fortune--2020-09-10--The best back-to-school benefits companies are offering their employees

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, companies quickly realized the old workplace benefits—on-site meals and dry-cleaning, anyone?—wouldn’t translate to remote work. Businesses raced to introduce benefits that their employees could take advantage of—and that would be most helpful— during the global crisis.
Now that the pandemic has reached the fall, companies are aiming to meet the changing needs of employees whose children are attending virtual school from home. These are some of the most innovative benefits tailored to the back-to-school season that businesses are now offering their employees.
Accenture
In August, consulting and tech firm Accenture introduced new school-day supervision for children ages 6 through 12 through a partnership with Bright Horizons. Accenture employees can pay $5 an hour—the company covers 75% of the cost—for their children to follow remote learning curriculums in a small group supervised by a proctor. The makeshift school day takes place at Mathnasium, Sylvan Learning, or Code Ninja locations, with supplemental activities available between classes.
Bank of America
Bank of America’s back-up childcare program for employees ended in mid-August; the bank followed up by introducing a daily childcare reimbursement of $75 or $100, depending on the employee’s salary, for children up to 12 years old and children with special needs through 21 years old through Dec. 31.
Through a partnership with Bright Horizons, similar to Accenture’s, Bank of America will provide workers with access to learning hubs and childcare. The company will also offer educational resources through Khan Academy, virtual field trips, and virtual after-school programs. Information on these resources will be available via a centralized hub for parents.
Carta
Fintech startup Carta this month announced a $10,000 annual stipend per employee to help with childcare for kids under 13 years old in both 2020 and 2021.
Citigroup
To its childcare offerings, which include back-up care and enrollment through Bright Horizons, Citi in August added nanny placement services for employees.
For the start of the school year, Citi introduced a service helping employees find caregivers trained in education who can supervise online learning and assistance finding tutors and other families to join small group learning outside the school setting. Citi offers a 10% discount on these services.
Dell Technologies
Dell expanded its longstanding “Connected Workplace” program offering flexibility for remote work to its full workforce in July.
For back-to-school, Dell is offering employees access to virtual learning pods, tutoring services, and help finding childcare providers also trained in education; the company provides some discounts and credits to employees. The company has also expanded its network of childcare centers from 1,000 to 2,400 locations to meet demand as parents search for in-person options with schools closed.
Fidelity Investments
Over the summer, the financial services company ran Fidelity Kids Camp, five weeks of virtual full-day summer activities for employees’ kids.
The company has since pivoted its online concierge service, which has long provided assistance with tasks like planning vacations or finding contractors, to more specifically address the needs of working parents. The service now finds information like where to buy face masks for children, what to make for lunch during the school day, and what availability is like at local daycares.
This month, Fidelity introduced a reimbursement of up to $100 per dependent per month for child, with a $300 household maximum, for childcare expenses through the end of the year. The company is also working on a program to provide flexibility in hours to employees who usually a fixed shift schedule.
Intel
Technology company Intel in September switched its backup childcare offering to a monthly reimbursement program, offering employees between $75 and $300 a month to help with caregiving costs.
Earlier this year, the company added 80 hours of supplemental paid time off. The company also changed how its longstanding four- and eight-week sabbatical program for long-term employees can be used to allow for more time off during the pandemic.
KPMG
During the 2020 year, consulting firm KPMG has expanded a number of its existing benefits. The company quadrupled the number of days employees can use the firm’s backup care program; expanded its network of discounted one-on-one or small group tutoring, academic support, test prep, and homework assistance (discounts range from 10% to 30%); and expanded its network of childcare centers with discounted care available from 1,000 to 2,500 locations.
KPMG also created “learning pods” for employees, where parents throughout the organization can team up for virtual or in-person learning for small groups of school-age children.
The firm also has a few benefits it is set to introduce in the coming weeks, including a college coaching program and specialized coaching for employees with teenage children.
Microsoft
Microsoft is participating in a Bright Horizons arrangement similar to Accenture’s, offering “school-day supervision” to children of employees who are learning remotely.
Palo Alto Networks
Cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks will provide $1,000 per year per employee that can be put toward benefits including health—like a gym membership—and education; those education benefits include tutoring assistance. The company has also introduced on-demand learning for employees.
Progress
Software company Progress has begun offering virtual events for families including a summer baking challenge inspired by the Netflix series Nailed It, art classes, virtual paint night, a “bring your kids to work” events.
Salesforce
Tech giant Salesforce has added six additional weeks of available time off for employees who are parents. The company has also clarified that parents will be able to work remotely past the August 2021 date currently pegged for the workforce’s return to the office is children’s schools remain closed.
ShipStation
Shipping software startup ShipStation specialized its virtual wellness series to focus on back to school, bringing in nutritionists to provide tips on healthy lunches and snacks alongside wellness experts leading webinars for parents about stress management.
SitterStream
SitterStream is a new startup providing 30- to 90-minute virtual babysitting and tutoring sessions. The companies Amazon, Alnylam, Sarepta, and Unum have signed on to offer SitterStream services to their employees, the startup says.
Synchrony
This summer, consumer financial services company Synchrony introduced Synchrony summer camps, virtual summer camp experiences for 3,700 children of employees.
This fall, the company is expanding that concept to “Synchrony after school,” similar virtual after-school programs for children, including homework help and extracurricular activities.
Wyzant
The tutoring marketplace Wyzant launched Wyzant for Business, an corporate benefit package allowing companies to subsidize at-home learning—for children or adults—for their employees.


fortune--2020-09-10--The rollercoaster of COVID-19 vaccines

The rollercoaster of COVID-19 vaccines

Pelosi to Britain : ‘ No chance ’ of a U.S. trade deal if you jeopardize the Good Friday accord

Good afternoon, readers.
We’ve had a few turbulent developments in the coronavirus vaccine development race.
The biopharma investment and global health communities went into a tizzy over a halt of British drug giant AstraZeneca’s trial for a COVID-19 vaccine, being conducted with the help of Oxford University.
But here’s the thing: This is just kind of how things work when you’re making a new drug. And it’s complicated when you’re making one that seeks to serve the entire world on a short timeline while you’re trying to control an outbreak.
“This is a routine action, which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials,” AstraZeneca spokeswoman Michele Meixell says in a statement.
AstraZeneca’s clinical trial hold stemmed from adverse events and may well proceed into further clinical development. The bigger picture of who can develop a COVID vaccine as soon as possible is still murky.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla remains optimistic about his own company’s chances. “I’m very confident,” said Bourla in a recent event with Fortune. “Within a month we’ve had almost 26,000 people vaccinated.” He still thinks we’ll know whether or not this biological technology works by the fall.
Read on for the day’s news, and see you again next week.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
Truepill raises $75 million. MobiHealthNews reports that digital health firm Truepill has announced a $75 million Series C funding round to fuel its at-home diagnostics efforts. Optum Ventures, TI Platform Management, and Sound Ventures were all in the mix. Diagnostics weren't the company's original focus (it's a digital pharmacy at heart)—but the expansion shows the upstart's growing ambitions. (MobiHealthNews)
INDICATIONS
Glaxo's asthma hat trick. British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline has long been battling in the asthma treatment space (where the company is a pioneer but now faces many competitors). On Wednesday, it got a bit of a boost with an FDA green light for its Trelegy Ellipta therapy, a triple-drug combination inhaler which only has to be taken once a day and, according to the firm, is significantly more effective on both a clinical and practical level. (FiercePharma)
THE BIG PICTURE
Childhood vaccination rates may finally be on the rise. A new report from Komodo Health suggests that childhood vaccination rates—an area that the U.S. has typically trailed other developed nations—are beginning to pick up. It's not exactly a public health game changer given the depths of the problem, though, and as with everything in medicine and society, the specter of COVID is delaying progress, according to the report. "Childhood vaccination rates began to fall sharply across the U.S. starting in March of 2020, hitting a low point the week of April 6, 2020, when routine childhood immunizations fell by 50% versus the same week in 2019," say the authors. "Weekly immunization rates continued to stay significantly suppressed vs. 2019 totals throughout April and May, though the magnitude of decline became smaller with each month. By the week of May 25, 2020, the weekly childhood immunization rate was just 6% below the rate seen in the same week of 2019." (Komodo Health)
REQUIRED READING


fortune--2020-09-10--How Google, Facebook, and Twitter plan to handle misinformation surrounding 2020 presidential electi

How Google, Facebook, and Twitter plan to handle misinformation surrounding 2020 presidential election results

Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are preparing for an unprecedented hurdle they may face on the night of Nov. 3: not knowing who won the 2020 presidential election.
A massive number of voters are expected to vote by mail, at least partially driven by a desire to avoid contracting the coronavirus. It takes longer to count absentee ballots than in-person ones, and any difficulties or delays could ultimately postpone election results by days or weeks, which could allow election misinformation and false claims of victory to go viral.
Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter will be under increased pressure to control election-related misinformation, which the social media giants have historically struggled to police. Politicians, political campaigns, foreign actors, and even average users have long used the services to disseminate false claims about candidates, and, in some cases, undermine the credibility of this year’s election given its unique circumstances.
The four services recently announced new policies aimed at mitigating false claims of victory. Here’s what they plan to do.
Google
Google is aiming to provide users with quick reliable information on the election results with help from partners.
The search giant plans to promote information from partners like the Associated Press and the nonprofit Democracy Works in a box atop the search results page. The company also said it also has ranking protections in place to ensure that reports that claim early victory will not appear in the search results.
“I have extreme confidence that the team will handle this algorithmically, but if a challenging piece of information slips through, our policies will allow us to take that down,” said David Graff, Google’s senior director of global policy and standards, during a call with reporters on Thursday.
On the advertising side, Google said it already has policies that prohibit advertisers from using doctored or manipulated media or false claims that could undermine voter participation or trust in the election. Any ads that violate that policy are removed from Google.
YouTube
YouTube is taking steps to try to mitigate election misinformation and promote news from credible organizations.
Beginning Nov. 3, YouTube said on all videos about the election, it will attach an information panel that suggests the results may not be finalized, linking users to Google’s election results box. It also will remove videos that misleads viewers about the voting process, encourages voter interference, or that have been manipulated to mislead viewers and poses a serious risk of harm.
To help combat misinformation, the company said it will promote information from news organizations and reduce the distribution of election misinformation.
Facebook
Facebook recently introduced a new policy directed at handling false claims of victory from candidates and political campaigns, but what’s unclear is how the company will handle misinformation about election results from users.
Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company was partnering with Reuters and the National Election Pool to provide authoritative information about the results of the election. The information will be featured in the Voting Information Center, a hub on Facebook that provides users with information from authoritative sources. Facebook plans to proactively notify users when the election results become available.
If any candidate or campaign declares victory before the results are determined, Facebook will include a label telling users that the election has not yet been determined. The label also will direct people to the official results. The company reportedly will not label posts from media organizations that prematurely announce the election winner.
Facebook has yet to announce how it will handle user posts that spread misinformation about the election results. The company said it’s still finalizing those details.
On Oct. 7, Facebook also announced that it will temporarily stop running all political ads after the polls close on Nov. 3, in addition to banning new political ads one week prior to the election. The company did not specify when it intends to end the ban.
The company also halted recommendations for political and social issue groups leading up to the election. It’s unclear when the company will lift that restriction.
Twitter
Twitter updated its civic integrity policy on Sept. 10, saying it plans to label or remove any misleading information about the election results or any disputed claims that could undermine the faith in the election itself. One month later, it expanded and clarified that policy.
Twitter said that it plans to label tweets that falsely claim election victory and will remove tweets that encourage violence or interference with polling places. On Nov. 2, the company elaborated: Labels will apply to candidates, campaigns, and users with more than 100,000 followers or those that have 25,000 likes, retweets, or quote retweets.
Twitter said it will consider the election results official when at least two of the following media organizations have made the announcement: The Associated Press, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and Decision Desk HQ, a private company that’s tracking the election.
The company also is adding new restrictions and warnings to tweets with misinformation from politicians, users with more than 100,000 followers, or users who receive a lot of retweets and replies. The tweets will be obscured by a warning, alerting users that the claims have been disputed, and users will have to tap before seeing the tweet. Users won’t be able to reply, and they’ll only be able to retweet the tweets if they include their own comments along them.
Twitter users are also now prompted when they are about to amplify misinformation before they are able retweet a flagged tweet.
Twitter previously said it will evaluate a tweet’s potential to cause harm when determining whether it will be removed. Content that has the propensity to create specific harm will be removed, whereas tweets that mischaracterize or represent general harm will be labeled as such.


fortune--2020-09-10--Whether it’s Trump or Biden, America’s policies on China will continue to shift dramatically

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Since Donald Trump assumed the presidency in January 2017, Republicans and Democrats have been at odds on virtually every major point of policy, both foreign and domestic. But regardless of whether Trump or his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, win the upcoming presidential election in November, one policy position appears set to remain on the same course: a tougher, more adversarial stance toward China, especially on issues like trade and national security.
As the Wall Street Journal notes today, the past four years have seen the Democratic Party establishment come around to accepting the Trump administration’s hard line on China—a position that launched the two nations into a trade war and redrew the dynamics of international relations.
And in its bid to defeat Trump, the Biden campaign has come to adopt a similar stance to the current administration on an array of matters related to China; it’s pledged to continue curbing China’s influence in high-tech sectors like artificial intelligence and 5G wireless technology, and has even refused to commit to revoking Trump’s heavy tariffs on Chinese imports.
“I think there is a broad recognition in the Democratic Party that Trump was largely accurate in diagnosing China’s predatory practices,” Biden campaign advisor Kurt Campbell, a former Asia official in the State Department during the Obama administration, told the Journal.
Biden has sought to differentiate himself from Trump by criticizing the President’s strategy toward confronting China, while his advisers also shoot down the notion of a “new Cold War” given the continued co-dependence of the two nations’ economies. And it’s likely a Biden administration would look to work more closely with China in cooperating on global challenges like the coronavirus pandemic and climate change.
Still, Biden’s move toward a more skeptical view of China represents a drastic shift from where establishment Democratic politicians have long stood on U.S.-China relations—from the Clinton-era trade deals that made China an indispensable part of America’s supply chain, to Obama administration policies that sought to develop closer ties to the nation.
Biden himself was a major part of Obama’s push in that regard; as the Journal notes, the Democratic nominee has himself boasted about spending more time with Chinese President Xi Jinping than any other foreign official. “It is in our self-interest that China continue to prosper,” Biden said during a 2011 visit to the country.
The Trump campaign, for its part, has looked to remind people of Biden’s role in a Democratic establishment that permitted China’s rise into a global power, and which allowed millions of American manufacturing jobs to be outsourced to China and other countries. That argument was a key feature of then-candidate Trump’s message of economic populism during the 2016 election, and played a major role in lifting Trump to the presidency.
Now, Biden and the Democratic establishment have found themselves adopting many of the same positions on U.S.-China relations as Trump—not to mention free trade skeptics on the left such as Sen. Bernie Sanders. Like Trump, Sanders opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership during his bid for the White House in 2016, prompting Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to reverse her own position on the trade agreement.
As divisive as many of the President’s policies and politics have proven, he has united Washington behind a more suspicious stance toward a Chinese regime that has recently cracked down on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and is said to have detained upwards of 1 million ethnic Uighurs in internment camps.
“Regardless of who wins, U.S. policy toward China is going to be tougher over the next five years than the last five years,” Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Journal. “China has changed, and the U.S. thinking on China has changed.”


fortune--2020-09-10--NASA wants to buy moon rocks from anyone who can fund their own space trip

NASA wants to buy some moon rocks, and it’s seeking out companies to make space mining trips so that it can establish a legal framework for its galactic aspirations.
The agency is soliciting bids from explorers anywhere on Earth who are willing to finance their own trips to the moon and collect soil or rock samples without actually returning the material to earth. The effort is meant to set a legal precedent for mining on the lunar surface that would allow NASA to one day collect ice, helium or other materials useful to colonies on the moon and, eventually, Mars.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration also wants to demonstrate the potential for “in-situ resource utilization,” or using locally sourced materials for future space missions, it said Thursday. NASA anticipates paying roughly between $15,000 to $25,000 per moon contract, agency Administrator Jim Bridenstine said, though final pricing will be determined by the competition.
Activities beyond the earthly plane are currently governed by the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Signed by the U.S., it bars extraterrestrial military bases or nuclear weapons and basically requires nations to explore in peace and clean up their own messes.
In particular, the treaty stipulates that outer space isn’t subject to “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” But it doesn’t specifically address space mining.
“It’s time for regulatory certainty to extract and trade space resources,” Bridenstine said in a tweet.
The winning bidder will “collect up to 500 grams (1.1 pounds) of lunar material, photograph it, document its location and then “conduct an ‘in-place’ transfer of ownership of the lunar regolith or rocks to NASA,” the agency said in a blog post. NASA will sort out any retrieval plans for the material at a later date.
It’s not clear yet who might step up as a contender. Landing on the moon is neither cheap nor easy, and NASA will pay only for the lunar material that’s collected. The contractor will be responsible for all costs associated with the mission, NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz said in an email.
Financially, the contract would make most sense for explorers already planning lunar trips. India plans a second try at landing a rover on the moon after its first attempt failed in September 2019. A $100 million privately funded Israeli mission to land on the lunar surface failed in April 2019. In March 2018, Google and the XPrize Foundation ended its $30 million lunar competition after multiple private teams were unable to launch and land a small rover on the moon and to drive it at least 500 meters (1,640 feet).
NASA’s Artemis program aims to land astronauts on the moon in 2024.


fortune--2020-09-10--Goldman Sachs just issued a very bullish projection for Q3 GDP

