fortune--2020-02-08--Wuhan coronavirus? 2019 nCoV? Naming a new disease

West Nile virus, Lyme disease, Ebola virus.
And now: 2019 nCoV?
“Just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?” said Trevor Hoppe, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who has studied the history of disease names.
The name, which stands for 2019 novel coronavirus, has been assigned to the virus behind the outbreak of flu-like illnesses that started in China late last year.
Scientists are still learning about the new virus, so it’s hard to come up with a good name, Hoppe said. The current one is likely temporary, said Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Once people have a chance to catch their breath, it might be changed,” Messonnier said.
Many media outlets have been skipping the clunky 2019 nCoV and just calling it the new virus or new coronavirus, which isn’t very specific. Coronavirus is the umbrella term for a large group of viruses, including the one that causes the common cold.
Since the outbreak is centered in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, others have been using Wuhan virus or Wuhan coronavirus or even Wuhan flu—even though flu is an entirely different virus.
It’s consistent with a centuries-old tradition of naming new ailments after cities, countries, or regions of the world where they first popped up. West Nile was first detected in the West Nile district of Uganda; Lyme disease in Old Lyme, Conn.; and Ebola in a village near Africa’s Ebola River.
But that can sometimes be wrong or misleading. The 1918 pandemic was called Spanish flu, though researchers don’t think Spain is where it actually started.
“Now we have a much different sensibility and tolerance about how we refer to things,” said Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan.
In 2015, the World Health Organization issued guidelines that discouraged the use of geographic locations (like Zika virus), animals (swine flu), or groups of people (Legionnaires’ disease).
Hoppe noted that AIDS, when it first emerged in the early 1980s, was called “gay-related immune deficiency.” That was dropped as it became clear that heterosexuals were also spreading the virus. AIDS stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
With the guidelines, WHO was trying to bring an end to unnecessary stigma that could ostracize people and damage business. Demand for pork plunged in 2009 with so-called swine flu, first identified in a boy who lived on a pig farm in Mexico—even though it wasn’t spread through eating pork.
Markel said he liked when diseases were named after the scientists who first described them. (Think Alzheimer, Parkinson, and Tourette.) That was once common but may be more problematic today with scientists across the world working on a new ailment at the same time.
As for the new virus, “I can see why they want to name it something generic but it has to be something people use,” he said. “Otherwise the easier name will take over, and it’s naive to think otherwise.”
In the end, the WHO may have little control over what it’s called, he added.
“’Wuhan virus’ is very catchy—no pun intended,” Markel said. “It’s a very contagious name.”
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fortune--2020-02-08--Antarctica’s summer has never been this hot before

For universities that have come to rely on China , the coronavirus poses an unprecedented risk

The temperature at one research base in Antarctica reached a record-breaking 65°F (18.3°C) on Thursday, almost a full degree above the previous high set five years ago.
Argentine scientists on the Esperanza base who confirmed the reading said that wasn’t the only record broken this week. The nation’s Marambio site registered the highest temperature for the month of February since 1971. Thermometers there hit 14.1°C, above the previous February 2013 reading of 13.8°C.
The reports are shocking, but not surprising, said Frida Bengtsson, who is leading a expedition to the Antarctic for the environmental group Greenpeace.
“We’ve been in the Antarctic for the last month, documenting the dramatic changes this part of the world is undergoing as our planet warms,” she said in an email. “In the last month, we’ve seen penguin colonies sharply declining under the impacts of climate change in this supposedly pristine environment.”
#Antártida | Nuevo récord de temperaturas 🌡
Este mediodía la Base #Esperanza registró un nuevo récord histórico (desde 1961) de temperatura, con 18,3°C. Con este valor se supera el récord anterior de 17,5°C del 24 en marzo de 2015. Y no fue el único récord… pic.twitter.com/rhKsPFytCb — SMN Argentina (@SMN_Argentina) February 6, 2020
Antarctica is among the fastest-warming regions in the planet, with the Antarctic Peninsula, where the Argentine bases are located, warming particularly quickly, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Average temperatures on the continent have risen almost 3°C over the past 50 years, and during that time glaciers along the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula have retreated.
WMO experts will now investigate whether the warm event recorded by Argentine scientists is a weather phenomenon known as foehn. That is a common event in Alpine regions that often involves high winds at altitude and the rapid warming of air as it heads down slopes or peaks, driven by significant air pressure differences, the WMO said in a statement.
The WMO will also determine whether the temperature extreme is a new record for the entire Antarctic landmass. The Signy island in the Antarctic region, which includes everywhere south of 60 degrees latitude, recorded an all-time high temperature of 19.8°C in January 1982. The average annual temperature ranges from about -10°C on the Antarctic coast to -60°C at the highest points of the interior.
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fortune--2020-02-08--Democratic debate fact check: Candidates skew health care, Iraq facts

