Business News

Despite starting at the back of the grid due to a penalty, Charles Leclerc believes he can come back strong but believes he will need a stroke of luck to climb to the top step of the podium.

• Also read: Canadian Grand Prix: Alonso, the surprise guest

• Also read: Canadian Grand Prix: Nicholas Latifi’s qualification fails

“Winning will be complicated and I need some luck, especially with the safety car,” explained the Ferrari driver, who won two of the first three stages of the season. You can never say never. Anything can happen here and I hope luck smiles on us. »

His penalty is the result of a change to his engine components made by his team after last Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku. The Monegasque is aware of the difficult situation he fell into but is very happy with his car.

“Obviously it’s not an easy situation but the car’s performance is there,” said Leclerc, who played it safe in first qualifying before returning to the pits as he had nothing to win. It will be important to overtake as quickly as possible. In Thursday’s free practice, however, we realized that overtaking wasn’t going to be as easy as we had imagined. I will try to do the best possible job to assert myself in front of the peloton. »

After the rain of the last two days we’re expecting a good day for the race, which isn’t entirely to Leclerc’s delight. “When you’re in front, it’s good that the weather is nice, but when you’re behind it’s different,” explained the man who will start from 19th place. In conditions like today [samedi], there are more chances that things can happen. It’s not serious. I will focus on ourselves. We have the car to come back. »

Great comeback

With a compote at the end of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix where he struggled to get out of his car, Lewis Hamilton was pleased with his 4th place finish in qualifying.

“It was a real physical challenge to manage the pain this week,” said the winner of the last edition of the Canadian Grand Prix in 2019. The medical team really helped me. The car is still struggling, we still have a long way to go before we reach the desired level. »

“To finish in the top 5 in qualifying under these conditions is unbelievable,” added the seven-time world champion. We tried several settings in free practice on Thursday. For the qualification we rely on various adjustments. Hopefully we found the right ones for the race. »

Schumacher’s best result

Mick Schumacher, still awaiting his first point of the season, also did well by finishing 6th, his best result in qualifying so far.

“I found grip wherever I put the car, that was the goal. However, this was not the case with the last set of tyres. So far I’ve been very, very happy and it’s a great position to build on to finally get my first points. It’s going to be difficult, that’s for sure. But we will do our best. »

His teammate Kevin Magnussen also made his boss happy with fifth place.

Paxton Bowers, 5, received a Covid shot at Texas Children’s Hospital in November. Credit… Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday recommended Covid vaccines for children as young as 6 months old, who were among the last Americans to qualify for the shots. Parents should be able to start vaccinating young children as early as Tuesday.

Federal authorities have now approved the Moderna vaccine for children ages 6 months to 5 years and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 6 months to 4 years. (Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine has been available for children ages 5 and older since November.)

All children as young as 6 months, including those who have already been infected with the coronavirus, should receive a Covid vaccine, said Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the CDC, in a statement.

“Together, and with science at the forefront, we have taken another important step forward in our nation’s fight against Covid-19,” she said. “We know millions of parents and carers are anxious to get their young children vaccinated and today’s decision allows them to do that.”

Videodr Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, endorsed the decision after a scientific panel supported the recordings despite reservations about a lack of data. CreditCredit … Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

After meetings on Friday and Saturday, the agency’s scientific advisors strongly supported the vaccines, despite reservations about the lack of data, particularly on the efficacy of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine.

The CDC panel heard evidence of the vaccines’ effectiveness in the youngest children, but repeatedly pushed Pfizer back on its estimates, noting that three doses of this vaccine would be needed compared to two doses of the Moderna vaccine.

Both vaccines are safe and both produced levels of antibodies similar to those found in young adults. However, the CDC advisors struggled with the difficulty of recommending two very different vaccines for the same population.

“Executing these two rollouts will be incredibly challenging,” said Katelyn Jetelina, a public health expert and author of the widely read newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist.

“There’s going to have to be a lot of proactive communication about the difference between the two and the implications of emphasizing one over the other,” she said.

In its clinical trials, Moderna found that two injections of its vaccine, each at a quarter of the adult dose, produced antibody levels at least as high as those seen in young adults.

The company estimated the vaccine’s effectiveness against symptomatic infections at about 51 percent in children aged 6 to 24 months and 37 percent in children aged 2 to 5 years.

Side effects were few, although about one in five children had a fever. Its effectiveness against serious illness and death is believed to be higher, similar to adults.

Based on this data, the FDA approved two doses of the Moderna vaccine four weeks apart.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine also generated a strong immune response, but only after three doses, company officials told scientific advisers on Friday.