It appears the recovery may be going better than expected, and Goldman Sachs isn’t afraid to put a bullish estimate out there: 35% GDP growth for the 3rd quarter.
That estimate is far above consensus at around 21% growth for Q3, per Bloomberg—But economists at the firm write the new bold call is born out of a “much stronger-than-expected jobs report (and solid summer data more generally),” economists at Goldman Sachs wrote in a report Thursday.
Indeed, the firm, like many on Wall Street, says it’s happily surprised by some of the recent data, notably the latest unemployment report for August, which came in at 8.4%—down from 10.2% in July with 1.4 million jobs added, and handily beating Goldman’s own estimate of 9.8%.
To be sure, the rebound in most economic data of late is perhaps surprising given the resurgence in coronavirus cases throughout the U.S. in June and July—and the expiration of the $600 enhanced unemployment benefits, stimulus checks, and the Paycheck Protection Program, designed to buoy small businesses during the crisis, had many worried the data may start looking worse again.
While some economists have been concerned consumer spending has been tapering off, economists at Goldman argue that, on the contrary, “spending instead rose strongly in July, and … high-frequency measures indicate a further 1-2% increase in real spending in August.” That’s prompted the firm to “pencil in” a 1.25% increase in consumption for August (concealing, however, a “decline among unemployment benefit recipients,” the firm notes). But even for those who received enhanced unemployment checks, Goldman notes the “spending decline is more moderate than we had previously expected. The end-of-summer spending pace for unemployment benefit recipients and for lower-income zip codes more generally is also well above Q2 levels—and we expect it to rebound by late September as retroactive top-up checks arrive.” Indeed, economists at the firm note “most information on August spending indicates stable or higher consumption”—apart from clothing, which may be impacted due to slower back-to-school sales.
Those consumer numbers have been key for economists to gauge the pace and success of the recovery thus far. Indeed, “It’s the consumer spending data I’m most uncertain about, and that happens to be 70% of the economy,” Brett Ryan, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, told Fortune recently.
Apart from the consumer, Goldman is also optimistic there has been a V-shaped recovery in manufacturing and inventories, as economists note “industrial production has risen 10% since April (not annualized),” while nominal business inventories rose in July for the first time since December.
But GDP is clawing its way back from some pretty grisly numbers earlier this year. GDP for the second quarter fell -32.9%, slightly better than some of the more gruesome projections. Now, Goldman’s estimate is more bullish than the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow estimate at 30.8 as of Sept. 10.
Still, the economy is by no means out of the woods yet. Congress has stalled on compromising on another stimulus bill to help boost states, the unemployed, and small businesses, and a less expensive proposal by Republicans failed to pass a vote in the Senate on Thursday. Despite the improving data, for some economists, “It would be a grievous mistake to conclude this economy is off and running and they don’t need to provide additional support,” Moody’s Analytics’ Mark Zandi remarked to Fortune in late August.
But all told, economists at Goldman note the markets have been expecting a far worse case scenario than we’re likely to get—and they believe “the sequential strength in the data in Q3 also bodes well for Q4 and beyond.”


fortune--2020-09-10--Russian hackers are again trying to disrupt U.S. elections, Microsoft says

Groups from Russia, China and Iran have stepped up cyber-attacks in an effort to disrupt the U.S. presidential election in November, a Microsoft Corp. investigation found.
The groups have increased cyber-attacks targeting the political campaigns of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and U.S. President Donald Trump, advocacy groups, political parties, academics and leaders in the international affairs community, according to a blog post by Tom Burt, corporate vice president of customer security and trust at Microsoft, on Thursday.
SKDKnickerbocker, a public affairs and political consulting firm working with Biden’s campaign, was recently targeted in an unsuccessful hack by suspected Russian state-backed hackers, according to a Thursday report by Reuters, which said that Microsoft had alerted the firm.
The attempted hack on SKDKnickerbocker reflects a broader trend that was documented by Microsoft, that a Russia-based group had attacked “political campaigns, advocacy groups, parties, and political consultants.”
Microsoft reported that more than 200 organizations directly or indirectly tied to the U.S. election and political organizations in Europe were affected by a Russian-operated group, called Strontium, including U.S.-based consultants serving Republicans and Democrats. The same group was also identified in the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as being responsible for the attacks on the Democratic presidential campaign in 2016, according to Microsoft. (Strontium is also known as APT28, or Fancy Bear).
Microsoft also reported unsuccessful cyber-attacks from Iran on people associated with the Trump campaign, and attempted attacks from China on people associated with the Biden campaign, as well as a “prominent” individual formerly associated with the Trump administration. The people who were targeted weren’t named. The Chinese group, referred to as Zirconium, has mounted thousands of attacks from March through September on campaign officials as well as prominent academics and others in international affairs. Of those attempts, about 150 were successful breaches, but Microsoft didn’t identify the victims other than to say they weren’t associated the presidential campaigns.
Microsoft’s findings echo those of U.S. government officials. In August, William Evanina, head of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said Russia, China and Iran are trying to “use covert and overt influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters’ preferences and perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people’s confidence in our democratic process.” And on Wednesday, Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said “the governments of China, Iran and Russia target our election systems, each with its own separate and nefarious motives and tactics.”
The recent attacks reveal that “foreign activity groups have stepped up their efforts targeting the 2020 election,” according to Microsoft. “What we’ve seen is consistent with previous attack patterns that not only target candidates and campaign staffers but also those who they consult on key issues.”
The majority of attacks were detected and stopped by security tools built into Microsoft’s software, Burt said.
Foreign groups used tactics including rotating IP addresses to disguise attacks, web bugs planted in purchased domain names and phishing, in an effort to harvest log-in credentials and gain information on targeted individuals and organizations. Phishing attacks can be for routine espionage against campaigns or, in some cases, to conduct hack and leak operations — a key feature in Russia’s campaign to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Disinformation experts are on high alert for strategic leaks of real or fabricated documents in the weeks ahead of Nov. 3, a foreign influence tactic that could significantly harm the candidate targeted, particularly if there is not enough time for them to adequately respond ahead of Election Day.
“We disclose attacks like these because we believe it’s important the world knows about threats to democratic processes,” Burt said. He also said more federal funding is needed in the U.S. so states can better protect their election infrastructure.


fortune--2020-09-10--GOP $500 billion aid package blocked by Senate Democrats—here’s what it means for unemployment benef

GOP $500 billion aid package blocked by Senate Democrats—here’s what it means for unemployment benefits and stimulus checks

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On Thursday, the Republican-proposed $500 billion stimulus package failed to get enough votes to advance in the chamber.
The stimulus package received 52 votes in favor, all from Republicans, and 47 opposed votes from Democratic Senators and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul. The bill needed 60 votes in favor to move forward.
The $500 billion package—which is scaled back from previous proposals—would have provided $250 billion for another round of Paycheck Protection Program loans, just under $50 billion for COVID-19 testing and vaccine development, over $100 billion for schools, and it forgives a $10 billion loan to the United States Postal Service. Additionally, it would secure $300 weekly enhanced unemployment benefits through the week ending December 27.
But Democratic leaders blocked that aid, saying it won’t do enough boost the economy or contain the virus.
The Republican’s “skinny” stimulus package did not include funding for a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks—a proposal that for months Republican and Democratic leaders supported. And it didn’t provided additional funding for state and local governments. Democratic leaders are still asking for $1 trillion for state and local governments in order to stave off mass public sector layoffs.
And this failed vote comes as funding for the $300 enhanced unemployment benefits, which are paid top of regular unemployment benefits, are set to run out this month. On Wednesday, Texas became the first state to announce it had depleted the funding and will discontinue payments.
So where does a stimulus package go from here? The consensus on Capitol Hill is nothing will get signed before the end of September—when U.S. lawmakers are required to approve more federal funding to stave off a government shutdown.
If Democrats and Republicans do come to an agreement before the election, it’s likely it would be more broad package than the $500 billion package voted down on Thursday. And it would likely include stimulus checks, unlike the Republican “skinny” bill.
When Republican and Democratic leaders last discussed a broad stimulus bill in August, the two parties were $900 billion apart: Democrats at $2.2 trillion, and the White House at $1.3 trillion. Both of those deals would have included stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment benefits.


fortune--2020-09-10--How 2020 is like a colonoscopy

How 2020 is like a colonoscopy

By just about any metric, 2020 has been a rough year. Although it may not yet compare to such dismal years as 1943 (peak of the Nazi Holocaust and World War II), 1348–49 (peak of the Black Death), or 536 (darkened skies and widespread famine due to an epic volcanic eruption), the fact that 2020 draws comparisons to terrible years spanning two millennia of human history says something. And we still have over three months to go.
But while 2020 has been an objectively bad year, psychological science suggests there’s still hope for 2020’s memory. Setting aside the morbid possibility of an even worse year in the near future making 2020 look comparatively mild, our collective memory of 2020 still may still be salvageable. Why?
Our “hedonic evaluations”—that is, our judgments about positivity or negativity—of past experiences rarely follow simple rules. Scientists have found, for example, that when people return from a vacation, their recalled enjoyment doesn’t correlate strongly with the “average” or “total” pleasure (or pain) experienced throughout the trip. Instead, their hedonic evaluation of the vacation is best explained by a combination of how good or bad the vacation was at its peak, and how good or bad the vacation was at its end.
This “peak-end rule” for how we make evaluations of experiences was first described by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and colleagues. The primary reason the peak and end experiences have a disproportionate influence on our evaluation of experiences is something called “episodic memory”: When recalling a recent experience, we focus on specific “episodes” or moments rather than the whole thing. And, as you might expect, the most intense and most recent moments tend to stand out.
Of course, for most of us, 2020 has shared little in common with a vacation, but we can apply the peak-end rule to unpleasant experiences, too. For example, one study compared the real-time reports of discomfort among colonoscopy patients (recorded every 60 seconds) to those patients’ recalled experience of the procedure afterward. During the colonoscopy, minute-by-minute pain averaged 3.1 on a scale from zero to 10, but nearly all patients recorded a peak moment of pain between five and 10 on the scale (with an average peak pain of 7.7).
After the procedure, each patient was asked to evaluate the overall experience of the colonoscopy while they waited in the recovery room. Surprisingly, this evaluation bore no relationship to a patient’s average pain rating during the procedure. Instead, retrospective evaluations correlated most closely to peak and end pain levels.
In a follow-up study, the researchers tried adding up to three minutes of below-average discomfort at the end of the colonoscopy. Patients who had this low-discomfort ending added to the procedure tended to recall the procedure as less unpleasant overall, even though the extra two or three minutes extended the overall duration of the procedure and thus added to the total amount of discomfort experienced.
So what do colonoscopies have in common with 2020? Crude humor aside, the year has had a lot of unpleasant moments so far. However, on Jan. 1, 2021, our evaluation of 2020 will likely be most influenced by how bad it was at its worst, and how bad it was at its end. If 2020’s peak “pain” levels have already passed, a good ending can go a long way toward salvaging the year in retrospect.
Here in the U.S., that might require, for example, good news in the fight against COVID-19, improved employment statistics, or—for a slim majority of Americans—a Joe Biden presidential election win. But even a couple months of more unpleasantness could make 2020 seem better in retrospect, as long as November and December are less painful on average than the rest of the year.
There is no end to 2020 that will lead us to remember it as a great year, but when an entire year can be compared to a colonoscopy, a couple months of “not so bad” could do us all a lot of good.
Aaron M. Sackett is an associate professor of marketing at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. He conducts research on factors affecting human judgment and decision-making and teaches courses on persuasion and consumer behavior.


