Wednesday, April 15, 2026

‘Urgent assessment of health service capacity needed’

Urgent assessment needed of current capacity under infection control guidelines, IMO tells the Oireachtas

An urgent assessment is needed of current capacity and how that capacity will be affected as we deliver care under new physical distancing arrangements and infection control guidelines, Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) representatives told members of the Oireachtas Special Committee on Covid-19 Response this morning (Tuesday June 2).

The IMO would fully support the National Public Health Emergency Team in the two metres rule in the health services.

Susan Clyne, IMO Chief Executive, warned of complacency about the outlook for further Covid-19 infections: “Until we have effective treatment options and a vaccine, we face continued uncertainty as to the impact of a second and subsequent waves particularly as respiratory illnesses begin to circulate again as early as September.”

With the ending of the Government agreement with the private hospitals, the IMO representatives told members their focus was on the urgent measures required to enable Ireland’s public health services to deliver care for both Covid-19 and non-Covid patients.

“By the time we get back to work we will be dealing with six months backlog. We cannot continue to lock public patients out of the services any longer,” said Dr Anthony O’Connor, who had been doing a lot of his elective endoscopy work in a private hospital the Health Service Executive (HSE) had partnered with.

Clyne charged that it was “untenable” to continue with historic deficits in manpower and bed capacity in the context of increasing waiting lists.

IMO Council member Prof Matt Sadlier said that while capacity could be reduced for an emergency for a couple of months, ultimately stressed the health service needed more capacity across the country.

At the forefront of this national effort to deal with the pandemic, and notwithstanding the long-standing contractual issues and inequities, the IMO reminded the Committee members that doctors across the health system had stepped up, working long hours and long weeks both in their normal work locations and being redeployed to other sites to deliver specialist care.

The rate of infection in healthcare staff was of extreme concern.

Many doctors had worked without leave since the pandemic began, they added.

They stressed the part played by non-consultant hospital doctors who had been at the front-line of care for Covid-19 patients, and public health specialists who played an invaluable role in health protection “and who should be awarded consultant status in line with the recommendation of Prof Gabriel Scally”.

The IMO representatives presented several recommendations to the Special Committee.

The imminent clinical roadmap for the reopening of services by the HSE must allow for a gradual reopening of both public and private care in tandem, prioritising patients based on clinical need.

Clyne told the Committee meeting that diagnostic, radiology and laboratory departments must be appropriately resourced to allow timely access to investigations for both hospital doctors and general practitioners in the community; clear referral pathways were needed for all patients into secondary care.

Immediate investment to recruit and retain doctors to work in the health service, including targeted measures to address the unprecedented number of hospital consultant vacancies, was needed.

Successive reports and studies had demonstrated that the two-tier consultant pay issue was a major barrier to recruitment.

valerie.ryan@imt.ie

Source link

Urvashi Rautela’s ‘Beyonce mode’ dance video storms the internet, watch

Image Source : INSTAGRAM/URVASHI RAUTELA

Urvashi Rautela’s ‘Beyonce mode’ dance video storms the internet, watch 

Bollywood actress and former beauty queen Urvashi Rautela has shared a throwback video where she switches on her ‘Beyonce mode’. In the Instagram video, Urvashi can be seen dancing on the popular track “Savage”, dressed in a yellow hoodie and black pants. “BEYONCE MODE ON shot this a month back… been super obsessed with savage since past 2 months haha,” she wrote along with the lyrics of the song as caption.

View this post on Instagram

BEYONCE MODE ON 👑🪐shot 🎥 this a month back 🌼 been super obsessed with savage since past 2 months haha 🔥🔥🔥 If you wanna see some real ass, baby, here’s your chance I say, left cheek, right cheek, drop it low, then swang Texas up in this thang, put you up on this game IVY PARK on my frame gang, gang, gang, gang If you don’t jump to put jeans on, baby, you don’t feel my pain Please don’t get me hype, write my name in ice Can’t argue with these lazy bitches, I just raise my price I’m a boss, I’m a leader, I pull up in my two-seater And my mama was a savage, nigga, got this shit from Tina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #love #UrvashiRautela #dance #savage #savagechallenge #savageremix #savageremixchallenge #beyonce #megantheestallion #clonesquad

A post shared by URVASHI RAUTELA 🇮🇳Actor🇮🇳 (@urvashirautela) on

Urvashi recently also shared a video of herself where she can be seen doing glute thrusts with 80-kilo weights.

Meanwhile, the actress currently awaits the release of her film “Virgin Bhanupriya” on an OTT platform. She has assured fans that the experience of watching the movie on a digital platform will be no less than watching it in theatres.

“Virgin Bhanupriya” also stars Gautam Gulati, Archana Puran Singh, Delnaaz Irani, Rajiv Gupta and Brijendra Kala, Niki Aneja Walia and Rumana Molla.

(With IANS Inputs)

Fight against Coronavirus: Full coverage



Source link

As Protests Engulf the United States, China Revels in the Unrest

0

The cartoon shows the Statue of Liberty cracking into pieces, a police officer breaking through its copper robe. A man’s head lies on the ground in front of the White House, its facade splattered with blood.