Democratic presidential contenders stretched beyond the facts on policy and sometimes on their own records Friday in their New Hampshire debate.
Amy Klobuchar called out Pete Buttigieg for an evolution on health care that he didn’t acknowledge. Joe Biden told only part of the story when he boasted about a success as vice president in getting troops home from Iraq.
A look at how some of their claims from Manchester, New Hampshire, compare with the facts:
KLOBUCHAR, on Buttigieg’s evolution on health care: “And Pete, while you have a different plan now, you sent out a tweet just a few years ago that said henceforth, forthwith, indubitably, affirmatively, you are for ‘Medicare for All’ for the ages.”
BUTTIGIEG: “Just to be clear, the truth is that I have been consistent throughout in my position on delivering health care for every American.”
THE FACTS: Klobuchar, a Minnesota senator, is right. Before he launched his presidential campaign, Buttigieg sounded supportive of “Medicare for All.” The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, isn’t now.
In February 2018, he was involved in a Twitter exchange as liberals were pressing Democratic politicians to back a government health plan.
“When/where have you ever heard me oppose ‘Medicare for All?’” he asked in a Feb. 17, 2018, response to an activist’s query.
A day later, he tweeted out a column he wrote as a Harvard University senior, saying he’d “been on record on this one since 2004.”
On the same day, he sent out a separate tweet: “Gosh! Okay … I, Pete Buttigieg, politician, do henceforth and forthwith declare, most affirmatively and indubitably, unto the ages, that I do favor ‘Medicare for All,’ as I do favor any measure that would help get all Americans covered. Now, if you’ll excuse me, potholes await.”
___
BIDEN, saying President Barack Obama asked him to get 156,000 troops out of Iraq: “I did that.”
THE FACTS: True, but that’s not the end of the story. Obama asked Biden to take the lead in efforts to withdraw troops and coordinate efforts to maintain stability in Baghdad. What Biden did not mention was that some of the troops had to go back.
Obama and Biden failed to win agreement from the Iraqi government to keep a limited number of U.S. troops there after December 2011. That was the deadline for a complete U.S. pullout under a deal negotiated by the Bush administration in late 2008. Biden was still vice president when Obama was compelled to return American troops to Iraq in 2014 after the rise of the Islamic State extremist group.
___
ANDREW YANG, tech entrepreneur: “We have record high corporate profits in this country right now.”
THE FACTS: Corporate profits are high, but they’re not at record levels.
Companies earned $1.84 trillion in profits in 2018, slightly below the $1.86 trillion earned in 2014, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. But as a share of national income, corporate profits were 6.6% in 2018. That’s down from 7.6% in 2012 and significantly below the peak of 8.9% in 1929.
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fortune--2020-02-08--Facebook’s Twitter account appears to have been hacked

Facebook’s corporate account on Twitter appears to have been hacked.
The official account @Facebook on Friday sent out a tweet saying, “Hi, we are O u r M i n e. Well, even Facebook is hackable but at least their security better than Twitter.”
Facebook didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment, and the tweet was removed quickly. The group OurMine has been linked to other Twitter hacks, most recently the official accounts for more than a dozen National Football League teams. The group also took credit for a hack of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s account last year. When it hacks accounts, OurMine markets its security services.
In a statement following the post’s removal, Twitter confirmed the @Facebook account was hacked and said it was breached via a third-party platform. “As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised account and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to restore them,” a representative said.
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fortune--2020-02-08--Trump ousts Sondland and Vindman after they testified in impeachment inquiry