fortune--2020-09-10--New report claims widespread deception by Nikola Motor and founder Trevor Milton

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A new report claims that zero-emissions vehicle startup Nikola Motor has made a series of deceptive public statements and representations about its technology and business. Allegations include that Nikola staged a 2018 video of its signature hydrogen fuel-cell truck driving, and that it has made deceptive claims about its battery development efforts after the failure of an acquisition deal.
The allegations come from Hindenburg Research, which has a short position in Nikola stock. But they follow previous reports of misrepresentations by Nikola and broader expert skepticism about the company’s aggressive claims.
The Hindenburg report’s most striking claim is that a January 2018 video purportedly showing a Nikola One hydrogen fuel-cell semi truck moving under its own power was staged. According to Hindenburg, the video in fact showed the truck rolling down a long, gentle slope. Hindenburg’s report includes a test confirming that the section of road shown in the video could accelerate a coasting vehicle to highway speeds, along with text messages from a former Nikola employee appearing to confirm the tactics.
Given these claims, it is notable that Nikola repeatedly described the video as showing the truck “in motion,” which would be technically true even if the truck were not moving under its own power. Bloomberg had previously reported that Nikola and its founder, Trevor Milton, made deceptive claims about the capabilities of the Nikola One unit displayed at a 2016 event.
Another major claim made in the Hindenburg report is that Nikola and Milton have misrepresented the company’s efforts to develop a new kind of battery for use in electric vehicles.
In November 2019, Milton claimed that Nikola would soon unveil “the biggest advancement we have seen in the battery world.” Those claims appear to have been based on the planned acquisition of a company called ZapGo, but by December, Nikola had backed out of that acquisition. In a March 2020 legal filing, Nikola said ZapGo “had nothing more than interesting research with no ability to commercialize its research.”
Despite pulling out of the deal, Nikola did not revise its public messaging about an impending revolution in EV battery technology. In a June interview with Fortune and in other public statements, Milton continued to promise an imminent unveiling of the tech. Milton claimed that Nikola was working to commercialize battery technology it had licensed from academic researchers, while declining to name those researchers. Experts evaluating Nikola’s battery claims were skeptical of the company’s aggressive timeline.
Further questions about Nikola’s prior battery claims were raised by a Tuesday announcement that Nikola would use battery technology licensed from General Motors in vehicles including its upcoming Badger pickup truck. That announcement caused both Nikola and GM stock to rise dramatically. On Thursday, the Hindenburg report appears to be driving both stocks back down, with Nikola off nearly 10% at press time, and GM down nearly 4%.
The Hindenburg report also makes a variety of other claims about deception by Nikola and Trevor Milton, including alleged misrepresentations by Milton about prior companies he founded and sold.
Nikola sent Fortune a brief statement in response to Hindenburg’s report: “Nikola has been vetted by some of the world’s most credible companies and investors. We are on a path to success and will not waver based on a report filled with misleading information attempting to manipulate our stock.”
Nikola did not address Fortune’s questions about Hindenburg’s specific claims, including questions about whether the truck shown in the 2018 video was moving under its own power, or who Nikola’s battery development partners were by summer 2020. On Twitter, Milton wrote, “It will take the rest of the day to address the one sided false claims, but I will put out a detail report to address it. In the meantime, troll on.”
Though its short position would allow it to benefit from negative stock moves, Hindenburg Research has built a strong reputation in recent years based on in-depth research into public misrepresentations and accounting irregularities at companies including Smile Direct Club, SC Worx, and Bloom Energy. Many of Hindenburg’s claims about those and other companies were subsequently confirmed by other reporting, by regulators, or by the companies themselves.


fortune--2020-09-10--Despite some gains in the past year, Hollywood still has inclusion problems, study says

As Hollywood searches for a response to the reckoning brought on by the death of George Floyd and the Academy Awards move to make Oscar nominees more inclusive, a new study captures how the film industry has improved in diversity and how it still lags.
In the most popular films of 2019, protagonists were more diverse than ever, and there were more women were behind the camera. But in many other areas — speaking roles, behind-the-scenes jobs, LGBTQ representation, parts for people with disability — Hollywood remains far from reflecting the makeup of its American audiences, according to the latest report by the Inclusion Initiative at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
“There is a bright spot or two in this report, but the backdrop to that is really problematic,” said Stacy L. Smith, director of the Inclusion Initiative in an interview. “It reflects a lack of seriousness, some ambivalence and apathy on the part of the creative community and the inability of different companies to really set in place policies and procedures that would change the status quo.”
“The data don’t reflect an overall ecosystem shift,” Smith added.
For the past 13 years, the USC researchers have tracked Hollywood’s progress, or lack thereof, in equity of on-screen roles and those off-camera. Over that time, there have been some marked improvements. Last year in the top 100 films at the box office, 32 featured leads from underrepresented groups, an increase of five from 2018. In 2007, it was 13. Twelve of the top 100 films were directed by woman, four times the number of 2007 and more than twice the five films of 2018. There were 43 films with a woman or girl in a leading role, an increase of four from the year before and more than double that of 2007.
Those figures show definite progress, but still fall short of representing overall demographics. Digging further into the data reveals only larger blind spots. Just three of 2019’s top films had a protagonist played by a woman aged 45 or older; one was played by a woman of color.
Many films went without roles from underrepresented groups entirely. There were no Hispanic speaking characters in 44 of the films; no speaking African Americans in 15 of them; and no speaking Asian characters in 36 movies.
Female speaking characters have only marginally increased over the last 13 years, reaching 34% in 2019. For every woman talking on screen, there’s nearly two men. People of color speaking characters also still lag behind the U.S. population with 34.3% in 2019. There were three films with speaking transgender characters, adding up to about two minutes of screen time. Just 1.4% of speaking characters were LGBTQ, and 2.3% were characters with disability. Among the 112 directors of 2019’s top films, 80.4% were white.
“The chart really reveals that there isn’t a procedure in place to counter bias in decision making,” said Smith. “That’s really what’s most necessary as a way forward particularly in the moment of racial justice that we’re in as a country.”
The study sheds light on the film industry’s inclusivity while the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is taking more sweeping steps than it has before to encourage the industry. The academy this week announced new rules to mandate a certain level of diversity in nominated films and at the studios behind them. Smith, among others, has criticized those criteria as not rigorous enough. All but five of the top 100 films of 2019 would meet the Oscars’ standard of on-screen representation.
“I wish they would have gone further because it’s more business as usual rather than we need to push the industry to think more critically about who they hire.”
Some companies have been more proactive. Half of Universal Pictures’ 2019 releases, which included “Us,” “Queen & Slim” and “Ma,” starred female protagonists. The studio, the lone major studio headed by a woman in Donna Langley, also led in female directors, writers and producers, as well as lead roles from underrepresented groups. The Walt Disney Co., which dominated the box office in 2019, accounted for arguably the largest impact with diversely cast blockbusters like “The Lion King,” “Aladdin” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”
Netflix, which only releases its films in brief theatrical runs fell outside the study’s scope, but still drew Smith’s praise for “ushering in a different reality” by hiring female directors at a pace far above that of the studios over the past decade.
Other companies have reorganized at the top. MGM this summer revamped Orion Pictures as a hub for diverse moviemaking with producer Alana Mayo (formerly head of Michael B. Jordan’s production company) as its president.
“That represents what we need to see,” said Smith. “That reflects exactly what needs to be observed quickly if we’re going to see 2021 or 2022 look different than this 2019 report.”
A study on 2020, Smith acknowledged, isn’t likely possible since the box office was shuttered for much of the year and most major releases have been postponed.


fortune--2020-09-10--Inside ‘I Am Woman’: A new biopic tells the story of Helen Reddy and her famous song

Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” was the unofficial anthem of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s. It was a chart-topping hit that earned the singer a Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female Grammy award in 1972.
Now the song and Reddy’s story are at the center of a new biopic, I Am Woman, which will be available to watch via video on demand Sept. 11. Directed by Unjoo Moon, the film stars Tilda Cobham-Hervey as the singer, Evan Peters (American Horror Story) as Reddy’s former husband and manager Jeff Wald, and Danielle Macdonald (Patti Cake$, Dumplin’) as Reddy’s friend, journalist Lillian Roxon.
“It’s such an extraordinary story. I was just so shocked that a movie hadn’t been made about her,” Cobham-Hervey tells Fortune. “Before I read the script, I knew the song ‘I Am Woman’; I knew the name Helen Reddy, but I did not know much about her life.”
Cobham-Hervey, who only met Reddy toward the end of filming, researched the singer by reading her autobiography The Woman I Am, looking up materials online, and watching old interviews and performances. She also worked with voice and movement coaches to make sure she captured the right energy while portraying Reddy on film, even taking a lesson with a breathing coach “to breathe like a singer.”
“I sang live on the day, even though my [singing] voice isn’t in the film,” she explains.
Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Helen Reddy in the new biopic “I Am Woman.” Lisa Tomasetti—Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
Though Cobham-Hervey is Australian, just like the singer, imitating Reddy’s speech patterns wasn’t the easiest task.
“She has such a particular accent of that time and such particular rhythm to her voice that in some ways, that was very challenging,” she says. “It really felt like doing an accent even though we’re both Australian.”
Moon, who had spent time with Reddy in previous years, also served as something of a resource to the actors.
“I spent a lot of time with Helen even before we started writing the script,” says Moon, adding that they’d go for walks, get lunch together, and that she was able to join Reddy during something of a revival tour. Once the scriptwriting process began, Reddy and her family left it to the filmmakers.
“I was really able to let her know that I wasn’t going to be making a documentary,” Moon says. “But I did say to her, ‘Helen, I absolutely promise you that I will honor the spirit of who you are, the life that you have, and the impact that your music has had on people.’”
The film details Reddy’s move to the U.S. as a single mother in the 1960s, the struggles she encountered before recording her hit tune and becoming a star, and the volatile relationship she had with Wald. It also depicts her friendship with Roxon, a fellow Australian living stateside and the writer of the groundbreaking Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia, which was published in 1969. Cobham-Hervey describes the friendship as “the other love story” in the movie, saying that doing the scenes involving the two women was a “lovely part of the filmmaking experience.”
Macdonald, who happens to live with two of her “best girlfriends”—which she describes as a lucky situation amid pandemic-related lockdowns and quarantines—feels the same way.
“I love that we get to see how impactful friendships are on-screen and what it does for us, and how we learn and grow from them,” she says.
Cobham-Hervey as Helen Reddy (left) and Danielle Macdonald as Lillian Roxon in “I Am Woman.” Lisa Tomasetti—Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
For Macdonald, playing Roxon was something of a departure from her other roles, even though those parts have also involved portraying strong female characters.
“She’s a little older, so she kind of just seems to have it a little bit more figured out,” Macdonald says, adding that other characters she’s played often seem to be on a journey of growth. “With Lillian—she has it in spades. She was confident, she was outspoken, she was kind of the queen of the underground New York rock music scene.
“She really just kind of owned it, owned herself, knew herself,” she continues. “And that was fun to play and also kind of scary to play because I still feel like I’m trying to figure it out. Lillian just seems like she knows it all, and I’m like, ‘I’m still not there yet.’ But it was fun to bring that out and just relax into it.”
Though the film follows a significant period of Reddy’s life in the U.S., it is very much an Australian production through and through—and was filmed in Australia as well, with the exception of a couple of days in Los Angeles.
Moon has lived in the U.S. herself, and other members of the filmmaking team had also spent time there and grown familiar with particular architecture and settings, so they were ultimately able to find ways to re-create previous eras of the U.S., as well as certain cities.
Helen Reddy (as portrayed by Cobham-Hervey) moved to the U.S. from Australia to pursue her dreams of stardom. Lisa Tomasetti—Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
“We pretty much shot through all the streets and suburbs of Sydney, Australia, to re-create America. It’s interesting because a lot of Americans have no idea we shot in Australia,” Moon says, adding that one major obstacle—though the crew found ways to cut around them—involved Australian birds. “I mean that was super annoying. Because you’re supposed to be in Los Angeles and suddenly you’ve got a kookaburra in the background.”
Making the movie in Australia was something of a treat for Macdonald, who has been living in the U.S. and working on American productions. “My America and my Australia collided,” she says, while mentioning that her American friends visited her while she was on set in Australia. “I’m only used to filming in the States. So this is the first time filming at home, and my family was on set. It really felt like a melding of my two worlds—life was imitating art there for sure, and it felt special.”
Moon describes Reddy’s story as “quintessentially Australian,” pointing to Australians who leave home and go to Hollywood with big dreams. “She was the first and paved the way,” Moon says.
It’s also a story that has relevance to women today, the actors say.
“I think it’s a really important thing to just look back at the women that came before us and celebrate all that they did,” says Cobham-Hervey. “I don’t think that we’d have things like the Me Too movement and the Time’s Up movement if it wasn’t for people like Helen who fought for things that have made my life possible, the way it is today.”
“It’s kind of amazing to see our past and our history and learn from it,” says Macdonald. “I felt inspired. When I was doing the film, I was like, ‘Yes, this makes me want to be vocal. This makes me want to speak up.’
“I hope that people get that feeling out of it.”
I Am Woman is available to watch on VOD starting Sept. 11.


fortune--2020-09-10--How we can save small business from coronavirus-induced extinction

In the 1970s, America’s 100 largest companies earned 49% of the earnings of all public firms. By 2015, that number was 84%. In the same time frame, the rate of new business creation has declined by half.
The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated this shift. Since March, 21% of all U.S. businesses—most of them small or midsize—have closed for good. And according to data from Gravity Payments’ 20,000 business clients, small-business revenue is down roughly 30% for the year. Meanwhile, the stock market is at a record high, and corporations like Walmart, Target, and Amazon have seen their profits spike 80% to 100%. Apple, the first company to ever receive a $1 trillion valuation just two years ago, recently became the first to be valued at $2 trillion.
If nothing is done to reverse this massive wealth transfer, we risk losing our independent businesses for good.
This is a crisis for several reasons. Small and midsize businesses make up the backbone of our economy. They employ roughly half the workforce and generate about half of our GDP. For every dollar spent at a local independent business, 58 cents stays in the community. For every dollar spent at a large chain, it’s just 33 cents. Small businesses create diversity and competition in the market, which is good for consumers and helps spur innovation.
I started my credit card processing company, Gravity Payments, 16 years ago to support these small businesses. I saw how large financial firms took advantage of mom-and-pop shops by gouging them on fees and offering shoddy customer service while bending over backward to court bigger businesses that were doing just fine. In 2015, when I raised our company’s minimum wage to $70,000 a year, I did so partially as a way to help these businesses. If my employees had more money, I reasoned, they’d have more money to spend at those same establishments. This has turned out to be true.
Despite efforts like ours, however, our economy is designed to support large corporations. Saving our small businesses requires systemic change.
Looking at the government’s response to the pandemic, you can see countless examples of imbalance. While the federal Paycheck Protection Program was designed to help small businesses, many large chains ended up receiving money from it, while those it was designed to help struggled to apply. Now the PPP funds have run out, and we’re well into month six of a lockdown that doesn’t show signs of ending anytime soon. Just .08% of the $600 billion allocated as part of the Federal Reserve’s Main Street Lending Program has been allocated to the firms it was designed to help. Meanwhile, Congress approved $50 billion—and is in talks to possibly provide even more—to the airline industry, despite the fact that many of the largest airlines have spent the last several years propping up their stock through buyback programs instead of using that money to keep their businesses solvent or saving for a rainy day.
Even the businesses that emerge from this pandemic intact face an uphill battle for continued survival. With well over 10% of the workforce currently out of a job, many everyday Americans simply don’t have the money to spend at local businesses. Unless they receive a new stimulus check or somehow find a job, that’s not likely to change anytime soon. And as large corporations continue to gain market share, they will continue to drive their smaller competitors out of business or buy them up at bargain prices.
The good thing about an economy that’s designed one way is that it can be designed another way. If we truly want to save small businesses, there’s plenty we can do.
We could start by making corporations like Netflix and Amazon pay more than zero dollars in federal income taxes (neither company paid such taxes in 2018, according to the Center for Public Integrity), and using some of that money to incentivize small-business creation and development. Or we could use that income to fund a universal basic income, which would give consumers additional funds to patronize their favorite small businesses. We saw how effective this could be when the federal government approved the $1,200 stimulus for all Americans and $600 in additional unemployment benefits for those who lost their jobs. Spending picked up temporarily, but now that the stimulus money is gone, spending has slowed again.
We could place caps on executive pay or require companies to pay executives no more than a certain multiple of what they pay their lowest-paid worker. Since 1978, CEO pay has increased 1,167%, while worker pay is up only 14%. We could raise the federal minimum wage, which hasn’t gone up in over 11 years, or incentivize businesses to pay their employees a living wage. This would also help to reverse the increasing income inequality in the United States and thus strengthen the middle class so they can spend more.
We can place limits on stock buybacks and bailouts so companies are forced to be responsible with their money instead of using it to inflate their share prices or line the pockets of executives—many of whom are already overpaid. By continuing to bail out large companies, our government is essentially telling them they can spend their money as recklessly as they want without consequence. Small businesses, meanwhile, must pinch every penny, and their survival is still not guaranteed.
We can adopt universal health care so that would-be entrepreneurs don’t have to worry about their or their employees’ medical expenses when trying to get their new ventures off the ground. We can overturn the disastrous Citizens United decision and cap the amount of money corporations are allowed to donate to political campaigns so they can’t continue to buy elections and favorable legislation in our so-called representative democracy.
As a small-business owner who works with 20,000 other small businesses every day, I know how valuable they are to our society. I also know that they are under threat more than they ever have been before and that piecemeal measures aren’t going to be enough to help them. We need systemic change and a shift from propping up wealthy, often irresponsible corporations to helping the institutions that help our communities thrive.
Dan Price is the founder and CEO of Gravity Payments, a credit card processing company based in Seattle. His book, Worth It: How a Million-Dollar Pay Cut and a $70,000 Minimum Wage Revealed a Better Way of Doing Business, was published in April.


