Business, Financial & Legal - Page 75

You might remember Martin Shkreli from headlines a few years ago, someone who was quickly nicknamed "Pharma Bro" after his company Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the manufacturing license for antiparastic drug Daraprim, and raised its price 56x from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

Well, Pharma Bro is back in the headlines after he has said he wants to get out of prison so he can research a treatment and cure for coronavirus. The news is coming directly from his defense attorney Ben Brafman, who has said he will be filing court papers requesting authorities to release Shkreli for 3 months so he can do the required laboratory work, but "under strict supervision".

Brafman said: "I have always said that if focused and left in a lab, Martin could help cure cancer. Maybe he can help the scientific community better understand this terrible virus".

It looks like Samsung's upcoming 3nm volume production has hit a snag, with the current COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak forcing Samsung to reportedly delay volume production into 2022.

According to DigiTimes, Samsung had projected volume production of the new 3nm process to begin in early 2021 -- but that has now slipped to 2022 because of the coronavirus pandemic. But to be clear, this has nothing to do with Samsung and its production facilities, but more so the world.

The logistics and transportation involved in getting new EUV equipment and other critical production equipment is a big issue for Samsung, and without it, it will not be able to meet its goal of 3nm volume production in early 2021. Samsung will be hit in multiple ways because of it, especially if its competitor in TSMC can come out of the coronavirus pandemic relatively unscathed.

The United Nations has proposed a massive project, so it can better respond to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic -- asking for at least 10% of global domestic product, or GDP.

In a fresh 26-page report, the United Nations has a plan to address the multi-threaded socio-econmic impact that COVID-19 is wrecking on the world. The UN describes it as a "global health crisis unlike any in the 75-year history of the United Nations".

The document by the UN continues: "This report is a call to action, for the immediate health response required to suppress transmission of the virus to end the pandemic; and to tackle the many social and economic dimensions of this crisis. It is, above all, a call to focus on people -- women, youth, low-wage workers, small and medium enterprises, the informal sector and on vulnerable groups who are already at risk".

Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso has ripped into the World Health Organization (WHO), stating that they should be renamed the 'Chinese Health Organization' (CHO), slamming Beijing for covering up the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. Watch it for yourself right here:

Aso said that Taiwan was driven to become a world leader in combating the coronavirus, and that coronavirus has caused the Tokyo 2020 Olympics that were taking place this year -- had been postponed because of the COVID-19 outbreak. The Japanese Deputy Prime Minister had some harsh criticism for China in Japanese parliament recently.

The Japanese Deputy Prime Minister said that "although the details are murky, the WHOs previous Director-General was a Chinese national and at the time there were complaints all around. And now, at least the petition has received 500,000 signatures. People think the World Health Organization should change its name, it shouldn't be called the WHO, it should be renamed the CHO (or Chinese Health Organization). This is truly resonating with the people".

We've got the United Nations warning us that they are concerned of global food supply shortages, and now the Federal Reserve estimates that the worst of the job losses to Americans could get much worse.

According to estimations by Federal Reserve's St. Louis district project that total employment losses would mount to 47 million, which means the US would see a 32.1% unemployment rate. St. Louis Fed economist Miguel Faria-e-Castro wrote in a research paper last week: "These are very large numbers by historical standards, but this is a rather unique shock that is unlike any other experienced by the U.S. economy in the last 100 years".

Faria-e-Castro had some what he calls "back-of-the-envelope" calculations: these numbers don't add in the workers who will drop out of the work force. This means that the dizzyingly high unemployment estimations could be a tiny bit better, as well as fact that they don't estimate how the recently passed government stimulus will help.

If you had to be on lockdown during a quarantine, I couldn't think of a better place than a $590 million superyacht -- but would you really boast about it on social media? Probably not.

Except, that's what billionaire David Geffen did. The DreamWorks co-founder posted a picture on his personal Instagram, saying he was on "quarantine" on his $590,000,000 superyacht with the caption: "Sunset last night... isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus. I'm hoping everybody is staying safe".

It wasn't long before social media tore Geffen a new one, saying that his post on Instagram talking about being quarantined on a $590 million superyacht was "tone deaf" considering the hardships people are going through right now. Even The View co-host Meghan McCain chimed in, saying: "David Geffen is worth 8 billion dollars! For God's sake help this country get ventilators, our health workers masks and the medical supplies they need! Or no, just stay on your f---ing yacht instagramming. This is just shameful and grotesque".

If you thought the fight for toilet paper was bad, just imagine if there was a global food shortage. This is something the United Nations (UN) has been thinking about, forcing them to issue a "battle plan" to make sure the worldwide food supply chains aren't destroyed.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture division said last week that it had "already seen signs" of this in the global food supply chain, caused by all the lockdowns worldwide that are impacting supply chains. Chief Economist Maximo Torero Cullen explained: "Disruptions, particularly in the area of logistics, could materialise in the coming months".

