fortune--2020-03-03--Warren persists. Will Super Tuesday be her big break—or  will it break her campaign?

This is the web version of the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Ivanka Trump talks to the NYT, Mandy Ginsberg reflects on the decision to step down as CEO of the Match Group, and we’re down to two female presidential candidates. Have a lovely Tuesday.
– Have a Super day. It’s Super Tuesday in the U.S., the day 14 states go the polls to vote in the Democratic primary—hopefully giving Americans a clearer picture of who might emerge as the party’s nominee.
One thing we know for sure even before the votes are tallied: it won’t be Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who dropped out of the race yesterday, throwing her support behind fellow moderate, former VP Joe Biden.
While the timing of Klobuchar’s departure surprised some, it’s not a shock that she’s out—the highlight of her campaign was arguably her unexpected third place finish in New Hampshire (though you might also give her some credit for surviving comb-gate!).
Without her, a race that once included a historic six women is down to two: Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. And with Gabbard polling at about 1% nationwide, those still holding out hope for a female nominee are looking to Warren—despite the fact that, at least according to national polls, she’s in a solid 4th place.
There’s been plenty written about why Warren’s candidacy has failed to catch fire—and about the reactions of supporters and pundits who believe Democrats’ fixation with the question of “electability” has unfairly kept voters from supporting the senator.
Yet Warren is still in the race. And because she is nothing if not true to her brand, Warren’s still pumping out new plans (read on for her take on the coronavirus). According to recent reporting from Politico, she still believes she has a path to the nomination.
Nevertheless she persisted, indeed. Is her persistence visionary—or delusional? Ask again in 24 hours.
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was produced by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- She's got a plan for that. Indeed, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has put out a detailed plan for how to fight the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. She proposes a $400 billion stimulus package that would include emergency paid sick leave for workers and low-cost or no-cost loans for small businesses hit by decreased business or supply chain interruptions. Warren also proposes making all testing and care for the disease free of cost. Warren first released the plan applicable to all infectious diseases a few weeks ago as the coronavirus spread abroad, but is re-upping it now that the illness has arrived in the U.S. The Hill
- A personal choice. Mandy Ginsberg, who officially stepped down as CEO of the Match Group this week, writes about why she made the decision. A tornado barreled through her Dallas home in October, and then she found out she needed to remove her breast implants, which she got after testing positive for the BRCA1 gene and having a preventative double mastectomy, hysterectomy, and oophorectomy, because they were recalled due to a link to cancer. "I knew there was no way I could balance my personal needs and my job as CEO," she writes. Fast Company
- Ivanka's evolution. Ivanka Trump sits down with the New York Times to make official her political evolution with the declarative statement: "I am a proud Trump Republican." The first daughter changed her voter registration from Democrat to Republican before the 2018 midterms. Anger over her father's impeachment trial has pushed her to take on more public and explicitly political roles, including fundraising appearances. New York Times
- Inside the NDAs. The New York Times has a new investigation into the use of non-disclosure agreements at Bloomberg (the company). Among the allegations: men "rated the hotness" of their female colleagues, women were encouraged to wear short skirts and high heels, some managers "perceived the use of medical or maternity leave as stealing from the company," and top female editors on the news side were pushed out. A spokeswoman said the company "hasn't found evidence" of the hotness claim, that the firm has no dress code, and that "bullying and discrimination are not tolerated." New York Times
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: WeWork named former Baker Hughes finance chief Kimberly Ross CFO. The White House withdrew the nomination of Pentagon official Elaine McCusker for deputy defense secretary and comptroller after she clashed with the Trump administration over the 2019 suspension of military aid to Ukraine.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- The woman behind WeWork. Was Rebekah Neumann at the core of everything that went wrong with WeWork? This piece makes the case, outlining the former chief brand officer's life and influence from her upbringing as part of the Paltrow clan to the co-working company's fall. Neumann gave her husband, Adam, $1 million to get the business off the ground and brought him to the Kabbalah Centre, where he found support and investors. "I can’t even go to yoga anymore,” one former employee says of her style of leadership. “It’s too triggering.” Bustle
- Congressional challenge. Rep. Kay Granger is the only GOP woman to represent Texas in Congress and the most senior Republican woman in the House. She's facing a primary challenge from the right. President Trump has endorsed Granger, who as a member of the Appropriations Committee negotiates funding for his border wall, but challenger Chris Putnam is still saying that she is "not conservative enough" and not supportive enough of the president. New York Times
- Sayonara, Staley? Activist Sherborne Investors is pressuring the board of Barclays to ask CEO Jes Staley to step down over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Sherbourne is the bank's largest shareholder and had criticized Staley's leadership before his relationship to Epstein—Staley for years ran JPMorgan's private bank where the late convicted sex offender was a client—became a matter of public concern. Wall Street Journal
- Swan song. The Recording Academy officially fired Deborah Dugan, the former president who said she was sexually harassed and questioned the integrity of the Grammy nomination process. The organization claims that two investigations found "consistent management deficiencies and failures." Dugan's attorneys—she filed an EEOC complaint and had been on administrative leave—say that the final decision shows the Academy's willingness to "stop at nothing to protect and maintain a culture of misogyny, discrimination, sexual harassment, corruption and conflicts of interest." Fortune
ON MY RADAR
Chris Matthews retires from MSNBC, citing inappropriate comments Fortune
7 new books by and about women to read in March Fortune
Why it’s so important the new Bachelorette star is 38 years old LA Times
The joy of Fran Drescher The Cut
PARTING WORDS
"I don’t think about criticism in terms of authority. I think about it in terms of charm and persuasion, which anybody can possess."
-New York Times book critic Parul Sehgal


fortune--2020-03-03--What is Clearview AI and why is it raising so many privacy red flags?

Testing for coronavirus should be free , but it ’ s not always that simple

Clearview AI, a startup that sells a facial recognition system to law enforcement and businesses, has been called “alarming” and “dystopian.” Its technology lets clients match faces to billions of images in a database, eroding most anonymity people have in public.
Over the past several weeks, the company has been the subject of a number of unflattering headlines. Each one raises serious privacy concerns about facial recognition technology and its growing adoption.
On Wednesday, Clearview AI confirmed to Fortune that hackers had stolen its entire client list, which BuzzFeed later reported included 2,200 law enforcement agencies, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Department of Justice. The company’s clients outside of law enforcement have included Walmart and the NBA.
Then on Friday, Apple removed Clearview AI’s app from its app store after determining that Clearview had violated its policies. Clearview had listed the app under Apple’s Enterprise program, which is typically only for apps that are meant to be distributed to a workforce within one company.
Here’s what you need to know about Clearview AI:
How does Clearview AI work?
Clearview AI has a database of 3 billion public images scraped from social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube that customers can compare their images to. If police want to identify suspects in a fight, for example, they can feed images of those suspects’ faces into Clearview to get results showing any public photos of them, along with links to social network profiles or websites from where those photos originated. Additionally, police can build a profile about the suspects based on what is posted online about them.
Why it matters
Freddy Martinez, a policy analyst at Open the Government, a non-partisan coalition that advocates for government transparency, first learned about Clearview AI last year while working with nonprofit news site MuckRock on a project about law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology.
In the past, police have mostly relied on mugshots to identify suspects, he says. More recently, they’ve moved into the digital age by tapping databases and artificial intelligence that does most of the work. “For the last few years, people have been warning as the technology gets cheaper and faster, how you can expand the data sets for relatively no cost,” Martinez tells Fortune. “What Clearview did was something quite unheard of.”
The company says on its website that its tools are used for “search, not surveillance” and that they help keep communities safe by identifying predators.
Still, experts and politicians have said that the technology raises privacy concerns. This includes making peoples’ data available without their consent and the company’s failure to secure its trove of photos after admitting last week that it had been hacked.
“This is a company whose entire business model relies on collecting incredibly sensitive and personal information, and this breach is yet another sign that the potential benefits of Clearview’s technology do not outweigh the grave privacy risks it poses,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), says in a statement.
Tor Ekeland, an attorney for Clearview, told Fortune last week that “security is a top priority.” He adds: “Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century. Our servers were never accessed. We patched the flaw, and continue to work to strengthen our security.”
Not everyone in government or tech is a fan
Facebook, Twitter, and Google have already sent Clearview AI letters asking it to stop scraping the photos on their sites. Some politicians are also sounding the alarm. On January 24, New Jersey’s attorney general ordered the state’s law enforcement to stop using Clearview AI over concern about the company’s techniques.
Sen. Markey sent Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That a letter on January 23, along with a list of questions he hoped to have the CEO answer.
“Clearview’s product appears to pose particularly chilling privacy risks,” Markey writes. “And I am deeply concerned that it is capable of fundamentally dismantling Americans’ expectation that they can move, assemble, or simply appear in public without being identified.”
Martinez, from Open the Government, adds that it’s vital that the federal and local governments continue to ask questions about this technology. “With a little oversight and transparency, people are finding this tech isn’t appropriate,” he says.
The right to be forgotten
Under a new privacy law, California residents can request to see the data that Clearview has about them, choose to opt out of its database, and ask the company to delete anything they have about them.
Residents of the European Union, along with Swiss and British residents, can also request their data from Clearview, opt out for the future, and request their data be deleted.
As for everyone else? It appears what’s out there will remain, at least for now.
Nico Fischbach, chief technology officer at security company Forcepoint, tells Fortune that Clearview’s business is an example of how “it takes just one person to make data public.”
“If you put something on public social media, whatever it is, you create a reference point to yourself,” he says. He adds that tagging friends also creates an even better picture of who is in a person’s social circle.
“Everybody lives a bit in their own social media bubble,” Fischbach says. “This has helped people realize there is no fence around the data they share on public social media.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How 5G promises to revolutionize farming
—Did the ‘techlash’ kill Alphabet’s city of the future?
—College backlash against facial recognition technology grows
—In A.I., what would Jesus do?
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-03-03--Honeywell sees path to world’s most powerful quantum computer in 3 months