fortune--2020-09-10--Citigroup names Jane Fraser CEO, shattering Wall Street’s glass ceiling

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By February, one of Wall Street’s largest banks will finally have a female CEO.
Jane Fraser will take over the top role at Citigroup early next year, the banking giant said on Thursday, replacing retiring CEO Michael Corbat and shattering one of the most enduring glass ceilings in finance. Until now, no woman has ever run a major Wall Street bank—despite the ascendance of many qualified executives more than a decade ago, as Fortune’s Claire Zillman reported last year.
By taking over Citigroup—the country’s fourth-largest bank, with $103 billion in annual revenue, and No. 31 on the 2020 Fortune 500—Fraser will definitively crash through that barrier. She will also join the relatively thin but growing ranks of women running Fortune 500 companies. That number will be at 38 next week, when Linda Rendle takes over Clorox. If nothing changes before February, Fraser will become the 39th woman running a Fortune 500 company, a new all-time high.
It is an expected, if unprecedented, transition: Last October, Corbat named Fraser as his No. 2 and heir apparent, promoting her to president of Citigroup and head of its massive global consumer banking operations.
“I have worked with Jane for many years and am proud to have her succeed me. With her leadership, experience, and values, I know she will make an outstanding CEO,” Corbat said in a statement Thursday.
Corbat became CEO in 2012, when Citigroup was still struggling to recover from near-failure during the 2008 crisis, and said Thursday he is “extremely proud of what we have accomplished in the past eight years. We completed our transformation from the financial crisis and emerged a simpler, safer, and stronger institution.”
Citigroup chairman John C. Dugan also praised Fraser’s “deep experience across our lines of business and regions,” and said the board is “highly confident in her. Jane’s ability to think strategically and also operate a business are a unique combination that will serve our company well.”
Fraser has shown that ability across several business lines in her 16 years at Citi, where she oversaw the bank’s strategy and M&A during the crisis, then ran its private bank, and then overhauled its troubled mortgage unit as CEO of its U.S. commercial and consumer banking. Prior to becoming president and global consumer banking CEO last year, she ran Citi’s Latin American region for four years.
The Edinburgh native has spent 2020 overseeing many of the bank’s efforts to navigate the coronavirus pandemic and financial downturn. “People do look for leadership at a time like this. Being a woman has real power and strength to it,” Fraser told Fortune’s Zillman in May. “I can be much more vulnerable in certain areas, talking more about the human dimensions of this than some of my male colleagues feel comfortable [with], and I don’t feel that’s in any way soft or weaker.”
In a statement Thursday, Fraser said that her priorities for Citi are to “invest in our infrastructure, risk management, and controls to ensure that we operate in a safe and sound manner and serve our clients and customers with excellence.” She was not immediately available for interviews, according to a Citigroup spokesperson.
Citi’s gender turnaround
The news of her promotion was greeted with public enthusiasm by fellow top Wall Street executives. “Congratulations to Jane Fraser, the next CEO of @citi and a pioneer in becoming the first woman to lead a major U.S. bank,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon wrote on Instagram. (He was also cheering on an alumna of his company, where Fraser started her career.)
“Great news for the company and for women everywhere! A big and fantastic moment,” Cathy Bessant, Bank of America’s chief operating officer and an executive who brushed that glass ceiling when Wells Fargo was searching for a new CEO last year, wrote on Twitter.
While all big banks have struggled to make their top ranks less male-dominated, Fraser’s promotion underlines an especially remarkable turnaround for Citi during Corbat’s tenure. When he became CEO, the only woman reporting to him was his chief of staff. In early 2013, after his first major organizational shakeup of Citigroup, all 13 executives reporting directly to him were men. “Male dominance is an age-old feature of big banks’ executive suites, but it appears to be particularly acute at Citigroup, which now counts only one woman among its 24-member operating committee,” I reported for American Banker at the time.
But since then, Corbat has worked to improve his company’s gender track record and (under some shareholder pressure) to address its pay gap. Today, six of his 16 direct reports are women and Citigroup’s board of directors is nearly at gender parity. As Fraser joins the board, effective immediately, 47% of its directors are women, and 19% are what the bank calls “diverse.”
Under Corbat, Citi also set targets to increase representation within Citigroup’s senior levels. The bank now is aiming to have at least 40% of jobs in the “assistant vice president through managing director levels” occupied by women globally, and 8% occupied by Black employees in the U.S., by the end of 2021.
“Where our industry has fallen short before is the organic, sustainable piece of it,” Corbat said at a Fortune CEO Initiative forum last year. “I think we’ve been okay at bringing women and minorities into the firm, but I don’t think we’ve created the environment that creates the sustainability of them wanting to be there.”
Citigroup’s shares rose slightly in Thursday morning trading before slipping back.


fortune--2020-09-10--Europe overtakes U.S. as COVID-19 hotspot as infections surge

Western Europe has surpassed the U.S. in new daily Covid-19 infections, re-emerging as a global hotspot after bringing the pandemic under control earlier in the summer.
The 27 countries in the European Union plus the U.K., Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein recorded 27,233 new cases on Wednesday, compared with 26,015 for the U.S. That follows several weeks of resurgent infections in Spain, France and other countries across the continent.
The comparison is based on data from the World Health Organization for the U.S. and Bloomberg calculations using numbers from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
Europe’s move ahead of the U.S. is a major setback for a part of the world that seemed to have gotten a grip on the coronavirus after the pandemic spread from China to Italy and other countries across the region last winter. After health systems were pushed to the brink, strict lockdowns brought the outbreak under control.
Now Europe is experiencing a new spike in infections, many of them linked to vacationers who caught the virus and brought it home, as well as young people socializing. The upturn has alarmed policymakers just as students return to school and offices try to bring back employees who have been working from home.
So far, the new upturn in infections has not resulted in a surge in deaths, which are at a small fraction of the levels in March and April, when the pandemic tore through Europe’s nursing homes. Many of the new patients are younger and healthier, testing has expanded vastly—turning up asymptomatic infections that previously went undetected—and treatment has improved.
Europe recorded 252 deaths on Wednesday, according to the ECDC, compared with daily totals in the thousands during the spring. There were 169 deaths in the U.S. on Wednesday, though daily totals were running at more than 1,000 for much of last week and Thursday’s total was already at more than 430 as of mid-morning, according to the WHO.
Most Deaths
Although the U.S. has seen the pandemic’s spread moderate in recent weeks, it’s still reporting more new cases daily than most other individual countries, except India and Brazil. The U.S. also leads the world in deaths from the disease.
Comparisons between the U.S. and Europe are imperfect because the EU, with a population of about 450 million, is larger than the U.S., with about 330 million. Methods of testing and reporting also vary. According to some trackers, for example, the European daily count exceeded that of the U.S. on Labor Day, but that’s because some countries didn’t report cases over the weekend, effectively resulting in a three-day tally for Monday.
In the U.S., new infections have eased from daily levels of more than 70,000 in July. States such as Florida and California have seen big declines, though they’re still reporting thousands of new cases daily.
The number of tests conducted in the U.S. has been dropping from a peak in late July amid shortages and delays, and that may affect the number of cases reported. Testing has surged in Europe, with France, for example, targeting 1 million tests a week.


