted average cap rate ” for property acquisitions as the average annual cash rent including rent escalations over the lease term, divided by the purchase price of the property. The vast majority of Modiv’ s real estate leases have annual rent escalations, which generally range from 2-3%. For acquisitions made during the second half of 2021 through March 2022, the weighted average annual lease escalation was 2.1%.
Disposition Activity
During the year ended December 31, 2021, the Company sold five properties and recognized an aggregate net gain on the disposition of real estate of $ 7.8 million; one of these properties was sold in the fourth quarter for an aggregate net gain of $ 3.3 million. During February 2022, the Company sold three office properties and one industrial property for aggregate net proceeds of $ 16.9 million, which it plans to redeploy in future acquisitions.
Portfolio
As of December 31, the Company’ s portfolio consisted of 38 properties, all of which are 100% owned, except one tenant-in-common real estate investment in which we own approximately 72.7%. The portfolio had approximately 2.4 million square feet of aggregate leasable space 100% leased to 31 different commercial tenants doing business in 14 separate industries in 14 states.
As of March 23, 2022, the Company’ s portfolio consisted of 36 properties, all of which are 100% owned, except the tenant-in-common real estate investment discussed above. The portfolio has approximately 2.3 million square feet of aggregate leasable space 100% leased to 29 different commercial tenants doing business in 16 separate industries in 14 states.
Pro forma annualized base rent ( based on rates in effect on December 31, 2021 for all lease contracts), after reflecting the impact of the two acquisitions in January 2022 and four dispositions in February 2022, totaled $ 30.4 million. Approximately 56% of the Company's tenants are investment grade, and the pro forma portfolio’ s weighted average lease term was 9.2 years as of December 31, 2021.
Capital Transactions, Balance Sheet and Liquidity
On February 10, 2022, the Company announced the pricing of an underwritten public offering of 40,000 shares of its Class C Common Stock at a price to the public of $ 25.00 per share. The shares of Class C Common Stock began trading on February 11, 2022, on the New York Stock Exchange ( “ NYSE ”) under the ticker symbol “ MDV, ” and the offering closed on February 15, 2022. The purpose of this offering was to facilitate the listing of Modiv’ s Class C Common Stock previously raised via crowdfunding technology and provide liquidity for the Company’ s existing stockholders.
On February 18, 2022, the Board of Directors authorized up to $ 20 million in repurchases of the Company’ s outstanding shares of common stock through December 31, 2022. Purchases made pursuant to the program will be made from time to time in the open market, in privately negotiated transactions or in any other manner as permitted by federal securities laws and other legal requirements. The timing, manner, price and amount of any repurchases will be determined by the Company in its discretion and will be subject to economic and market conditions, stock price, applicable legal requirements and other factors. The program may be suspended or discontinued at any time.
Total cash and cash equivalents were $ 56 million as of December 31, 2021. As of December 31, 2021, the Company had $ 183 million of outstanding indebtedness consisting of $ 175 million of mortgages and $ 8 million outstanding on the Company’ s credit facility. On January 18, 2022, $ 108 million of mortgages and the $ 8 million balance on the credit facility were refinanced upon the closing of the new $ 250 million credit facility described above. The Company also borrowed $ 36 million under the new credit facility to refinance the mortgage on one of the properties acquired in January 2022 and an additional $ 22 million of mortgages were repaid in connection with the February asset sales described above. After taking into account the new credit facility, the two acquisitions in January 2022 and four dispositions in February 2022, the Company’ s pro forma leverage ( defined as debt as a percentage of the aggregate fair value of the Company's real estate properties plus the Company’ s cash and cash equivalents) as of December 31, 2021 was 39%.
After making a $ 35 million prepayment on the credit facility in early March, the Company has $ 45 million of mortgages and $ 121 million outstanding under its credit facility as of March 23, 2022, with available borrowing capacity of approximately $ 80 million.
Until the Company achieves scale with total assets of at least $ 1.0 billion, it is targeting a leverage ratio of 40% with a long-term goal of reducing leverage upon reaching scale.
Conference Call and Webcast
A conference call and audio webcast with analysts and investors will be held tomorrow, March 24, 2022, at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time / 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time, to discuss the fourth quarter and full year 2021 operating results and answer questions.
Live conference call: 1-877-407-4092 at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time, Thursday, March 24 Webcast: To listen to the webcast, either live or archived, use this link https: //themediaframe.com/mediaframe/webcast.html? webcastid=xX15s4YJ or visit the investor relations page of Modiv’ s website at www.modiv.com.
About Modiv
Modiv Inc. is an internally managed REIT that acquires, owns and manages a diversified portfolio of single-tenant net-lease real estate. The Company primarily invests in industrial and retail properties that are mission critical to tenants. Driven by innovation and an investor-first focus, Modiv is committed to providing investors with Monthly Dividends and More Diversification. As of December 31, 2021, Modiv had a $ 500 million real estate portfolio ( based on estimated fair value) comprised of 2.4 million square feet of aggregate leasable area. For more information, please visit: www.modiv.com.
Forward-looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release, other than historical facts, may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our plans, strategies and prospects, both business and financial. Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those described under the section entitled “ Risk Factors ” in the Company’ s prospectus dated February 10, 2022, and the Company’ s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021 filed with the SEC on March 23, 2022. Accordingly, there are or will be important factors that could cause actual outcomes or results to differ materially from those indicated in these statements. These factors should not be construed as exhaustive and should be read in conjunction with the other cautionary statements that are included in this press release and in the Company’ s other filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements herein speak only as of the time when made and are based on information available to the Company as of such date and are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The Company assumes no obligation to revise or update any such statement now or in the future, unless required by law.
Notice Involving Non-GAAP Financial Measures
In addition to U.S. GAAP financial measures, this press release and the referenced supplemental financial and operating report contain and may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are in addition to, not a substitute for or superior to, measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered replacements for, and should be read together with, the most comparable GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and statements of why management believes these measures are useful to investors are provided below.
Three Months Ended
December 31,
Twelve Months Ended
December 31,
2021
2020
2021
2020
$
7,899,149
$
8,948,819
$
36,222,717
$
38,639,460
2,816,102
3,148,001
12,649,042
10,399,194
-
-
-
201,920
3,449,407
4,171,997
15,266,936
17,592,253
1,874,867
2,264,686
7,586,197
11,460,747
1,580,629
1,518,767
6,691,899
6,999,178
-
761,100
( 400,999
)
10,267,625
3,767,190
-
3,767,190
34,572,403
-
( 3,120,678
)
-
-
13,488,195
8,743,873
45,560,265
91,493,320
3,271,289
2,446,107
7,803,702
4,139,749
( 2,317,757
)
2,651,053
( 1,533,846
)
( 48,714,111
)
-
135,541
-
( 1,039,648
)
19,958
50
21,328
4,923
53,337
57,752
276,042
296,780
-
-
517,000
-
65,993
110,994
283,971
310,146
139,288
304,337
1,098,341
( 427,799
)
( 2,178,469
)
2,955,390
( 435,505
)
( 49,141,910
)
( 921,875
)
-
( 1,065,278
)
-
$
( 3,100,344
)
$
2,955,390
$
( 1,500,783
)
$
( 49,141,910
)
$
( 0.41
)
$
0.37
$
( 0.20
)
$
( 6.14
)
$
( 0.41
)
$
0.32
$
( 0.20
)
$
( 6.14
)
7,531,167
7,967,096
7,544,834
8,006,276
7,531,167
9,157,061
7,544,834
8,006,276
2021
2020
$
61,005,402
$
65,358,321
250,723,446
272,397,472
21,504,210
23,792,057
333,233,058
361,547,850
( 37,611,133
)
( 32,091,211
)
295,621,925
329,456,639
9,941,338
10,002,368
305,563,263
339,459,007
31,510,762
24,585,739
337,074,025
364,044,746
55,965,550
8,248,412
2,441,970
129,118
1,836,767
1,824,383
5,996,919
6,665,790
691,019
820,842
6,379,099
2,193,441
788,296
1,079,361
17,320,857
17,320,857
-
5,127,788
$
428,494,502
$
407,454,738
$
152,223,579
$
175,925,918
21,699,912
9,088,438
173,923,491
185,014,356
8,022,000
6,000,000
-
517,000
11,844,881
7,579,624
-
2,980,559
11,102,940
12,565,737
788,016
1,743,889
383,282
801,337
206,064,610
217,202,502
-
7,365,568
2,000
-
7,427
7,875
64
63
273,441,831
224,288,416
( 101,624,430
)
( 92,012,686
)
171,826,892
132,283,668
50,603,000
50,603,000
222,429,892
182,886,668
$
428,494,502
$
407,454,738
Three Months Ended
December 31,
Twelve Months Ended
December 31,
2021
2020
2021
2020
$
( 3,100,344
)
$
2,955,390
$
( 1,500,783
)
$
( 49,141,910
)
Add:
3,290,588
3,711,854
13,710,588
15,759,199
53,203
15,301
245,438
61,204
189,439
181,786
735,335
727,048
-
761,100
( 400,999
)
10,267,625
Less:
( 3,271,289
)
( 2,446,107
)
( 7,803,702
)
( 4,139,749
)
( 2,838,403
)
5,179,324
4,985,877
( 26,466,583
)
Add:
158,819
460,144
1,556,348
1,833,054
3,767,190
-
3,767,190
34,572,403
629,542
190,034
2,744,883
712,217
162,200
230,605
369,286
1,025,093
32,456
35,445
129,823
169,857
( 285,982
)
( 248,942
)
( 970,039
)
770,898
( 16,100
)
( 22,766
)
696,825
94,043
-
( 3,120,678
)
-
-
Less:
1,138,991
( 563,149
)
188,297
( 1,591,012
)
( 363,074
)
( 383,362
)
( 1,462,797
)
( 1,541,313
)
-
-
( 517,000
)
-
( 6,191
)
( 23,052
)
( 62,776
)
( 90,803
)
$
2,379,448
$
1,733,603
$
11,425,917
$
9,487,854
7,531,167
7,967,096
7,544,834
8,006,276
8,744,340
9,157,061
8,780,131
9,196,240
$
( 0.38
)
$
0.65
$
0.66
$
( 3.31
)
$
( 0.38
)
$
0.57
$
0.57
$
( 3.31
)
$
0.32
$
0.22
$
1.51
$
1.19
$
0.27
$
0.19
$
1.30
$
1.03
FFO is defined by the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts ( “ Nareit ”) as net income or loss computed in accordance with GAAP, excluding extraordinary items, as defined by GAAP, and gains and losses from sales of depreciable operating property, plus real estate-related depreciation and amortization ( excluding amortization of deferred financing costs and depreciation of non-real estate assets), and after adjustment for unconsolidated partnerships, joint ventures, preferred distributions and real estate impairments. Because FFO calculations adjust for such items as depreciation and amortization of real estate assets and gains and losses from sales of operating real estate assets ( which can vary among owners of identical assets in similar conditions based on historical cost accounting and useful-life estimates), they facilitate comparisons of operating performance between periods and between other REITs. As a result, we believe that the use of FFO, together with the required GAAP presentations, provides a more complete understanding of our performance relative to our competitors and a more informed and appropriate basis on which to make decisions involving operating, financing, and investing activities. It should be noted, however, that other REITs may not define FFO in accordance with the current Nareit definition or may interpret the current Nareit definition differently than we do, making comparisons less meaningful.