Taking swift and harsh action against those who crossed him, President Donald Trump on Friday ousted two government officials who had delivered damaging testimony during his impeachment hearings. Trump made the moves just two days after his acquittal by the Senate.
First came news that Trump had ousted Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, the decorated soldier and national security aide who played a central role in the Democrats’ impeachment case. He was escorted out of the White House complex Friday, according to his lawyer, who said he was asked to leave in retaliation for “telling the truth.”
“The truth has cost Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman his job, his career, and his privacy,” David Pressman, an attorney for Vindman, said in a statement. The Army said in a statement that Vindman and his twin brother, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, who also was asked to leave his job as a White House lawyer on Friday, had been reassigned to the Army.
Next came word that Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, also was out.
“I was advised today that the President intends to recall me effective immediately as United States Ambassador to the European Union,” Sondland said in a statement.
Alexander Vindman’s lawyer issued a one-page statement that accused Trump of taking revenge on his client.
“He did what any member of our military is charged with doing every day: he followed orders, he obeyed his oath, and he served his country, even when doing so was fraught with danger and personal peril,” Pressman said. “And for that, the most powerful man in the world — buoyed by the silent, the pliable, and the complicit — has decided to exact revenge.”
The White House did not respond to Pressman’s accusation.
“We do not comment on personnel matters,” said John Ullyot, spokesman for the National Security Council, the foreign policy arm of the White House where Vindman was an expert on Ukraine.
Vindman’s status had been uncertain since he testified that he didn’t think it was “proper” for Trump to “demand that a foreign government investigate” former Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s dealings with the energy company Burisma in Ukraine. Vindman’s ouster, however, seemed imminent after Trump mocked him Thursday during his post-acquittal celebration with Republican supporters in the East Room and said Friday that he was not happy with him.
“You think I’m supposed to be happy with him?” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. “I’m not. … They are going to be making that decision.”
Vindman, a 20-year Army veteran, wore his uniform full of medals, including a purple heart, when he appeared late last year for what turned out to be a testy televised impeachment hearing. Trump supporters raised questions about the immigrant’s allegiance to the United States — his parents fled the Soviet Union when he was a child —and noted that he had received offers to work for the government of Ukraine, offers Vindman said he swiftly dismissed.
“I am an American,” he stated emphatically.
Trump backers cheered Vindman’s removal, while Democrats were aghast.
“The White House is running a two for one special today on deep state leakers,” Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, wrote on Twitter.
A Twitter account used by the president’s reelection campaign, @TrumpWarRoom, claimed Vindman leaked information to the whistleblower whose complaint about Trump’s call ignited the investigation, and “colluded with Democrats to start the partisan impeachment coup.”
Former Trump NSC official Tim Morrison testified that others had brought concerns that Vindman may have leaked something. Vindman, in his own congressional testimony, denied leaking any information.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the firing was another example of how the “White House runs away from the truth.”
“Lt. Col. Vindman lived up to his oath to protect and defend our Constitution,” Schumer said in a statement. “This action is not a sign of strength. It only shows President Trump’s weakness.”
Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, recalled how Vindman in testimony before the House impeachment panel said that he reassured his worried father that would be “fine for telling the truth.”
“It’s appalling that this administration may prove him wrong,” Clinton said in a tweet.
At last fall’s hearing, when the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, addressed him as “Mr. Vindman,” the Iraq War veteran replied: “Ranking member, it’s Lt. Col. Vindman please.”
Defense Secretary Mark Esper was asked what the Pentagon would do to ensure that Vindman faces no retribution. “We protect all of our service members from retribution or anything like that,” Esper said. “We’ve already addressed that in policy and other means.”
Alexander Vindman is scheduled to enter a military college in Washington, D.C., this summer, and his brother is to be assigned to the Army General Counsel’s Office, according to two officials who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and so spoke on condition of anonymity.
Pressman said Vindman was among a handful of men and women who courageously “put their faith in country ahead of fear” but have “paid a price.”
“There is no question in the mind of any American why this man’s job is over, why this country now has one less soldier serving it at the White House,” Pressman said. “Lt. Col. Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth. His honor, his commitment to right, frightened the powerful.”
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fortune--2020-02-10--For tech world’s China manufacturers, the coronavirus ‘nightmare’ may be just beginning