Two doses of the vaccine were insufficient, they said, justifying the FDA’s decision in February to delay approval of the vaccine until regulators had data on three doses. Two doses may not have been enough, as the company only gave children a tenth of the adult dose with each injection, some advisers said.

The vaccine has an overall effectiveness of 80 percent in children under the age of 5, Pfizer scientists claimed on Friday. However, that calculation was based on only three children in the vaccination group and seven receiving a placebo, making it an unreliable metric, CDC consultants noted.

“We should just assume that we don’t have efficacy data,” said Dr. Sarah Long, an infectious disease expert at Drexel University College of Medicine. But dr Long said she was “comfortable enough” with other data showing the vaccine’s effectiveness.

Three doses of the Pfizer vaccine produced antibody levels comparable to those seen in young adults, suggesting it’s probably just as effective.

“The Pfizer is a three-dose series, but as a three-dose series it’s quite effective,” said Dr. William Towner, who led vaccine trials for Moderna and Pfizer at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California.

Any vaccine would be better than none, added Dr. Towner added. He predicted that some parents might choose Moderna because it’s easier to take kids to a pediatrician for two shots than making sure they get three.

The Pfizer vaccine was approved in November for children ages 5 to 11, but less than 30 percent in that age group have received two shots. In CDC polls in February, about half of parents said they would vaccinate their children, but in May only a third of parents said they intend to do so.

The consultants discussed whether vaccination increases protection against serious illnesses in children who are already infected. Little information is available for children aged 5 to 11 years due to the low uptake of vaccines in this age group.

But in adults, infection with the earlier Omicron variant alone has not been enough to protect against the newer versions.

Vaccinations are still needed to protect children from future variants, the experts concluded. “This combined protection is really the safest and most effective,” said Dr. Sara Oliver, a CDC scientist who led Saturday’s discussion.

Parents of the youngest children may be more willing to choose a Covid vaccine if it can be offered alongside other routine vaccinations, said Dr. towner

“That’s the area that a lot of people are unsure about right now,” he said. “I hope there will be a guide to that.”

An employee sells Apple iPhones as a customer shop in an Apple Store.

Mike Segar | Reuters

Workers at an Apple store in Towson, Maryland, voted to join a union on Saturday, a significant achievement for organized labor that could encourage workers at other Apple stores to unionize. The Towson Store is the first unionized Apple store in the United States

The vote is a defeat for Apple, which has opposed union organizing efforts, and could spur workers at the company’s other retail locations to move forward with organizing.

The balance was 65 yes votes and 33 no votes. Around 110 employees were eligible to vote to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Voting began Wednesday and ran through Saturday night.

“We did it, Towson! We won our union vote! Thanks to everyone who worked so hard and supported everyone!” Towson organizers tweeted.

The National Labor Relations Board has yet to confirm the votes. This can take about a week. According to the NLRB, once the vote is confirmed, Apple will have to negotiate with the union over working conditions.

The Towson store is not one of Apple’s so-called “flagship” stores in high-traffic areas of major cities. It’s a smaller place in a mall.

Apple management caught the store’s attention as soon as workers announced plans to form a union. Apple’s director of retail and human resources, Deirdre O’Brien, visited the site in May. A recorded message from O’Brien, distributed to employees after union campaigns went public, discouraged retail workers from joining unions, saying it would make it harder for Apple to respond to workers’ concerns. She said the unions have no obligation to the company’s employees.

Workers are looking for more input on wages and working conditions, e.g. B. How the shops deal with the safety of Covid and other processes.

“To be clear, the decision to form a union is about giving us, as workers, access to rights that we don’t currently have,” Towson organizers wrote in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook .

The Towson store is one of several Apple locations that have publicly announced union campaigns, and other retail organizers in other locations are closely monitoring the results. Two busy, high-volume stores in New York, the Grand Central Terminal and World Trade Center locations, have signaled they are unionizing but have yet to get to the official voting stage.

A store in Atlanta, Georgia was due to hold an election earlier this month, which was postponed indefinitely after the Communication Workers of America union claimed Apple intimidated its employees. Stores in Louisville, Kentucky and Nashville, Tennessee are also in the process of organizing, according to NBC News.

The Apple Retail Union at the Towson store is unlikely to jeopardize Apple’s core business model of selling devices and services. Although Apple Stores are an important channel for selling products, Apple also sells through its website and retail partners such as carriers. Apple’s hourly workforce is smaller than at other companies, like Amazon and Starbucks, which are currently facing waves of union campaigns.

Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world. The company reported worldwide sales of over $365 billion in 2021 and says its US retail workers make at least $22 an hour.

Several women gathered in downtown Montreal on Saturday night to denounce sex tourism on the sidelines of the Formula 1 Grand Prix taking place in metropolitan Quebec this weekend.

• Also read: Grand Prix: François Dumontier, the victim

• Also read: Sexual Exploitation: Government invests $880,000 to help victims

• Also read: The #1 pimp in Montreal? Let’s say Opportunity #1 instead!

“Buying sex is not a sport, it’s a crime” or “Stop buying us” [Arrêtez de nous acheter] were among the few slogans uttered by the demonstrators.

Thierry Laforce / QMI Agency

The rally took place early in the evening at the intersection of Crescent Street, where many activities are organized for the sporting event, and Sainte-Catherine Street.

The recent Chapter 7 failure of EV startup ELMS has probably emboldened some EV haters to rejoice, but electric last-mile delivery trucks remain the strongest immediate bet in EVs, in my opinion.

The four largest home delivery fleets in the US — Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and DHL — know what the North American Council on Freight Efficiency is predicting: An electric last-mile van uses about $2,000 in energy per year, compared to $10,000 -Dollars per year in fuel, charged at $2.98 per gallon. That wasn’t enough to save ELMS from its financial woes, alleged stock market speculation and executive departures.

ELMEN

The company offered a Class 1 urban van with a range of 110 miles at a base price of $28,000 and a larger Class 3 chassis that would normally be fitted with a cargo box with a range of 125 miles. These range figures would overwhelm any electric car buyer, but they are actually proof of why electric delivery vans make sense: they can fulfill an important working role with an easily achievable range and, moreover, harmonize with many other characteristics of electrification.

Rewarding grunt

Vans need ample torque and there’s a better way to use it than hitting 60mph in 2 seconds. Electric motors deliver almost all of their massive torque from 1rpm, while petrol and even relatively high-torque diesel engines need to be coaxed and revved to deliver maximum torque.

UPS has hired electric delivery truck maker Arrival to begin building its fleet of electric last-mile trucks in local “micro-factories” across the US, UK and Europe.

UPS

Good at walking slowly

There are few things less efficient than internal combustion engines, which use most of their fuel to generate waste heat rather than move the vehicle they’re built into, and slow, stop-and-go driving is combustion inefficiency in their worst form. But electric powertrains are hardly phased by this driving pattern and remain efficient when cruising around town. Freely adapted from Eric Schmidt: The fact that delivery vehicles were powered by combustion engines is a bug in automotive history.

Routes kill fear

There’s not much reason for range anxiety when you know exactly where you’re going, down to the distance, number of turns, stops, traffic conditions and terrain. That kind of knowledge makes it clear if you’re going to have enough cargo and is the kind of planning and analysis that has long been part of local trucking. It’s the opposite of the unpredictable driving that we do (and imagine we will) do with our private cars. And while the charge analysis gauge on EV dashboards is just data art for most owners, it matters a great deal to fleet operators. Electric delivery vans come home for a fee or are not sent at all.

Frequent use is crucial

The best way to recoup the high marginal costs of electrification or autonomy is to use the product as much as possible. Delivery trucks work 8 to 12 hours a day instead of sitting parked for 95% of their lives, their advanced features are rarely used. Electric work trucks should pay back their investment faster than a Tesla Model S Plaid avoids itself.

ELMEN

Low floors are important

Remember the last time you moved and how tiring it was loading things in and out of that truck? A low, level truck bed is a big deal on vans, which are well served by the flat, low-mount batteries used by most electric vehicles. Eliminating an engine and its powertrain also eliminates the “dog kennel” that often occupies the center of the cab and can require a design with an extra step. Even a step eliminated in getting in and out of the cab when a driver stops can create a more enjoyable, less tiring day and a slightly more attractive job.

Even with gasoline priced at $2.98 per gallon, the energy cost difference between electric and gasoline last mile trucks was huge.

NACFE

Delivery fleets get it

Amazon recently announced it would buy up to 100,000 Rivian electric vans, although the company will later source them from Ram as well Jeff Bezos ripped Rivian about the delivery of the vehicles. FedEx will only buy electric delivery vehicles by 2030. UPS has ordered 10,000 electric delivery vans to be deployed across the US, UK and Europe by 2024. And you might not even have known that a fifth of DHL’s delivery truck fleet is electric, because it uses familiar-looking Ford Transits converted by Lightning eMotors.