Additionally, we use AFFO as a non-GAAP financial measure to evaluate our operating performance. AFFO excludes non-routine and certain non-cash items such as revenues in excess of cash received, amortization of stock-based compensation, deferred rent, amortization of in-place lease valuation intangibles, acquisition-related costs, deferred financing fees, gain or loss from the extinguishment of debt, unrealized gains ( losses) on derivative instruments, write-offs of transaction costs and other one-time transactions. We also believe that AFFO is a recognized measure of sustainable operating performance by the REIT industry. Further, we believe AFFO is useful in comparing the sustainability of our operating performance with the sustainability of the operating performance of other real estate companies. Management believes that AFFO is a beneficial indicator of our ongoing portfolio performance and ability to sustain our current distribution level. More specifically, AFFO isolates the financial results of our operations. AFFO, however, is not considered an appropriate measure of historical earnings as it excludes certain significant costs that are otherwise included in reported earnings. Further, since the measure is based on historical financial information, AFFO for the period presented may not be indicative of future results or our future ability to pay our dividends.
By providing FFO and AFFO, we present information that assists investors in aligning their analysis with management’ s analysis of long-term operating activities. For all of these reasons, we believe the non-GAAP measures of FFO and AFFO, in addition to income ( loss) from operations, net income ( loss) and cash flows from operating activities, as defined by GAAP, are helpful supplemental performance measures and useful to investors in evaluating the performance of our real estate portfolio. However, a material limitation associated with FFO and AFFO is that they are not indicative of our cash available to fund distributions since other uses of cash, such as capital expenditures at our properties and principal payments of debt, are not deducted when calculating FFO and AFFO. AFFO is useful in assisting management and investors in assessing our ongoing ability to generate cash flow from operations and continue as a going concern in future operating periods. However, FFO and AFFO are not useful measures in evaluating NAV because impairments are taken into account in determining NAV but not in determining FFO and AFFO. Therefore, FFO and AFFO should not be viewed as a more prominent measure of performance than income ( loss) from operations, net income ( loss) or cash flows from operating activities and each should be reviewed in connection with GAAP measurements.
Neither the SEC, Nareit, nor any other applicable regulatory body has opined on the acceptability of the adjustments contemplated to adjust FFO in order to calculate AFFO and its use as a non-GAAP performance measure. In the future, the SEC or Nareit may decide to standardize the allowable exclusions across the REIT industry, and we may have to adjust the calculation and characterization of this non-GAAP measure.
2021
2020
$
( 2,178,469
)
$
2,955,390
Add:
3,449,407
4,171,997
189,439
181,786
1,874,867
2,264,686
-
761,100
3,767,190
-
629,542
190,034
Less:
( 3,271,289
)
( 2,446,107
)
-
( 135,541
)
-
( 3,120,678
)
$
4,460,687
$
4,822,667
$
17,842,748
$
19,290,668
$
181,945,491
$
191,014,356
( 58,407,520
)
( 8,377,530
)
$
123,537,971
$
182,636,826
6.9x
| general |
US Covid-19: As BA.2 subvariant grows, experts look to other countries to predict its impact here |
After weeks in free fall, new Covid-19 cases are starting to level off in the US, as the BA.2 subvariant continues its ascent.
BA.2 caused about 35% of cases in the US last week, up from 22% the week before, according to new estimates from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which were posted on Tuesday.
At the same time, new Covid-19 cases are holding steady or increasing in about 19 states, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Some of the states seeing increases—New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Jersey are in northeastern regions where the
CDC estimates
that BA.2 is now causing more than half of new Covid-19 cases.
Health officials have warned that overall
Covid-19 infections
could rise across the US in a few weeks, parallel to trends in the UK and Europe.
Read More
What an expert says about the new BA.2 Omicron variant and whether it should affect your plans
`` I would not be surprised at all if we do see somewhat of an uptick, '' Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a live interview on Tuesday with the
Washington Post
. `` I don't really see, unless something changes dramatically, that there will be a major surge, '' he said.
In the UK, where BA.2 now accounts for 85% of new infections, cases have increased by 20% week-over-week. Hospitalizations are up about 22% compared to the prior week. Deaths recorded within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test are up about 17%, according to the
most recent government numbers
.
On Tuesday, the University of Washington's Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, said their model does not predict a new surge in Covid-19 cases `` similar to what we have seen in parts of Europe, '' said Ali Mokdad, a professor of global health at IHME,
on Twitter
. Instead, he said, their models suggests that after the end of March there would be a steady further decline in Covld-19 transmission in the US.
Highly contagious, but not more severe
BA.2 is technically classified as a part of the Omicron family of viruses, but genetically this strain is very different, with about 40 mutations separating it from its cousin, BA.1. That makes it about as distinct from the original Omicron as Alpha, Beta, and Delta were from each other.
It is more contagious than Omicron's BA.1, which was already an extremely contagious virus with a basic reproduction number, or R-naught, of about 8, according to William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which means that a single infected person could be expected to transmit the disease to an average of 8 others.
How protected are we against Covid-19? Scientists search for a test to measure immunity
Adrian Esterman, an epidemiologist at the University of South Australia, pegged the basic reproduction number for BA.2 at around 12. `` That makes it pretty close to measles, the most contagious disease we know about, '' he wrote on Twitter on March 10.
Though BA.2 is more contagious, it does not appear to cause more severe disease. And though it escapes some of the immune protection created by vaccinations and prior infections, it doesn't seem to do so any more than BA.1.
Hanage says that at a population level, Omicron is much more manageable than Delta was, but it is not harmless.
`` The reason why Omicron BA.2 and BA.1 are a problem at all are the sheer numbers of infections they cause, '' Hanage said.
Will BA.2 cause a tidal wave or a ripple?
The contours of the BA.2 wave have looked very different in different countries. BA.2 has caused a spike in cases and deaths in
Hong Kong
, where many seniors were hesitant to be vaccinated, but in South Africa, where it arrived on the heels of that's country's large BA.1 surge, it barely made a ripple—causing cases to plateau rather than climb.
What the BA.2 may do in the US remains an open question.
The UK has offered some clues to the trajectory of variants in the past. But there are key differences.
Working in their favor, the UK is more highly vaccinated than the US. Among those ages 12 and older, 86% of the population has had two doses of a vaccine, while more than two-thirds have gotten a third or booster dose. In the US, 74% individuals ages 12 and older have had two doses of a vaccine, but just 46% have had a booster.
But the UK has its own challenges, too, says Dr. Carlos Del Rio, an infectious disease specialist and executive associated dean at the Emory School of Medicine. `` They have a much, much older population than we do, '' he says.
China's zero-Covid policy is showing signs of strain. But ditching it now could be a disaster
In the UK, 19% people are over the age of 65, according to a UK government report. In the US, seniors make up about 16% of the population.
Del Rio says that while it wasn't much fun at the time, `` The good news is that we got a huge Omicron surge in the US. Millions of people were infected, '' he says.
`` And between the number of people infected and the number of people who were already vaccinated, we estimate that about 73% to 75% of the population has some degree of immunity, '' he says.
Leaving about 25% of Americans vulnerable to the BA.2 virus either because they couldn't or didn't make antibodies.
`` So my guess is that we're going to have a surge, but it's not going to be a severe surge, '' Del Rio says, though he's still worried about the 25% of Americans that aren't protected.
Clues from Qatar
Other intriguing clues about the shape of a BA.2 wave come from the Middle Eastern country of Qatar, which has used roughly the same mix of vaccines as the U.S.
Qatar has been living with BA.2 as it's dominant virus since Christmas. They also saw a large Omicron surge that peaked around mid-January, followed by a sharp decline in cases.
In a string of recent studies, Laith Abu-Raddad and his co-authors at Qatar's Weill Cornell University, have been estimating the protection
conferred by mRNA vaccines
as well as by
previous infections
.
What they found is that two doses of the mRNA vaccines offer moderate protection against symptoms—in the range of 36% to 50%. But that protection only lasted for about four months. After four months, the protection became negligible, and after seven months, their studies found that vaccinated people were actually a bit more likely to get sick than unvaccinated people, perhaps because they had a false sense of security.
`` Vaccinated people don't behave the same ways as unvaccinated. You know, they think they are protected, so this could expose them, '' Abu-Raddad said.
Could the Covid-19 vaccine become a yearly shot? Some experts think so
Even though protection against infections faded pretty dramatically over time, people who were vaccinated continued to have good protection against hospitalizations and deaths, in the rage of 70% to 80%, he said, and it jumped to around 90% with a booster.