Multinationals see a new coronavirus red flag on the horizon—a stronger dollar

As Chinese-based manufacturers begin to restart factories Monday, no one knows for sure when they’ll be back at full-speed — or what sort of chaos may ensue.
Tech producers led by Foxconn, which makes the majority of the world’s iPhones from Zhengzhou a few hundred miles from the coronavirus outbreak’s epicenter, had begun preparing investors for the potential bedlam when hundreds of thousands make their way back to factories.
Apple Inc.’s most important partner warned investors of the daunting task of securing enough workers despite widespread transport blockades, quarantining thousands, and the “nightmare” scenario of an on-campus epidemic that could shut down production altogether. Last week, it took the unprecedented step of warning workers to stay away from its Shenzhen headquarters till further notice as government inspectors vet its containment procedures, Bloomberg News reported.
“How we can make sure there will be no infection within our campuses will be the first priority, because if you put a lot of people together and one of them gets infected, that will be a nightmare,” Foxconn investor relations chief Alex Yang told investors on a Thursday call, according to a recording obtained by Bloomberg News. “We try very hard to make sure the possibility of any on-site infection will be as low as zero, although it will be challenging.”
The deadly virus has illustrated the increasingly central role China plays in global manufacturing, from clothing and chemicals to automobiles and especially technology. Just about every major piece of consumer electronics is made in China, from iPhones and gaming consoles to half the world’s liquid crystal display or LCD screens. The contagion has already shuttered plants across China for a week longer than anticipated after the Lunar New Year break — a disruption that could get much worse if rolling quarantines and suspended rail and air links prevent the return of the millions of blue-collar laborers at the heart of electronics assembly.
When they do make it back, untold numbers will get funneled into a quarantine of up to two weeks — a sequester of unknown scale. Any disruptions at Chinese plants can, in a worst-case scenario, freeze parts of the supply chain by triggering cascading shortages. Influential supply chain analyst Kuo Ming-chi of TF International estimates Foxconn’s main iPhone-making base will properly resume work only next week — and then at 40% to 60% capacity. Citigroup estimates just 30% of the entire Chinese semiconductor workforce is estimated to return to their workplaces as of Feb 11.
Foxconn said in a statement Saturday it’s working with local governments to prepare for the return of employees, without specifics. Shenzhen’s Longhua district said in a WeChat post it was helping the Taiwanese company fine-tune its plans. “To safeguard everyone’s health and safety and comply with government virus prevention measures, we urge you not to return to Shenzhen,” Foxconn wrote in a Feb. 5 text message to employees based in the southern city. “As for the happy reunion date in Shenzhen, please wait for further notice.”
On last week’s call, Yang spoke in depth about Foxconn’s virus-prevention measures and the need to comply with various regulations in the so-called “iPhone city” of Zhengzhou — just 300 miles from Wuhan, the origin of the outbreak — covering infection-fighting measures from quarantines to face mask and hand sanitizer inventories. “If you are talking about tens of thousands of people in a line, in a building, in a campus and we try to prevent a virus — and in the meantime you are asking for them to do their normal job — that’s very challenging.”
Apple and Foxconn, known also as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., were among the first corporations to try and quantify the viral epidemic’s impact. Hon Hai slashed its 2020 outlook last week, anticipating disruptions to Apple’s carefully calibrated production chain centered on China, as well as dampening consumer demand and overall economic growth. As China’s largest private employer and a key partner to many of the world’s most recognizable consumer brands, the Taiwanese company has become a high-profile symbol of how the outbreak could disrupt Chinese manufacturing and hence the world’s supply of electronics.
The disruptions extend well beyond electronics or technology. Many auto plants in the world’s largest market remain idled. Toyota Motor Corp., which initially halted its Chinese plants until Feb. 9, said Friday it now plans to resume production as soon as Feb. 17. Honda Motor Co. said it will reopen its factory in Hubei on Feb. 14 with an eye toward restarting output the week of Feb. 17. And Volkswagen AG also delayed the resumption of production at some of its Chinese businesses until Feb. 17.
Expect the “supply chain situation to get worse before getting better,” wrote Jeff Pu of GF Securities.
In the industry’s favor
One thing in the industry’s favor is that the first half of the year is often a lull period for a consumer electronics sphere driven by holiday sales and new iPhones in the fall. Yang stressed that the disruption was “manageable” and that Hon Hai would scramble to make up for any early 2020 production shortfall.
Several of the biggest names in tech including Sony Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. have said they’ll restart production in China as scheduled. Production at Tesla Inc.’s new Shanghai factory — its first outside the U.S. — resumed on Feb. 10., it said. And Apple-assembler Pegatron Corp. on Monday said it’s gradually restarting operations.
But much depends on the extent and severity of the outbreak. Even if it peaks soon, the interconnectedness of just-in-time global supply means the entire system will go through an unprecedented upheaval. The shortage of just one component exerts a ripple effect on the entire chain by holding up production further down the line, rippling through the carefully choreographed networks that companies from Apple to Huawei Technologies Co. and display-maker BOE Technology Group Co. rely on.
“There will certainly be risks of on-site infections. Companies also do not have control over neighborhoods near their factories,” said Eric Tseng, chief executive officer of Taipei-based Isaiah Research. “Manpower levels for most manufacturers will still be low during the first two to three weeks of February due to the length of quarantines and the possibility that not many workers will return.”
Unlike in previous years, Foxconn hasn’t even begun the recruitment of the hundreds of thousands it employs annually to piece together gadgets like the Sony Corp. PlayStation and HP Inc. computers, according to people familiar with the matter. Local executives were awaiting clarity and trying to reconcile rapid-fire and sometimes conflicting virus-prevention measures announced by local governments.
As such, its main iPhone-making plant in Zhengzhou may start the week of Feb. 10 with just a small number of workers who didn’t decamp for their hometowns before the extended break, one of the people said. The majority of the plant’s workforce are expected to encounter immense travel obstacles, the person added, asking not to be identified talking about internal matters. Foxconn’s two biggest campuses in Shenzhen now also face a similar predicament given the warning to employees to stay away.
To make matters worse, the virus has shrunk the available labor pool. Foxconn will temporarily halt recruiting workers from Hubei, site of the outbreak’s epicenter in Wuhan, and other heavily affected areas in neighboring provinces, a second person said. It’s ordered workers currently in Hubei as well as from seven other cities in adjacent Henan, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces not to return to work, according to an internal document dated Feb. 4. obtained by Bloomberg. The company offered a 200 yuan ($28) reward to employees who report on co-workers violating that ban. While the picture remains murky, Foxconn is the most visible proxy for the confusion that now grips the broader supply chain.
More broadly, economists are still struggling to tote up the economic fallout of the outbreak. While SARS was bad economic news for China and its neighbors, which suffered from weaker exports and falling tourism, China’s small weight capped the global impact back then, when China’s GDP was 4% of the global total. That share now stands at 17%. That means, even if the outbreak peaks soon and producers impose double overtime to make up for lost production, the final end-demand in 2020 for gadgets of all stripes could take a severe beating.
At Huawei, China’s largest tech company and a global leader in smartphones and networking gear, executives are debating when to resume production for fear of angering Beijing by forcing large numbers of people into cramped dorms and factories, according to another person familiar with the matter. Then there’s the LCD makers from BOE to Tianma Microelectronics Co. that now crank out 50% or more of the screens for all TVs, phones and even car dashboards — much of that from Wuhan.
The city is an important base for FiberHome and other optical fiber makers as well, that Huawei and networking firms rely on. “These will get directly hit,” said Kevin Chen, an analyst at China Merchants Securities. “ Near-term, their production will be impacted even if they resume working they might have a problem getting enough workers resulting in lower utilization.”
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—Stock scammers are using coronavirus to dupe investors, SEC warns
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fortune--2020-02-10--Trillion-dollar deficits are here to stay