“Beneath human rights,” says the title of the cartoon, which was published by People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, and circulated widely on social media sites this week.

As protests over police violence engulf hundreds of cities in the United States, China is reveling in the moment, seizing on the unrest to tout the strength of its authoritarian system and to portray the turmoil as yet another sign of American hypocrisy and decline. It is a narrative that conveniently ignores many of the country’s own problems, including its history of ethnic discrimination, its record on human rights and its efforts to suppress protests in Hong Kong.

Chinese officials are trolling their American counterparts with protest slogans like “Black lives matter” and “I can’t breathe.” The state-run media is featuring stories about the “double standards” of the United States for supporting the Hong Kong demonstrators. Prominent Chinese commentators are arguing that American-style democracy is a sham, pointing to the country’s bungled response to the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing racial tensions.

“This situation in the U.S. will make more Chinese people support the Chinese government in its efforts to denounce and counter America,” Song Guoyou, a scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai, said in an interview. “The moral ground of the United States is indeed greatly weakened.”

The propaganda push is the latest skirmish in a longstanding power struggle between China and the United States, with tensions between the two countries at their lowest point in decades.

President Trump has accused Beijing of covering up the coronavirus outbreak that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, saying China should be held responsible for deaths in the United States and around the world. He has also threatened to punish China for moving to adopt a broad new security law in Hong Kong by curtailing the city’s special relationship with the United States.

Now, the protests in the United States are giving Mr. Xi and the Communist Party’s propagandists a natural line of counter attack.

Chinese social media sites are rife with video clips of tense standoffs between the police and protesters in the aftermath of the death last week of George Floyd, after he was pinned to the ground by a white Minneapolis police officer who has since been charged with murder. Television shows feature videos of National Guard troops patrolling city streets, as broadcasters describe the long history of discrimination against minorities in the United States. Social media sites are portraying America as unruly and chaotic: “This is not Syria, this is the U.S.!” read a caption on one popular site.

Global Times, a nationalistic newspaper controlled by the party, called on the American government to “stand with the Minnesota people.” Its editor, in a tweet, pointedly called out Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who had said “we stand by the people of Hong Kong” in his condemnation of Beijing’s move to impose national security rules.

“The violent protests in the streets of urban America are further discrediting the U.S. in the eyes of ordinary Chinese,” said Susan Shirk, chair of the U.C. San Diego 21st Century China Center. “The propaganda depicts American politicians as hypocrites living in glass houses while throwing stones at China.”

Ms. Shirk said that as the reputation of the United States suffers in China fewer people might be willing to voice support for American ideals, such as free markets and civil liberties.

“Even without the propaganda, Chinese people nowadays find little to admire in the U.S.,” she said. “As the U.S. model is tarnished, the voice of Chinese liberals is silenced.”

While Chinese officials have gleefully joined the global chorus of criticism aimed at the United States, the unrest has put them in an awkward position.

China’s government has long maintained strict limits on free speech and activism, and the authorities often resort to aggressive tactics to quash unrest. The police in Hong Kong, where the government is backed by Beijing, have been accused of using excessive force as it has sought to rein in antigovernment protests that have convulsed the semiautonomous territory over the past year.

With the comparisons to Hong Kong unmistakable, many mainland commentators have stopped short of endorsing the tactics used by American protesters, instead denouncing racism in the United States in general terms and rehashing protest slogans.

“The chronic racial wound in the United States is now smarting again,” said a recent report by Xinhua, the state-run news agency.

The Chinese government, in its first official statement on Mr. Trump’s move against Beijing’s national security rules, directly called out the United States for hypocrisy. A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, noted on Monday how American officials have portrayed protesters in their own country as “thugs” but glorified Hong Kong protesters as “heroes.”

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, echoed the party line on Tuesday, accusing the United States of having “double standards.”

“When it comes to their country’s security, they attach great importance,” she said at a regular news briefing. “When it comes to my country’s security, especially regarding Hong Kong’s current situation, they’ve put on tinted glasses.”

Chinese officials, wading into the complex racial politics of the United States, have sometimes struggled with striking the right note.

A spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry, Hua Chunying, was widely praised in China recently when she wrote “I can’t breathe” in response to a critical Twitter post by an American official.

But she had less success with a post on Monday, when she wrote “All lives matter,” apparently unaware she was embracing a slogan that has been used in the United States to criticize the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Chinese officials have used the protests to revive favorite propaganda themes, including the idea that the United States acts as a bully on the world stage, meddling in the affairs of other countries. Hong Kong has been a particular point of contention, with many news outlets in China pairing images of burning buildings and flags in American cities alongside comments last year by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, praising demonstrations in Hong Kong. Ms. Pelosi said the city’s protests were a “beautiful sight to behold.”

The editor in chief of Global Times, Hu Xijin, said that the attacks were to be expected given the intense criticism of China by American officials over the past year.