The International Agri-Food Network, which also acts as the UN Committee on World Food Security explains: "While the immediate problem has been access to food and the need for shelf stable foods, disruptions at borders and in supply chains may cause an echo in the food system with potentially disastrous effects".

It looks like millions of Americans are being spied on (even more so than they already are), with sources of The Wall Street Journal saying that the CDC is using federal, state, and local governments access to users' location data from mobile ads to help track COVID-19 coronavirus spread.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the anonymized data helps CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) officials understand where people are gathering in large numbers, whether they're honoring the stay-at-home lockdowns, and how retail is suffering because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

How is the CDC doing this? They are reportedly gettring their data through a COVID-19 Mobility Data Network, something that was created by experts at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and other schools. While it sounds good in this way, the idea that mobile ad data is being used to track is a huge invasion of privacy. Will these new spy powers be taken away once COVID-19 is no longer a threat?

Lyft is in a really big spot of trouble right now over COVID-19 coronavirus, with millions of riders no longer using the service, business isn't doing so well. It's gotten to the point that Lyft is now referring drivers to jobs at Amazon.

The ridesharing giant emailed its drivers of the new referral program with Amazon, where it is encouraging Lyft drivers to apply for jobs at Amazon warehouses. These drivers are recommended to take jobs with Amazon's own grocery and package deliveries platforms. Why is Lyft doing this?

Well, Uber has its own food delivery platform in Uber Eats -- where Lyft, does not. This has seen Lyft team with Amazon over the new job referral program, even after Lyft announced that it would begin expanding its delivery network to help out in the delivering of coronavirus test kits, medical supplies, and meals to the elderly and vulnerable ppopulations.

Singapore is taking things up a serious notch when it comes to social distancing over COVID-19 coronavirus, with a press release from Singapore's Ministry of Health.

In the press release, it warned the people of Singapore to maintain a distance of at least 1 meter (3.2 feet) from other people during "non-transient" public interactions. If you don't, you'll face a 10,000 Singapore dollars (or $6985) fine -- or even 6 months in jail. Yeah, they're not kidding around in Singapore.

Singapore isn't the only country getting serious over social distancing either, with a 35-year-old man in France reportedly sent to prison after he violated lockdown. He was found guilty of "endangering the lives of others". A 4-month suspended prison sentence was handed down to a 19-year-old man, as he broke lockdown laws 10 times in a matter of days.

Monitoring the coronavirus COVID-19 spread, TAITRA has been under pressure for several weeks to make a judgment call on Computex Taipei 2020, Asia's largest IT trade show. The popular yearly event is routinely attended by TweakTown and many technology exhibitors, buyers, analysts, and media from all over the world.

Last night in Taipei, TAITRA finally made its call. Computex 2020 will be postponed from its planned date of June 2 till June 6, 2020, until September 28 till September 30, 2020 - six months out from now and around four months out from its original date. That means the event is getting cut down from its usual five days to just three days. Computex is usually spaced out over the greater Taipei area with halls in Xinyi and Nangang, as well as hotels in the Xinyi area.

Computex 2020 will be scaled down and held in just one hall - Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center Hall 2 (TaiNEX 2). It is unclear at this stage if exhibitors will be allowed to exhibit their goods from hotel suites, as is usually the case.

You can't escape hearing about coronavirus COVID-19 in the news virtually 24/7, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that Google searches for "coronavirus" have absolutely skyrocketed in recent weeks.

Using the last 90 days on Google Trends and looking at Worldwide searches, we can see that things started to ramp up a bit in late January 2020 but died down throughout February. Google searches for coronavirus began steadily rising in the second half of February, and have reached fever pitch in the second week of March.

Leading the charge in Google searches in Italy, where the most interest in coronavirus searches takes place in the first country to go under lockdown over the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak.

Supermarket shelves in Australia are virtually bare of essentials, where it first started with toilet paper -- and quickly saw things like bottled water, frozen goods, pasta, and more ripped from shelves over coronavirus panic.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said the Australian government will be prosecuting those who stripped supermarket shelves of essential items, with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) also says these people could be linked to criminal enterprises. Mr Dutton told 2GB in Australia: "We will come down on them like a ton of bricks... I believe they are the ones who have created this pattern of hoarding".

Dutton continued: "They (Australians) are following the behaviour of people who aren't purchasing for themselves - they're doing it for profit, and reasons that are unacceptable. If you have photos, or registration numbers, or if you have instances ... photos, intelligence or information, I want you to call Crime Stoppers".

The New York Stock Exchange has announced that it will be temporarily closing its trading floor, shifting to a world of fully electronic trading after 2 people have tested positive for coronavirus.

NYSE will start its all-electronic trading on March 23, with the NYSE equities trading floor, NYSE American Operations trading floor in New York, and the NYSE Arca Options trading floor in San Francisco to have all humans removed. The NYSE had screenings at its Big Board, with 2 people testing positive for coronavirus, ushering in the all-electronic trading push from the NYSE.