For tech world ’ s China manufacturers , the coronavirus ‘ nightmare ’ may be just beginning

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
President Trump today will propose a $4.8 trillion budget plan that increases spending for defense systems and space travel, but sharply cuts most social safety net programs. And while his plan would propose eliminating more than $4 trillion in spending over the next decade, budget deficits would continue for the next 15 years.
Meanwhile, as Democrats prepare for the New Hampshire primary, they are competing with an expansive array of huge new spending programs and little apparent concern for the budget consequences.
With the economy in its longest expansion in history and unemployment at historic lows, now would normally be a time for belt tightening. But tight belts have gone the way of bipartisan backroom deals. In today’s era of polarized politics, it’s a good bet that we’ll be seeing trillion dollar deficits for years to come.
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Coronavirus update
The British government has decided the coronavirus outbreak (global death toll around 910) is a serious and imminent threat to public health, paving the way for the forced quarantining of infected people. The move follows the news that a British man who picked up the virus at a Singapore conference may have transmitted it to people in England, France and Spain. Meanwhile, Sony, Amazon and Nvidia are the latest firms to join Ericsson and LG in pulling out of Mobile World Congress due to the contagion threat. Guardian
Chinese investment
Alibaba is leading the retreat of Chinese investors pulling back from the U.S. Last year, the Chinese e-commerce giant made no publicly disclosed American investments, and there was a sharp drop-off in U.S. investments by Baidu and Tencent, too. There is a global slowdown in investment, but in these cases increased regulatory scrutiny is likely playing a role. Financial Times
Ghosn case
Carlos Ghosn's lawyers have argued in a Dutch court for the release of internal Nissan and Mitsubishi papers relating to his firing, which Ghosn says was unlawful. Ghosn wants around $17 million in damages, due to alleged violation of Dutch labor laws. Why Dutch laws? That's where the Nissan-Mitsubishi entity is registered. Reuters
Victoria's Secret
The sale of L Brands' Victoria's Secret brand to Sycamore Partners may be announced this week, according to a CNBC report that says talks are near completion. It's not clear whether there will be a role for L Brands chief Les Wexner, one of the longest-standing CEOs out there, given his reported ties to Jeffrey Epstein. CNBC
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Parasite win
Bong Joon Ho's Parasite has become the first non-English language film to win the Oscar for best picture—Bong also won best director. Another first: Taika Waititi became the first indigenous director to win an Oscar, taking best adapted screenplay for Jojo Rabbit (like Parasite, a satire). However, many were unhappy at the lack of nominations for female directors. Fortune
Lagarde's way
Christine Lagarde's first three months at the helm of the European Central Bank have been marked by her push for discipline in the ECB's governing council—central bank chiefs have had to stop trashing policy decisions in public, and they have to put their phones away during meetings. Reuters
Merkel successor
Angela Merkel's protégé, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (a.k.a. AKK), has unexpectedly resigned as leader of Germany's Christian Democratic Union and ruled herself out as candidate for chancellor. AKK, already seen as a weak figure, dithered when the CDU in the state of Thuringia tacitly entered an alliance with the far-right AfD party—Merkel put her foot down remotely from an African tour, ending that politically explosive episode. The upshot is that Merkel's successor is now more likely to come from the right of the CDU. Bloomberg
Irish elections
Meanwhile the direction of Irish politics is also suddenly in doubt, after Sinn Féin—a center-left party that favors reunification with the currently-British province of Northern Ireland—won more than 20% of the vote in national elections. It may have won more if it had anticipated this degree of success and fielded candidates for all seats. This indicates the end of an effective two-party system (namely, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael) that has lasted for decades. CNBC
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-02-10--Multinationals see a new coronavirus red flag on the horizon—a stronger dollar