“It’s a kind of vengeful feeling, which I think is human nature,” he said in an interview. “Americans shouldn’t be unhappy about it.”

Mr. Hu said the unrest in the United States, as well as the failures in the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, had strengthened confidence among many Chinese in Beijing’s political system.

“It has made them believe that the government of this country really cares about people’s lives and well-being,” he said. “They see how the U.S. government and capital despise the lives and interests of vulnerable and marginalized groups.”

Nationalism has been in full force in recent days on the Chinese internet, with many people taking to Weibo, a popular microblogging platform, to denounce the “arrogance” of the United States and Mr. Trump. Hashtags about the American protests, including the decision to deploy the National Guard in some cities, are among the most popular topics on the site.

Some worry that the propaganda campaign may further inflame tensions between the two countries. He Weifang, an outspoken law professor in Beijing, said that even some critics of the government are becoming more sympathetic to the official line.

“Any Chinese with a brain,” he said, “would not simply look at it as China being so successful and the U.S. being a failure.”

But, he added, “with the terrible compression of space for free speech, many people’s heads are gradually broken.”

Elaine Yu contributed reporting from Hong Kong. Albee Zhang and Claire Fu contributed research.



Source link

Police shot, hit by vehicles in escalating George Floyd protests

Police officers were among those injured across the U.S. overnight amid continuing protests and violence sparked by the in-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week.

Four officers in St. Louis, Missouri, were shot after a peaceful protest turned violent in the early hours Tuesday. Two officers were hit in the leg, one in the foot and one in the arm, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Commissioner Col. John W. Hayden said during a news conference.

“Some coward fired shots at officers,” he said. “Thankfully, they’re alive. They’re alive.”

People had pelted officers with rocks and fireworks throughout the night before shots were fired at the police line, Hayden added. None of their injuries were believed to be life-threatening. It wasn’t immediately clear whether a single or multiple shooters were involved, he said.

In New York, a state police officer and a Buffalo police officer suffered serious injuries after being hit by a truck during protests in the city. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the two officers were in stable condition.

A New York City police officer was also struck by a vehicle in the Bronx early Tuesday, police said. Officers were investigating reports of break-ins when a sergeant got out of an unmarked vehicle and was hit by a black sedan that subsequently fled the scene, police told NBC News’s local affiliate WNBC.

The sergeant suffered serious injuries and was last reported to be in stable condition at a local hospital, police said. No arrests have been made and the suspect remained at large.

Full coverage of George Floyd’s death and protests around the country

The president of Lieutenants Benevolent Association representing command officers in New York City wrote a letter to its members on Monday blaming politicians — including Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio — for wrongfully blaming the police for the rise in violence and ignoring the danger and injuries officers are facing.

Fireworks go off in front of police who were responding to protesters in front of police headquarters in St. Louis on Monday.Colter Peterson / AP

“These out-of-touch and inept politicians are obviously using the members of law enforcement as pawns,” Lou Turco wrote in a letter obtained by NBC News. “The politicians see our members as being expendable, they show no concern about our safety, they show no concern about our members returning home safely to our families.”

Floyd’s death incited rage over the treatment of minorities, particularly African Americans, as he is viewed as the latest victim in a series of deaths at the hands of police.

Civilians have also sustained serious injuries — and even been killed — in the protests that have seen thousands arrested.

Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts on this story

In Louisville, Kentucky, local business owner David McAtee was shot dead during an exchange of gunfire between police, the National Guard and protesters on Monday. It remains unclear whether the fatal shot was fired by law enforcement or someone else, however Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad was subsequently relieved of duty after it was revealed that the officers involved did not activate their body cameras.

New York City’s police department is among those facing criticism, most recently after footage emerged on Saturday of two NYPD vehicles driving into a crowd of protesters. New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea told the “TODAY” show on Monday that “anyone that looks at that has to be troubled by what they saw” and vowing there would be an investigation into the incident.

Jonathan Dienst, Tom Winter and Kurt Chirbas contributed.



Source link

The Weeknd Donates $500,000 to Black Lives Matter Causes


The Weeknd Donates $500,000 to Black Lives Matter Causes and Urges the Wealthy to ‘Give Big’ | Entertainment Tonight


































Source link

U.S. Economy Faces Long-Term Recovery, C.B.O. Says

This briefing is no longer updating. Read the latest developments in the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak here.

The hit to the U.S. economy could last for a decade.

The Congressional Budget Office projected on Monday that the coronavirus pandemic could cost the United States economy $16 trillion over the next 10 years. When adjusting for inflation, the pandemic is projected to cause a $7.9 trillion, or 3 percent, loss in “real” G.D.P. through 2030.

The projections reflect the steep long-term toll that the pandemic is likely to take on the economy, which could experience dampened consumer spending and business investment in the years ahead. Much of the diminished output is projected to be the result of weaker inflation, as prices for energy and transportation increase more slowly than they otherwise would have as Americans pull back on travel.

