“A new brutal winter storm will rampage across the United States over the next couple of days, with more than 100 million Americans in its path as it tracks from the southern Plains to the East Coast. From Minnesota to Texas, utility companies have implemented rolling blackouts to ease the burden on power grids straining to meet extreme demand for heat and electricity as record low temperatures were reported in city after city. More than 30 people have died because of the intense cold and a series of storms that moved from coast to coast since the weekend. The next winter storm will bring more snow and ice and ‘just a real mess’ to many areas of the country, including the South, Midwest and Northeast, AccuWeather meteorologist Bernie Rayno said. And as the storm advances to the northeast through Friday, snow is forecast to fall along a 2,000-mile-long swath from northwestern and north-central Texas to northern Maine, AccuWeather said.” Read more at USA Today
Montinique Monroe/Getty Images
“Across the South, whose energy grids are largely unwinterized, power outages have left people without heat and water, causing rolling — and in some cases continual — power outages.” [Vox / Umair Irfan]
“In hard-hit Texas, deregulation has disincentivized power companies from securing their grids for winter weather. Now, pipelines have frozen, power plants have gone dark, and the price of electricity is soaring — and over 4 million Texans are without power.” [Vox] [The Washington Post / Will Englund]
“The outages, combined with nearly a year of the coronavirus pandemic, have pushed many Texans to the physical and mental brink: People are unable to charge their medical devices, sleeping in their cars, and losing access to water and grocery stores.” [Vox] [The Texas Tribune / Shannon Najmabadi and Marissa Martinez]
“Minority neighborhoods were among the first to lose power and could be the last to see it returned. Their houses often lack proper insulation and will be at risk of pollution exposure due to proximity to stopping-and-starting industrial sites.” [Vox] [The New York Times / James Dobbins and Hiroko Tabuchi]
“Across Texas, hundreds of cases of hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning have been reported in hospitals as people desperately try to get warm using stoves, grills, gas ovens, and other dangerous means.” [Vox] [The Dallas Morning News / Joseph Hoyt]
“A political battle has ensued, as Republicans have blamed wind and solar energy shutdowns for the blackouts and used it as an opportunity to criticize the Green New Deal — which has not been passed. In actuality, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy are responsible for the vast majority of outages.” [Vox] [The Associated Press / Ali Swenson and Arijeta Lajka]
“Life expectancy in the United States dropped to its lowest level in 15 years – and even lower for Black Americans and Latinos – during the first half of the coronavirus pandemic, a new study released Thursday finds. Data through June 2020 shows life expectancy at birth for the total U.S. population fell from 2019 by a year to 77.8 years , the lowest since 2006, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. Life expectancy for Black populations declined the most from 2019 – by 2.7 years, to 72 years – the lowest level since 2001. Latinos experienced the second-biggest decline, falling 1.9 years since 2019 to a life expectancy of 79.9 years, lower than when it was first recorded in 2006.” Read more at USA Today
“Federal prosecutors have begun an investigation of how the administration of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo handled the Covid-19 pandemic in the state’s nursing homes, people familiar with the matter said.
The new inquiry, led by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn, is in addition to an August request for records from the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil-rights division about state-run nursing homes. The people didn’t specify Wednesday any individuals as the focus of the new query or when it began.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Rush Limbaugh, the relentlessly provocative voice of conservative America who dominated talk radio for more than three decades with shooting-gallery attacks on liberals, Democrats, feminists, environmentalists and other moving targets, died on Wednesday. He was 70.” Read more at New York Times
“Cuba says it has developed a Covid-19 vaccine and will soon begin mass production.” Read more at New York Times
More from Around the World:
“South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was among the first in his country to receive a vaccination, effectively joining an observational study as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is not yet authorized for general use anywhere in the world.”
“The European Union, under heavy pressure to ramp up vaccination efforts, approved contracts for 300 million additional doses of Moderna's vaccine and 200 million more from Pfizer. The EU is also funding more research to successfully hunt down variants and counter them.”
“U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sharply criticized the ‘wildly uneven and unfair’ distribution of vaccines, saying 10 countries have administered 75% of vaccinations.” Read more at AP
“The White House announced a sweeping immigration bill today that would create an eight-year path to citizenship for millions of immigrants already in the country and provide a faster track for undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children. But it faces a tough battle in Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has just a five-vote margin, while Senate Democrats would need some Republican support to cross the 60 vote threshold needed to pass the measure (they currently only hold 50 seats). There are, however, already multiple standalone bills in Congress aimed at revising smaller pieces of the country's immigration system. How to move forward is now up to Congress.” Read more at CNN
“Walmart Inc. WMT 1.06% reported strong holiday sales and said it would raise wages for about 425,000 of its employees after a year in which the Covid-19 pandemic boosted its business.
U.S. comparable sales, or those from stores and digital channels operating for at least 12 months, rose 8.6% in the quarter ended Jan. 29, an acceleration from the third quarter, when sales climbed 6.4%, and higher than most analysts’ forecasts. U.S. e-commerce sales, which include online grocery orders, increased 69% from a year earlier.