Honeywell plans to introduce the “world’s most powerful quantum computer,” a buzzy experimental type of computer that is pitched as a successor to today’s supercomputers.
The industrial conglomerate said on Tuesday that it will introduce the computer in three months, putting it in competition with companies like Google and IBM that are working on similar technology and have already unveiled early versions of their technology.
Honeywell is basing its potential claim to the world’s most powerful quantum computer on a metric called “quantum volume,” which takes into account multiple factors including the number of “quantum bits,” or qubits, available in a given machine. Quantum volume also factors in the qubits’ connectivity, meaning how well the qubits interact with each other, and fidelity, meaning how prone they are to errors.
A quantum computer with a higher quantum volume can, theoretically, solve more complex problems—meaning it has more power. While early quantum computers tended to compete solely on number of qubits, quantum volume has been gaining steam as a more holistic yardstick by which to measure the machines, since it conveys more information about their potential utility.
Honeywell says the quantum computer it unveiled Tuesday morning has a quantum volume of 16. The company plans to debut a machine with a quantum volume of 64 in the coming months.
If Honeywell can reach its targets as quickly as it says, it will be something of a darkhorse hardware provider in the nascent corporate quantum computing race. In recent years, since the introduction of the first quantum computers, the technology has been dominated by tech powerhouses IBM and Google
Earlier this year, IBM said it had produced a quantum computer with a quantum volume of 32, doubling its achievement of a machine with a quantum volume of 16 from a year prior. Honeywell’s quantum computer appears poised to surpass it.
Scientists believe quantum computers will one day perform calculations that are impossible for present-day computers, greatly advancing pharmaceutical research, the energy efficiency of batteries, financial risk modeling, and more. No one is sure how soon that day may come.
Competition over the nascent market has been heating up.
Google made waves when it announced last year that it had attained “quantum supremacy,” an impressive-sounding milestone that means its quantum computer performed a task unfeasible for a classical computer to replicate. The demonstration’s utility—it involved an arcane calculation based on random number sampling—remains an open question.
IBM has taken a different approach by slowly and steadily boosting the quantum volume in its machines. Last year it debuted a machine it dubbed the world’s “first commercial quantum computer,” signaling that the technology was moving out of the laboratory and into the business world.
Google and IBM are both pursuing a technology called “superconducting qubits.” The technique involves cooling down specially designed semiconductors until they exhibit weird physical properties, like “superposition” and “entanglement,” two hallmarks of quantum science that allow qubits to store more information and run massively parallel operations, respectively.
Honeywell has staked its bet on a different technology. The company is building “trapped ion” quantum computers, which use lasers to manipulate charged atoms in a vacuum. The method has shown early promise for its relative stability and low error rates, keeping quality qubits in play for longer. (The longer a calculation takes, the likelier it is that a qubit will degrade.)
Early success has caused Honeywell executives to brim with confidence. The company posted a paper describing its method on the scientific pre-print site ArXiv on Tuesday.
Tony Uttley, Honeywell’s president of quantum solutions, believes the company will quickly outpace its rivals. “We’re on a trajectory to increase that quantum volume 10-fold every year for the next five years,” Uttley says.
That ambitious forecast has attracted interest from partners. Honeywell said Tuesday that is has teamed up with JPMorgan Chase to develop financial algorithms on its quantum computers. Marco Pistoia, managing director and research lead at JPMorgan Chase and a former longtime IBM researcher, said in a statement that the collaboration will help the bank “get closer to tackling major and growing business challenges.”
Darius Adamczyk, Honeywell’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement that companies should start exploring how quantum computing fits into their overall business strategy now, since the technology will have significant applications in so many different fields—ranging from transportation and logistics to medicine.
In addition to partnering with businesses, Honeywell said Tuesday that its venture capital arm placed bets on two quantum computing software startups: Boston-based Zapata Computing and UK-based Cambridge Quantum Computing.
Last year Honeywell partnered with Microsoft, enabling customers of Azure, Microsoft’s “cloud computing” business, to access to its quantum computers. The tie-up provided Microsoft a quantum computer offering to compete with cloud computing rivals Google and IBM, while it gave Honeywell hooks into more potential customers.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How 5G promises to revolutionize farming
—Did the ‘techlash’ kill Alphabet’s city of the future?
—College backlash against facial recognition technology grows
—In A.I., what would Jesus do?
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-03-03--Some Super Tuesday polls moved after tornadoes in Tennessee cause 40 buildings to collapse

At least two tornadoes touched down early Tuesday in central Tennessee, including one that ripped across downtown Nashville and caused about 40 buildings to collapse around the city, police said as they searched for injured people.
Authorities pleaded with people to stay indoors, at least until daybreak could reveal the dangers of a landscape littered with blown-down walls and roofs, snapped power lines and huge broken trees. Schools, courts and transit lines were closed, and four polling stations were moved only hours before Super Tuesday voting was set to begin.
“A tornado skipped across the county,” Nashville Mayor John Cooper told the Tennessean while visiting an emergency shelter early Tuesday. “You do have people at the hospital and frankly there have been fatalities.”
Nashville police said in a tweet that two deaths in East Nashville had been reported to the department but did not say if the fatalities were confirmed. Reports of other deaths were likewise unconfirmed early Tuesday.
The tornado near downtown reportedly stayed on the ground into Hermitage, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) east of the city. Other areas reporting extensive damage included Mt. Juliet, downtown Nashville and Germantown.
“Our community has been impacted significantly,” the Mt. Juliet Police Department tweeted early Tuesday. Multiple homes were damaged and multiple injuries were reported, the department said. ”We continue to search for injured. Stay home if you can.”
Police officers and fire crews were responding to about 40 building collapses around the city, Metro Nashville police said.
John C. Tune Airport, Nashville International’s sister airport in West Nashville, “sustained significant damage due to severe weather,” spokeswoman Kim Gerlock said in a statement early Tuesday morning. Several hangars have been destroyed and power lines are down, she said, adding that there are no reported injuries.
Gerlock asked that the public avoid the airport until further notice and that the Airport Authority has activated its Emergency Operations Center to coordinate response.
A video posted online from east Nashville showed what appeared to be a well-defined tornado moving quickly across the city. Lightning repeatedly flashed while much of the city was in the dark. The whir of the wind could be heard gusting after the tornado moved out of sight.
Images on social media showed extensive damage to buildings, mangled wires on downed power lines and structures that are now unrecognizable as the tornado had reduced them to rubble. One photo showed a white vinyl fence that had fallen a car. Another showed the roof and walls gone from a building that still had what appeared to be boxes stacked on shelves.
A reported gas leak forced an evacuation of the IMT building in the Germantown community, according to WSMV-TV. Photos showed dozens of people in the street carrying their belongings not long after the tornado moved through the city.
Nashville police said in a tweet that two deaths in East Nashville had been reported to the department but did not say if the fatalities were confirmed.
The American Red Cross of Tennessee said on its Twitter account that a shelter had been opened for displaced residents downtown at the Nashville Farmers Market, just north of the state capitol.
Nashville Electric tweeted that four of its substations were damaged in the tornado. Power outages as of 4 a.m. were affecting more than 44,000 customers, the utility company said.
Metro Nashville Public Schools said its schools would be closed Tuesday because of the tornado damage. Wilson County, just east of metro Nashville will close schools for the rest of the week. Election polling sites at schools were expected to remain open, as well as district offices, according to tweets from its official account.
Jeff Roberts of the Elections Commission said in a statement early Tuesday that information about damage to polling stations is being collected as polls open for Super Tuesday. Any voter in Davidson County whose assigned precinct has been impacted may vote at the Election Commission Offices, the statement said. Polls open at various times, starting at 7 a.m. CST, depending on the county.
The storm system was forecast to bring an isolated tornado, damaging winds and large hail, news outlets reported. Heavy rain was expected to impact Gulf Coast states over the next several days, according to WTVF-TV.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Are we undergoing an industrial revolution or a phase change?
—Twitter’s testing new ways to fight misinformation. Is open-source the answer?
—Meet Trump’s Giuliani-approved power broker—and Melania’s new senior adviser
—Angela Merkel is on her way out. Meet her potential replacements
—How the 2020 election could influence your personal finances
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-03-03--China claims ‘political oppression’ as Trump administration tells it to cut U.S. staff at state news

China claims ‘political oppression’ as Trump administration tells it to cut U.S. staff at state news outlets