`` The best thing anyone can do right now is to get a booster, '' Abu-Raddad said. `` Boosters bring back the protection against infection to what it used to be about 60%, which is great, '' even though it wanes over time, he said. `` But really the amazing thing about booster effectiveness is that it virtually eliminates the risk of Covid-19 hospitalization and death, '' he added.
In a separate study, Abu-Raddad and his team also looked at protection of a BA.1 infection against BA.2. That protection was even stronger and more durable than two shots of an mRNA vaccine, in the range of 90%, he said.
`` So that is actually another reason to think that even if there will be a wave, it's not going to really be as bad as people may fear, '' he said.
Immunity after infection wanes much more slowly, he says. In a new study, where they followed people who were infected with Alpha and Beta variants, they still had 50% protection against Omicron reinfection up to a year later.
Abu-Raddad thinks that the difference is that immunity created by an infection remains in the tissues of the mouth and nose, while antibodies created by vaccination rise body-wide don't stay elevated for as long in these tissues that first encounter the virus.
Fourth doses coming for seniors?
One thing Abu-Raddad's research can't reveal is how well immunity holds up for older people. Qatar is a young country. Less than 10% of the population are over the age of 50, he says, so they couldn't tell if the vaccines continued to work as well for seniors as they did for younger people.
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The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta
every Tuesday from the CNN Health team.
Del Rio suspects that the vaccine efficacy in seniors wanes farther and faster than it does for younger people.
`` I predict the CDC in the next week or two is going to recommend a fourth dose for people over 65. If you're 65, and you get infected, you could still have very severe disease despite being vaccinated, '' he said. | general |
Florida becomes largest state to mandate personal finance education | Florida is officially the largest state to mandate a financial literacy course for high school graduation.
On Tuesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed bill SB 1054 into law. The legislation was unanimously passed by both the state House of Representatives and Senate in early March.
`` What the bill is doing with financial literacy is really providing a foundation for students that's going to be applicable in their lives regardless of what path they take, '' said DeSantis during a Tuesday press event. `` This will provide a foundation for the students to learn the basics of money management, understanding debt, understanding how to balance a checkbook, understanding the fundamentals of investing. ''
The new law will apply to students entering ninth grade in the 2023-2024 school year, and require that they take a half-credit course in personal finance before they graduate.
More from Invest in You: American dream of the middle class isn't what it used to beRetiring with $ 1 million may leave you less than $ 2,800 a month to spendYour income tax bill may be cheaper if you live in one of these 5 states
`` Whether our students choose to go to one of our great colleges or universities, do a trade or apprenticeship program, a career in the arts or the military, every student deserves to be equipped with the education and knowledge to succeed financially in our society, '' said Rep. Demi Busatta Cabrera, a Republican and one of the main sponsors of the bill.
Florida is the latest in a growing trend of states adopting legislation that includes personal finance education for students.
`` The world of money is changing so fast, if we don't help our students keep up, the next generation is going to repeat cycles of a lack of financial literacy, '' said Yanely Espinal, director of educational outreach at Next Gen Personal Finance, a nonprofit.
Currently, there are 54 personal finance education bills pending in 26 states, according to Next Gen Personal Finance's bill tracker. At least seven states, now including Florida, require students to take a stand-alone personal finance course to graduate, which the nonprofit considers the gold standard of such education.
More than 20 other states include some sort of personal finance education in their curriculum in different ways. And others have various proposals, as well. For example, a bill proposed in Arizona says a personal finance course can fulfill a math course requirement, according to Next Gen Personal Finance.
Another bill proposed in Tennessee would mandate personal finance courses for middle school students. Tennessee is one of seven states that already guarantee personal finance courses for high schoolers.
The activity shows that states are recognizing the importance of personal financial education for their students. While the coronavirus pandemic upended such education across the country, it also highlighted the importance of teaching solid financial habits.
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Disclosure: NBCUniversal and Comcast Ventures are investors in Acorns. | business |
U.S. stock futures pull back as investors watch for more Fed comments, Ukraine war nears one-month mark | U.S. stock index futures were slightly lower Wednesday, as investors continued to absorb hawkish comments from Federal Reserve officials and monitor the ongoing war in Ukraine with President Joe Biden set to arrive in Europe to discuss the crisis with allies.
How are stock-index futures trading?
S & P 500 futures
ES00,
-0.43%
fell 0.36% to 4,488
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures
YM00,
-0.34%
dropped 0.29% to 34,608
Nasdaq-100 futures
ES00,
-0.43%
fell 0.57% to 14,570
On
Tuesday
, the Dow industrials
DJIA,
+0.74%
climbed 254.47 points, or 0.7%, to close at 34,807.46, the S & P 500
SPX,
-0.43%
rose 1.1% to finish at 4,511.61, and the Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
+1.95%
advanced 2% to end at 14,108.82.
What’ s driving the market?
A largely positive week for U.S. stocks thus far, showed signs of stalling on Wednesday, ahead of new-home sales data for February at 10 a.m. Eastern and fresh comments from Fed officials.
Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester
and
San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly
backed up hawkish remarks at the start of the week from Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who said the central bank could boost interest rates by more than a quarter percentage point if needed to rein in inflation.
Powell will speak on digital challenges at 8 a.m. Eastern Time at a BIS meeting, while Mester is due to speak to reporters at 10 a.m. Eastern and Daly will be speaking on the economy at 11:45 a.m. Eastern.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
2.379%
was slightly lower after hitting the
highest levels since mid-2019
. U.S. stocks have shrugged off the fresh spike in yields seen over the past two weeks, “ suggesting that the Fed is still badly behind the curve if its intention is a significant tightening of financial conditions, ” said the Saxo Bank strategy team in a note to clients.
“ Some even suggest that the Fed’ s rate hikes are unlikely to work very quickly on the economy as consumers have exited the pandemic with strong balance sheets and supply-side disruptions have little to do with the policy rate in any case, ” said the analysts. So the Fed could be targeting a “ negative wealth effect ” bringing down demand and thereby prices for assets from housing to equities.
While the Fed may find it faster to do that with quantitative tightening, the central bank and the market may be “ locked into a dangerous battle, with the Fed prepared to continue turning the screws until something ‘ breaks, ' ” said the analysts.
Investors were also watching
the war in Ukraine
that is nearing the one-month mark, with Russian forces accused by Ukrainian leaders of seizing rescue workers and drivers from a humanitarian convoy headed to the besieged city of Mariupol.
President Biden is headed to Europe for four days to attend meetings of NATO, the G7 and the EU in Brussels and Warsaw this week and strategize on how to keep Russia’ s Ukraine invasion from spiraling into an even larger crisis. He’ s also expected to announce more sanctions to punish Russia, and ways to continue pressuring China from coming to that country’ s aid.
“ Supply chains from Asia to EU may come under further pressure as automakers and tech giants look to avoid rail routes through Russia and shift to sea routes, causing further congestion. Rising Covid cases in China and continued mass testing is also threatening shipping delays, ” said the Saxo team.
As stock futures eased off, oil prices were pushing higher, with U.S.
CL00,
+2.71%
and Brent crude
BRN00,
+2.95%
rising more than 2% each to $ 115.56 and $ 117.88 a barrel, respectively. | business |
Broadway is seeing a sales boom -- - thanks to Wolverine ( aka Hugh Jackman) | Two years after theaters shut down because of the pandemic, Broadway is seemingly back on track. And Hugh Jackman is leading the way.
Many shows are enjoying respectable, if not robust, sales, according to figures released Tuesday by the Broadway League, the industry’ s trade group. Chief among them: a revival of “ The Music Man ” that stars Jackman, the actor best known for playing Wolverine in the X-Men cinematic franchise.
The show, which opened in February, grossed nearly $ 3.5 million over the seven-day period that ended March 20. That made it one of a handful of Broadway productions to have ever passed the $ 3 million weekly sales mark.
Tickets for the production sold for as much as $ 697 last week. On resale websites, some prime seats have a $ 3,000-plus asking price.
“ We are so grateful for the audiences that have not only embraced our show but have returned with such incredible enthusiasm to theaters all up and down Broadway, ” said “ Music Man ” producer Kate Horton in a statement.
Other top-grossing shows during the previous week included such longtime hits as “ Wicked ” ( $ 1.9 million in sales) and “ The Lion King ” ( $ 1.8 million).
Then, there’ s “ Hamilton, ” Lin-Manuel Miranda’ s hip hop-fueled take on American history that consistently became Broadway’ s biggest weekly seller after it opened in 2015. It grossed $ 2.3 million last week — still a sizable figure, though far short of the $ 3 million mark it used to regularly hit in the pre-pandemic era.
“ Hamilton ” is also no longer Broadway’ s most expensive ticket — its highest priced seat for the past week was $ 449, far below “ The Music Man, which had the industry’ s top ticket price. In its heyday, the costliest “ Hamilton ” ticket was routinely $ 849.
Officials with “ Hamilton ” declined comment.
Tuesday’ s sales announcement marked the first time the Broadway League has released weekly figures for individual shows since theaters started reopening in the second half of 2021. Many who follow the industry thought the numbers might spell a picture of a business very much in the recovery stage, with shows having to offer massive discounts to attract audiences.
In fact, it was arguably just the opposite. Not only are shows selling tickets, they are also charging more for them overall, notwithstanding the “ Hamilton ” dip. The average paid admission for the week was $ 135.98 — or about $ 22 higher than the figure during roughly the same weekly period in 2019.
Industry professionals pointed to a number of contributing factors for Broadway’ s return. The most obvious one? A pent-up demand for live entertainment.
“ I think people were starved for something to do, ” said Victoria Cairl, a theater marketing specialist.
“ Hamilton ” is still a hugely popular Broadway show, but it no longer commands the top ticket price it once did.
Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images
Broadway has also maintained strict COVID safety protocols, requiring that theatergoers show proof of vaccination and wear masks while inside venues. And it has done so even as New York City has relaxed many such rules — for example, restaurant and bar patrons no longer need proof of vaccination.
Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin said keeping the theater protocols in place certainly haven’ t hurt sales. Cairl, the marketing professional, agreed.
“ When I talk to my friends, they feel more comfortable going to a Broadway show than they do going to a crowded bar, ” Cairl said.
Broadway relies heavily on out-of-towners to fill theaters — and given the steep decline of tourism during much of the pandemic, that could have spelled trouble for shows. But as virus numbers decline, visitors are returning to the city, which is clearly helping ticket sales.
NYC & Company, the city’ s tourism marketing arm, said the city is on track to welcome 56.5 million visitors in 2022 — or about 85% of the pre-pandemic level.
Broadway is likely to see sales increase in the coming weeks, since more than a dozen shows are set to open. A number of them include high-profile actors, such as Daniel Craig, who will appear in a production of Shakespeare’ s “ Macbeth, ” and Billy Crystal, who stars in “ Mr. Saturday Night, ” a new musical based on the movie of the same name.
In other words, Wolverine may have some competition. | business |
Omicron's subvariant BA.2 could spread 'wildly ' in Europe: Epidemiologist | LONDON — While war rages in Ukraine, not much attention is being paid to surging Covid-19 cases across Europe that could soon start to filter out to the rest of the world.
The rise in cases across the continent, from the U.K. and France to Italy and Austria, is being driven by several factors: The lifting of most — if not all — Covid restrictions, waning immunity from vaccines and booster shots, and the spread of the more transmissible omicron subvariant, BA.2.
`` We all hoped and expected a different turn now at the beginning of spring, '' Ralf Reintjes, professor of epidemiology at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, told CNBC this week.
`` But the situation in Europe is a bit bumpy at the moment, and in Germany... the [ case ] numbers are at a very, very high level, and they're still increasing and have been increasing for quite some time. ''
Germany is seeing a surge in cases and has reported daily tallies of new infections of between 200,000 to 300,000 a day in the last week.
Reintjes said that the combination `` of everyone thinking and expecting somehow that the pandemic is over now '' and the relaxation of what he saw as protective Covid measures gives the BA.2 subvariant `` a really good chance to spread extremely wild in many parts of Europe. ''
`` It's difficult to predict but personally I think it's very likely that this is going to continue its tour around the globe as well, '' he added. `` That's what viruses in a pandemic usually do. ''
`` There are also quite a few reports that people who have got an omicron infection, or BA.1 variant, then a few weeks later got BA.2 infection, '' he noted, adding that there is a good chance that this new variant will spread and act like `` some sort of new wave of a new pandemic like seasonal flu. ''
Public health officials and scientists are closely monitoring BA.2, a subvariant of the already highly transmissible omicron variant, as it is accounting for a growing number of new cases in Europe.
To a somewhat lesser extent it is also accounting for a growing number of infections in the U.S. and Asia.
The subvariant is estimated to be 1½ times more transmissible than omicron and is likely to usurp it as the globally dominant variant.
Initial data has shown that BA.2 is a little more likely to cause infections in household contacts when compared with BA.1. It's not believed currently that the BA.2 variant causes more severe illness or carries an increased the risk of being hospitalized, however further research is needed to confirm this, according to a U.K. parliamentary report published earlier in March.
BA.2 has been described as a `` stealth '' variant because it has genetic mutations that could make it harder to distinguish from the older delta variant using PCR tests, compared with its original omicron parent, BA.1.
The new subvariant is the latest in a long line to emerge since the pandemic began in China in late 2019. The omicron variant — the most transmissible strain so far — overtook the delta variant, which itself supplanted the alpha variant — and even this was not the original strain of the virus.
The World Health Organization has said it is monitoring BA.2 closely, which it said had now been detected in 106 countries, and has also noted a rise in global cases after a recent lull.
In its latest weekly update published Tuesday, the WHO said that after a consistent decrease since the end of January, the number of new weekly cases rose for a second consecutive week last week, with a 7% increase in the number of infections reported, compared to the previous week.
The WHO also noted that while omicron has a number of sublineages, BA.2 has become the predominant variant in the last 30 days, with 85.96% of the virus sequences submitted to GISAID, the public virus tracking database, being the BA.2 variant.
The WHO noted that weekly data shows that the proportion of BA.2 cases, compared to other sublineages, has increased steadily since the end of 2021, with the subvariant becoming the dominant lineage by week seven of 2022.
`` This trend is most pronounced in the South-East Asia Region, followed by the Eastern Mediterranean, African, Western Pacific and European Regions. BA.2 is currently dominant in the Region of the Americas, '' the WHO said.
In the U.K., the latest available data from the Office of National Statistics, for the week ending March 13, showed that the BA.2 variant is now the most common variant in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. In the week that was surveyed, 76.1% of all sequenced Covid-19 infections from the survey were compatible with the BA.2 variant, and 23.9% were compatible with the original omicron strain.
In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that BA.2 cases now account for 34.9% of all cases in the U.S. with the subvariant making up over half the number of cases reported in some northeastern states, but it has noted that the overall number of infections is still declining from the record highs seen in January. | business |
Ukrainian refugee flees to Poland with $ 2,000 in bitcoin on USB drive | On the morning that Russia went to war with Ukraine, Fadey woke up at 9am to a deluge of Telegram messages from friends asking him what was happening on the ground in the western city of Lviv. After a quick scan of the news, he realized his country was under siege. He decided to get out.
Fadey is 20 years old and asked to be identified by a pseudonym to protect his privacy, because there is conscription for Ukrainian nationals aged 18 to 60. Escaping duty on the frontline meant having to clear the border before officials had the chance to lock it down. To do that, he needed two things fast: A negative Covid test, and money.
`` I couldn't withdraw cash at all, because the queues to ATMs were so long, and I couldn't wait that much time, '' Fadey told CNBC.
So he turned to bitcoin instead.
Fadey tells CNBC that he made a peer-to-peer ( P2P) exchange with a friend, trading $ 600 worth of his bitcoin savings for złoty, the Polish national currency, which he then used to pay for a bus across the border, a bed in a hostel for him and his girlfriend, and some food.
The speed and ease of that crypto transaction proved instrumental. Within two hours of Fadey's safe passage into Poland, Ukraine closed its borders to all men of fighting age.
Fadey also took a USB stick with him across the border containing 40% of his life savings, or about $ 2,000 in bitcoin. That thumb drive, combined with a unique passcode, became the key to his financial survival.
`` I could just write my seed phrase on a piece of paper and take it with me, '' explained Fadey.
His experience highlights some of the most important characteristics of bitcoin: It's valid across borders, requires no bank, and is tethered to its owner by a password, making it a lot harder to steal than cash.
Nearly a quarter of Ukraine's population has been forced from their homes in the last four weeks, and the war has strained the country's financial system. As the invasion proceeded, ATMs across the country started to run out of cash, and some people stood in line for hours only to face a $ 33 limit per transaction. Transferring money out of national bank accounts proved equally fruitless after the central bank suspended electronic cash transfers on the same day that Russia invaded the country.
Add in closed borders, a rapidly depreciating currency, and the looming threat of a Russian takeover supplanting the Ukrainian hryvnia with the ruble, and it was a perfect use case for cryptocurrency.
`` In that part of the world, crypto – despite its volatility, despite the sentiments that the West has towards it – they don't ask, 'Why crypto? ' They just ask, 'How? ' '' said Brian Mosoff, CEO of Toronto-based crypto investment platform Ether Capital.
`` That's a very powerful thing for a group of people who don't have financial stability, or political stability right now. To be able to hold their net worth in some type of asset or product that essentially can be stored in a password. ''
Within hours of Russia's attack on Ukraine, the country's financial system began to show signs of strain.
`` The country's economy shut down within a matter of hours, '' said Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer for the Human Rights Foundation, which has been supporting activists in Ukraine since 2009.
`` Everything gets frozen. All of a sudden, it's a wartime economy. That happened in a matter of days. We're talking 24 to 48 hours, '' continued Gladstein.
Fadey says he is unable to transfer his fiat-based savings to Poland, but crypto has blunted the impact. After his bitcoin holdings, the balance of his net worth is split between his monero stake, which he keeps on cryptocurrency exchange Binance, and his Ukrainian bank account.
Alex Hammond, a free trade fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, tells CNBC it was difficult to pull money out of Ukrainian banks for several weeks preceding the invasion.
`` For many weeks prior to the invasion, most of the Ukrainian people I knew were actively trying to move as much money out of their Ukrainian bank accounts as possible, whether that be into UK banks, US banks, or crypto, '' continued Hammond, who spent several months in Ukraine in the last year and is currently in Poland.
Maria Chaplia, for example, is a Ukrainian national now living in Poland. She originally got into cryptocurrency when her Ukrainian bank wouldn't let her move out an appreciable amount of money, and the fees that PayPal charged were higher than she wanted to pay. `` With crypto, it was much easier, '' she said.
On the other side of the border, trying to access cash via banks yields similar friction.
`` How are you going to access your Ukrainian bank account in Poland? Good luck, '' said Gladstein. Even with the laws passed to protect asylum seekers, Gladstein warns that most Ukrainian refugees won't be able to just walk into the Bank of Poland and open a bank account.
`` Not everybody has a crypto wallet, but those who do are treating it like a bank account and transacting with it in these times of need, '' said Pablo Villalba, from Kimchi Fund, which invests in a mix of cryptocurrencies.
Well before war gave Ukrainians a reason to turn to bitcoin, Ukraine was among the most progressive crypto jurisdictions on the planet. The country ranks fourth globally in terms of digital asset adoption, and earlier this month, it passed a law legalizing cryptocurrencies.
Gladstein tells CNBC that Eastern Europe generally is big on digital assets, and Ukraine, in particular, is a known technology hotspot.
`` There were tons of Ukrainian exchanges, companies, even core developers, '' explained Gladstein. `` They all have phones. This is a highly connected, very IT-driven country. Very computer-literate. Very phone-literate, probably more than your average American. ''
That technical know-how has been especially helpful as Ukrainians turn to their crypto wallets as their sole on-ramp to banking.