It’s not clear how much Americans will be driving when we emerge from the pandemic, but local delivery miles still have a long way to go. Getting that job done with clean, quiet, and economical vehicles for the last mile seems to be the most obvious priority in the immediate future of electric vehicles.

Trial River’s verdict on defamation of ex-spouse Depp-Heard may come as a surprise.

• Also read: Amber Heard stands by “every word” of her allegations against Johnny Depp

• Also read: Amber Heard speaks out against ‘hate and irritation’ during Johnny Depp trial online

• Also read: Johnny Depp’s lawyer calls love rumors ‘sexist’

The two ex-spouses were found guilty of defamation and convicted, albeit in very different proportions. Amber Heard is ordered to pay $10.35 million in compensatory and punitive damages to Johnny Depp, who must pay his accuser $2 million in compensatory damages.

The huge difference in verdicts may seem incomprehensible, starting with Amber Heard, who didn’t hesitate to explain on NBC News that the trial had been influenced by social media.

One of the seven jury members has agreed, on condition of anonymity, but is known to be a man, to speak to an ABC journalist.

And the reason has nothing to do with Twitter or TikTok: Amber Heard just didn’t convince her and her statements seemed to show her contradictions between her actions and the facts mentioned.

“They had a few arguments. They yelled at each other. I don’t think that makes either of them right. This is what happens when we fight. But to come to what she claimed, there wasn’t enough or any evidence to support her statement. If you are an abused woman, why are you buying the other “the attacker” a knife? If you really want Johnny Depp to get drugs, then why are you doing them in front of him? he wonders.

The material “evidence” presented by the actress also underscores the fragility of the testimony.

Amber Heard describes Johnny Depp as a heavy drug and alcohol user and uses a photo of the collapsed actor as evidence.

“But, the juror said, if you mix alcohol with marijuana, you’re going to end up like this — you’ll pass out. We’ve talked at length about all the drugs she claims he takes, and most of them are drugs that turn you on. You don’t become violent with these drugs. You become a zombie as shown in the pictures. »

Not more compelling are the photos of Amber Heard covered in bruises.

“She never leaves the house without makeup, but to file a restraining order in court, she doesn’t wear makeup and her publicist is with her. Those things add up and it’s starting to be hard to believe,” said the jury member, who no longer appreciated Amber Heard’s stance in court and questioned his sincerity.

“It was like she could switch from one feeling to another with a snap of her fingers. She answered a question, started crying and two seconds later she was freezing. It didn’t look natural,” he said, explaining that the jury dubbed it “crocodile tears.”

The seven jurors (five men, two women) also disapproved that Amber Heard withheld the divorce money when she announced she had donated that $7 million to charities.

Not only did she lie – as she had claimed in an interview to have given the entire sum despite paying only a tiny part of it – but also the excuse that took her to court (having to keep the money to fighting back a lawsuit by Johnny Depp) didn’t fit the chronology of facts.

“That she didn’t give much was hypocritical,” the juror commented.

He also spoke about Amber Heard’s post-trial comments, which the jury accused the jury of being manipulated and influenced by social media, mostly in favor of Johnny Depp.

“That’s not true. Social media doesn’t affect us. We focused on the evidence. We didn’t consider what was happening outside the court. (…) There were serious allegations and a lot of money at stake, we don’t have it taken lightly, ”he stressed, specifying that neither he nor at least three other members of the jury did not have a Twitter account.

That poor impression and the weakness of her argument and evidence therefore earned Amber Heard the right to large punitive damages from which Johnny Depp is exempt.

The actress, who in the filmed interview she gave NBC News, says she wants “people to see me as a person” could have an opportunity to be more convincing with a new jury, as his attorney has announced , appeal assessment.

The call has yet to be answered. Johnny Depp, who lost his defamation suit against the Sun in the UK and in which Amber Heard testified, had his appeal rejected.

This week in coins. Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.

This week’s crypto crash is an ongoing spectacle, with the total market cap of all blockchain assets shrinking to approximately $844.5 billion, a level not seen since the start of 2021.

Bitcoin plummeted well below $20,000 and is trading at $19,095 as of this writing – the market leader has lost a third of its value in the past seven days.

Ethereum is also in the ditch, trading at $994.68 at the time of writing, down 36% over the week.

Other leading cryptocurrencies that have seen price losses of 30% or more this week include privacy coin Monero, which fell nearly 37% to $102.28, Cronos, which fell 30% to $0.10, and Polygon, which fell 33% to $0.36.

Each of the 30 largest cryptocurrencies, with the exception of stablecoins, are down double-digit percentages since last Saturday.