The Trump administration ordered four Chinese state-owned news outlets to slash the number of staff they have working in the U.S., part of a broader response to Beijing’s restrictions on American journalists including its expulsion of three Wall Street Journal reporters last month.
The move risks further tit-for-tat measures from Beijing as the world’s biggest economies continue a broader battle for global influence even after reaching a phase-one trade deal earlier this year. That wider strategic fight is affecting everything from manufacturing supply chains to 5G mobile-phone technology to the leadership of international organizations.
Starting March 13, the four outlets will be allowed to employ a combined 100 Chinese citizens in the U.S., down about 40% from now, two State Department officials told reporters Monday on condition of anonymity. The officials insisted that the reductions weren’t expulsions, though about 60 or so employees will almost certainly need to leave the country.
“Unlike foreign media organizations in China, these entities are not independent news organizations,” Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said in a statement after the officials briefed reporters. “As we have done in other areas of the U.S.-China relationship, we seek to establish a long-overdue level playing field.”
The outlets affected by the move are Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International and China Daily Distribution Corp. A fifth, Hai Tian Development USA, is also included under the cap but won’t have to cut staff because it has only two Chinese employees on its payroll in the U.S.
The restrictions stem from an effort by the Trump administration to restore what officials call reciprocity between the way China and the U.S. treat each other’s journalists. China currently allows about 100 Americans in the country and has severely restricted the number of visas it issues to foreign reporters.
More restrictions are likely to come soon. Another senior administration official, also briefing reporters ahead of Pompeo’s statement Monday, said the U.S. plans to limit how long Chinese citizens are allowed to stay in the country on journalist visas. That would match a Chinese requirement restricting foreign reporters to as little as 30 days before they must seek an extension.
China condemned the move Tuesday, saying Chinese journalists have a “universally recognized professional reputation.”
“Out of a Cold War mindset the U.S. is conducting political oppression on Chinese media agencies in the U.S.,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters in Beijing. “We urge the U.S. to correct its mistake at once and we reserve the right to take further actions.”
‘Foreign Missions’
The administration began mulling expulsions in earnest after China last month ordered the departure of the three Wall Street Journal reporters — two Americans and an Australian — after saying the outlet had refused to apologize for a “racially discriminatory” headline on an op-ed piece. U.S. officials have also said the reporters were expelled because of the Journal’s coverage of a Chinese government crackdown on Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province.
The Journal has defended its reporters and, like most U.S. outlets, said it operates with a strict separation between its news and opinion staffs. The op-ed piece in question referred to China as “the real sick man of Asia.”
Monday’s move is a direct outgrowth of a State Department decision last month to designate Xinhua and the other four outlets as “foreign missions.” That means their employees in the U.S. are treated as foreign government employees, not journalists. The five are “effectively controlled” by China’s government, Pompeo said in the statement.
The staffing reductions apply to any Chinese citizens working for the four news organizations in the U.S., whether they are reporters or managers or technicians. The outlets can still hire as many Americans as they like. Hai Tian wasn’t included in the new cap because it currently has only two Chinese staff on its payroll in the U.S., the officials said.
Asked about the expected State Department action last week, the Foreign Press Association, which represents foreign journalists working in the U.S., said in a statement that “any suggestion that the United States should emulate the Chinese government’s decision to expel three WSJ reporters by deporting Chinese journalists would be counterproductive and ultimately damaging to First Amendment principles for the entire press community in the United States.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
—The Greek economy is roaring back—which could lead to mass evictions
—10 journalists who deserve justice immediately
—Fortune Explains: Tariffs and trade wars
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-03-04--Once coronavirus fades, global businesses are set to face new danger: a wave of lawsuits

China scoffed at being subject to early coronavirus travel restrictions .
Now it ’ s enacting its own

The coronavirus has upended markets, disrupted supply chains and forced quarantines. It’s all fertile ground for lawsuits.
Hospitals, restaurants, day care centers, nursing homes and hotels may face claims that they didn’t take adequate steps to protect people. Shareholders can sue if companies fail to act effectively in response to the epidemic. Businesses are scrambling to see if their insurance policies cover disruptions caused by the virus. Governments are reviewing their quarantine powers.
“The impact on the global supply chain, I think, is going to be dramatic,” said Paul White, a partner with Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker who represents insurers.
Some cases have already been filed: The pilots’ union at American Airlines Group Inc. sued the carrier to stop it from serving China, while the city of Costa Mesa, California, sued the U.S. government to halt the transfer of quarantined cruise passengers to a state-owned facility there.
Here’s a survey of the likely legal landscape.
‘Act of God’
The fallout from business disruptions is going to be “very significant in a way we haven’t seen before,” said Joe Balice, a litigator with Brutzkus Gubner in Los Angeles who represents clients in the textile and apparel industry, many of them hit by factory shutdowns in China.
Manufacturers may sue over missed deadlines, while suppliers could sue energy companies, which have already stopped taking some shipments as transportation demand dwindles.
Michael Hurst, a partner at Lynn Pinker Cox & Hurst in Dallas, expects to see a surge in disputes over whether force majeure clauses, which frees a contract’s parties from their obligations in the event of an “act of God,” apply to the outbreak.
“Someone can say they can’t perform under a contract because they can’t get supplies from China or their people wouldn’t come to work,” Hurst said. “The other side might say you’re being too cautious or you’re just using that as an excuse.”
Insurers are likely to find themselves in court. Balice said businesses are poring over their policies to see if they’re insured against the coronavirus fallout. “And a lot will find out that they are not,” he said.
Business disruption insurance claims typically deal with physical damage, like a factory that has burned down, not closures ordered to control a virus, Balice said. “This could be an area of insurance litigation for many years to come,” he said.
“Companies which already faced business challenges in the Chinese market could get hit hard if they have limited resources,” said Philipp Senff, head of compliance at the law firm CMS in China.
Worker protections
Some companies have already limited business travel and encouraged employees to work from home. Several industry conferences have been scrapped to prevent large gatherings from spreading the virus.
Now some fear they may be held liable for workers’ participation in meetings or corporate events where employees are exposed. At the same time, efforts to protect staff could run afoul of privacy rules.
Didn’t expect to see this one day in the EU courts. 3 March 2020. @EUCourtPress pic.twitter.com/BwD5oEn0xj — Stéphanie Bodoni (@StephanieBodoni) March 3, 2020
“What can they and can’t they ask their workforce about their potential exposure to the virus, travel activities and medical history?” said David Newman, a partner at Morrison & Foerster in Washington, who is leading the firm’s task force on advising clients about the outbreak.
Domenique Camacho Moran, a partner with Farrell Fritz who represents employers, said she has been contacted by clients with these very concerns, including one who said an employee caused a brief panic after disclosing a diagnosis of coronavirus — but not the one that’s raising the global alarm.
“This is a fluid situation,” Camacho Moran said. “The right answer on Monday may be different by the time we get to Friday.”
Companies “may need to be more flexible in allowing employees to take sick leave and providing sick pay to motivate them to stay home,” said Sloane Ackerman, a labor and employment lawyer with O’Melveny & Myers in New York.
Businesses that have daily contact with the public or who deal with captive populations are also at risk of getting sued, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who teaches mass torts. He cited nursing homes, like the one in Washington state whose residents account for many of the U.S. casualties so far.
“The claim could be they didn’t move quickly enough to protect residents once it was clear the virus was a danger, or that they didn’t have proper contingency plans in place,” Tobias said.
A visitor wearing a protective mask walks in front of the Louvre Museum as the museum was closed for a staff meeting about the coronavirus outbreak on March 4, 2020 in Paris. Due to a sharp increase in the number of cases of coronavirus declared in Paris and throughout France, several sporting, cultural and festive events have been postponed or cancelled. Chesnot/Getty Images
Airlines have spent years in European Union courts battling and shaping rules on when they should compensate passengers. The EU’s Court of Justice might again have to weigh in on whether the companies could claim extraordinary circumstances beyond their control to avoid new payouts, EU Transport Commissioner Adina Valean said at a press conference Monday.
In Germany, the season for annual general meetings is about to start. These meetings — which must be held within the first eight months of the year — can be big, filling Olympic stadium halls. While it’s still early to gauge what will happen, lawyers are already exploring what can be done with virtual participation and voting.
Quarantine power
Government efforts to fight the virus through mandatory quarantines and other such steps are another potential source of litigation, if members of the public push back.
Henry Greenberg, president of the New York State Bar Association and a former general counsel of the state’s health department, said officials have “tremendous authority” to trace and isolate virus carriers, based on a “vast body of law” over communicable diseases. The trick for government officials is to weigh public health against individual rights and avoid excesses, he said, citing “some overreaction and stigmatizations” that occurred when health workers who treated Ebola patients in Africa returned to the U.S. in 2014.
Claims involving the government have already arrived. In addition to Costa Mesa’s suit over the proposed transfer of the cruise passengers, San Antonio has sued U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and other officials over the government’s quarantine of a cruise passenger in the area after she was cleared by two tests for the virus. A third test came back positive — after her release.
A dozen passengers from the ship, the Diamond Princess, have contacted Miami-based Lipcon, Margulies, Alsina & Winkleman to explore litigation against Princess Cruises parent company Carnival Corp., and several have retained the firm, partner Michael Winkleman said.
“It’s a very difficult situation for the company, but they should have been familiar from handling previous norovirus cases on board,” he said, adding that the question is “whether they pursued all reasonable and proper care.”
The cruise line said it did.
Governments must also protect captive populations from infection. Dan Cogdell, a veteran Texas criminal defense attorney, said he has discussed with a state judge the viral threat posed by prisoners in a Houston lockup.
“The real danger is that the jails have terrible resources, and the coronavirus will likely spread like wildfire in the jail,” he said. “And they’ll bring it straight to the courthouse.”
Prisoners in the Harris County system, which houses the fourth-largest U.S. inmate population, are being screened, and the facility has quarantine experience from managing previous infectious disease outbreaks, said Jason Spencer, a spokesman for the system.
Everything else
Other lawsuits popping up around the U.S. include claims indirectly related to coronavirus.
A medical staffing agency claims U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services dragged its feet in reviewing applications for H-1B visas for skilled foreigners and that the delays threaten the supply of medical professionals needed to deal with the outbreak.
A suit seeking class-action status alleges that the maker of the hand sanitizer Purell exaggerates its product’s powers to prevent illness.
And then there’s the Manhattan lawyer who asked a court to excuse a delay in suing Consolidated Edison Co. for a trip-and-fall over a manhole cover. It was “due to the extraordinary and unforeseen circumstance” of his being stuck in China for six weeks, he explained.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
—The Greek economy is roaring back—which could lead to mass evictions
—10 journalists who deserve justice immediately
—Fortune Explains: Tariffs and trade wars
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-03-04--A big day for Fortune