In Poland, for example, there are more than 175 bitcoin ATMs, allowing refugees who fled with bitcoin to cash it back out for fiat currency.
Recent advancements in payment technology have also made it easier than ever to transact in cryptocurrency. The Lightning Network is a payments platform built on bitcoin's base layer that enables virtually instantaneous transactions.
Some Ukrainians use it to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions, while others have found that Lightning is a cheap and fast way to receive donations and remittances from anywhere in the world.
The payment process is simple and takes less than 60 seconds. Users can download an app like the Muun wallet, make a four-digit pin, and begin sending and receiving cryptocurrency payments simply by showing an QR code.
`` Me sitting in California, I can still send you any amount of money instantly to your phone anytime, '' said Gladstein. `` We don't have to worry about the fact that you're a refugee. It doesn't matter that you don't have a Polish passport or a bank account. None of these things matter. ''
Constantin Kogan is the co-founder of a blockchain-based gaming ecosystem, and he has team members based in both Ukraine and Russia. Kogan tells CNBC that one of his Ukrainian employees stayed put, but sent his wife and children to the border with a crypto wallet.
This employee wasn't sure where his family was – or which border they had crossed – but he did have a plan for their financial security: make regular deposits into his wife's crypto wallet. He keeps the bulk sum of his net worth ( about 60%) in crypto, mostly stablecoins.
Chaplia says that many of her friends in Ukraine are `` very, very deep into crypto, '' but for her, moving some of her cash into bitcoin, ethereum, and tether served like digital gold: A way to store it for safety and forget about it.
`` I used to be skeptical of crypto, I have to admit, but because of the war, I had to give it a chance, '' she said. | business |
Covid: Moderna vaccine for young kids up to 44% effective against omicron | In this article
Moderna's two-dose Covid vaccine was about 44% effective at preventing infection from omicron in children 6 months to under 2 years old and about 38% effective for children 2- to 5-years-old, according to data released by the company Wednesday.
None of the children developed severe illness from Covid and the majority of breakthrough cases were mild, according to the biotech company. Moderna will ask the Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency use authorization for the vaccine for children under 6 years old as soon as possible, CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.
Moderna's vaccine is currently FDA approved for adults ages 18 and older. Moderna has also asked the FDA to authorize its vaccine for children 6- to 11-years-old, the company announced Wednesday.
The highly mutated omicron variant has significantly reduced vaccine effectiveness from its high-water mark of around 94% when the shots were first authorized for adults in December 2020, causing many more breakthrough infections. However, Moderna said the vaccine effectiveness for children under 6 years old against omicron was consistent with the currently approved vaccine for adults 18 and older.
Read CNBC's latest global coverage of the Covid pandemic:
Children under 6 years old received two 25 microgram doses of its vaccine administered 28 days apart, much smaller than 100-microgram shots given to adults. Children 6- to 11-years-old receive two 50 microgram doses.
Moderna said no new safety concerns were identified in children under 6 years old. No deaths or cases of myocarditis, pericarditis or multisystem inflammatory syndrome were reported, according to the company. Myocarditis and pericarditis are types of heart inflammation that have been observed at elevated rates after the second dose of Moderna's and Pfizer's vaccines primarily in younger men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Moderna said the side effects in young children were mild and more frequently reported after the second dose. About 17% of kids under 2 years old developed a fever of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or 38 Celsius, while slightly more than 14% of kids 2- to 5-years-old developed such a fever. A fever higher than 104 Fahrenheit, or 40 Celsius, was observed in only a few children in each age group, according to the company.
The data on the youngest children comes from a broader pediatric clinical trial of 11,700 kids under 12 years old in the U.S. and Canada. The trial included 2,500 children under 2 years old and 4,200 kids 2- to 5-years-old. The study was conducted in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health.
Children under 5 years old are the only age group left in the U.S. not eligible for Covid vaccination. Hospitalizations of kids in this age group with Covid were five times higher during the omicron peak in January compared with last year's delta wave, according to the CDC.
The FDA sought to expedite the authorization of the first two doses of Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine for children under 5 years old in response to omicron last month, but the process was delayed because the data did not meet expectations. Pfizer and BioNTech are expected to submit data on a third dose in this age group sometime in April. | business |
Demand: OECD Shows Strength, Ukraine Perils Loom Globally | Global demand has outperformed expectations, not only in February but so far in the first quarter of 2022, even if Russia’ s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine is now clouding the future. The demand forecast for the first quarter of 2022 has been raised by 800,000 barrels per day from last month, essentially reflecting the strong contribution from the US and Europe. For the year, global demand is assessed 100,000 b/d lower to 100.6 million b/d, including a 200,000 b/d downward adjustment for the second quarter of 2022. The annual growth projection of 3.2 million b/d in 2022 can face steep downward revisions from global economic fallouts from the war and new Covid-19 waves, especially in China. | general |
The World Must Avoid Another Food Crisis by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala | It is becoming clear that the Ukraine war’ s economic and humanitarian repercussions – especially rising food prices – will be felt far beyond Europe. The international community must act now to prevent some of the world’ s poorest and most vulnerable people from becoming collateral damage.
GENEVA – The war in Ukraine is causing immense, heart-wrenching human suffering. At the World Trade Organization, an institution based on the rule of law and established to help forge peace, we find the violence abhorrent to our fundamental principles. We echo United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ s call for the bloodshed to stop, and we wish for a prompt and peaceful resolution of the conflict.
But even as we remain transfixed by the shocking and tragic images of Ukrainian cities under attack, and even as we commit to doing all we can individually and collectively to help Ukraine’ s people, it is also becoming clear that the war’ s economic and humanitarian repercussions will be felt far beyond Europe. We have a responsibility to mitigate these consequences proactively as well.
Even prior to the war, rising food and energy prices were straining household and government budgets in many smaller and poorer countries whose economies had also been among the slowest to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. New price spikes triggered by the conflict in Eastern Europe now threaten to cause poverty and food insecurity to rise. In these circumstances, the role of the WTO and trade in general, particularly for countries that are net food importers, is of paramount importance in preventing hunger.
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Writing for PS since 2010 21 Commentaries
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, is a former managing director at the World Bank, finance minister of Nigeria, board chair of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and African Union special envoy on COVID-19. She is a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Global Public Leader at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
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If the Cold War powers could come together to complete the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in the 1960s, and if Central America's warring parties could agree on settlements to end their conflicts in the 1980s, the same can happen today in Ukraine. In fact, there is no alternative to dialogue.
The structures supporting the global economy and the international political order are buckling under the pressure of pandemics, climate disaster, and war. To prevent a further unraveling, political leaders must update the old models of threat containment, multilateralism, and globalization.
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| general |
Alaska Airlines flight attendants get double pay to pick up shifts | In this article
Alaska Airlines is offering flight attendants double pay to pick up extra trips this spring in hopes of avoiding staffing shortfalls ahead of an even bigger jump in travel demand in the coming months.
Airlines rolled out incentives such as bonuses and up to triple pay to pilots and flight attendants late last year to stem staffing shortfalls during the busy year-end holidays, but a wave of Covid omicron infections still sidelined crew members, contributing to thousands of flight cancellations.
Alaska's offer shows the carrier is willing to pay crews more to avoid flight disruptions from staffing shortfalls, a problem that can quickly spread through an airline's network.
`` Like many other airlines, we are facing general staffing challenges, '' Alaska said in a statement. `` In response, we're offering flight attendants pay incentives to fill gaps in staffing for a short period of time this Spring. ''
The airline has recently hired and trained 165 new flight attendants and plans to bring 700 more on board this June. It had more than 5,500 flight attendants as of the end of 2021. Alaska is the fifth-largest U.S. carrier with more than 120 destinations in North America and hubs on the West Coast and in Alaska.
The Seattle-based airline approached the flight attendants ' union about the incentive pay, according to a note to cabin crews sent Friday.
American Airlines, which aims to hire some 18,000 people this year, and Southwest Airlines, which has targeted 8,000 new employees in 2022, said they aren't currently offering similar incentives to Alaska's.
Airline executives last week said travel demand has bounced back faster than they expected. In February, bookings and sales surpassed pre-pandemic levels for the first time, according to Adobe data, and airport security screenings this week hit the highest since Thanksgiving.
They said they expect that trend to help offset a sharp rise in fuel prices this year, though some carriers, including Alaska, have trimmed their schedules in response to the higher costs. The airline, however, said it expects to be back to pre-Covid capacity by the summer.
Alaska executives will outline its plans for the coming year in an investor day on Thursday. | business |
Who felt biggest financial pinch from rising gas prices in February | Low-earners bore the brunt of the economic fallout after the initial onset of Covid-19.
Now, as gas prices have spiked and historic high inflation drives consumer costs up, that same cohort is feeling the biggest pinch to their budgets, according to a new report on February data from Morning Consult.
People with $ 50,000 or less in annual income already have thinner margins between the money they take home and what they spend, according to Kayla Bruun, economic analyst at Morning Consult.
Now, people in that income group are seeing those margins erode, she said.
More from Personal Finance: Why a federal gas tax holiday won't save consumers muchInflation is costing households $ 300 more a monthWhy the Fed raises interest rates to combat inflation
Meanwhile, higher-earners have been able to absorb the cost increases without necessarily disrupting their spending.
`` Lower-income adults are really feeling these gas prices; they're having to cut back on discretionary spending, '' Bruun said.
`` The highest-income earners, those earning $ 100,000 per year or more, were actually able to increase their purchases and celebrate the end of omicron, to a certain extent, in February, '' she said.
Month-over-month spending on gas climbed 13% in February from the previous month, according to Morning Consult.
Yet it was still only the third-highest spending category to see a bump. Hotels and airfare saw bigger spikes, with 19% and 17% increases, respectively.
Areas tied to travel, personal care and recreation bounced back as the omicron variant of Covid receded, though rising prices and seasonal factors also account for the higher outlays.
Just how big a bite high gas prices take out of household budgets depends on income growth.