fortune--2020-09-10--TikTok is looking for ways to avoid a sale

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The White House set a tight deadline for Chinese-owned social media app TikTok: Find a U.S. buyer for your stateside operations by Sept. 20, or face a potential shutdown.
It became a mad scramble. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has been in talks with almost every tech giant, or so it seems, with names such as Microsoft and Oracle among the frontrunners for the company’s U.S. assets. But those talks hit yet another hurdle when the Chinese government announced new restrictions in late August that could make it even more difficult for TikTok to sell a U.S. company.
Now, TikTok is in talks directly with the U.S. government about potentially avoiding “a full sale of its U.S. operations,” per the Wall Street Journal. What could that mean? Well, it could lead to a deal in which, instead of buying the company outright, a U.S. tech partner takes a potential minority stake in TikTok and secures its data—which appears to be the crux of the White House’s concerns anyway.
LVMH BACKS OUT OF TIFFANY: French luxury conglomerate LVMH—which already owns brands including Chrstian Dior and Louis Vuitton—bid hard to acquire jeweler Tiffany & Co. to its roster late last year. In late October, it made a bid valuing the latter firm at $14.5 billion and then bolstering the offer at least twice before agreeing on $16 billion in a move that would allow LVMH to compete more strongly in the jewelry segment. It was very much the top of the market.
Now, amid the pandemic, LVMH has moved to back off the acquisition while Tiffany & Co. is suing its maybe-fiancee in the hopes of keeping the deal intact. The global lockdown halted international travel and cut into luxury sales by extension. Read more.
PALANTIR SETS AN LISTING DATE: Palantir Technologies, the big data company planning to go public via direct listing, plans to debut Sept. 23 on the New York Stock Exchange. Last valued at $20 billion in 2015, its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission have shorn down that valuation. Based on back-of-the-envelope calculations of Palantir’s share price in private-market transactions, the company held an average valuation of about $12 billion in August. Read more.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a Salt Lake City-based drug discovery startup, raised $239 million in Series D funding. Leaps by Bayer led the round. Read more.
- Xometry, a Gaithersburg, Md.-based on-demand manufacturing marketplace, raised $75 million in equity. T. Rowe Price Associates led the round and was joined by investors including Durable Capital Partners, ArrowMark Partners, BMW i Ventures, Greenspring Associates, Dell Technologies Capital, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Foundry Group, Highland Capital Partners, and Almaz Capital.
- Orchard, a New York-based home buying and selling platform, raised $69 million of Series C funding. Revolution Growth led the round and was joined by investors including FirstMark, Navitas, Accomplice, and Juxtapose.
- Groww, a Bangalore-based stock investing startup, raised $30 million in Series C funding. YC Continuity led the round and was joined by investors including Sequoia India, Ribbit Capital and Propel Ventures. Read more.
Ubicquia, a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based smart city solution, raised $30 million in Series C funding. Investors included Fuel Venture Capital.
- StackRox, a Mountain View, Calif.-based container and Kubernetes security provider, raised $26.5 million in funding. Menlo Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Highland Capital Partners, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Sequoia Capital, and Redpoint Ventures.
- Sana Benefits, an Austin-based provider of self-funded health insurance for small businesses, raised $20.8 million in Series A funding. Gigafund led the round and was joined by investors including Trust Ventures and mark vc.
- Iron Ox, a San Francisco-based startup working on agricultural robotics, raised $20 million in Series B funding. Pathbreaker Venture led the round and was joined by investors including Crosslink Capital, Amplify Partners, ENIAC Ventures, R7 Partners, Tuesday Ventures, At One Ventures and Y Combinator.
- Virtual Kitchen, a commissary kitchen start-up founded by two ex-Uber executives, raised $20 million. Founders Fund led the round. Read more.
- Klue, a Canadian the AI-powered market intelligence platform on competitors, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Craft Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including HWVP, OMERS Ventures, Rhino Ventures, and BDC Ventures.
- Descartes Underwriting, a Paris-based insurtech focused on climate risk modeling and data-driven risk transfer, raised $18.5 million in Series A funding. Investors included Serena, Cathay Innovation and BlackFin Capital Partners.
- Oyster Financial, a Mexico-based fintech startup, raised $14 million in seed funding. monashees and SV Latam Capital led the round and were joined by investors including Fintech Collective, Kevin Efrusy, Redpoint eventures, S7 Ventures and Ulu Ventures.
- CredoLab, a Singapore-based developer of digital credit scorecards based on smartphone metadata, raised $7 million in Series A funding. GBG led the round.
- Bolster, a New York-based marketplace for executive talent, raised $6 million in funding. Investors included High Alpha, Union Square Ventures, Costonoa Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank.
- Terabase Energy, a Berkeley, Calif.-based solar digital startup, raised $6 million in Series A funding. SJF Ventures led the round.
- Manifold Bio, a Boston-based startup focused on boosting throughput of protein therapeutics testing in vivo, raised $5.4 million in seed funding. Playground Global led the round and was joined Fifty Years, GETTYLAB and Allston Venture Fund.
- QuadSAT, a Danish company for testing satellite antennas, raised €2 million ($2.4 million). Seraphim Capital led the round.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- KKR is in advanced talks to invest at least $1 billion in Reliance Retail Ventures, the retail business of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, per Bloomberg. Read more.
- Omnitracs, backed by Vista Equity Partners, agreed to acquire SmartDrive, a video-based safety and transportation intelligence company backed by Sixth Street Partners. The deal is estimated to be worth $450 million.
- ECI Software Solutions, backed by Insight Partners, agreed to acquire Shoptech Industrial Software Corp., a Glastonbury, Conn.-based provider of software for job shops and made-to-order manufacturers. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Symplr Software, a portfolio company of Clearlake Capital Group and Skyknight, acquired ComplyTrack, a healthcare regulatory risk solution, from Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.
- Providence Strategic Growth recapitalized Wagepoint, a Toronto-based online payroll software provider.
- LRN Corporation, a portfolio company of Leeds Equity Partners, acquired Interactive Services, a Ireland-based compliance training company. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Bristol Hospice, a portfolio company of Webster Equity Partners, acquired Remita Health, a hospice care provider, in the states of Arizona, California and Nevada. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Cove Hill Partners will invest in SecureLink, an Austin-based provider of vendor privileged access management solutions. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHERS
- Kansas City Southern (NYSE:KSU) rejected a $20 billion takeover offer from an investor consortium led by the Blackstone Group, per Wall Street Journal. Read more.
EXITS
- Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG) acquired Intact Vascular, a Wayne, Pa.-based maker of medical devices for minimally invasive peripheral vascular procedures, for up to $360 million. Intact has been backed by Versana Capital and NEA.
- Astute acquired Socialbakers, an A.I.-powered social media marketing platform. Draper Esprit and Index Ventures backed Socialbakers. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Digital Currency Group acquired Luno, a London-based cryptocurrency exchange. Luno investors have included Balderton Capital. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Hyland agreed to acquire Alfresco, a Wellesley, Mass.-based content services platform and solutions provider, from Thomas H. Lee Partners. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
IPOs
- Petco Animal Supplies, a San Diego retailer of pet supplies, is weighing an IPO or sale that could kick off next year and value the firm at $6 billion, per Bloomberg. CVC Capital Partners and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board back the firm. Read more.
- Petz, a Brazilian pet store chain, raised 3.03 billion reais ($570.71 million) via IPO. Warburg Pincus backs the firm. Read more.
- Academy Sports and Outdoors, a Katy, Texas-based sports and outdoor equipment retailer, filed to raise $100 million. KKR backs the firm. Read more.
- Dyne Therapeutics, a Waltham, Mass.-based biotech developing therapies for muscular diseases, plans to raise $175 million in an offering of 10.3 million shares priced between $16 to $18. Read more.
- Codiak BioSciences, a Cambridge, Mass.-based early stage biotech developing exosome therapeutics, filed to raise $100 million. Arch Venture Funds, Flagship Venture Funds, and Fidelity back the firm. Read more.
SPACs
- PWP Forward Acquisition Corp., a SPAC seeking to invest in a female-led company proposed by Perella Weinberg Partners, will seek to raise about $200 million, per Bloomberg. Read more.
- Starboard Value Acquisition Corp., a blank check company formed by Starboard Value, raised $360 million by offering 36 million units priced at $10. Read more.
F+FS
- Bridgepoint Development Capital raised £1.5 billion (about $1.95 billion) for its fourth fund.
- Benford Capital Partners, a Chicago-based middle market private equity firm, raised $130 million for its first fund.
PEOPLE
- Alice Lloyd George, a former investor at RRE Ventures, established Rogue Capital Partners, an early stage venture firm. Read more.
- SK Capital Partners added Christopher Fraser as Senior Director.
- Cressey & Company promoted Steve Dildine to Partner and Ryan Moseley to Principal.
- Levine Leichtman Capital Partners promoted Tannaz Chapman to Managing Director; Michael Knapp to Director; Jay Berajawala to Associate Director; Steven Korff to Associate Director; Monty Ismail to Associate Director; Robert Papetti to Senior Associate, and Alexander Bruno to Senior Associate


fortune--2020-09-10--To fight systemic racism, the investment industry needs to look at its whiteness first

