The Full Belmonte, 12/28/21
Two lines on a rapid at home Covid-19 test indicate a positive result.
“The CDC has shortened the recommended times people should isolate when they’ve tested positive or have been exposed to Covid-19. Now, the agency says people only have to isolate for five days instead of 10 if they test positive but don’t have symptoms — and continue to wear a mask around others for five more days. People who were sick but whose symptoms are improving and don’t have a fever can also leave the house after five days, as can those who were exposed to Covid-19 but are fully vaccinated. The CDC says the change is based on scientific evidence that most transmission occurs early in the disease, right before and after the onset of symptoms.” Read more at CNN
“NEW YORK (AP) — Flight cancellations that disrupted holiday travel, stretched into Monday as airlines called off more than 1,000 U.S. flights because crews were sick with COVID-19 during one of the year’s busiest travel periods, and storm fronts added to the havoc.
Flight delays and cancellations tied to staffing shortages have been common this year. Airlines encouraged workers to quit in 2020, when air travel collapsed, and carriers have struggled to make up ground this year, when air travel rebounded faster than almost anyone had expected. The arrival of the omicron variant only exacerbated the problem.” Read more at AP News
“At least five Republican-led states have extended unemployment benefits to people who’ve lost jobs over vaccine mandates — and a smattering of others may soon follow.
Workers who quit or are fired for cause — including for defying company policy — are generally ineligible for jobless benefits. But Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, and Tennessee have carved out exceptions for those who won’t submit to the multishot coronavirus vaccine regimens that many companies now require. Similar ideas have been floated in Wyoming, Wisconsin, and Missouri.
Critics contend that these states are incentivizing people to skip shots that public health experts say offer the best line of defense against the coronavirus. Business leaders and industry groups have argued against the rule changes because, they say, companies would shoulder much of the costs. And the efforts are playing out as the Biden administration is pressing immunization rules for private companies and as coronavirus cases are surging again because of the fast-spreading Omicron variant.
Observers say it’s a mark of the politicization of the coronavirus — with fights flaring over business closures, mask mandates, and more — and how it has scrambled state politics and altered long-held positions. It wasn’t long ago, they note, that two dozen Republican-led states moved to restrict unemployment aid to compel residents to return to the workforce and ease labor shortages.” Read more at Boston Globe
“The Justice Department has been doling out a surge of grants to help cities confront recent increases in violent crime. The department’s Office of Justice Programs says hundreds of communities and organizations are being awarded or are eligible to receive a slice of $1.6 billion to support a wide range of public safety programs. For instance, the Justice Assistance Grant program will share more than $271.9 million -- with $187 million going to state law enforcement agencies and over $84.9 million to more than 900 cities and counties. Initiatives covered by the funding may include things like drug and gang task forces, domestic violence programs, treatment and correction programs, and other crime reduction efforts.” Read more at CNN
“At least four people are dead following a string of shootings in the Denver metro area last night. The suspect is also dead, authorities said. The shooter killed and injured people at multiple locations -- including a business, a shopping area and a hotel. Police were involved in a vehicular chase and exchanged gunfire with the suspect. At one point, the suspect disabled a police car during the chase, and wounded an officer before being shot and killed. Law enforcement officials say there is no ongoing threat to the community, and they have no known motive for the shootings.” Read more at CNN
“Banks and regulators around the world have managed to replace the plumbing of the entire financial system — and almost nobody has noticed, Axios' Felix Salmon writes.
As of Monday (Jan. 3), Libor — the interest rate that once underpinned some $300 trillion in financial contracts from derivatives to corporate credit lines — effectively will be dead.
Why it matters: The easily manipulable Libor was at the center of one of the biggest scandals in the history of finance, which came to light in 2012.
Where it stands: Libor is being replaced by a suite of more reliable benchmarks — Sonia for British pounds, Tona for Japanese yen, Saron for Swiss francs, and so on.
The U.S. dollar is the only currency that will still continue to publish an official Libor rate. But even that will only be used for legacy loan products.
A longstanding but less famous benchmark called SOFR, published by the New York Fed, is the leading replacement.” Read more at Axios
“MOSCOW — Russia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the liquidation of the country’s most prominent human rights organization, the International Memorial Society, in a decision that dismayed rights advocates.