Average incomes have increased by 4.9% compared with a year ago, according to Morning Consult. Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ' Consumer Price Index, which measures certain prices consumers pay, has climbed 7.9%, indicating those income gains are not keeping pace.
But workers are in a better position than they were last year, said Morning Consult. In February, 61% of adults had income from working, up from 57% in the previous year. At the same time, just 13% of adults are relying on unemployment checks, down from 19% who said the same last year.
One temporary bright spot is the tax refunds many people expect to receive in the coming months. The average reported refund was $ 2,845 in February, which for the average U.S. adult would double their monthly reported income, according to Morning Consult.
Adults in households that earn less than $ 50,000 per year are also facing challenges due to high housing costs, according to Morning Consult.
In February, they paid 10% more for housing than they did one year earlier.
Much of that is due to soaring rental prices, which pushed renters average monthly spending up by 15% year over year as of February. In comparison, homeowners with mortgages did not experience a significant monthly spending increase over the previous year.
Adults who earn less than $ 50,000 per year allocated more than 15% of their total spending toward groceries, compared with 12% for the highest-income earners, according to Morning Consult.
While the same price increase phenomenon is happening across all income groups, smaller income households are feeling it most due to the fact that they have less of a financial buffer, according to Bruun.
`` It does seem likely that what we're seeing in the lowest-income group could sort of work its way up to the higher-income brackets, '' Bruun said.
| business |
Broadway tickets more expensive as pandemic eases | Ticket prices for many blockbuster Broadway shows have become more expensive, as theatergoers are paying up for an evening out on the Great White Way.
Audiences appear to be eager to catch up on lost time, as the latest Covid wave has abated a great deal. All Broadway shows went dark back on March 12, 2020, during the pandemic's early days. Several shows never returned, but those that did, saw a staggered reopening in the fall —ending an unprecedented hiatus.
For the first time since shows resumed performances, the Broadway League on Tuesday released weekly box-office grosses for individual Broadway musicals and plays. The league, which is essentially Broadway's trade association, had previously chosen to suspend that weekly practice even after shows got back up and running in the fall and into the winter.
Here are some key takeaways from the figures for the most recent week, which ended March 20:
The most recent box-office grosses, ticket prices and attendance figures are a stark contrast to what happened around the holiday season and into January. The Christmastime weeks are historically the most important weeks of the year for Broadway productions. That's when they can charge premium prices and basically play to full theaters thanks to the holiday season.
But that changed late in 2021 when the omicron surge once again crippled business on Broadway. Although just about all Broadway actors, musicians, theater personnel and theatergoers were required to be vaccinated, they were not immune to the highly contagious variant. Some Broadway shows had to pause for a few days – or in some cases weeks – because so many in the cast and crew tested positive. In January, which is usually a more challenging time of the year to fill houses, audiences stayed away because of the virus, and attendance suffered even more.
In addition to publishing the most recent week's data, the Broadway League also released all the past weeks ' data that had been withheld since Broadway's fall reopening. Those figures provided insight into how difficult business was in the wake of omicron. Take a look at the week ended Jan. 16 as an example: | business |
Building bridges, not silos | The MIT campus is built to connect people. Some structures, like the Stata Center, the Sloan building, or the Media Lab building, offer large lobbies, flexible labs, and common spaces to enhance collaboration. MIT’ s Infinite Corridor — which is one-sixth of a mile long — mixes thousands of people together daily. Aerial walkways connect campus research buildings.
Do all these design elements truly help people to work together? A study led by MIT scholars reveals new details about collaboration on the Institute’ s campus. Overall the study, which looks at email traffic between faculty, researchers, and staff on campus, confirms that physical proximity does matter for workplace collaboration, but it adds new wrinkles about how this happens.
People are more likely to communicate via email after running into each other at a campus eatery, for instance, than in a crowded corridor. The study also found that email exchanges occur more often among researchers whose workspaces are connected through indoor halls rather than outdoor paths. And greater physical proximity may not replace email communication among people who don’ t know each other well — they are more likely to email each other even when working in close proximity.
“ Studying how spatial relationships may influence social ties has been of interest to scholars of the built environment and sociologists alike for a long time, ” says Andres Sevtsuk, an associate professor in MIT’ s Department of Urban Studies and Planning ( DUSP), and co-author of a new paper detailing the study’ s results. While past work often used survey data to account for interactions, here the campus email information added hard data to the research.
“ We were interested in taking this idea of spatial relatedness further and examining its more nuanced aspects that have not been well-covered in prior research, ” Sevtsuk notes.
Those findings apply to not only MIT but other organizations as well.
“ These ideas could be explored analogously in other work environments beyond MIT, such as companies, organizations, or even public sector institutions, ” says Bahij Chaucey, a researcher at the MIT City Form Lab and a co-author of the paper.
The paper, “ Spatial structure of workplace and communication between colleagues: A study of E-mail exchange and spatial relatedness on the MIT campus, ” was published in advance online form in March, by the journal Social Networks.
The authors are Chancey; Rounaq Basu, a doctoral candidate in DUSP; Martina Mazzarello, a postdoc at the MIT Senseable City Lab; and Sevtsuk, the Charles and Ann Spaulding Career Development Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning in DUSP and head of the MIT City Form Lab.
The Allen Curve and onward
A large body of scholarship has examined workplace interactions — often influenced by the late Thomas Allen, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management whose interest in the subject was spurred in part by a stint working at Boeing. Allen’ s research in the 1970s and 1980s found that greater proximity has a strong relationship with greater collaboration among engineers, a phenomenon represented by the “ Allen Curve. ”
To conduct this study, the researchers used anonymized email data collected by MIT’ s Information Systems and Technology group in February 2020, a month before the Covid-19 pandemic altered campus routines. The data track how many bilateral email exchanges occurred between research units on campus, such as departments or labs; the scholars examined the number of individuals in a unit to estimate the typical amount of person-to-person exchange.
The team then examined the spatial relationships between research units, to see how the built environment might interact with email patterns. Overall, the study spanned 33 different departments, labs, and research groups, and 1,455 office occupants.
The scholars also modeled the likely walking routes to the office or lab of MIT workers, based on MIT’ s 2018 Commute to Work survey, while also estimating the total foot traffic or crowdedness of each corridor and eating venue on campus. Sevtsuk’ s research has included extensive modeling of pedestrian routes in city settings using such methods.
More food for thought
Many specific, granular findings emerged from the study — especially the idea that proximity matters along with the specifics of the built environment. For starters, other things being equal, workers in research units located near the same dining facilities are more likely to email and interact.
“ Cafeterias are spaces where verbal and visual communication is an important part of eating culture, especially in a research environment like MIT, ” says Basu.
Not having to venture outside also influences behavior — at least, it did during the wintery Massachusetts weather during the study period. For research units that are basically an equal distance apart, those linked by interior corridors tended to communicate more than those separated by outdoor space, even when that communication was in the form of email.
“ We clearly saw that if people’ s offices are linked via the indoor Infinite Corridor system, they are more likely to engage in email exchange than if the logical connections between their offices require outdoor paths, ” Basu says.
As an added wrinkle, however, really busy corridors seem to generate brief greetings more than exchanges that lead to follow-up communication. “ We found that if the corridor where person A may be walking past person B’ s office on the way to work tends to be more crowded, then it reduces the likelihood of A and B engaging in email exchange, ” Sevtsuk says.
However, this does not seem to be the case with very crowded cafeterias, which if anything seem to encourage more subsequent contact. “ A more crowded cafeteria could provide more opportunities to engage in group conversations, where new social ties can emerge between people who are introduced by mutual connections, ” Sevtsuk observes.
Not least, the effects of physical proximity are themselves related to preexisting relationships. For people already familiar with each other, the research suggests, proximity leads to more face-to-face interactions; for those previously unfamiliar with each other, meeting people due to proximity tends to lead to a greater proportion of emails being exchanged, at first.
Many pathways ahead
The researchers believe their methodology could suggest ways to place new faculty or staff in useful spots where they would be able to interact easily with others.
“ It is possible to use our findings to identify where such locations are within each department and school, ” Sevtsuk says.
Campus planners could also continue to build on ideas evident in the Stata Center and Sloan building, which have large ground-floor cafeterias and “ strategically position social lounges or dining facilities at locations where access from surrounding offices, and the likelihood of passing [ by ] is highest, ” Sevtsuk adds.
In universities and tech-firm campuses, Sevtsuk suggests, when new building projects are being considered, it makes sense to “ strategically evaluate their locations and circulation systems vis-a-vis spatial connectivity to surrounding departments with which they have the most potential for joint research. ”
Certainly, MIT, other universities, and large companies can not always quickly reconfigure themselves. But over time, good planning and design can enhance interdisciplinary work, collaboration, and generate serendipitous meetings between people. Or, as the authors state in the paper, “ Planning environments to encourage greater interaction across different groups may offer a pathway to bridge siloed social networks and encourage information exchange between otherwise unlikely parties. ” | business |
Mexico’ s CFEi Reports 14% Surge in 2021 Marketed Natural Gas Volumes | Sign in to get the best natural gas news and data. Follow the topics you want and receive the daily emails.
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Mexico’ s CFE International LLC ( CFEi) reported a 14% year/year increase in natural gas sales transactions during 2021, even as many large marketers posted declines, according to NGI’ s Top North American Natural Gas Marketers ranking.
CFEi, a fuel procurement and marketing arm of state-owned power utility Comisión Federal de Electricidad ( CFE), transacted 3.53 Bcf/d of gas last year, up from 3.11 Bcf/d in 2020. That made it the 11th largest marketer by volume, according to the survey.
CFE has sought to continue expanding its natural gas import capacity from the United States in order to supply its gas-fired power plants and grow its domestic gas marketing business through subsidiary CFEnergía.
Mexico energy regulators in February also approved a rule that consolidates CFE and state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos’ ( Pemex) control over transport capacity on the Sistrangas pipeline network.