A big day for Fortune

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
Today is a big day for Fortune, as we take another step on our journey to reinvent this storied brand for a new century.
Those of you who follow Fortune have seen the changes we’ve already put into place. With the support of our new owner, we have in the past year secured our independence from Time Inc. and Meredith, built an independent company, and invested in journalism and technology to better serve our audiences, digitally as well as in print. We now have more than a dozen in-depth newsletters, a new video portal filled with unique insights from the world’s greatest business leaders, monthly webinars, new mobile apps, new quarterly investment guides, and proprietary data analysis, all aimed at giving you the tools you need to succeed in today’s rapidly changing business world. Even the magazine has been reimagined as a premium print publication, worthy of a place on every executive coffee table.
Today, we begin asking our digital audiences to directly support our in-depth journalism. Our best, most deeply-reported stories will go behind a paywall, and subscribers will be able to choose from three tiers, starting at less than $1 a week. That’s a small price to pay. As editor-in-chief Clifton Leaf notes: “Fortune has been honored with 74 prestigious journalism awards over the past five years, and subscribers will get to see all of that reporting, sharp corporate analysis, and deep storytelling whenever and wherever they choose.”
There is more to come. As readers of CEO Daily know, Fortune is famed for its elite, executive-level convenings, which give the world’s top executives an opportunity to learn about cutting-edge trends in business and technology, and to share learnings and best practices. Later this year, we will launch a new product designed to extend those learnings to a broader community of aspiring leaders. Our goal is to make Fortune the indispensable tool to make business better.
So stick with us. Subscribe here today. And as always, send me your feedback. I hope you’ll support us on this journey to take the magazine that Henry Luce conceived 90 years ago and make it a guiding light to the future.
Other news below. And oh, yes, I should have mentioned—CEO Daily, like our other newsletters, will remain free. But you will need to subscribe to access all the great stories that underpin it.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Mixed markets
Asian markets were mixed today, with the Shanghai Composite (0.6% up) bucking a general downward trajectory. In Europe, the markets are happy, with the Stoxx Europe 600 up 1.2% at the time of writing. U.S. futures look positive after yesterday's drop of almost 3%, which showed investors to be unimpressed with the Fed's rate cut. CNN
Universal healthcare
The Trump administration is reportedly considering paying hospitals and doctors to treat uninsured Covid-19 patients, using funds from a national disaster program. Around 8% of the U.S. populace does not have health insurance. President Trump: "We are going to look at the uninsured because they have a big problem." Wall Street Journal
Indian cryptocurrency
India's Supreme Court has overturned the country's ban on cryptocurrency trading by financial services firms. The court said the ban, instituted two years ago by India's central bank, was disproportionate and unconstitutional. India's Bitcoin entrepreneurs are, naturally, very excited. Economic Times
Biden vs. Bernie
Yesterday was a great day for Joe Biden, who took Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia in the Democratic primaries' Super Tuesday. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, took California, Utah and Colorado. The race is now clearly between the two of them. Michael Bloomberg, meanwhile, is reportedly considering dropping out after spending around $215 million of his fortune advertising in the Super Tuesday states alone, to no avail—though he can take comfort in having won American Samoa. Politico
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
H&M supply chain
H&M, the Swedish fashion giant, is launching a service called Treadler that will let smaller brands use it and its supply chain. The driver is sustainability, and it is not coincidentally H&M's first major move since former sustainability exec Helena Helmersson took over as CEO. Helmersson: "To future proof our industry, we have focused on transforming and improving our supply chain. We’ve realised that the output of our efforts can be valuable for others too." Financial Times
Olympics outlook
The Japanese government has made its first mini-admission that the Olympics might not go ahead as planned, due to the coronavirus outbreak. Despite having previously insisted there is "no plan B" for the Games, Olympics minister Seiko Hashimoto said yesterday in parliament that "the contract calls for the Games to be held within 2020. That could be interpreted as allowing a postponement." The Olympics are currently scheduled to begin in late July. Fortune
Autonomous vehicles
Another self-driving-car startup is abandoning its plans to develop and run its own vehicles: Five, a U.K. outfit that will now instead license its tech to other players (and has secured $41 million in fresh funding to pivot thusly). CEO Stan Boland: "A year and a bit ago we thought we would probably build the entire thing and take it to market as a whole system. But we gradually realized just how deep and complex that would be." TechCrunch
Market gyrations
How historic is the current market volatility? As Ritholz Wealth Management's Ben Carlson explains for Fortune, there have been 53 double-digit corrections in the stock market in the last nine decades or so, but the current one "feels different because there is the prospect of a looming pandemic and potential economic slowdown…Just remember that the fact that stocks have fallen so hard so fast doesn't necessarily make it any easier to predict what comes next." Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-03-04--‘Collective psychosis:’ As coronavirus fears grow, the world travel industry stares into the abyss

On Lake Como in northern Italy, spring normally spells the return of the tourists. The likes of George Clooney descend on waterfront villas, couples wander the cobbled streets and design fairs fill hotel rooms with well-heeled travelers. This year, because of the coronavirus, hoteliers are wondering whether the visitors will come at all.
Hotels in the area saw more than half their bookings canceled in three days last week as the virus spread through northern Italy in the biggest outbreak outside Asia. Now innkeepers are waiting anxiously to see the impact on the all-important summer months.
“We had our ups and downs in the past, but nothing like this,” said Roberto Cassani, 58, president of the Como hotel operators’ association. “American tourists in particular seem to be victims of a collective psychosis. I am really worried.”
As an illness that broke out in China goes global, the tourism business faces a growing threat. Many of the Chinese travelers who have driven the industry’s expansion were already staying home, after the government locked down tens of millions of people and banned sales of package tours. That emptied lodgings in the casino hotspot of Macau, cleared beaches across Southeast Asia and eliminated lines outside Louis Vuitton boutiques in Paris.
Casinos in Macau reported a record drop in gaming revenue, as they grappled with the cost of closing down their businesses for 15 days to help contain the deadly coronavirus outbreak. Billy H.C. Kwok—Bloomberg/Getty Images
Even as the viral spread slows in China, it’s taking off elsewhere, including South Korea and Italy, which together have reported more than 8,000 of the global total of some 93,000 cases. Now it’s not just Chinese who are staying home. Germans and Belgians are rethinking ski trips to Italy. Japanese are canceling visits to Bali. At stake is the $1.7 trillion in revenue that international tourism generated in 2018, according to the UN World Tourism Organization.
Many business travelers who normally fill the travel industry’s slack during the winter months are staying home, too, as companies like Facebook Inc. and Google trade face-to-face meetings for webcasts. The likes of L’Oreal SA, Nestle SA and Cargill Inc. have suspended employee travel globally for the coming weeks. Authorities have axed trade fairs that would have drawn hundreds of thousands to Berlin, Geneva and Barcelona, while Hawaii’s Festpac cultural festival was canceled.
The Global Business Travel Association says the coronavirus could cost the industry some $47 billion per month. Airlines and package tour operators have painted an equally gloomy picture, with the International Air Transport Association predicting almost $30 billion in lost flight sales.
“We aren’t capable of saying how long the situation will last,” said Ana de Pro, chief financial officer of Amadeus IT Group SA, which provides online booking software for the travel industry. Package holiday giant TUI AG announced a hiring freeze, saying it can’t yet estimate the financial fallout from the outbreak.
It’s the biggest setback for the travel industry since a downturn that accompanied the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and the SARS outbreak and the war in Iraq two years later. Airlines, tour operators and hotel companies were already wrestling with a shift in how people travel, thanks to the rise of online bookings and discount carriers. Rising passenger numbers, including millions of new travelers from China, had cushioned the blow for airlines, which relied on rapid consolidation to fuel profit growth. Now they’re lurching toward a crisis.
While Chinese flights are resuming after much of the country’s air traffic was grounded earlier this year, fallout is spreading in Europe and elsewhere. Deutsche Lufthansa AG and British Airways parent IAG SA issued profit warnings over the coronavirus, while EasyJet Plc and Ryanair Holdings Plc have canceled services and Italian carrier Alitalia SpA laid off 4,000 workers temporarily. Some ticket-holders for flights are simply not turning up, the air transport association said.
The cruise industry was among the first to get hit, with passengers quarantined on virus-stricken liners such as Carnival Corp.’s Diamond Princess, turning holiday dreams into nightmares for thousands of guests. MSC Cruises’ Meraviglia was turned away by two Caribbean ports before returning to Miami this week.
For local economies dependent on tourism, the full impact will be broader, as travelers weigh risk and benefit for the busy summer season. Each lost booking is not only a blow to hotels and airlines but also to the myriad other businesses—from Parisian luxury boutiques to Asian street-food stands—that rely on travelers.
On Boon Tat Street, Singapore’s outdoor satay market where tourists typically come to feast on cheap, tasty skewers, vendors say business is down 70% to levels not seen since the SARS outbreak.
“It’s 7 o’clock. We’re normally packed by now,” said Emmy Mohammed, looking out across half-empty tables. “Now, no one is here.”
Shares of luxury-goods companies such as LVMH, Burberry Group Plc and Kering led last week’s global stock rout as a report by Boston Consulting Group and Sanford C. Bernstein said industry sales could fall by as much as 40 billion euros ($44 billion) in 2020.
With the travel industry in the first line of fire, the OECD featured a picture of an empty airport baggage-claim hall on the cover of a global economic outlook this week, when it cut this year’s growth forecast to 2.4% from 2.9%, which would be the weakest since 2009.
The outbreak has hit particularly hard in Italy, where travel and tourism generate 13% of economic activity, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. Normally at this time of year, skiers from across Europe head for Cortina d’Ampezzo, Val Gardena or Cervinia, some staying overnight in Milan or Venice on the way.
With alarm growing over the virus, some vacationers self-quarantined in their hotels instead of hitting the slopes, shopping or eating out. Maria Minkova, a 39-year-old civil servant from Brussels, returned home early from what was supposed to be a week in the Dolomite mountain resort of San Vito di Cadore.
“The decision to leave was dictated not so much by fear of the virus, but by the unknown measures the Italian or other European authorities might decide to take,” Minkova said. After hearing about hundreds of people quarantined in a hotel on the Spanish island of Tenerife, she worried the same might happen to her. Now Minkova is waiting to see how things evolve with the virus before making reservations for the Easter holidays.
Worries like those are exactly what the travel industry doesn’t want to hear. Some, such as Florence Airbnb host Simona Bellini, have resorted to direct emails to try to explain the situation.
“Our life goes on normally,” Bellini wrote to customers who had booked a stay in her one-bedroom apartment near the city’s Duomo. “We wanted to explain to our guests that we are not a quarantined city,” she added in a separate note.
Some travelers, though, say the risk is simply too great. In Berlin, tech company manager Jaime Fernandez-Galiano and his wife, who is seven months pregnant, canceled a family trip to northern Italy after her doctor advised them not to go. Fernandez-Galiano’s company would also have required him to work at home for 14 days after the trip to minimize the risk of spreading the virus to his team.
“I might get it, and because I’m 32, I would be OK,” Fernandez-Galiano said. “But if I’m contagious, I may infect other people who may infect other people who are older.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
—The Greek economy is roaring back—which could lead to mass evictions
—10 journalists who deserve justice immediately
—Fortune Explains: Tariffs and trade wars
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-03-04--China scoffed at being subject to early coronavirus travel restrictions. Now it’s enacting its own