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Good morning, and happy Monday to everyone. There’s another busy earnings week on the calendar, but the biggest story today remains China. Everyone wants to know: Will the world’s No. 2 economy re-open fully for business this week?
Market movers
So let’s start there. The Asian markets are mixed despite news over the weekend that the coronavirus outbreak (death toll now at 908, infections above 40,000) has now surpassed the 2003 SARS crisis. Europe is down, and U.S. futures are just above break-even, and slipping, as I type.
On the bright side…Even after Friday’s swoon, the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 are up year-to-date, and European equities had their best week last week in years. So equities are more than holding their own during this uncertain period.
If you’re wondering what’s the biggest loser from the coronavirus outbreak so far—it’s commodities, from Brent crude to copper. If Chinese factories are unable to go fully operational this week, look for more pain there as economists calculate the impact on global trade and growth well beyond Wuhan.
The almighty dollar
As a Yank abroad, I’m a bit of an FX nut. I check dollar performance almost daily, sometimes even before I scan the baseball box scores.
Around Christmas I started noticing a fair number of predictions that 2020 would be something of a reckoning for the greenback. As recently as mid-January, “weakening dollar” headlines were predicting a lift for commodities and for American multinationals.
Coronavirus has all but wiped out that talk.
The dollar, while down slightly today, is the ultimate safe haven. It tends to climb during periods of great uncertainty. That’s proved axiomatic during the coronavirus outbreak.
The conventional wisdom is that should the coronavirus outbreak extend into the second quarter, various sectors will suffer and, conversely, traditional safe havens—the dollar—will fare well. Such a scenario would have big ripple effects. A strong dollar makes exports more expensive, which messes with the competitiveness of American companies abroad.
As the Wall Street Journal noted over the weekend, American multinationals in various sectors, including 3M, Ford Motor Co., Johnson & Johnson and Coca-Cola, have all warned of “the negative effects of currency swings on earnings calls.”
Today’s chart reveals what they’re seeing: a rapidly climbing dollar over the past month.
In the FX world, a 1.7% climb (as measured by the U.S. Dollar Index) in a little over three weeks is an impressive gain, one that will get the attention of CFOs.
The concern is that a sustained rally by the greenback could impact the earnings of multinationals in upcoming quarters. Add to the strong dollar supply chain disruptions, a China slowdown and global trade shocks and you can see how this contagion could exacerbate the biggest vulnerabilities in the global economy.
Something to watch.
***
A quick shout-out to all those newsletter readers who have sent me their predictions on Dow 30,000. If you haven’t done so, there’s still time. Drop me a note.
Have a good day.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
Today's reads
Cashing out. Investors scrutinizing chief executives’ behavior for buy/sell signals will be reassured to learn that few bosses are selling their shares despite the stock market boom. Despite a 30% leap in the S&P 500 last year, only 80 CEOs reduced their stakes in the companies they run, The Wall Street Journal has calculated. But it's not all rosy. Of those that did, the vast majority—67—did so at the same time as their companies were buying back shares. Rob Jackson, a commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission, thinks this is a “real governance problem.”
Axis of power. Could the U.S.-China trade war cost the U.S. its crown as global tech leader? Ken Griffin, CEO of hedge fund Citadel, thinks it's a distinct possibility, Fortune’s Lucinda Shen reports. Aggressive U.S. moves against Chinese tech firms are encouraging Beijing to become more technologically self-reliant and that could lead to a world where the United States and its allies have one set of technology, and China and its allies have another.
Tesla shorts. Spare (yet another) thought for the Tesla bears. Investors who bet that Tesla was hugely overvalued, and set for a tumble, have been badly burned by last week's surge to a record high of just below $969, losing $8.4 billion since January, The Wall Street Journal tallies. As one such bear told the newspaper: “Someone could go buy a brand new Toyota Camry with the loss that I took.” Why are shorts so keen on Tesla shares? Check out Shawn Tully's by-the-numbers takedown of Elon Musk's creation.
Market candy
Finn-ancial savvy. Finland has been declared the happiest country on earth. But there is a cloud on the horizon in the form of a sharp rise in household debt. Some experts believe that the rapid adoption of digital payments has led tech-savvy Finns to forget the meaning of financial restraint. The Finnish central bank plans to do something about it by drawing up a financial-literacy schooling plan for citizens, Bloomberg reports.


fortune--2020-02-10--Ex-Nissan boss Ghosn has hired legendary agent Michael Ovitz to negotiate his film deals

Hollywood producers eager to dramatize the life of Carlos Ghosn, the former Nissan Motor Co. chairman who staged a cinematic escape from Japan in December, are likely to get a simple response: call my agent.
Not just any agent. Ghosn is working with Michael Ovitz, the founder of Creative Artists Agency and former president of Walt Disney Co., to explore film and TV projects. A spokeswoman for Ghosn said Ovitz would assist with projects and evaluating proposals he has received, cautioning that any discussions are still preliminary.
A deal with a studio could be a significant financial boon to Ghosn, who forfeited $14 million in bail money when he fled Japan at the end of December, a caper that one security expert estimated could have cost him another $15 million.
Ghosn’s story — which involves allegations of a high-level corporate coup and government collusion, followed by a dramatic extraction masterminded by a former Green Beret — has the makings of a compelling film or mini-series at a time when companies from Netflix Inc. to Amazon.com Inc. are hungry for fresh content.
Few people in Hollywood are more familiar with such negotiations than Ovitz, who has been one of the entertainment industry’s most prominent dealmakers since the 1980s. At CAA he pioneered the practice of “packaging” film projects, putting together stars, screenwriters, and directors and shopping them to studios as a team.
Ovitz didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment outside of regular U.S. business hours.
In 1995 Ovitz crossed to the other side, joining Disney as the second-in-command to then-chairman Michael Eisner — a relationship that soon turned sour, leading Ovitz to depart the company after a little more than a year. He received $140 million in severance payments, prompting a group of investors to unsuccessfully sue Disney’s board, claiming it had wasted money hiring him.
It’s probably safe to say that Ovitz, who over the years worked with A-listers including Steven Spielberg and Meryl Streep, has never had a client with Ghosn’s background.
The Brazilian-French-Lebanese auto executive, who spent much of late 2018 and early 2019 in solitary confinement in Tokyo, was facing four criminal charges in Japan, which together could have put him in prison for more than a decade. Two related to claims that he understated his compensation in official filings, while two more indictments, for “breach of trust,” alleged that he misused Nissan’s resources for his own benefit.
Ghosn was a household name in Japan even before his arrest, after turning around Nissan almost two decades ago. He became something of a corporate celebrity in the country, spawning numerous business books even a manga comic about his management style and time at the carmaker.
The auto executive, who made his way to Lebanon via private jet, has denied wrongdoing, arguing the charges were part of a conspiracy by Nissan executives and Japanese government officials to halt his plans to integrate the company more closely with its top shareholder, Renault SA.
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—Stock scammers are using coronavirus to dupe investors, SEC warns
—Asia worries about big events like the Olympics amid coronavirus spread
—Why China is still so susceptible to disease outbreaks
—Looking to cut emissions, Europe eyes a “sustainability” tax on meat
—Fortune Explains: Tariffs and trade wars
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-02-10--Airbnb suspends all check-ins in Beijing amid the coronavirus outbreak