This is the first time in the history of the New York Stock Exchange that the physical trading floor of the Big Board has been shut down independently, while electronic trading flows. The NYSE has shut down a couple of times in history, the last of which was 9/11 and before that during World War II.

We all know that coronavirus COVID-19 is wrecking havok on the world in multiple ways, but now we have an analyst who thinks it is the perfect time for Apple to acquire Disney. Yeah... Disney, and yeah... Apple.

Rosenblatt Securities Director Bernie McTernan has thought about what would happen if Apple were to acquire Disney, during a recent chat with Yahoo Finance. He had some interesting facts that he bought up, and with coronavirus COVID-19 bringing markets down and changing the way consumers consume content right now, Apple could make a big move on the board and acquire everything giant Apple.

Yahoo Finance talked about Apple having the ability to "possibly take advantage of those struggles" that Disney is going through right now, with Disney stock plummeting 40% in the last month alone.

It looks like things could go from (really) bad to unbelievably bad when it comes to the flow-on effects of coronavirus COVID-19.

Coronavirus could crash the entire US housing market causing trillions of dollars in damage, and affecting hundreds of millions of Americans. The latest data from Google Trends is a big indicator towards this, with Google searches of "unemployment benefits" shoot up.

As you can see from the Google Trends data on US-based users searches for "Unemployment Benefits" it has skyrocketed in the last week or so. But the issue is, it's not just searches for "unemployment benefits" that is concerning, because "can't pay rent" searches are surging, too.

The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) says that COVID-19 coronavirus, and the closures of countless schools worldwide, will have an affect on 776 million children.

UNESCO explains: "an unprecedented number of children, youth and adults are not attending schools or universities because of COVID-19". Governments in 100 countries have announced, or already implemented closures of schools -- where in 85 countries, schools nationwide have been completely closed, which has affected 776.7 million children.

There's no an updated list of digital education tools from UNESCO, something that includes digital learning management systems like ClassDojo and Google Classroom. There are also apps that have been designed for smart featurephones including KaiOS, and software with offline compatibility with Can't Wait to Learn, Kolibri, Rumie, and Ustad Mobile.

Uber is doing what it can to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, and it has recently announced its battle plan that is aimed at helping many restaurants.

Uber has announced that it will be launching daily marketing campaigns to push Uber Eats customers into purchasing food from local restaurants. On top of that, Uber has also said that it will waiver delivery fees from over 100,000 local restaurants in the United States and Canada. The goodness doesn't stop there, though. Uber will also be allowing restaurants to choose daily payments to Uber Eats instead of normal weekly payments.

There will also be 300,000 free meals that can be claimed by first responders and healthcare workers on Uber Eats. For workers that are currently participating in keeping local restaurants afloat, Uber is offering two weeks of pay to drivers and delivery people who have unfortunately tested positive for COVID-19. Uber also recommends that it's customers select the 'non-contact' delivery to minimize the chance of the virus spreading.

Apple is being slapped with fines left, right, and center recently, and now another billion-dollar fine has been slid across the company's desk. This time it's for engaging in anti-competitive agreements with wholesalers.

According to a report for The Guardian, Apple has been fined a staggering 1.1bn EURO ($1.2 billion USD) by French antitrust regulators for engaging in anti-competitive agreements with two wholesalers. Isabelle de Silva, the head of Autorite de la Concurrence, the watchdog for competition, said: "Apple and its two wholesalers agreed to not compete against each other and prevent resellers from promoting competition between each other, thus sterilising the wholesale market for Apple products."

The two companies that Apple worked closely with are Tech Data, and Ingram Micro. Both of these companies were also slapped with fines, Tech Data received a 76 million EURO fine ($84 million USD), and Ingram Micro received a 63 million EURO ($70 million USD) fine. The French regulator said that Apple aligned its prices with wholesalers, and selectively distributed stock to favored wholesalers. Apple also reportedly gave more stock to select wholesalers when products launched.

We are all well aware of COVID-19 coronavirus right now, with entire cities in lock down, schools being shut, borders being closed -- and while it feels like it's the end of the world, I feel fine -- just like R.E.M. did in its 1987 hit song 'It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)'.

R.E.M's massive 1987 hit is once again on the charts now in 2020, where it has turned up in the top songs list on iTunes, where on Monday it was at #41. It has been 33 years since the release of R.E.M.'s It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) but with the recent outbreak of COVID-19 coronavirus, it is back on the charts as people are listening to it en masse.

Not only that, but funnily enough the US box office has been sinking as cinema attendance has been so low, so much so that it hasn't been this bad since 1995 -- coincidentally, since the year Outbreak was released. Outbreak, was a movie about a disease outbreak -- right at a time of the COVID-19 coronavirus frenzy. And now? R.E.M.'s hit It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).