The ruling signaled the Kremlin’s determination to obliterate dissent, after a year in which authorities have jailed and harassed hundreds of opposition figures, activists, journalists and human rights lawyers, forcing dozens of them to flee the country for their safety.
The International Memorial Society, known as Memorial, was set up by dissidents — including renowned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov — during the final years of the Soviet Union. It is focused on researching Soviet abuses in the gulag, a vast web of prison camps where political prisoners toiled and died, many of them executed on the basis of concocted evidence.” Read more at Washington Post
“The defense ministers of Japan and China have agreed to set up a joint defense hotline by the end of 2022, even as the two East Asian powers continue to be at odds over territorial disputes and military posturing. Tokyo is showing increasing concern over the situation surrounding Taiwan, the self-governed island that China claims as its own. Japan and China also have a long-standing dispute over an uninhabited Japanese-controlled island chain in the East China Sea -- known as the Senkakus in Japan and Diaoyus in China. Over the last few years, Japan has bolstered its air and sea defenses in response to China’s displays of military aggression in the South China Sea and beyond.” Read more at CNN
“Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed Farmajo has suspended the powers of the prime minister, triggering fears of political violence in the country. Farmajo has accused Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble of looting public land and tampering with the ensuing investigation. The tussle over power between the two leaders stems from a spat over long-delayed parliamentary elections in Somalia. Both men have accused each other of holding up the elections. The US and UK have both urged calm, lest the situation in the politically unstable nation takes a violent turn.” Read more at CNN
“The year 2021 will probably go down in the annals of space history as a turning point, a moment when ordinary citizens started leaving Earth on a regular basis. Multiple crews lifted off on several different spacecraft, and for a brief moment this month, there were a record 19 people in the weightless environment of space — and eight of them were private citizens.
But for all the achievements of 2021 — which include a rover landing on Mars, a small drone called Ingenuity flying in that planet’s thin atmosphere, and the launch of the James Webb Space telescope, the most powerful space telescope ever — 2022 could hold just as much promise, if not more.
If 2021 was the year of the private space tourist, 2022 could be marked by the first steps toward a return to the moon, as NASA and the growing space industry seek to maintain the momentum that has been building over the past several years in what has amounted to a renaissance of exploration.
A pair of massive rockets, both more powerful than the Saturn V that flew the Apollo astronauts to the moon, are getting ready to fly in 2022. Those launches would mark the first significant steps in NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2025 and create a campaign that would allow a permanent presence on and around the moon.
After years of development, and billions of dollars spent, NASA is finally gearing up to launch its Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule, which are designed to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since Apollo. The first mission, known as Artemis I, is scheduled for March or April and would send Orion, without any crew on board, to orbit around the moon.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Apple moved its 16 major New York City stores, including the Fifth Avenue cube, to online pickups only. Apple also has temporarily closed the Carnegie Library store in D.C., the Tower Theatre store in LA, and some locations in London, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Texas.” [Axios] Read more at Bloomberg
“Goldman Sachs will require employees and visitors to its U.S. offices to have booster shots, beginning in February. Beginning in January, in-person staff will get tested twice weekly.” [Axios] Read more at Reuters
“The video game maker Riot Games agreed to pay $100 million to settle a gender discrimination suit with more than 2,000 current and former female employees.” Read more at New York Times
“Pharmacies from Italy north to Paris are offering cheap, quick COVID tests as countries try to preserve their holiday traditions and economies, Axios political editor Glen Johnson writes in this dispatch from Paris.
Why it matters: Europe has been ahead of the U.S. in suffering the effects of Omicron.
Glen's 10-day family trip offers lessons for the U.S.:
You get in virtually no restaurant without proof of vaccination. For Europeans, it's a digital pass via a QR code on their smartphones. For Americans, it's showing their CDC vaccination card — and occasionally a passport to prove it's their card.
A pre-departure test from Italy required a three-hour wait in Milan's chilly Piazza Duomo. Then Swiss border guards never asked for the certificate, or the country's mandatory pre-entry registration form.
In Paris, pharmacies and even the Champs-Élysées were dotted with pop-up test centers. They offered rapid tests — with certified results emailed directly to digital pass holders, or verified with a paper certificate — that are good for air travel. It cost €30 (about $34).