Tether is currently trading slightly below its peg at $0.9988.

“Extreme Market Conditions”

While many crypto skeptics were quick to point out the falling prices, markets everywhere have slipped.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve announced a 0.75% interest rate hike — the biggest since 1994. When the Fed hikes rates, many investors tend to dump riskier assets like crypto and tech stocks to prepare for a potential recession.

A report by S&P Global Market Intelligence released the same day revealed that FAANG shares (linked to Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) have lost a combined $3.328 trillion this year.

Similarly, a closer look at events in the blockchain industry this week reveals that things have been pretty grim.

It started Sunday night when crypto lender Celsius froze all customer withdrawals, swaps and remittances, citing “extreme market conditions” and liquidity issues. That night, the decentralized finance platform’s native CEL token suffered a 70 percent drop in the space of an hour amid a broader market sell-off that took Bitcoin’s price down to 2020 levels.

Celsius’ drop may have catalyzed the market decline this week, as it came just a month after the collapse of another DeFi standard-bearer: Terra. To understand how they compare, just look at Celsius’s business model: Celsius offers over 7% returns for locking stablecoins like USDC and Tether and 7.25% for Polygon, 6.25% for Bitcoin and 6 % for Ethereum. The protocol then lends its pooled tokens at higher rates.

Now, Terra’s dollar-pegged stablecoin UST ran to zero last month after its key use case — 20% yield on Anchor — was hit by market uncertainty. A mass exit followed, resulting in billions of UST being burned to mint LUNA at a rate too fast for the pegging algorithm.

While Celsius hasn’t collapsed nearly as quickly as Terra, a lot of funds have fled recently: In the first half of 2022, the total amount of digital assets locked on the protocol shrank from around $24 billion to $12 billion.

On Wednesday, embattled Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky broke a three-day silence to praise the strength of the Celsius community, but gave no indication of when users will be able to withdraw funds again.

@CelsiusNetwork Team works continuously. We are focused on your concerns and are grateful to have heard from so many. Seeing them come together is a clear sign that our community is the strongest in the world. This is a difficult moment; Your patience and support mean the world to us.

— Alex Mashinsky (@Mashinsky) June 15, 2022

On Thursday, a Wall Street Journal report indicated that Celsius’ top investors were unwilling to bail out the company.

There was also talk of an “extended crypto winter” across the industry. Both Coinbase and Celsius rival BlockFi are cutting their workforces by up to 20%.

Meanwhile, Binance is, um, hiring.

LOS ANGELES (CNS) — The average price of a gallon of self-serve regular gasoline in Los Angeles County on Saturday fell for the fifth time in the past six days after a long series of increases that took it to record highs and declined 1.4 cents to 6th $.43.

The declines come as a result of “a nearly 60-cent slump in the Los Angeles wholesale gasoline market last week,” which was compounded by “a very volatile week for the US economy and a slight drop in consumer demand, reported by the EIA. caused, which is likely due to record prices,” said Doug Shupe, communications manager for the Automobile Club of Southern California, referring to the US Energy Information Administration.

The average price set records for 16 consecutive days, then fell a tenth of a cent on June 13 before hitting another record high on June 14, rising to $6,462. It’s 2.8 cents down from a week ago, but 34.1 cents up from a month ago and $2.178 up from a year ago, according to figures from the AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

Orange County’s price also fell for the fifth time in six days, falling 1.8 cents to $6.367. It also set records for 16 consecutive days before falling on June 13. The average price in Orange County is 4.1 cents down from a week ago, but 29.4 cents up from a month ago and $2.165 up from a year ago.

Los Angeles County’s median price has risen $1,634 since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 “sent shockwaves through the oil market that have kept oil prices high,” said Andrew Gross, a national public relations executive for the AAA. The median price in Orange County is up $1.59.

The Northern California gas station manager was fired after a 69-cent-a-gallon error

According to the US Energy Information Administration, the cost of crude accounts for a little more than half of the pump price. The remainder of the price includes the other components of the gasoline, production costs, distribution costs, overheads for everyone involved in production, distribution and sales, taxes and California carbon offset fees paid by the refiners.

The national median price of a gallon of self-serve regular gasoline fell for the fourth straight day after an 18-day streak of increases, down 1.1 cents to $4,989. The average price rose 41.5 cents over the 18-day streak, setting a record every day. It fell two-tenths of a cent on Wednesday, half a cent on Thursday, and nine-tenths of a cent on Friday.

Copyright © 2022 City News Service, Inc. All rights reserved.