U.S.-to-Mexico exports of natural gas by pipeline averaged 5.9 Bcf/d in 2021, up from 5.45 Bcf/d in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Pipeline flows to Mexico ( excluding non-public intrastate flows) stood at 5.39 Bcf/d as of Wednesday, according to NGI data.
In a year defined by rebounding energy demand and a strong but vulnerable economic recovery amid coronavirus vaccine campaigns, leading natural gas marketers posted nearly flat sales volumes in 2021.
The marketers included in the latest survey reported combined sales transactions of 106.35 Bcf/d for all of 2021 and 109.77 Bc/d for the fourth quarter. The full-year result was down slightly – 2% — from 2020, while the 4Q2021 number was virtually even with a year earlier.
That noted, several companies reported robust increases in the fourth quarter and throughout the year, offsetting notable declines among a handful of prominent players. Traders said the industry finished the year benefiting from strong natural gas demand momentum that is continuing into 2022.
Among the top 10, EQT Corp., the largest U.S. natural gas producer, reported sales of 5.40 Bcf/d for 4Q2021, up 32% from a year earlier. For full-year 2021, EQT’ s sales totaled 4.78 Bcf/d, which is 23% ahead of 2020.
ConocoPhillips, for another, reported sales of 9.90 Bcf/d for the fourth quarter and 9.80 Bcf/d for the full year, up 19% and 23%, respectively.
ConocoPhillips’ buyout of Concho Resources Inc. in 2021 added to the sales volumes. However, like EQT, it also reported that new gas marketing and energy management agreements with producers, end users and power generators helped drive gains.
U.S. Global Investors’ Mike Matousek, head trader, said demand was not an issue in 2021, nor is it early in 2022. Rather, lingering concerns about the pandemic, combined with investor pressure on energy giants to invest more in renewable fuels, kept overall gas production in check. This, by extension, curbed sales totals.
Perennial top five marketers BP plc and Shell Energy North America, for example, both reported double-digit sales declines for 2021.
Matousek told NGI that demand is solid amid increasingly harsh weather in both the peak winter and summer demand seasons in the United States, while supply shortages in Europe and Asia are driving steadily increasing demand for American exports of liquefied natural gas ( LNG).
Still, the nagging effects of the pandemic – notable supply chain disruptions and soaring inflation — make it expensive and difficult to ramp up production. Oil production, too, is under pressure. This hinders output of associated natural gas, a byproduct of oil production.
“ This virus is still a serious wildcard, ” Matousek said.
StoneX Financial Inc.’ s Tom Saal, senior vice president of energy, agreed.
“ I think we’ ve learned how to live with it, but it’ s definitely with us, definitely capable of causing problems, ” Saal told NGI.
Saal noted that this month, in response to a resurgence of cases, the Chinese government placed more than 30 million people under new lockdown measures to slow the spread of an Omicron variant.
Cases of the new subvariant of Omicron are spreading anew in other parts of Asia and Western Europe in March as well. This has fostered fresh concerns that the pandemic could cause at least temporary disruptions to both the energy sector and global economy recoveries this year.
Russia’ s invasion of Ukraine adds another heaping dose of uncertainty as natural gas marketers move deeper into 2022.
With European countries currently dependent on Russian gas but vowing to wean themselves in protest of the war, demand for U.S LNG is soaring and supporting prices. American exports of the super-chilled fuel have consistently held near or above 13 Bcf – around record levels – since the war started nearly four weeks ago.
However, that may not be enough to offset European gas needs, and U.S. LNG exporters have little ability to ramp up further in the near term. Several expansion efforts are in the works, but it will be a matter of years rather than months for such projects to come online and drive significantly greater capacity.
Marex North America LLC’ s Steve Blair, a senior account executive, told NGI that export volumes could top 15 Bcf to meet global demand, given Europe’ s challenges and ongoing calls from parts of Asia for U.S. supplies. Because the United States does not have the ability to ship 15 Bcf/d of LNG, he said, the demand at that level amplifies global supply concerns.
“ U.S. natural gas is absolutely tied into the global market now, ” Blair said. “ And when there is a major challenge affecting an entire continent like Europe, it also becomes our challenge in a way, and so this war creates a ton of uncertainty. Yes, there’ s strong demand, but can we meet it, and if this continues for months, what other issues does it cause? ”
In the near term, Rystad Energy analyst Kaushal Ramesh noted, Europe still relies on Russia for about one-third of its gas. He said markets are worried Russian natural gas exports could be interrupted amid pipeline damage from bombings in Ukraine. Much of the gas that countries on the continent get from Russia flows through Ukraine.
What’ s more, Europe is pushing to rebuild stockpiles of gas amid the war, looking to the United States and other Western sources to minimize its dependence on Russia. The European Commission this month approved multiple rounds of sanctions against Russia, including bans on new investment in the Russian energy sector.
While the penalties do not restrict oil and gas purchases from Russia, Ramesh said an increasing number of international energy companies are withdrawing from Russia. As such, Russian gas exports to Europe could taper in coming months “ as more companies ramp up self-imposed sanctions. ”
In total, the various moving parts of the global natural gas puzzle make it difficult for producers to gauge the ideal level of output, U.S. Global Investors’ Matousek said. This could keep a lid on total production in 2022 and, in turn, put a ceiling on marketer sales volumes – at least in the first half of the year.
“ There’ s just so many unknowns right now, ” Matousek said. While government forecasts call for increased output in 2022, production much of this year so far has held below 2021 highs and well below pre-pandemic peaks. “ I’ m not sure there really is a good guess at this stage of how much more active producers get. ”
Andrew Baker contributed to this story.
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Asia-Pacific markets: Singapore stocks jump after Covid easing | SINGAPORE — Asia-Pacific markets struggled for direction on Thursday as oil prices saw volatile trading following yesterday's 5% jump.
Shares in Singapore outperformed the broader Asia-Pacific region, with the Straits Times index climbing around 0.8%, as of 4:12 p.m. local time. Those gains came as the country's prime minister on Thursday announced plans to ease Covid restrictions.
Shares of travel-related stocks were up, with Singapore Airlines and Sats — which provides ground-handling and in-flight catering services — jumping more than 3% each.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index closed 0.94% lower at 21,945.95.
Shares of Chinese tech giant Tencent dropped 5.91% in Hong Kong after the firm on Wednesday posted its slowest revenue growth on record. Tencent also said it is 'exploring ' a financial holding company for WeChat Pay if required by Chinese regulators.
Other Chinese tech stocks in Hong Kong were also lower, with Alibaba falling 3.23% and NetEase slipping 2.05%.
Bank of Communications International's Hao Hong said Chinese internet stocks are `` very, very cheap '' at the moment, citing Alibaba's recent announcement to up its share buyback program.
`` If you have a longer-time horizon, even though the market is very volatile, it is still worthwhile to take a look at these names, '' Hong, managing director and head of research at the firm, told CNBC's `` Street Signs Asia '' on Thursday.
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In mainland China, the Shanghai composite declined 0.63% to end the trading day at 3,250.26 while the Shenzhen component shed 0.831% to 12,305.50.
The Nikkei 225 in Japan recovered from earlier losses to close 0.25% higher at 28,110.39, adding to its 3% jump from Wednesday. The Topix index gained 0.14% to 1,981.56.
South Korea's Kospi slipped 0.2% on the day to 2,729.66. In Australia, the S & P/ASX 200 climbed 0.12%, finishing its trading day at 7,387.10.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan traded 0.54% lower.
Investors monitored oil moves, which saw choppy trading on Thursday.
In the afternoon of Asia trading hours on Thursday, international benchmark Brent crude futures gained 0.47% to $ 122.17 per barrel, still much higher than levels below $ 112 seen earlier in the week.
U.S. crude futures declined fractionally to $ 114.88 per barrel.
Oil prices have been volatile for weeks since Russia's invasion of Ukraine as investors assess the war's impact on oil supply along with other concerns such as a Covid outbreak in China.
The price of oil currently remains significantly elevated, with Brent more than 50% higher as compared to where it was early this year.
`` I tend to think that we 've had threats of supply interruptions but it's been more so trade disruptions that the market is really experiencing that is putting a floor [ to a ] high price level that we're experiencing right now, '' said Stephen Jones, senior vice president of oil markets strategy at Argus Media.
`` The trade costs are escalating, the trade pattern disruptions, the cost of freight, the scarcity, if you will, for the countries that have sanctioned or are financially disallowed to do business is adding a lot … of cost structure to the outright prices, '' Jones said. `` That's why we didn't see prices … fall much below, you know, the $ 109 level, '' he said.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 98.881 — still above the 98.4 level that is was below earlier this week.
The Japanese yen traded at 121.57 per dollar, weaker as compared with levels below 119.7 seen against the greenback earlier in the week. The Australian dollar changed hands at $ 0.7474, having risen from below $ 0.74 earlier this week. | business |
Covid: Omicron BA.2 subvariant will soon dominate in U.S., but Fauci doesn't expect another surge | Omicron's more contagious subvariant, BA.2, has more than doubled in prevalence over the past two weeks in the U.S. and now represents more than 34% of Covid-19 infections that have undergone genetic sequencing, according to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week.
BA.2 has been steadily growing as a proportion of the Covid variants circulating in the U.S. since Feb. 5 when it represented about 1% of genetically sequenced virus samples, according to the CDC. BA.2 probably already accounts for 50% of new infections in the U.S. because many people are taking tests at home that aren't picked up in the official data, according to Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Data from Walgreens, which conducts testing at its pharmacies nationwide, shows BA.2 as the dominant variant at 51% of all positive Covid cases for the week ending March 19.
Read CNBC's latest global coverage of the Covid pandemic:
Though BA.2 is rising in the U.S., leading public health officials are not expecting another dramatic surge in new cases, largely due to the amount of immunity the population has from vaccination and the fierce outbreak during the winter omicron wave.