Following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis earlier this year, a wave of protests against racial inequality swept around the globe, shining a spotlight on deeply ingrained issues of systemic racism. The practices and ultimately the role of elected officials, businesses, and investors in addressing minority rights and race are now being called into question.
At the Principles for Responsible Investment, a UN-supported initiative of over 3,000 investors worldwide with more than $100 trillion in assets, we not only welcome this scrutiny—we encourage it.
That’s because racism and racial inequity are more than just public policy issues. They are deeply interconnected with the economic and financial systems and ingrained in societies. Those in the private sector have a moral responsibility to do the right thing not just by shareholders, but also by the stakeholders whose lives they impact—employees, consumers, and the communities in which they operate. It’s also in their financial interest to do so.
It is encouraging to see many American companies, large and small, speak out about issues of racial inequity, though not all have backed up their talk with action. For too long now, it has largely been sporadic cases of outrage from the general public that have led to some accountability for these companies.
Too little of the responsibility for holding companies accountable—and setting expectations for what role they should play in addressing racial injustice—has fallen on those who have arguably the most power to impact their behavior: their shareholders. It’s time for investors to step up and be a part of the solution.
Read this: The investment industry claims to support diversity, but the numbers don’t add up.
As long-term stewards of capital, investors have the agency to create change not only through words, but also through actions in leveraging the global financial system. That means more engagement on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues that directly and indirectly perpetuate inequality.
The first step investors should take is to look inward. The investment industry itself is notoriously homogenous. A Fundfire and Money Management Institute survey found that 88% of professionals at the executive committee level in the U.S. asset management industry are white. And the New York Times recently reported that Morgan Stanley’s diversity director of 16 years was fired and is now suing the firm for racial discrimination and retaliation after she tried to persuade executives to eliminate barriers to success for black financial advisers.
In order for investors to successfully engage the companies they invest in around issues of racial equity, investors must first seek to walk the walk themselves, which means promoting diversity and inclusion internally, especially at the executive level. I include my own organization on this list.
A priority for investors should be making sure the companies they invest in are more diverse and inclusive, specifically focusing on the corporate leadership level. Investors have a critical role to play in encouraging equitable hiring and advancement and driving more inclusive corporate culture by tracking relevant data through corporate disclosures and making clear to portfolio companies that these issues are considered in the risk management process.
This moment is an opportunity for investors to examine diversity, equality, and inclusion at a portfolio level, and to understand their role in promoting change. Moving away from the executive level, it is also important that investors engage with companies about their expectations for all staff to have a living wage, access to health care, sick leave, and appropriate holiday entitlements. Too often, we find that those at the bottom of the pay scale, with few rights or any bargaining power, are people from minority backgrounds.
Ultimately, the greatest opportunity investors have to contribute to economic equality is deciding who gets capital. That’s why they need to start making decisions about what investments they want in their portfolios and which money managers they want to employ. That means setting benchmarks for the demographic makeup of investors’ partners, investing in minority-owned businesses and companies that primarily serve communities of color, and divesting from companies—and entire industries—that contribute to systemic oppression and are unwilling to change. When making investment decisions, asset owners and asset managers have the power to pick leaders and laggards.
In order to do this effectively, investors need greater public disclosures on racial diversity, human capital management, and other metrics by which they can assess progress toward concrete outcomes. In the U.S., that means opposing moves by the Securities and Exchange Commission to further limit the ESG-related disclosures companies are required to make to their investors.
In the 1980s, companies and investors around the world mobilized to deny apartheid South Africa the economic lifeline it needed to maintain its status quo of racial oppression. This investor-driven effort, as part of a broader boycott, ultimately helped end apartheid in South Africa.
Today we face another such pivotal moment, this time on a global scale. Investors face a choice: Do they want to be on the right side of history? Their choices might not only impact their returns but also help create a more equal future for everyone.
Fiona Reynolds is CEO of Principles for Responsible Investment.


fortune--2020-09-10--You’re not sitting correctly at your home office

This is the web version of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
It’s time to have a conversation about ergonomics.
Sounds thrilling, right? Look at it this way. I could pretend to explain to you why tech stocks are yo-yo-ing. Or I could spend a moment trying to convince you to take your work-from-home setup seriously.
If you’re like me, you were too busy last March to be bothered with ergonomic happiness. Six months later, it’s time to focus on our hurting necks, wrists, forearms, shoulders, backs, eyesight, and so on. I’m shifting to an external keyboard, propping up my laptop screen on some books, and getting a proper monitor. This handy piece from The New York Times has great tips, including these pearls of wisdom about how to sit: “hips slightly higher than the knees, arms relaxed at your side, neck relaxed and straight, forearms parallel to the ground, feet resting on the floor.”
There’s a lot you can do without new equipment. But in some cases, you’ll need some new stuff. GitLab, the all-remote company that makes tools for software developers, encourages its employees to buy whatever they need to get comfortable, within reason. It also has published its suggestions for how to improve your home setup.
If your company is too stingy to invest in your comfort, you might consider investing in yourself—or finding another job.
***
The Fortune Global Forum convenes each year or so in important business centers around the world. (My passport stamps include New Delhi, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Toronto, and Paris.) This year it convenes online, Oct. 26-27, with a time-zone-sensitive schedule to accommodate participants from Asia and Europe.
Freed from the commitment of travel, we’ve already signed up an impressive group of CEOs including Marriott’s Arne Sorenson, Beth Ford of Land O’Lakes, Brian Cornell of Target, Deanna Mulligan of Guadian Life, and GE’s Larry Culp.
Fortune events are by invitation only; please email me if you’d like to be considered.
***
SOME CULTURE: I can’t recommend strongly enough the Spotify podcast Wind of Change, the eight-episode exploration by journalist Patrick Radden-Keefe of whether the CIA wrote a famous rock ballad. I spent multiple blissful walks listening to it this summer … I finally watched the three-part docuseries Inside Bill’s Brain, the all-access and slightly puffy deep dive on Netflix into Bill Gates by Davis Guggenheim. Despite all the good cheer, it is really insightful, including comments from Melinda Gates on being married to such a difficult guy and Bill Gates’ regrets about not having said a proper goodbye to his onetime best friend Paul Allen … Fitzgerald nerds and residents of Westport, Conn., need to watch the low-production-value but charming documentary Gatsby in Connecticut on Amazon Prime Video.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
JOIN US: The pandemic has rewritten business. Fortune is hosting a virtual discussion with experts across industries (Intel, Slack, Citi, Universal Pictures) to explore how companies can, through transformative tech such as A.I., become more resilient in a time of intense change. Register here for free to join on September 16 at 2:00-3:00 p.m. EDT.
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Dead chip bounce. As Adam mentioned, tech stocks bounced back a bit on Wednesday after the big sell-off. Zoom and Tesla jumped 11%, Nvidia gained 7%, while Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon gained 4% each. Still, it wasn't all about winning. As Robert mentioned yesterday, Slack's revenue growth disappointed and its shares finished down 14% on Wednesday. The stock is now up just 12% for the year. If you follow the market at all, it may be time to re-try Google Finance. After years of neglect and lost features, Google unveiled a redesign this week that looks positively useful.
You shall not pass. Like Gandalf making a stand against the Balrog at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, Palantir CEO Alex Karp faced potential investors on Wednesday and gave no quarter in defending his strategy of working with defense and intelligence agencies that some in Silicon Valley shun. “We have certain beliefs and we will stick with those,” Karp said. Don't like it? “Pick a different company.” In more down-to-earth IPO news, future database giant Snowflake announced investments ahead of its stock market debut from Warren Buffett and Marc Benioff's Salesforce. And at the other end of the financing curve, digital healthcare service Grand Rounds is a unicorn, valued at $1.3 billion after a $175 million investment from the Carlyle Group.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich attacked Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Twitter, saying that Tesla's 10% salary cuts while the company stock skyrocketed made Musk "a modern-day robber baron." Musk shot back: "All Tesla workers also get stock, so their compensation increased proportionately. You are a modern day moron."
Flip to the music. In phone world, Lenovo's Motorola unit announced the second generation update of its Razr folding smartphone. Priced at $1,400, a 7% cut, the new Razr 5G gets 5G compatibility, a better camera, and the same cool 6.2-inch screen that folds down the middle. It's also no longer a Verizon exclusive. Michael Fisher, aka Mr Mobile on YouTube, follows the foldable market closely and has a smart take on the new Razr after using the device for a few days. But do you really need a 5G phone yet? Not according to these PC Magazine tests in 26 cities.
The very face you wear will not be your own. The city council of Portland, Oregon, is the latest metro government to ban the use of facial recognition technology. The ban is broader than most, covering government entities and private businesses in any place of "public accommodation," such as a store.
Deja vu all over again. Hackers from the Russian government were caught trying to break into one of the political consulting firms working on Joe Biden's campaign. Microsoft blocked the attack on SKDKnickerbocker and said the hackers used some of the same techniques that got them into the DNC's emails four years ago. In other global tech battles, TikTok's sale by ByteDance is still up in the air. The Wall Street Journal reports on the latest back and forth, but it's still not clear what will happen if the app isn't sold by September 15.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Former Google engineer and computational photography pioneer Marc Levoy jumped to Adobe over the summer, where he's working on improving the pictures taken by all smartphones. In a fascinating and wide-ranging interview with The Verge, Levoy explains the centuries-old influences on the way phone photos look today.
It’s an artistic decision. My team (at Google) was instrumental in that. I looked at a lot of paintings and looked at how painters over the centuries have handled dynamic range. One of my favorite painters was Caravaggio. Caravaggio had dark shadows. I liked that...Last year, we moved a little bit more toward Titian. Titian has lighter shadows. It’s a constant debate, and it’s a constant emerging taste. You’re right that the phones are different. It’s also true that there is probably some ultimate limit on high dynamic range imaging — not necessarily on how high a dynamic range you could capture, but on how high a dynamic range you can effectively render without the image looking cartoony.
One of my favorite photographic artists is Trey Ratcliff, and his look is deliberately pushed and cartoony. I think that’s his style. But I’m not sure I would want the Trey Ratcliff look with every picture that I took every day with a smartphone. I think that’s an important limit. It’s not clear how we get beyond that limit or whether we ever can.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Amazon’s A.I. voice project gets help from Facebook, Dolby, and Garmin By Jonathan Vanian
Nearly half of open board seats went to women in 2019. Only 23% were filled by people of color By Emma Hinchliffe
Review of the Microsoft Surface Duo folding phone: Very pretty but just how useful is it? By Aaron Pressman
Mastercard launches digital currency kit for central banks By Jeff John Roberts
Time is running out for Big Tech’s monetization of Europeans’ personal data By David Meyer
‘A real uphill battle:’ Why China will struggle to counter U.S.’s attack on Huawei By Veta Chan
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
There have been several previous attempts to adapt Frank Herbert's 1960s sci-fi classic novel Dune for both TV and the movies, none terribly worth watching. That's likely to change now that Denis Villeneuve is at the helm. The new trailer for Villeneuve's version of Dune looks both epic and coherent. When will we get to see it on the big screen? That remains an open question.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com