Once coronavirus fades , global businesses are set to face new danger : a wave of lawsuits

On Tuesday, the Chinese embassy in Iran announced that hundreds of Chinese citizens there will be evacuated back to China amid the coronavirus outbreak in Iran. It was a startling indication of the virus’s rising threat around the world and of China’s emergence as a sort of safe haven from the coronavirus, just weeks after being a hotbed.
When the coronavirus first cropped up in earnest in January, countries around the world—from the United States to Australia to Russia—scrambled to close their borders to travelers from China. Beijing criticized such moves at the time. “Some countries, the U.S. in particular, have inappropriately overreacted,” a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said of the travel restrictions in early February. But now the tables have turned. As China sees its coronavirus caseload decline, officials are taking steps to reduce the risk of travelers to China reintroducing the virus.
In recent days, cities and municipalities across China have instituted their own mandatory quarantine measures for Chinese citizens and foreign nationals arriving from countries like Iran, South Korea, Italy, and Japan that have been hit worst by the global spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Beijing’s city government said on Tuesday that anyone from countries that have been “severely affected” by the virus will now have to undergo a 14-day mandatory quarantine.
Some local governments are even urging Chinese passport holders living abroad to not return home for the time being for fear they might bring infections back into China.
The government of Qingtian, a small county in China’s southeastern province of Zhejiang, urged Chinese citizens abroad to “not to come home without careful consideration.” The county had recently reported eight new cases of coronavirus from Chinese nationals who had just returned from Italy. In total, Chinese nationals living overseas have imported at least 13 cases into China.
The decisions on how to treat high-risk arrivals seem to fall in line with recent central government orders that give local governments the authority to quarantine and employ “other prevention measures” as they see fit.
In addressing the coronavirus threat posed by visitors, China is not discerning between citizens and foreigners. “We treat Chinese and foreign nationals alike,” said China Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Monday. “[These measures] are effective in stemming the cross-border spread of the virus and conducive to prevention and control efforts in China and other countries.”
Just weeks ago, China was reporting thousands of new coronavirus infections every day; on Wednesday, it said it had identified 143 new cases. The top official in Wuhan, the city at the epicenter of the outbreak, even said on Monday that authorities had the virus “under strong control.”
Yet the virus’s spread continues to escalate in places like the United States and across Europe, putting China’s overseas populations in a more precarious situation.
In total, there are roughly 11.8 million Chinese nationals living abroad, according to the United Nations’ World Migration Report. There are over a million Chinese nationals living in South Korea, nearly 400,000 in Japan, 300,000 in Italy, and likely at least a few thousand living in Iran—all countries the Chinese government has recently labelled high-risk.
The strict measures imposed on overseas Chinese if they return home is a new stressor for a population that’s reportedly been subject to more discrimination in their adopted countries amid the outbreak.
Authorities in China seem to recognize the strain the restrictions may place on their citizens abroad.
“What cannot be broken is the flesh and blood relationships between overseas Chinese and their families in their hometowns,” the Qingtian county statement read.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How to think about COVID-19
—Coronavirus spreads to a previously healthy sector: corporate earnings
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
—Coronavirus shows why we need vaccines before, not after, an outbreak
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
Subscribe to Fortune’s forthcoming Eastworld newsletter for expert insight on what’s dominating business in Asia.


fortune--2020-03-04--Will the coronavirus cancel or postpone the 2020 Olympics? Host city Tokyo sends mixed messages

As the coronavirus pandemic takes its toll on international events, prompting the cancellation of major global summits and regional sports meets, Japan’s Olympic organizing committee has remained resolute that the summer 2020 games will go ahead as scheduled.
There is “no plan B” for Tokyo 2020, the Tokyo Olympic organizers said on February 15. However, as the number of people infected with COVID-19 continues to rise—both within Japan and abroad—cracks are appearing in that narrative.
“The contract calls for the Games to be held within 2020. That could be interpreted as allowing a postponement,” Japan’s Olympics minister Seiko Hashimoto said in response to a lawmaker’s question in parliament on Tuesday. Currently, the Olympic games are scheduled for July 24 to August 9, followed by the Paralympics from August 25 to September 6.
Hashimoto reiterated that the Olympics are still on schedule for July—a message that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has maintained for weeks as well. In a statement emailed to Fortune on March 2, the IOC said “preparations for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 are continuing as planned.”
“The IOC is in contact with the World Health Organization as well as its own medical experts. We have full confidence that the relevant authorities, in particular in Japan and China, will take all the necessary measures to address the situation,” the IOC said.
However, officials in Japan have been criticized for their slow response to the coronavirus outbreak, which has now infected 293 in the country—excluding the 706 infected passengers onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Tokyo’s Yokohama district.
Japan’s northern-most province of Hokkaido, which has the highest number of cases at 79, declared a state of emergency last week. Meanwhile countries including Thailand, the U.S., and China have warned citizens against traveling to Japan, with some nations imposing mandatory two-week quarantines on arrivals from Japan.
On February 26, IOC member Dick Pound renewed speculation that the games were under threat when he suggested that a decision about the future of Tokyo 2020 would have to be made by the end of May, saying, “In and around that time, I’d say folks are going to have to ask: ‘Is this under sufficient control that we can be confident about going to Tokyo or not?’”
The following day, in a phone call with reporters, IOC president Thomas Bach attempted to quiet the rumor mill Pound set off and asserted that preparations for the games are “on schedule.”
But not everything is sticking to plan. Training for the roughly 80,000 volunteers required to ensure the games run smoothly was postponed at the end of February and the final Olympic baseball qualifier, due to be held in Taiwan, has been rescheduled from April to June.
Meanwhile some teams—particularly those from China—have had to evacuate from their home countries in order to continue training safely.
“Now, the Chinese wrestling team is training in Serbia and traveling from there to the different qualification tournaments. The table tennis team of China is in Qatar. The Chinese women’s basketball team is in Croatia. We have managed to move qualification competitions and tournaments within weeks from China to other countries where the safety of the athletes could be ensured,” Bach said.
But as the coronavirus continues to spread beyond Asia, viable safe training grounds are becoming harder to find.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How to think about COVID-19
—Coronavirus spreads to a previously healthy sector: corporate earnings
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
—Coronavirus shows why we need vaccines before, not after, an outbreak
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
Subscribe to Fortune’s forthcoming Eastworld newsletter for expert insight on what’s dominating business in Asia.