Phillip L. Swagel, the director of the budget office, acknowledged that “an unusually high degree of uncertainty surrounds these economic projections” because of what remains unknown about the pandemic’s trajectory, as well as the impact of social distancing and the legislation enacted by the federal government.

“If future federal policies differ from those underlying C.B.O.’s economic projections — for example, if lawmakers enact additional pandemic-related legislation — then economic outcomes will necessarily differ from those presented here,” Mr. Swagel wrote in a letter to Senators Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, and Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent. The two senators had asked the budget office on Wednesday to examine the impact of the pandemic and the shuttering of local economies to combat the spread of the virus as lawmakers look to negotiate another round of economic aid.

In a joint statement following the release of the report, Mr. Schumer and Mr. Sanders said the estimate undercut Republican arguments that Congress should wait to approve another relief package, as well as President Trump’s call to include a tax cut in the next measure. “In order to avoid the risk of another Great Depression, the Senate must act with a fierce sense of urgency to make sure that everyone in America has the income they need to feed their families and put a roof over their heads,” the two senators said. “The American people cannot afford to wait another month for the Senate to pass legislation. They need our help now.”

New regulator warns that health measures, like masks, may hurt banks.

The new head of a powerful banking regulator is not letting his first full week on the job pass quietly, warning that measures meant to contain the spread of the coronavirus — including mandates for the use of masks in public — could endanger the financial system.

Brian P. Brooks took over on Friday as the acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the federal agency that oversees the country’s largest banks. Mr. Brooks, a former banker, sent letters to the country’s mayors and governors about the negative effects of restrictions on public activity. Among them, he said: Face masks could lead to more bank robberies.

Mr. Brooks’s letter was unusual in its tone and scope; banking regulators tend to keep their communications fairly abstract. But Mr. Brooks pointed to what he said were specific risks associated with “continued state and local lockdown orders.”

“Certain aspects of these orders potentially threaten the stability and orderly functioning of the financial system,” he wrote.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone wear a cloth face covering when they leave their home, to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Airlines and airports around the world are doing everything they can to instill confidence that it is safe to fly again, despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Airlines are requiring face masks for passengers and staff, imposing new aircraft cleaning procedures, using social distancing to board flights, blocking middle seats on planes and, in one case, even prohibiting passengers from lining up to use plane bathrooms.

As to the airports, they are screening passengers’ temperatures through high- and low-tech means; using biometric screening to speed check-in, security and customs and immigration processes; and using autonomous robots to clean terminal floors.

But none of it is consistent. And it’s unclear whether the measures are enough.

“So much is uncertain right now,” said Henry Harteveldt, founder of Atmosphere Research Group, a San Francisco travel analysis firm. “Do airports and airlines need to invest in something long-term that will be permanent, like airport security, or are these short-term, tactical responses?”

Dr. Joshua Schiffer, an infectious disease physician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said, “It’s next to impossible to have complete confidence you won’t get infected” on flights. But he added that he hoped that airlines would provide travelers “publicly available information on what the projected risk would be to a certain destination, so you could choose your airline based on the quality of this information.”

The Paycheck Protection Program, the federal government’s ambitious effort to keep workers at small businesses off the unemployment rolls, was a lifeline for many businesses.

But with many cities still shut down, consumers’ habits have changed and recharging the economy may take years. Small companies, which employ nearly half of America’s workers that don’t work in government, typically have thin margins and scant savings. Some fear they won’t survive without further help.

Just one week after A&J Transportation, a Frac-sand shipper based in Oklahoma, got its paycheck loan, its entire staff of truckers was out of work because producers shut down their wells when oil prices plunged in April.

“We lived through the 2014 oil crash, the 2008 economic crash. This one is worse,” said Dana Sanford, the office manager for the family-run business, which worked exclusively on oil fields.

The loan arrived right as the work disappeared, so A&J used it to keep paying all of its 72 employees, even though most had nothing to do but stay home. The money kept those workers off the unemployment rolls, Ms. Sanford said.

She does not expect a quick recovery. A&J hopes to return one of its crews — about a third of its workers — to the oil fields in June, but Ms. Sanford thinks it will be months before the company’s full fleet is needed. Its eight weeks of payroll support will run out in mid-June.

“The drivers are getting a little more scared as that last week approaches, wondering, ‘Am I going to have a job when this is done?’” she said. “I wish we could apply again. Even four more weeks would be really helpful.”

Target, Walmart and CVS shut stores amid protests.

A number of retailers, still reeling from the economic impact of the coronavirus shutdown, have temporarily closed some stores as protests and looting spread across the United States in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

Target is temporarily closing or shortening the hours of about 200 stores, a spokesman, Joshua Thomas, confirmed on Sunday morning. The Target store on Lake Street in Minneapolis, the location nearest to where Mr. Floyd died, was badly damaged and looted last week. Images of the battered store have featured prominently in news coverage of the unrest in Minneapolis, where Target has its headquarters.

Target has nearly 1,900 stores in the United States. The decisions to temporarily shutter or shorten store hours at roughly 200 locations, Mr. Thomas said, were being made “out of an abundance of caution” to ensure “the safety of our teams.”