The country’s largest private employer said it would raise pay for U.S. workers to an average above $15 an hour. Its minimum starting wage for U.S. workers will remain at $11 an hour.” Read more at Walmart
“Some of the biggest players in last month’s GameStop trading frenzy will face a congressional hearing Thursday as the House Financial Services Committee looks into whether market manipulation was involved. The chief executives of Reddit, Robinhood, electronic-trading firm Citadel Securities and hedge fund Melvin Capital will attend. Also at the hearing will be the investor who spearheaded the GameStop buying frenzy on the r/WallStreetBets Reddit forum, Keith Gill. Despite the uproar, there likely won’t be significant legislation following the hearing, experts say. ‘But there could be some rulemaking that comes out of this from the regulatory agencies,’ said Daniel Smith, a partner at ACA Compliance Group, an advisory firm for financial services.” Read more at USA Today
“After a 293-million-mile trek since its July 2020 launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, NASA’s Perseverance is slated to land on Mars at 3:55 p.m. EST Thursday . The target? Jezero Crater, a harsh surface feature that was likely once a deep lake fed by rivers of running water. The mission? Find signs of life. But before it can begin roving its targeted landing site at a breakneck 0.1 mph, Perseverance has to pull off a series of risky landing maneuvers all by itself. The $2.4 billion rover must slow down from thousands of miles an hour to a soft 1.7 mph at landing. This seven-minute process – from 3:48 p.m. to 3:55 p.m. – is known as the ‘seven minutes of terror.’ Because signals take 11 minutes to reach Earth, human input in the event of a mishap is impossible. Perseverance is on her own.” Read more at USA Today
“Serena Williams’ long quest for a 24th Grand Slam title will have to wait. Because once again, the best player in women’s tennis stood in her way.
Naomi Osaka, who hasn’t lost an official match since last February, put together a dominating performance in the Australian Open semifinals, beating Williams 6-3, 6-4 and ending hopes that the 39-year old American would tie Margaret Court’s all-time Slam record at this tournament.
Osaka, seeking her fourth major title and second Australian Open championship, will play American Jennifer Brady, the No. 22 seed.
Williams had to put together a fantastic tournament before the semifinals, beating No. 7 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 2 Simona Halep and flying around the court with more speed and flexibility than she had displayed in several years.” Read more at USA Today
“Pentagon officials will recommend two female generals for four-star commands, after delaying the promotions over fears that the Trump White House would object.” Read more at New York Times
“Ford says it will phase out gasoline-powered vehicles in Europe by 2030.” Read ore at New York Times
“Lives Lived: Dr. Bernard Lown invented the first effective heart defibrillator, saving countless lives, and also co-founded a physicians group that campaigned against nuclear war, earning a Nobel Peace Prize. He died at 99.” Read more at New York Times
“Early on Thursday morning, Australia’s Facebook users—all 17.2 million of them—found themselves caught in a battle of wills between the social media giant and the Australian government. In a warning shot ahead of the country’s proposed law that would force tech platforms to pay news organizations for sharing their articles, Facebook has indefinitely blocked users from reading or sharing news on the platform.
Whether willfully or not, Facebook also blocked the pages of some of Australia’s public services as part of the crackdown. The page for Queensland’s public health service, Canberra’s municipal government, the country’s weather service, and Facebook’s own page were all wiped and locked as part of the sweeping move.
What may have seemed trivial a decade ago has more serious implications today. About 40 percent of Australians report using Facebook as a news source. It also shows the power that Facebook has to act when it wants to—making the company’s excuses for its slow pace in countering problems like misinformation and abuse harder to take at face value.
What’s in the code? At issue is a new Australian media code, that would allow media companies to collectively bargain with tech firms to receive a slice of revenue in return for allowing news content to appear on feeds and search results. Facebook says ‘the value exchange between Facebook and publishers runs in favor of the publishers,’ and that referrals from Facebook offset any losses media companies may incur from missing out on advertisers. The company also claims that only 4 percent of the content shared in Australia is news-related.
Facebook’s cries of innocence aren’t entirely baseless (after all, they aren’t forcing advertisers to use their service) but the rate at which it has come to dominate the digital ad market has spooked lawmakers. Taken together, Google and Facebook now account for 80 percent of the digital ad market in Australia.
Google’s play. Google, which holds an even larger share of that market than Facebook, has taken a different route. This week it announced revenue sharing agreements with Australian media giants Seven West Media, Nine, and News Corp—a major victory for Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire dominates the Australian market.
Power move. The fact that Facebook—which made more than $27 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020 alone—could easily pay whatever fees the proposed law would mandate appears to be beside the point. ‘What Facebook wants to do,’ the BBC’s James Clayton writes, ‘is call the shots.’
With such a deep well of user data at Facebook’s fingertips, the company likely already knows whether the move to restrict news has had an impact on its bottom line. A bigger test will be how Facebook reacts when huge markets like the European Union, which are considering similar legislation, decide to act.
Tech backlash. As Vivek Wadhwa and Tarun Wadhwa wrote at the end of 2020, the Big Tech backlash is alive and well in the United States, too. They gave seven reasons why Silicon Valley will struggle under a Biden administration.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“The French National Assembly approved a bill that would enforce religious secularism for any private contractor engaged in public service — such as a bus driver. It also approved ‘anti-separatism’ legislation that restricts homeschooling and ties government grants to affirmation of French secular principles.” [Vox] [Euronews / Alice Tidey]
“Though it goes unnamed, the bill clearly targets Islamist extremism. France’s weakened Socialist Party decried the bill as a transgression against civil liberties and promoting security over social welfare, while the right said it did not go far enough.” [Vox] [The New York Times / Roger Cohen]
“Critics of centrist President Emmanuel Macron have said the bill, which his party supported, is an attempt to shore up right-wing support against his strongest competitor, far-right leader Marine Le Pen, in upcoming elections.” [Vox] [The Associated Press / Elaine Ganley]
“Britain’s 99-year-old Prince Philip has been admitted to a London hospital after feeling unwell, Buckingham Palace said Wednesday.” Read more at Boston Globe