fortune--2020-03-04--Biden wins Texas primary in resounding Super Tuesday finish

Joe Biden ended a triumphant Super Tuesday with a narrow victory over Bernie Sanders in Texas, the giant red state where Democrats are seeking a rare return to power in 2020.
The former vice president’s victory over the Vermont senator capped a resounding and resurgent string of victories across the South for Biden, who won at least nine states but none bigger or more symbolic than Texas. Just 24 hours earlier in Dallas, Biden mounted a display of force by the Democratic Party’s moderate wing — revealing endorsements by former rivals Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke.
The primary put Texas’ fast-changing politics to the test and delivered some surprises. For Republicans, that included a rare loss for the Bush brand in the Lone Star State after Pierce Bush, a grandson of former President George H.W. Bush, failed to even make a runoff in a bid for Congress.
But for Texas Democrats, it meant seeing how far left voters would go before November.
“Things are looking awful good,” Biden told supporters in Los Angeles before the race in Texas was called in his favor. “For those who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind, this is your campaign.”
The last-minute gambit may have helped overtake Sanders, who had built a firm foothold in Texas just four years after badly losing the state to Hillary Clinton. Sanders was banking on young and Latino voters in booming Texas to accelerate his path to the nomination.
His rise emboldened an unusual crop of liberal challengers in Texas — and like Sanders, they were also coming running close into Wednesday.
In Texas’ Senate race, Democrat MJ Hegar awaited an opponent after advancing to a May runoff. Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez, who was endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive New York firebrand, was fighting to make the cut.
The winner of the Democratic Senate runoff will try to unseat Republican incumbent John Cornyn, who is seen as a heavy favorite in a state where a Democrat hasn’t won a Senate seat since the 1970s. The Senate race hasn’t mustered the same energy or attention as O’Rourke’s barnstorming run in 2018 against GOP Sen. Ted Cruz that became a launchpad the former congressman’s short-lived White House run.
“As a combat veteran, I am concerned about the values of this country that are under attack,” Hegar told supporters in Austin. “And as a working mom, I’m concerned about the future if we keep it in the hands of people like Sen. John Cornyn.”
And on the Texas border, Jessica Cisneros, 26, wasn’t yet out in her bid to become the youngest member of Congress in a challenge against Rep. Henry Cuellar, a rare Texas Democrat who has received support from the National Rifle Association.
Democrats are making fast gains in the nation’s biggest GOP stronghold and have a shot in November at taking control of the Texas House for the first time in 20 years. Reclaiming such power would swiftly change the landscape of one of the GOP’s most crucial states.
It’s an outcome that some conservative voters had on their minds as they went to the polls in Texas. Shelby Schnefke, a stay-at-home mother of two, said after casting her ballot in Dallas that the GOP needs to stay on guard against Democrats making further inroads.
“I feel like recently it’s been proven that it could happen,” Schnefke said. “I think that’s why it’s more motivating now than ever for Republicans to come out and vote because I think a lot of times in Texas you’re like, ‘Oh, we’re safe.’ But we definitely aren’t safe.’”
In Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, elections officials rushed to send additional voting machines to polling places where voters reported long lines.
With the hotly contested presidential race topping the ballot, long lines at polling sites encouraged Democrats who are counting on record-shattering turnout across the state this fall.
Coronavirus fears resulted in a number of poll workers and elections judges not showing up for work in Austin, where there have been no confirmed cases. And in San Antonio, technical stumbles caused delays at some polling sites and reporting results in key races Wednesday.
In Houston, Rebecca Taylor tried voting in one of the city’s historically black neighborhoods where voters waited up to an hour. So she planned to go elsewhere to cast a ballot for Biden after also considering billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who made Houston a centerpiece of his half-billion dollar gambit to win the nomination despite skipping the first four states.
Taylor said she thought Sanders would scorch other Democrats on the Texas ballot in November if he’s the presidential nominee, and she expressed skepticism about whether he could deliver on his promises.
“I just don’t believe he can get in there and do what he says he’s going to do,” she said.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—What is Super Tuesday? Everything you need to know
—Twitter’s testing new ways to fight misinformation. Is open-source the answer?
—Meet Trump’s Giuliani-approved power broker—and Melania’s new senior adviser
—Angela Merkel is on her way out. Meet her potential replacements
—How the 2020 election could influence your personal finances
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-03-04--Amazon’s U.S. workforce has its first confirmed case of coronavirus

Amazon.com Inc. notified employees Tuesday of the first confirmed case of coronavirus among its U.S. workforce. The online retailer told workers about the infected employee via email.
The employee left work Feb. 25 due to an illness and the company said it was informed Tuesday that the person had contracted Covid-19. All co-workers in contact with the employee, who were at Amazon’s South Lake Union office complex in Seattle, have been notified, the company said.
Two Amazon employees in Italy were previously confirmed to have contracted the virus. The company has said it will limit nonessential travel within the U.S. and cancel warehouse tours. It has started conducting some job interviews virtually rather than face-to-face.
Seattle, home of Amazon’s headquarters, has had the first and largest U.S. outbreak of Covid-19. 21 people have been infected and eight have died in the wider King County area, according to the local department of health, including some infected in a nursing home. Firefighters and emergency responders who transported infected patients are in quarantine. Some schools have closed so they can be cleaned and local stores are running out of hand sanitizer and face masks.
Health officials said there may be hundreds of infections that haven’t been reported yet in Washington state and potentially more nationwide. King County will use emergency authority to buy a motel to isolate what could be scores of patients.
Worldwide, there have been more than 92,000 infections and 3,161 deaths attributed to the virus, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned that global economic growth will sink as the pathogen spreads. Officials say the virus causes mild or flu-like symptoms in the vast majority of people infected, but it has proven dangerous for the elderly or those with other underlying conditions.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How to think about COVID-19
—Coronavirus spreads to a previously healthy sector: corporate earnings
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
—Coronavirus shows why we need vaccines before, not after, an outbreak
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
Subscribe to Fortune’s forthcoming Eastworld newsletter for expert insight on what’s dominating business in Asia.


fortune--2020-03-04--The Fed tries to calm heads—but markets roil instead

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the financial markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Good evening, Bull Sheeters. This is Fortune finance reporter Rey Mashayekhi, filling in this week for Bernhard Warner. We’re trying something new: To keep you informed on the latest developments in the Asian and U.S. markets amid the coronavirus scare, I’ll be sending you a special evening (or morning, for those of you in Asia) edition of the newsletter. We’ll be back to regular scheduling next week.
After reversing some of last week’s precipitous, coronavirus-induced declines on Monday, the global markets were much more tepid on Tuesday. And in the U.S., even a big helping hand from the Fed couldn’t stem considerable losses.
Markets update
First to Asia, where markets on mainland China continued to show signs of life despite negative manufacturing indicators in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. The major indices in Shanghai and Shenzhen all ended the day up around 1%.
The same could not be said for the markets in Hong Kong and Tokyo, both of which saw early gains give way to losses by the close of trading. The Hang Seng ended the day down marginally, while the Nikkei lost more than 1% despite measures taken by the Bank of Japan to counter the coronavirus outbreak’s impact.
The Japanese central bank has taken to buying hundreds of billions of yen in ETFs and government debt this week to “provide ample liquidity and ensure stability in financial markets,” according to BOJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda. But with Japan already operating on negative interest rates, investors may be skeptical of the BOJ’s ability to stem the tide should conditions continue to worsen.
In Europe, most of the major indices—including London’s FTSE, Frankfurt’s DAX, and the pan-European STOXX 600—registered gains around 1% on Tuesday. Like her counterparts in the U.S. and Japan, European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde has said that the ECB is “ready to take appropriate and targeted measures” to support its economy in the face of coronavirus-related headwinds. Commerzbank is already forecasting a “decisive” interest rate cut and heightened bond-buying program by the ECB—despite the fact that Europe, like Japan, is already in negative interest-rate territory.
Indeed, central banks globally are coordinating their efforts to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, as evidenced by an emergency conference call Tuesday involving the top economic policymakers at the Group of Seven nations. That conference was led by Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, whose own central bank followed up on its pledge to take action by cutting its benchmark interest rate by half a percent, to a range of 1% to 1.25%.
The emergency rate cut—which comes two weeks before the Fed was originally slated to meet this month—is the first time the U.S. central bank has taken such action between scheduled policy meetings, and its largest single move on interest rates, since the height of the financial crisis in 2008. But if the Fed’s aim was to calm the markets in New York and sustain Monday’s rally, it fell wide of the mark.
After rising 300 points early in the day’s trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged to end the day down almost 800 points, or nearly 3%. Likewise, the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 couldn’t sustain early gains, with both indices also finishing Tuesday down nearly 3%.
That won’t assuage fears that the market could continue onward in correction territory, rather than experiencing a mere blip spurred by a temporary—albeit serious—black swan event. Such fears were evident in the fact that the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell below 1% yield for the first time ever on Tuesday, as cautious investors flocked to bonds to insulate themselves from roiling equity markets. Gold prices rose, evoking a similar sentiment, while crude oil was flat and the dollar fell.
Hang tight—it’s only Tuesday, and who knows where things go from here. For now, have a pleasant evening and see you tomorrow.
Rey Mashayekhi
@reym12
rey.mashayekhi@fortune.com
Today's reads
Buy the dip? Not so fast. Shawn Tully, Fortune's legendary scribe of all things finance, offers up a great read today on whether stock market investors should try to take advantage of the current selloff in a bid to boost their own portfolios. But Shawn cautions against any such designs; instead, he notes that metrics like those developed by Nobel laureate economist Robert Shiller indicate that "stocks have simply gone from outrageously overpriced to extremely overpriced."
The SEC won't let me be. In Washington, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seems to be on the verge of a big win as far as preserving its power to hold those who violate securities laws accountable. The Supreme Court appears set to rule in favor of the SEC's right to ask a federal court to order the repayment of financial gains obtained through fraud—a tool that the regulator used to recoup $3.2 billion last year.
More debt, more problems. The coronavirus outbreak is affecting all kinds of companies, but some are more vulnerable than others—specifically, those with more debt than usual on their books. The likes of Richard Branson's Virgin Australia Holdings, casino operator MGM China, and movie theater chain AMC Entertainment Holdings are among those that may feel the hurt more than most, should economic conditions get worse and their creditors come calling.
Market candy
-0.1%
That's how much the S&P 500's real estate sector declined on Tuesday—the least significant drop of all 11 sectors tracked by the index. The Fed's decision to cut interest rates may be a pain for financial institutions who rely on net interest income to make money (the S&P's financials sector was down 3.7% Tuesday), but they're great for real estate investors and home buyers who can take advantage of lower borrowing costs when looking to obtain a mortgage. That, in turn, could very well drive more people to purchase homes.
It's no surprise, then, that some of America's largest home builders were among the publicly-traded names that managed to escape Tuesday's losses on Wall Street; the likes of Lennar Corporation (up 2.6%), D.R. Horton (1.4%), PulteGroup (1.5%), and NVR (1.5%) all saw their shares register gains by the end of trading.