Walmart and CVS also shuttered a number of stores. Amazon said it would scale back deliveries in some cities. Adidas is temporarily closing all of its U.S. stores, The Wall Street Journal reported.

U.S. stocks posted modest gains on Monday, continuing a recent climb that had left the S&P 500 with its best two-month gain in 11 years.

The gains were small though, and came after a weekend of violence and unrest in the United States in the wake of the death of George Floyd in police custody. The S&P 500 rose less than half a percent. Shares of some retailers who said they were temporarily closing some stores in response to protests took a hit. Target was down more than 2 percent.

European markets closed about 1 percent higher on Monday, though markets in Germany and a number of other countries were closed for a holiday. Asian markets rose strongly, paced by an increase of more than 3 percent in Hong Kong and more than 2 percent in mainland China shares.

The rally in stocks has come as investors have bet the worst of the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic could be over. In another sign of optimism on Monday, an index of U.S. manufacturing activity rose in May. The index was 43.1 last month, up from 41.5 in April, which was the lowest level in more than a decade, the Institute for Supply Management said. However, it was still below 50, which connotes an economy still in contraction.

A group of publishers sued the Internet Archive on Monday, saying that the nonprofit group’s trove of free electronic copies of books is robbing authors and publishers of revenue at a moment when it is desperately needed.

The Internet Archive has made about 1.3 million books available for free online, according to the complaint, which were scanned and available to one borrower at a time for 14 days. The group said in March that it would lift all restrictions on its book lending until the end of the public health crisis, creating what it called “a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners.”

But many publishers and author have called it something different: theft.

“There is nothing innovative or transformative about making complete copies of books to which you have no rights and giving them away for free,” said Maria A. Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers, which is helping to coordinate the industry’s response.

Traditional libraries pay licensing fees to publishers and agree to make them available for a particular period or a certain number of times. Internet Archive, on the other hand, acquires copies through donated or purchased books, which are then scanned and put online.

The lawsuit, which accused the Internet Archive of “willful mass copyright infringement,” was filed in federal court in Manhattan on behalf of Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House.

Brewster Kahle, the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, defended his organization and said it was functioning as a library during the coronavirus pandemic, when physical libraries have been closed.

Since April, landlords have looked to the first of the month fearing that tenants will stop paying their rent. For the most part, that has not happened, writes Conor Dougherty.

Despite a 14.7 percent unemployment rate and millions of new jobless claims each week, collections are only slightly below where they were last year, when the economy was booming.

How can this be? The answer is a little negotiation and a lot of government money. The $2 trillion CARES Act, which backstopped household finances with stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits, has kept a surprising number of tenants current on their monthly balances. At the same time, many landlords have reduced rents or are forgiving overdue payments in full or in part.

The trend cannot continue without a swift and robust recovery, which is becoming increasingly unlikely, or without another big injection of government money, which Senate Republicans say is not happening anytime soon.

American households were struggling with rent long before the economy went into free fall, and there are signs — from an increase in partial payments to surveys that show many tenants are putting rent on their credit cards and struggling to pay for essentials like food — that this pressure is building.

Here’s the business news to watch this week.

🗣 All eyes will be on Zoom, the videoconferencing company that has seen its user base explode during the lockdowns; it reports earnings Tuesday. Others releasing earnings this week include Tiffany on Tuesday, Campbell Soup on Wednesday and Gap on Thursday.

🎶 Warner Music prices its I.P.O. on Tuesday, aiming for a valuation of up to $13 billion. China’s Tencent is reportedly considering taking a stake in the record company as part of the listing on Nasdaq.

🇪🇺 The European Central Bank meets on Thursday, and it could unveil more monetary stimulus measures to tide over the region’s struggling economy as its members negotiate a huge fiscal package.

📉 On Friday, U.S. employment data for May is expected to show a decline of nine million jobs in the month, with the official unemployment rate rising to just under 20 percent.

Catch up: Here’s what else is happening.

  • Marriott International’s chief executive, Arne M. Sorenson, said all of its Chinese hotels had reopened and occupancy levels were more than 40 percent, Reuters reported. Mr. Sorenson, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Travel and Leisure Conference on Monday, said the company’s open hotels in the United States had crossed the 20 percent occupancy threshold.

  • Nasdaq said Monday that it would postpone the planned reopening of its trading floor in Philadelphia, which had been closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, as protests in the city continued.

Reporting was contributed by Jane L. Levere, Elizabeth E. Harris, Emily Cochrane, Alan Rappeport, Conor Dougherty, Steve Lohr, Matt Richtel, Ron Lieber, Nellie Bowles, Carlos Tejada, Jason Karaian, Katie Robertson and Jeanna Smialek.

Source link

As Protests Engulf the United States, China Revels in the Unrest

0

The cartoon shows the Statue of Liberty cracking into pieces, a police officer breaking through its copper robe. A man’s head lies on the ground in front of the White House, its facade splattered with blood.