`` The bottom line is we 'll likely see an uptick in cases, as we 've seen in the European countries particularly the U.K., '' White House Chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC's `` This Week. '' `` Hopefully we won't see a surge – I don't think we will. ''
In the U.K., the number of people testing positive for Covid has jumped 16% over the past week, according to government data. Patients admitted to hospitals with the virus are also up about 20%. BA.2 now represents about 44% of all positive cases in London as of March 10, according to the U.K. Health Security Agency.
However, Mokdad said the situation in the U.S. is different from European countries, because there was much more infection from omicron here over the winter. European nations have also dramatically changed their behavior in recent weeks by lifting restrictive public health measures, which has lead to the spike. In many parts of the U.S., on the other hand, restrictive measures were not implemented during omicron, so there's not as dramatic a change in behavior to drive new infections, Mokdad said.
In the U.S., new infections are down 96% from the pandemic record set of more than 800,000 on Jan. 15, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. However, the speed of the decline has slowed and new cases appear to have basically plateaued at a seven-day average of around 31,000 new infections daily. Hospital admissions of patients with Covid have dropped 90% from the peak of the omicron wave in January, according to the CDC.
Though Mokdad expects BA.2 to represent more than 80% of new cases in the coming months, he said the variant's doubling time has actually slowed recently. IHME is projecting that cases will continue to decline through the spring and summer, with another surge possible this winter when immunity has started to wane substantially.
`` The pandemic phase of the virus is over in our opinion, '' Mokdad said. `` We are moving into an endemic phase. ''
Public health officials in England have found that the subvariant is growing 80% faster than the earlier version of omicron, BA.1, according to a briefing paper published earlier this month. The World Health Organization's Maria Van Kerkhove has described BA.2 as the most transmissible Covid variant so far and said it's sweeping the world. The subvariant now represents more than 80% of sequenced Covid samples worldwide, according to an international database.
Between vaccination and infection, an estimated 95% of the U.S. population ages 16 and older had developed antibodies against the virus as of late December 2021 before the omicron wave peaked, according to a CDC survey of blood donor samples. Mokdad said this level of immunity puts the U.S. in a good place until winter when protection will start to wear off.
The antibodies induced from the vaccine decline after about three months, which can lead to breakthrough infections, though the shots still protect against severe illness. Younger healthy people who have recovered from Covid have immunity for at least 6 months, according to peer-reviewed studies in Denmark, the U.K. and the U.S. Though these studies were published before omicron, scientists in Qatar recently found that infection 10 months earlier provided about 46% protection against illness from BA.2 in people who weren't vaccinated. However, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems are much more vulnerable to reinfection.
BA.2 does not make people more sick than BA.1, which was less severe than the delta variant, according to a large real-world study from South Africa's National Institute of Communicable Diseases. Reinfection with BA.2 – though possible – appears rare, according to a February study from Denmark's Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen. Public health authorities in the U.K. have come to the same conclusions on hospitalization and reinfection. Neither study has been peer reviewed yet.
`` The fact that there are similar clinical manifestations of BA.1 versus BA.2 gives me a little bit of hope that it's not going to completely change the game on us in the same way that omicron changed the game from from delta, '' said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University.
There's also no significant difference in the duration of protection that Pfizer and Moderna's shots provide against mild illness from BA.2 compared to BA.1, according to a study published this month by scientists based in Qatar, which is also not peer reviewed. The vaccines are 50% effective at preventing mild illness from both omicron variants three months after the second dose, but protection is negligible after that time. However, the two-dose vaccines still provide more than 70% protection against hospitalization and death, and booster doses increase this protection to more than 90%.
Fauci said this week that there's no need to reimplement Covid restrictions at this time. The CDC said earlier this month 98% of people in the U.S. live in areas where they no longer need to wear masks in public places indoors under its new Covid guidance. Public health authorities in the U.S. have shifted their focus to hospitalizations, rather than just new infections, when assessing the threat the virus poses to communities.
The Biden administration is relying on a strategy of vaccination, testing and treatment with antiviral pills to prevent the virus from disrupting daily life. About 75% of adults in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease expert at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said the public should focus should on hospitalizations, a measure of more severe illness, rather than just new infections. Offit said between vaccination and infection from omicron, there's likely enough immunity in the population to protect against a major spike in hospitalizations from BA.2.
`` For right now, I choose to be optimistic that we're just going to see a lot of mild illness and not see a dramatic increase in hospitalizations, '' Offit said. | business |
Cramer: Investors should ‘ stay the course’ as markets continue to shake | CNBC's Jim Cramer told investors that they shouldn't lose faith in the market's ability to recover after Wednesday's declines.
`` History is very clear: It says you must stay the course. The S & P 500's already had a successful 50% retracement of its huge decline, and in the 21 times that's happened since the Great Depression, it's meant the decline is over every single time, '' Cramer said, noting that the averages retraced 50% of their post-November decline after yesterday.
`` Could this time be different? Sure, but don't ignore the very real possibility that good things can happen, too, '' he added.
The `` Mad Money '' host, who cautioned investors against unwarranted optimism on Tuesday, cited information from legendary market technician Larry Williams for his analysis of the markets ' future course. Cramer has relied on Williams ' analysis to make market predictions in the past.
Cramer listed several factors, in addition to the pattern Williams spotted, that suggest the markets could recover, including the Russia-Ukraine war seeming to enter a stalemate, which could potentially lead to an end sooner than later.
He also pointed to the Federal Reserve's recent interest rate hike, Fed Chair Jerome Powell's strong comments on inflation and the Covid-19 pandemic potentially ending soon as additional market factors.
`` This is a brutal environment with a lot of truly awful possibilities, and I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow's worse than today. … But at moments of extreme doom and gloom, like I saw today, I need you to remember that the bears could perhaps be wrong, '' Cramer said.
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With U.S. Output Flat and War in Ukraine Stoking Fresh Global Supply Worries, Oil Prices Surge | Sign in to get the best natural gas news and data. Follow the topics you want and receive the daily emails.
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U.S. crude production was flat last week, as it has been throughout 2022, even as the Russia-Ukraine conflict drags on and global supply worries intensify.
Output for the week ended March 18 held at 11.6 million b/d, even with the prior week and a month earlier, the U.S. Energy Information Administration ( EIA) said Wednesday.
American producers are at once under pressure to shift investments to renewable fuels and cautious about ramping up oil output amid the dueling uncertainties imposed by the lingering pandemic and Russia’ s invasion of its eastern European neighbor.
Domestic demand, meanwhile, is climbing alongside a growing U.S. economy. Overall petroleum consumption advanced 2% week/week and rose substantially from a year earlier, EIA’ s latest Weekly Petroleum Status Report showed.
Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 21.0 million b/d, EIA said, up 12% from the same period in 2021. Over the past four weeks, demand for motor gasoline, distillate fuel and jet fuel all advanced. The latter surged 44% amid a rebound in air travel.
At the same time, nearly 3 million b/d of Russian petroleum exports were at least temporarily withdrawn from the global market early in the month-old conflict. This is partly because of the United States’ ban on imports of Russian oil and, more broadly, because of stiff Western economic sanctions in protest of the war that have crippled the Kremlin-controlled energy sector.
The result: Global oil prices are surging anew this week after choppy trading a week earlier. Brent crude prices, the international benchmark, surged 5% to above $ 120/bbl in intraday trading Wednesday. Brent prices are up more than 50% on the year.
This in turn has fueled a surge in travel fuel costs, with U.S. gasoline prices reaching record levels earlier this month, according to AAA.
“ The oil bulls have again gained an upper leg in the market, ” Rystad Energy senior analyst Louise Dickson said.
Yet producers are not ramping up – at least not quickly – to capitalize on lofty prices.
Internationally, members of OPEC and an allied group of producers – OPEC-plus – recently agreed to boost output by 400,000 b/d in March. This extended a targeted rate of monthly supply increases launched in August 2021. But it is a pace that only gradually unwinds production cuts of nearly 10 million b/d made in April 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.
Dickson noted that U.S. President Biden is slated to meet with European Union ( EU) members as well as leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Thursday in Brussels to assess how to further counter Russia’ s assault on Ukraine. She said the market anticipated discussions about the EU joining the U.S. embargo on Russian oil imports, a move that would deal a severe blow to Moscow but also could throw into disarray the global oil market.
“ Though Europe has not firmly committed to cutting off its more than 2.1 million b/d of oil originating from Russian pipelines and ports, the meeting on Thursday could yield tougher measures against Moscow, potentially confirming the anticipated supply risks to Russian upstream oil in the short term, ” Dickson said.
If further embargoes are enacted and Russian exports remain off the market for the balance of 2022, economists Lutz Killian and Michael Plante of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said Wednesday this could keep prices exceptionally high. That would eventually suppress demand and, in the process, stunt economic activity.
In that scenario, they said, “ a global economic downturn seems unavoidable. ”
As all of this is developing, the coronavirus pandemic is surging anew in China and parts of Europe this month, adding to uncertainty. What’ s more, central banks in the United States and Europe have begun this year to raise interest rates to combat inflation. With higher rates comes the expectation for slower economic growth.
[ Need Shale prices? Check out NGI’ s Shale Daily natural gas prices at 21 locations spanning 16 plays, including the Marcellus, Permian and Bakken, and everywhere in between. ]
Should rising rates intersect with a pandemic-induced lull and prolonged war woes, this would “ further add to recessionary risks, ” EBW Analytics Group’ s Eli Rubin, senior analyst, said.
Notably, he added, a global recession would impact commodities beyond oil, including natural gas.
“ Global natural gas demand is highly correlated with the macroeconomic backdrop and a possible recession could contribute to downward pressure on gas prices over the next 12-18 months, ” Rubin said.
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ISSN © 2577-9877 | ISSN © 2158-8023 |
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Global supply challenges amid Russia’ s invasion of Ukraine and knock-on effects in the United States sent domestic natural gas prices higher for a third consecutive session on Wednesday. The April Nymex gas futures contract rose 4.5 cents day/day and closed at $ 5.232/MMBtu. May gained 4.7 cents to $ 5.274. At A Glance: Weather outlook for late…
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