fortune--2020-03-04--Virginia’s Governor signs law banning conversion therapy for minors

Virginia is outlawing the discredited practice of conversion therapy for LGBTQ children.
Conversion therapy is a practice used to try to change sexual orientation or gender identity. Gov. Ralph Northam said Tuesday he had signed into law that bans licensed therapists and counselors from subjecting minors to the practice. The legislation passed the Virginia General Assembly earlier this year.
Northam, a pediatric neurologist, said he was proud to sign the bill into law.
“No one should be made to feel they are not okay the way they are—especially not a child,” Northam said.
The American Psychological Association has said conversion therapy is not based in science and is harmful to mental health. Many people who have been through it say it deepened feelings of depression and increased thoughts of suicide.
The Virginia law will go into effect July 1.
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—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
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fortune--2020-03-04--Paris Fashion Week showcases the latest in clothing—and face masks

Louis Vuitton staged a dazzling cinematic fashion production to cap Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday, with a wall of around 200 human figures dressed in fashions that spanned human history.
While, Chanel staged a comparatively low-key affair, as the coronavirus outbreak kept many of the regular VIPs and fashion editors away. Some guests who made it wore CC-branded face masks, while others watched the Parisian stalwart’s display streamed online. Restraint was also evoked in Chanel designer Virginie Viard’s designs: A marked departure from her showman predecessor and mentor, the late Karl Lagerfeld. Simplicity was the Chanel “mot du jour”—from the set of tiered white steps to the pared-down aesthetic of monochrome.
Here are some highlights on the last day for fall-winter 2020 ready-to-wear.
Louis Vuitton’s wall of history
Elizabethan ruffs glistened in the lights alongside medieval two-point hats, pantaloons, exaggerated wigs and crinolines Tuesday at Louis Vuitton’s fall collection in Paris.
Guests marveled, as the show began inside the Louvre’s Cour Carree, to reveal a “wall” full of 200 people dressed in glimmering historic costumes, ranging from the 15th century to the 1950’s.
It was an arresting spectacle, especially when music sounded in a beautiful and stirring harmony.
The set, by Stanley Kubrick’s costume designer Milena Canonero, led the house to ask: “ What if all of the innumerable eras that nourish fashion could come together?”
Yet despite the exorbitantly-priced set piece, and a few garments, the answer was thin. The journey through design history in this Ghesquiere showing was relatively limited and the runway seemed to explore different themes to those evoked by the set piece.
Some historic-looking puff skirts with layers in gold gave certain looks a period air, as did bejeweled and embroidered jackets with a semi-circular lapel the historic musing was scant.
But front row of stars, including Alicia Vikander, Lea Seydoux, and Lupita Nyong’o, attested that this show was instead rooted firmly in the present.
On the runway, multicolored ski jackets followed pin-striped pants, loose silk knee-length dresses in sparkling tiger prints, black leather ankle boots with a geometric flash of color, and tailored plaid jackets with strong black lapels.
The collection, albeit finely executed, was rather hard to pin down.
Chanel seeks simplicity
“A very simple, very pure momentum. Romanticism, but without any flourishes,” is how Viard described her designs.
Evoking French film director Claude Chabrol’s 1968 film The Does, a lesbian drama, female models walked the runway together and chatted like intimates in the first looks. The models wore stylish retro black leather boots, ones with a brandy bell-shaped collar at the mid-calf that became the collection’s leitmotif.
Viard’s simplest designs were the most effective: A black silk bodice dress with the top lobbed off and dropped Juliette sleeves. Modeled by Cindy Crawford’s daughter, Kaia Gerber, it had guests clicking their cameras. And voluminous studded jodhpurs that opened up at the bottom cut a beautiful silhouette. This design, Viard said in a touching detail, was an homage to Lagerfeld’s personal style. Another simple garment, a loose wool jacket in Chanel’s emblematic pink with a soft-spiky collar, was a high point.
Yet, a drawback of the tasteful showing were some of the overly flashy gold chains and costume jewelry that often distracted the eye from the show’s central aesthetic.
Fun at Miu Miu
There has been renewed focus on Miuccia Prada after she announced during Milan Fashion Week that she had hired Belgian designer Raf Simons as co-creative director of the family house that she directed to icon status.
The first show since then for Prada’s little-sister brand, Miu Miu, did not disappoint creatively. The “intellectual” fashion display was a pastiche of itself.
Bright colors, intentionally contrasting checks, faux animal fur, and sumptuous shimmering silk gowns merged in divergent ways for disruptive, quirky effects.
Old school glamour came in an emerald green crinkled silk column dress, modeled with 1930s-style wavy hair that looked like it had been left in curlers a little too long.
As expected from Miu Miu, the fun vibe was everywhere: from the patterned runway that confused the eye when a model in a plaid split-leg dress walked it to the knit Cetacean blue bathing suit sweater and bright red furry heels worn by model Bella Hadid.
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fortune--2020-03-04--Super Tuesday results so far: Sanders wins California, the state with the most delegates