“Beneath human rights,” says the title of the cartoon, which was published by People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, and circulated widely on social media sites this week.

As protests over police violence engulf hundreds of cities in the United States, China is reveling in the moment, seizing on the unrest to tout the strength of its authoritarian system and to portray the turmoil as yet another sign of American hypocrisy and decline. It is a narrative that conveniently ignores many of the country’s own problems, including its history of ethnic discrimination, its record on human rights and its efforts to suppress protests in Hong Kong.

Chinese officials are trolling their American counterparts with protest slogans like “Black lives matter” and “I can’t breathe.” The state-run media is featuring stories about the “double standards” of the United States for supporting the Hong Kong demonstrators. Prominent Chinese commentators are arguing that American-style democracy is a sham, pointing to the country’s bungled response to the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing racial tensions.

“This situation in the U.S. will make more Chinese people support the Chinese government in its efforts to denounce and counter America,” Song Guoyou, a scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai, said in an interview. “The moral ground of the United States is indeed greatly weakened.”

The propaganda push is the latest skirmish in a longstanding power struggle between China and the United States, with tensions between the two countries at their lowest point in decades.

President Trump has accused Beijing of covering up the coronavirus outbreak that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, saying China should be held responsible for deaths in the United States and around the world. He has also threatened to punish China for moving to adopt a broad new security law in Hong Kong by curtailing the city’s special relationship with the United States.

Now, the protests in the United States are giving Mr. Xi and the Communist Party’s propagandists a natural line of counter attack.

Chinese social media sites are rife with video clips of tense standoffs between the police and protesters in the aftermath of the death last week of George Floyd, after he was pinned to the ground by a white Minneapolis police officer who has since been charged with murder. Television shows feature videos of National Guard troops patrolling city streets, as broadcasters describe the long history of discrimination against minorities in the United States. Social media sites are portraying America as unruly and chaotic: “This is not Syria, this is the U.S.!” read a caption on one popular site.

Global Times, a nationalistic newspaper controlled by the party, called on the American government to “stand with the Minnesota people.” Its editor, in a tweet, pointedly called out Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who had said “we stand by the people of Hong Kong” in his condemnation of Beijing’s move to impose national security rules.

“The violent protests in the streets of urban America are further discrediting the U.S. in the eyes of ordinary Chinese,” said Susan Shirk, chair of the U.C. San Diego 21st Century China Center. “The propaganda depicts American politicians as hypocrites living in glass houses while throwing stones at China.”

Ms. Shirk said that as the reputation of the United States suffers in China fewer people might be willing to voice support for American ideals, such as free markets and civil liberties.

“Even without the propaganda, Chinese people nowadays find little to admire in the U.S.,” she said. “As the U.S. model is tarnished, the voice of Chinese liberals is silenced.”

While Chinese officials have gleefully joined the global chorus of criticism aimed at the United States, the unrest has put them in an awkward position.

China’s government has long maintained strict limits on free speech and activism, and the authorities often resort to aggressive tactics to quash unrest. The police in Hong Kong, where the government is backed by Beijing, have been accused of using excessive force as it has sought to rein in antigovernment protests that have convulsed the semiautonomous territory over the past year.

With the comparisons to Hong Kong unmistakable, many mainland commentators have stopped short of endorsing the tactics used by American protesters, instead denouncing racism in the United States in general terms and rehashing protest slogans.

“The chronic racial wound in the United States is now smarting again,” said a recent report by Xinhua, the state-run news agency.

The Chinese government, in its first official statement on Mr. Trump’s move against Beijing’s national security rules, directly called out the United States for hypocrisy. A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, noted on Monday how American officials have portrayed protesters in their own country as “thugs” but glorified Hong Kong protesters as “heroes.”

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, echoed the party line on Tuesday, accusing the United States of having “double standards.”

“When it comes to their country’s security, they attach great importance,” she said at a regular news briefing. “When it comes to my country’s security, especially regarding Hong Kong’s current situation, they’ve put on tinted glasses.”

Chinese officials, wading into the complex racial politics of the United States, have sometimes struggled with striking the right note.

A spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry, Hua Chunying, was widely praised in China recently when she wrote “I can’t breathe” in response to a critical Twitter post by an American official.

But she had less success with a post on Monday, when she wrote “All lives matter,” apparently unaware she was embracing a slogan that has been used in the United States to criticize the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Chinese officials have used the protests to revive favorite propaganda themes, including the idea that the United States acts as a bully on the world stage, meddling in the affairs of other countries. Hong Kong has been a particular point of contention, with many news outlets in China pairing images of burning buildings and flags in American cities alongside comments last year by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, praising demonstrations in Hong Kong. Ms. Pelosi said the city’s protests were a “beautiful sight to behold.”

The editor in chief of Global Times, Hu Xijin, said that the attacks were to be expected given the intense criticism of China by American officials over the past year.

“It’s a kind of vengeful feeling, which I think is human nature,” he said in an interview. “Americans shouldn’t be unhappy about it.”