What we're watching:
Packed sidewalks and cafés in Paris, and crowds for a full-moon tour of the Coliseum in Rome, show people are trying to resume life.
In Rome, police outside the Pantheon were telling visitors to pull masks up over their noses.
Strategies that have worked for the Johnson party: masks both in and outdoors, except when away from crowds ... eating outdoors when possible and away from others when indoors ... traveling by van to avoid airport and airplane crowds ... wearing N95 masks in Paris.
The bottom line: Travel is possible — even overseas. But you have to be flexible and ready to spend time and money.
For Glen's family, that included showing a vax card, game ticket and passport (to prove the ticket was theirs), to enter famed San Siro stadium in Milan to watch Inter Milan beat Serie A soccer rival Torino. The crowd of over 50,000 all wore masks.” Read more at Axios
“The NBA and NBPA agreed Monday to alter their regulations, allowing players and staff who test positive but are asymptomatic to return to work six days after a positive test instead of the previous 10. Players can still return at any point after two negative tests in 24 hours.
If the NFL adopts the CDC guidelines, it could be a huge shift for unvaccinated players, who must isolate for 10 days after a positive test under current regulations.
The NHL, meanwhile, adopted taxi squads Sunday before the league resumes tonight after a short hiatus. The league is reviewing its protocols, which mandate the 10-day absence, after the CDC announcement.
This doesn’t mean COVID cases are slowing — far from it. The NFL set a record for positive tests Monday. The NBA already broke a record for number of players appearing in a season (547) by yesterday, December 27.” Read more at The Athletic
“A lawsuit raises questions about how Disney handled sexual-assault allegations at ‘Good Morning America.’ Kirstyn Crawford, a former producer at ABC News, alleged that senior officials at ABC and parent company Disney were aware of misconduct claims against Michael Corn, the former producer of ‘Good Morning America,’ the network's biggest revenue earner, but failed for several years to investigate. ABC says it fired Mr. Corn after formal complaints were made against him this year. A Disney spokeswoman said ABC News disputes the claims made against it and will address the matter in court. Mr. Corn has denied the allegations, calling the claims in the lawsuit fabrications.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Skier Mikaela Shiffrin has tested positive for Covid just months before the Beijing Winter Olympics. Shiffrin, a three-time Olympic medallist, is the first U.S. superstar athlete known to have tested positive. She will likely recover in time to compete, but her case highlights the Omicron variant's threat to the Games.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“AT&T has cut promised life insurance for many of its 220,000 retired employees who are eligible for the benefits. These cuts don’t apply to top executives and come as the telecom company remains profitable. AT&T said its cuts bring the benefits in line with what other large employers offer.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Food prices are expected to rise by 5% in the first half of 2022 as many manufacturers say they plan to charge more to offset higher wage, material and freight costs. ‘There’s nothing immune from price increases,’ said Tony Sarsam, chief executive officer of food retailer and distributor SpartanNash.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Churches are using big data to target new members
“More than 30,000 churches have signed up to use Gloo, a startup that analyzes Americans’ personal data and online activities to help churches reach people most likely to be open to their messages and join their congregations. For some churches, the online ads are part of an effort to keep their congregations going, with the pandemic accelerating years of falling attendance. In doing so, they are borrowing techniques long used by businesses and political campaigns. ‘There are a lot of people who are in pain and isolated,’ said Randy Frazee, lead pastor of Westside Family Church. ‘If you don’t come to church, the church will come to you.’” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Alexis Blackburn filed a civil suit against former MLB pitcher Sam Dyson on Monday alleging sexual battery, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. This comes after MLB suspended Dyson for the entire 2021 season when the accusations came to light. Dyson hasn’t played since 2019.” Read more at The Athletic
“Jonathan D. Spence, an eminent scholar of China and its vast history who in books like ‘God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan’ (1996) and ‘The Search for Modern China’ (1990) excavated that country’s past and illuminated its present, died on Saturday at his home in West Haven, Conn. He was 85.
His wife, Annping Chin, said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.
Professor Spence, who taught for more than 40 years at Yale University, where his lecture classes were always in great demand, found the big picture of Chinese history in small details. His books, deeply researched, examined individual lives and odd moments that were representative of larger cultural forces, wrapping it all together with vivid storytelling.” Read more at New York Times