The latest on the Democratic presidential primary and Super Tuesday.
Joe Biden has notched his 10th Super Tuesday victory by winning Maine’s Democratic presidential primary
The state, which was called Wednesday afternoon for Biden, has 24 delegates at stake.
Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said turnout was higher than he had anticipated.
It was the state’s first presidential primary in 20 years. Maine last used primaries in 1996 and 2000 and then switched to the caucus system for the next four presidential election cycles. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders handily won Maine’s Democratic caucuses in 2016.
Biden also won Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia, while Sanders captured California, Colorado, Utah and Vermont.
Joe Biden has won Texas’ Democratic presidential primary
The state has 228 delegates at stake, the second biggest prize of the night.
More than 2 million people had already voted in Texas even before polls opened for Tuesday’s primary. The state, which has long been reliably Republican, is growing increasingly bluer amid a demographics change in Texas.
Biden held a rally in Dallas on Monday night, where he showcased two of his newest supporters and former rivals, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke. Pete Buttigieg endorsed Biden earlier in the night in Dallas.
Biden has also won Massachusetts, Arkansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Virginia. Bernie Sanders has won California, Utah, Vermont and Colorado.
Bernie Sanders has won California’s Democratic presidential primary
The state has 415 delegates at stake, the biggest haul on the electoral map.
Sanders’ campaign has long seen the nation’s most populous state as a critical early contest and has had droves of volunteers organizing events across the state. Sanders lost the 2016 Democratic presidential primary to Hillary Clinton and was hoping for a comeback that would be a capstone moment for the state’s progressive wing.
Sanders has also won Utah, Vermont and Colorado. Joe Biden has won Massachusetts, Arkansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Virginia.
Joe Biden has won Massachusetts’ Democratic presidential primary.
The state has 91 delegates at stake.
Massachusetts was considered a must-win state for its home-state candidate, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and election officials predicted high turnout. Nearly 230,000 voters took advantage of early voting last week, the first time the state has allowed early voting in a presidential primary.
Biden has won Arkansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Virginia. Bernie Sanders has won Utah, Vermont and Colorado.
Bernie Sanders has won Utah’s Democratic presidential primary.
The state has 29 delegates at stake.
Sanders has a deep well of popularity with the state’s left-leaning voters.
The Democratic primary is open in Utah, so voters can cast a ballot regardless of party affiliation. Some in the Republican majority have not fully embraced President Donald Trump and moderates saw an opportunity to woo middle-of-the-road voters with a pitch that they offer the best chance to unseat the president.
Sanders has also won Vermont and Colorado. Joe Biden has won Arkansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Virginia.
Joe Biden has won Arkansas’ Democratic presidential primary
The state has 31 delegates at stake.
The solidly Republican state has seen intense interest from Democratic presidential hopefuls who have crowding airwaves with ads and lining up endorsements. Arkansas’ Republican Legislature last year voted to move the state’s primary in presidential years from May to March.
Biden has also won Minnesota, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Virginia. Bernie Sanders has won Vermont and Colorado.
Joe Biden has won Minnesota’s Democratic presidential primary
The state has 75 delegates at stake.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s abrupt withdrawal from the presidential race gave Bernie Sanders a sudden opportunity to lock up her home state on Super Tuesday. Instead, Biden won the state after receiving Klobuchar’s endorsement.
Sanders easily won Minnesota’s caucuses in 2016 and has a large and motivated progressive base in the state, offsetting Klobuchar’s presumed home-field advantage in a race that was increasingly seen as tight before she dropped out Monday.
Biden has also won Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Virginia. Bernie Sanders has won Vermont and Colorado.
Joe Biden has won Tennessee’s Democratic presidential primary
The state has 64 delegates at stake.
Deadly overnight tornadoes delayed the start of Super Tuesday presidential primary voting in Nashville and another Tennessee county, spurring elections officials to redirect voters from some polling places to alternate locations.
In a state where Republicans hold every major elected office, including seven of the nine congressional seats, the Democratic primary voting base has a history of being more moderate than that of other states.
Biden has also won Alabama, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Virginia. Bernie Sanders has won Vermont and Colorado.
Joe Biden has won Oklahoma’s Democratic presidential primary
The state has 37 delegates at stake.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won Oklahoma’s Democratic primary in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.
Bernie Sanders has won Colorado’s Democratic presidential primary
The state has 67 delegates at stake.
It was Colorado’s first presidential primary in 20 years, and Sanders’ victory shows how much the Democratic Party can attract independents, still the largest voting bloc in a state that’s moved further left in recent elections.
Colorado held presidential primaries from 1992 to 2000, then dropped them to save money. In 2016, voters approved reinstating primaries after complaining about the caucus system of thousands of precinct meetings to start choosing presidential candidates.
Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the state’s 2016 Democratic caucuses, and he has maintained an enthusiastic base in Colorado ever since.
Joe Biden has won Alabama’s Democratic presidential primary
The state has 52 delegates at stake.
Black voters hold sway in the state’s Democratic electorate, and Biden and Mike Bloomberg split the endorsements of the state’s largest black political coalitions. The Alabama New South Coalition backed Biden, and the Alabama Democratic Conference supported Bloomberg.
Biden has also won Virginia and North Carolina, while Bernie Sanders has won the primary in his home state, Vermont. Voting is still underway elsewhere in the country, including California, the night’s biggest prize.
Mike Bloomberg and Tulsi Gabbard have won their first delegates thanks to American Samoa
The island has six Democratic delegates and their caucus awarded five to Bloomberg and one to Gabbard, who hails from Hawaii.
Bloomberg got nearly half the votes, followed by Gabbard’s 29%. Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren all were below the 15% threshold, said island party executive director Andrew Bergquist.
Joe Biden has won North Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary
The state has 110 delegates at stake and is one of the swing states for the 2020 election.
Biden has also won Virginia’s primary, while Bernie Sanders has won the primary in his home state, Vermont.
Voting is still underway elsewhere in the country, including California, the night’s biggest prize.
Bernie Sanders has won Vermont’s Democratic presidential primary
Vermont has 16 delegates at stake and is Sanders’ home state. In 2016, Sanders won more than 85% of the Democratic primary vote in the race against Hillary Clinton.
Sanders is holding an election night rally at the Champlain Valley fairgrounds in Essex Junction.
Joe Biden has won Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary
His victory comes as polls began to close in some states on Super Tuesday. Voting is underway elsewhere in the country, including California, the night’s biggest prize.
Virginia has 99 delegates at stake. It has been considered a tossup state that is increasingly moving to the left.
The results of the Democratic primary in Virginia, with its diverse electoral terrain of rural, urban, and suburban voters, could be a key indicator of which Democrat will be chosen to face President Donald Trump in the general election.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—What is Super Tuesday? Everything you need to know
—Twitter’s testing new ways to fight misinformation. Is open-source the answer?
—Meet Trump’s Giuliani-approved power broker—and Melania’s new senior adviser
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—How the 2020 election could influence your personal finances
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fortune--2020-03-04--7 reasons you’re not hearing back about your job applications

When will PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X debut ?
With coronavirus , it ’ s anyone ’ s guess

You know that feeling: although you apply to several jobs, you never hear back from recruiters or hiring managers. It’s frustrating, but definitely not unusual: A survey by Randstad US found that it takes job seekers an average of five months to be hired and, unsurprisingly, 82 percent of people called the process a “stressful experience.”
While it will always be a necessary ordeal for job-seekers, there’s no reason for you to have to guess your way through it. From the layout of your resume to following up with a recruiter, each application comes with a lot of balls to juggle.
“The job search process is complex and non-intuitive,” says Daniel E. Santos, CEO at Prepory, a career coaching company. “However, tailoring application materials to the companies and industries you’re interested in can greatly increase the probability of hearing back.”
Putting in additional time and energy knowing full-well you may never hear back from someone can definitely be annoying, but it will increase your chances of getting a response. Here’s why you may not be hearing back about the job you applied to and what you can do to get your inbox buzzing:
1. You didn’t follow the application instructions
When you’re on a job application spree, it’s easy to overlook the fact that each recruiter is looking for different information and resources. One might ask for examples of your past work while another may request your availability and salary expectations.
Neglecting to provide the information requested by not following the instructions given can lead to no response from a recruiter, says Brie Reynolds, a career development manager, career coach, and resume writer at FlexJobs, a site designed to help candidates find remote and flexible jobs. This is the first impression you’re giving the company so take the extra few minutes to ensure you’ve applied exactly as the instructions say.
2. Your resume doesn’t reflect the job description
It’s critical you tailor your standard one-page resume to each job you apply for. “Recruiters often use [narrowing, electronic] searches to find candidates after they have applied,” says Sarah Doughty, Director of Recruitment of TalentLab, an IT recruitment company. “Ensuring your resume uses the same keywords will push it to the top of the search results, so you know your profile will be reviewed.”
Instead of making it into a guessing game, take keywords directly from the listing. “The easiest way to tailor your resume: print each job description you’re applying for and grab a highlighter. Then, start highlighting the keywords you think are important and that describe your skills and experiences,” says Reynolds. “and make sure they appear on your resume.”
3. Your cover letter is generic
The cover letter was declared dead in 2017, when the Job Seeker Nation Survey reported that only 26 percent of recruiters considered it an important aspect of their hiring decision. But knowing how someone writes does matter for potential employers-hence asking for a cover letter is still standard practice in many application processes.
So, how to write one that stands out? “Before drafting a cover letter, thoroughly review the position’s overview and explore the company’s webpage,” says Santos.”Ask yourself, ‘How can I connect with the company’s ideals/culture?’ or ‘Are there any qualifications listed that may not be clear in my resume?’” It can be tempting to skip this step when a cover letter is optional, but consider submitting it nonetheless: it can set you above other candidates who leave it blank.
4. You’re following up too aggressively
The process of searching for a job is definitely a test of patience, but the waiting game must be played. Aggressively following up with the recruiter or hiring manager directly after applying online is a big no-no. Doughtry explains: “I’ve even had candidates arrive in-person to my office within a few minutes of applying online to see if they have gotten the role, which only creates stress and negative association when the hiring teams consider the candidate in the future”.
While confidence in your abilities is important, when you follow up, don’t assume you have an interview or the job in the bag. “A candidate who doesn’t display patience, emotional intelligence and self-awareness during the application process is unlikely to get an interview,” she says.
It should go without sayin,g but berating a recruiter with nasty messages or demands for a response is a surefire way to be taken out of the running for a role.
5. You didn’t follow up at all
While following up too quickly or aggressively hurts your chances of getting the job, so does not following up at all. It’s all about finding that balance between too eager and just eager enough, right?
“Candidates should follow up on each application via phone or email approximately seven days after it was submitted,” says Santos. “You can encourage the hiring manager or recruiter to schedule an interview with you by providing your availability in an email and restating your interest in the position.” Stating your availability can go something like, “If you choose to move forward with an interview, I’ve provided my availability below for your convenience.”
6. You applied too late
It may be the case that you’re not hearing back from a job simply because the hiring process is in its final steps. “Sometimes applicants may be submitting applications for positions that are towards the end of the hiring process,” says Santos. “An easy way to avoid applying to these types of postings is to sort jobs by ‘most recent’ or ‘date posted.’ This will provide a bit more assurance that the candidate’s resume will be reviewed,” he says.
Of course, if a job was posted some time ago but looks like a great opportunity, there’s no harm in applying. If none of the applicants work out or a similar opportunity pops up in the future, then they’ll have your information readily available.
7. You’re just not the right fit
No matter how much you want a job, sometimes you’re just not the best applicant for it — and not because you don’t have the talent or the skillset. The Randstad US survey also reported that 38 percent of participants had applied to a job without reading the description. If you’ve been blindly applying to every job in your field with no luck, start paying closer attention to how well your particular skills line up with the qualifications requested. “You should take the application process seriously and never apply for a role where you don’t have at least 70 percent of the skills listed,” says Doughty, “as well as being at the right general level of seniority.”
With conflicting qualifications, such as having only five years of experience doing something when the job asks for seven, she says you should still go ahead and apply. Explain your relevant experience incredibly clearly for your best shot at being selected—and learn from each application as you go.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
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