Mr. Hu said the unrest in the United States, as well as the failures in the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, had strengthened confidence among many Chinese in Beijing’s political system.

“It has made them believe that the government of this country really cares about people’s lives and well-being,” he said. “They see how the U.S. government and capital despise the lives and interests of vulnerable and marginalized groups.”

Nationalism has been in full force in recent days on the Chinese internet, with many people taking to Weibo, a popular microblogging platform, to denounce the “arrogance” of the United States and Mr. Trump. Hashtags about the American protests, including the decision to deploy the National Guard in some cities, are among the most popular topics on the site.

Some worry that the propaganda campaign may further inflame tensions between the two countries. He Weifang, an outspoken law professor in Beijing, said that even some critics of the government are becoming more sympathetic to the official line.

“Any Chinese with a brain,” he said, “would not simply look at it as China being so successful and the U.S. being a failure.”

But, he added, “with the terrible compression of space for free speech, many people’s heads are gradually broken.”

Elaine Yu contributed reporting from Hong Kong. Albee Zhang and Claire Fu contributed research.



Source link

SpaceX’s 1st astronaut launch was NASA’s most-watched online event ever

0

NASA’s “Launch America” drew much of the nation in.

On Saturday (May 30), SpaceX launched its first-ever crewed mission, a test flight called Demo-2 that sent NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS). 



Source link

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has that ‘new car smell’ and flies ‘totally different’ than a NASA shuttle

0

When the hatch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft opened up to let two NASA astronauts inside the International Space Station on Sunday (May 31), the astronaut who greeted them at the door got a strong whiff of “new car smell.” 

“In fact, there was a little bit of space smell in the vestibule,” or the entryway, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy told reporters from the space station Monday (June 1). “When we got that hatch open, you could tell it was a brand new vehicle, with smiley faces on the other side, [a] smiley face on mine — just as if you had bought a new car, the same kind of reaction. Wonderful to see my friends and wonderful to see a brand new vehicle.”



Source link

DealBook: Mark Zuckerberg’s Biggest Challenge Yet

Good morning. What’s next for Big Tech? Kara Swisher, one of the most plugged-in reporters in the tech industry, will join us this Thursday at 11 a.m. Eastern for our next DealBook Debrief conference call. She will discuss how the tech giants are dealing with the political and cultural storm over free speech, the risks and opportunities created by the pandemic and more. R.S.V.P. here. (Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

Facebook’s hands-off approach to President Trump’s posts presents Mark Zuckerberg with the most serious challenge to his leadership in the company’s 15-year history. That’s according to more than a dozen current and former employees who spoke with reporters from The Times.

Hundreds of employees walked out (virtually) from work yesterday, to protest the company’s decision to allow inflammatory posts from the president on its platform.

• “The hateful rhetoric advocating violence against black demonstrators by the U.S. President does not warrant defense under the guise of freedom of expression,” one Facebook employee wrote in an internal message board.

Mr. Zuckerberg moved a weekly Q.&A. with employees to today, from later in the week, to address the criticism. At a session last Friday, Mr. Zuckerberg faced significant anger over his explanation of why Mr. Trump’s posts about the use of “state force” differed from other threats of violence, which are removed from the platform.

Rare public criticism of the company by employees is front-page news, with stories flooding the media today, featuring gripes both on- and off-the-record. Take your pick:

• “Facebook Employees Stage Virtual Walkout to Protest Trump Posts” (NYT)

• “Handling of Trump Posts Prompt Facebook Employees to Stage Virtual Walkout” (WSJ)

• “Facebook employees revolt over Zuckerberg’s stance on Trump” (FT)

The last word, from the markets: What crisis? Facebook’s shares closed up 3 percent yesterday. Premarket trading this morning suggests that they could get close to setting another record high today.

____________________________

Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin in Connecticut and Michael J. de la Merced and Jason Karaian in London.

____________________________

As unrest spreads following the death of George Floyd, businesses and their leaders continue to speak out against racism and confront the challenges posed by the protests.

George Floyd “could be me,” Ken Frazier of Merck, one of four black C.E.O.s of Fortune 500 companies, told Andrew on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” yesterday. Mr. Frazier was one of the first corporate chiefs to rebuke President Trump after Mr. Trump equivocated in his response to the white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

YouTube executives encouraged employees to take today off to “focus on how to improve racial equality,” The Information reported. Lyor Cohen, the video service’s music chief, said that he would cancel all meetings, and urged his workers “to reflect, give yourself space to process, or take action in ways that feel right for you.”

Retailers have continued to express empathy for protesters even as they are boarding up stores and halting operations, write Sapna Maheshwari and Michael Corkery of The Times. “We can fix the damage to our stores. Windows and merchandise can be replaced,” Nordstrom said in a statement. “We continue to believe as strongly as ever that tremendous change is needed to address the issues facing Black people in our country today.”

Steven Davidoff Solomon, a.k.a. the Deal Professor, teaches at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law and is the faculty co-director at the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy. Here, he considers the meaning of Elon Musk’s unusually lucrative pay package.

This past week was a good one for Elon Musk, and not just because of SpaceX’s successful crewed spacecraft launch. Tesla awarded him more than $1.5 billion in stock as part of a pay package, with incentives that could ultimately be worth some $55 billion.

To understand this potential payday, and what it means for business and society, you need to think about Instagram.

The social network’s founders, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, sold the business to Facebook for $1 billion in 2012. At the time that figure seemed incredibly high. Yet Mr. Krieger and Mr. Systrom helped build Instagram into a business now worth well over $100 billion — only to quit abruptly in 2018 over disagreements with Mark Zuckerberg.

They lost out a bigger payday not because they sold for too little, but because their pay packages at Facebook ended up being meager relative to the value Mr. Zuckerberg got from the deal.

The lesson that many founders take from Instagram is, “don’t sell too soon, for too little.” But Mr. Musk’s 2018 pay deal shows how executives can reap even more money, year in and year out, by sticking around:

• He does not earn a salary but is granted 12 sets of options that vest when Tesla hits various milestones tied to market cap, revenue and earnings.

• The first tranche, worth $1.5 billion at current share prices, was triggered when Tesla’s market cap stayed above $100 billion for six months.

• Future batches are released for each additional $50 billion added to the company’s market value. Tesla is now worth about $165 billion, meaning Musk is likely to get another tranche by year-end.

This is the epitome of pay for performance: Mr. Musk makes money only if shareholders make even more.

But who deserves the gains? The Instagram case posed this as a question of shareholders (Mr. Zuckerberg) versus founders (Mr. Krieger and Mr. Systrom). But in the new era of stakeholder capitalism, what about labor, community and others? This question could become more relevant if Mr. Musk moves out of California to a low-tax jurisdiction like Nevada or Texas.

In other words, it’s not about whether Musk deserves the pay but who else shares the rewards along the way.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a hedge fund and a labor union challenging the constitutionality of the board that Congress created in 2016 to repair Puerto Rico’s broken finances. At stake were agreements affecting millions of people on the island and beyond.

“This is a real case about real things,” Justice Samuel Alito said at oral arguments last October. Specifically, it’s about the biggest government bankruptcy in U.S. history, which could set a precedent for pandemic-hit states struggling with debt. Puerto Rico’s financial oversight board filed a plan last year to cut the territory’s debt by a third, from $129 billion to $86 billion.

Justices rejected an effort to undo the restructuring. The hedge fund Aurelius Investment said that the board lacked authority to act because its members weren’t confirmed by the Senate. (The firm spent years fighting Argentina in court for a better deal on that country’s defaulted debt.) Federal appointments require Senate confirmation, but federal officers working in a local capacity — like the board members in Puerto Rico — do not, the justices concluded.

More problems for bondholders loom, with the board recently projecting that it will have $15 billion less than anticipated over the next decade to repay Puerto Rico’s debts, because of the pandemic’s impact on the island’s economy.

The pandemic has clearly battered the U.S. economy. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released figures yesterday about how bad the damage will be.

The agency projected that it would cost $7.9 trillion in G.D.P. over the next decade, largely because consumers and businesses will rein in spending for years to come. The economy isn’t expected to return to its pre-pandemic trend until the end of 2029.

Shoppers expect low prices from the e-commerce giant, but Amazon scored a deal of its own yesterday when it sold $10 billion worth of bonds at a rock-bottom price.

Some of the debt was sold with an interest rate of just 0.4 percent, The Financial Times reports. The newspaper notes that this rate for three-year notes is barely above the equivalent for government debt, and set a record for the lowest rate ever recorded for a borrower in the U.S. corporate bond market at that maturity.

It’s the latest sign of hunger for blue-chip companies’ debt, fueled by Fed programs that effectively guarantee huge swaths of the corporate bond market.

Deals

• Steward Health Care plans to announce today that it has bought back control from the investment firm Cerberus, becoming one of the biggest physician-owned and operated health care systems in the U.S.

• One of China’s biggest chipmakers, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, filed for an I.P.O. in Shanghai that could raise $2.8 billion. (CNBC)

• Talk about tough timing: Viagogo, the online ticketing company, closed a $4 billion deal to buy rival StubHub from eBay in February — just before the pandemic halted all live events. (Forbes)

Politics and policy

• The acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees the nation’s largest banks, warned that face masks worn for coronavirus protection could aid bank robbers. (NYT)

Tech

• Twitter flagged a tweet by Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, for violating its rules against glorifying violence. (NYT)

• Why President Trump’s attacks on Twitter are good for the social network’s business. (Bloomberg)

Best of the rest

• Retailers’ latest headache: what to do with mountains of unsold clothes. (Reuters)

• Pandora, the jewelry giant, says it will use only recycled gold and silver by 2025. (FT)

• Those nifty SpaceX spacesuits? The astronauts who wore them for last weekend’s launch give them a “5-star review.” (NYT, Business Insider)

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.

We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

Source link