Airbnb Inc. is suspending check-ins at all of its Beijing listings until March to comply with local regulations intended to curb the coronavirus outbreak that’s spreading across China.
The San Francisco-based company said in a statement that it will offer refunds to all those affected or that cancel their bookings. This is in adherence to municipal policy, Airbnb said, though the Beijing government’s press office didn’t answer calls from Bloomberg News seeking comment.
Local rival Xiaozhu will match Airbnb’s actions, shutting down all rentals in Beijing for February and issuing full refunds for existing bookings while also waiving landlord commission fees, it said in a statement. It’s not yet clear whether others in the home-sharing industry, including Trip.com Group Ltd.-backed Tujia, are following suit. In its mobile app, Trip.com said “some” apartment bookings in Beijing have been suspended and recommended users turn to hotels instead.
“In light of the novel coronavirus outbreak and guidance from local authorities for the short-term rental industry during this public health emergency, bookings of all listings in Beijing with check-in from 7 February 2020 to 29 February 2020 have been suspended,” Airbnb said in its statement. The company “appreciates that disease control efforts are causing overall travel disruptions that also affect our community of guests and hosts.”
Health authorities in China and around the world are trying to gauge whether the world’s largest known quarantine effort has been effective in containing the pneumonia-causing virus in central Hubei province, a landlocked region of 60 million people. Infections are rising elsewhere in the country and Beijing is one of its most popular tourist destinations. As of Sunday, Beijing’s health authorities have confirmed 337 cases, including two deaths.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Why China is still so susceptible to disease outbreaks
—Startup uses A.I. to identify molecules that could fight coronavirus
—Stock scammers are using coronavirus to dupe investors, SEC warns
—Governments deploy surveillance tech to track coronavirus victims
—WATCH: Coronavirus outbreak has disrupted global economy
Subscribe to Fortune’s Brainstorm Health for daily updates on biopharma and health care.


fortune--2020-02-10--‘Parasite’ is the first non-English language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars

Subtitle this: “Parasite” is the first non-English language film to win best picture in the 92-year history of the Academy Awards.
Bong Joon Ho’s masterfully devious class satire took Hollywood’s top prize at the Oscars on Sunday night, along with awards for best director, best international film and best screenplay. In a year dominated by period epics — “1917,” “Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood,” “The Irishman” — the film academy instead went overseas, to South Korea, to reward a contemporary and unsettling portrait of social inequality in “Parasite.”
True to its name, “Parasite” simply got under the skin of Oscar voters, attaching itself to the American awards season and, ultimately, to history. The win was a watershed moment for the Academy Awards, which has long been content to relegate international films to their own category.
Multiple standing ovations greeted Bong’s several wins. “I am ready to drink tonight,” Bong said, prompting roars from the crowd. Unexpectedly called up again for best director, Bong saluted his fellow nominees, particularly Martin Scorsese, and concluded: “Now I’m ready to drink until tomorrow.”
The win for “Parasite” — which had echoes of the surprise victory of “Moonlight” over “La La Land” three years ago — came in year in which many criticized the lack of diversity in the nominees and the absence of female filmmakers. But the triumph for “Parasite” enabled Hollywood to flip the script, and signal a different kind of progress.
In doing so, the film academy turned away another history-making event, again denying Netflix its first best-picture win despite two contenders in “The Irishman” and “Marriage Story,” and a big-spending awards campaign blitz.
All of the acting winners — Brad Pitt, Renee Zellweger, Joaquin Phoenix and Laura Dern — went as expected.
Few categories were more certain coming into Sunday’s Oscars than best supporting actor, which Pitt has had locked down all awards season. While Pitt (who in 2014 shared in the best picture win for “12 Years a Slave,” as was a producer) has regaled audiences with one-liners in the run-up to the Oscars, he began his comments on a political note.
“They told me I have 45 seconds to speak, which is 45 seconds more than the Senate gave John Bolton this week,” Pitt said, alluding to the impeachment hearings. “I’m thinking maybe Quentin does a movie about it.”
Pitt said the honor had given him reason to reflect on his fairy-tale journey in the film industry, going back to when he moved to Los Angeles from Missouri. “Once upon a time in Hollywood,” said Pitt. “Ain’t that the truth.”
Most of the early awards went according to forecasts, including Dern winning for her performance as a divorce attorney in Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story.” Accepting her first Oscar, Dern thanked her in-attendance parents, “my legends, Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern.”
For the 87th time, no women were nominated for best director this year, a subject that was woven into the entire ceremony — and even into some attendees’ clothing. Natalie Portman wore a cape lined with the names of female filmmakers who weren’t nominated for best director, including Lulu Wang (“The Farewell”), Greta Gerwig (“Little Women”) and Mati Diop (“Atlantics”).
Coming on a rare rainy day in Los Angeles, the ceremony was soggy and song-heavy. Some performances, like Eminem’s performance of “Lose Yourself,” were unexpected (and drew a wane response from Martin Scorsese). All of the song nominees performed, including Elton John who won with his longtime songwriting partner Bernie Taupin for their “Rocketman” tune.
The hostless ceremony opened on a note of inclusion, with Janelle Monae performing “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and her own song, “Come Alive,” with an assist from Billy Porter. “I’m so proud to be standing here as a black queer artist telling stories,” Monae said. “Happy Black History Month.”
Two former Oscar hosts, Chris Rock and Steve Martin, provided the opening monologue. “An incredible demotion,” Martin called it. Martin also reminded that something was missing from this year’s directing nominees. “Vaginas!” Rock replied.
There were milestones, nevertheless. In winning best adapted screenplay for his Nazi satire “Jojo Rabbit,” the New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi became the first indigenous director ever to win an Oscar. He dedicated the award to “all the indigenous kids in the world who want to do art, dance and write stories.”
“We are the original storytellers,” Waititi said.
“Joker” composer Hildur Gudnadottir became only the third woman to ever win best original score. ”To the girls, to the women, to the mothers, to the daughters who hear the music opening within, please speak up,” said Gudnadottir. “We need to hear your voices.”
Awards were spread around to all of the best-picture nominees, with the lone exception being Martin Scorsese’s 10-time nominee “The Irishman.”
“1917,” acclaimed for its technical virtuosity, took awards for Roger Deakins’ cinematography, visual effects and sound mixing. The car racing throwback “Ford v Ferrari” was also honored for its craft, winning both editing and sound editing. Gerwig’s Louisa May Alcott adaptation “Little Women” won for Jacqueline Durran’s costume design. “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” for Barbara Ling’s production design.
Netflix came in with a leading 24 nominations. Along with the win for “Marriage Story,” the streamer’s “American Factory” won best documentary. The film is the first release from Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions. No studio has spent more heavily this awards season than Netflix, which is seeking its first best picture win after coming up just shy last year with “Roma.”
Pixar extended its domination of the best animated film category, winning for “Toy Story 4.” It’s the 10th Pixar film to win the award and second “Toy Story” film to do so, following the previous 2010 installment.
It was an early award for the Walt Disney Co. which despite last year amassing a record $13 billion in worldwide box office and owning the network the Oscars are broadcast on, played a minor role in the ceremony. The bulk of its awards came from 20th Century Fox (“Ford v Ferrari”) and Fox Searchlight (“Jojo Rabbit”), both of which the company took control of after its $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox last year.
Disney’s ABC, which is broadcasting the show live, hoped a widely watched field of nominees — including the $1 billion-grossing “Joker,” up for a leading 11 awards — will help viewership. Last year’s show garnered 29.6 million viewers, a 12% uptick.
In a year of streaming upheaval throughout the industry, this year’s Oscar favorites were largely movies released widely in theaters. They also predominantly featured male characters and came from male directors.
After a year in which women made significant gains behind the camera, no female directors were nominated for best director. The acting categories are also the least diverse since the fallout of #OscarsSoWhite pushed the academy to remake its membership. Cynthia Erivo (“Harriet”) is the only actor of color nominated. Those results, which have been a topic in speeches through awards season, stand in contrast to research that suggests the most popular movies star more people of color than ever before.
___
The AP’s Amanda Lee Meyers contributed to this report.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Parasite director Bong Joon Ho dissects his tale of two families
—Inside 1917: Designing a World War I battlefield
—Bombshell‘s Charlize Theron and John Lithgow reflect on the film’s indelible impact
—Taika Waititi on Kiwi humor, directing as Hitler, and why kids should see Jojo Rabbit
—The oral history of Laura Dern—in her own words
—Building Judy Garland: How Renée Zellweger was transformed
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-02-10--Buttigieg wins most Iowa delegates after party reviews caucus votes

Pete Buttigieg appears to have sealed his victory in Iowa after the state’s Democratic Party released on Sunday corrected results from its disputed caucuses.
Buttigieg now has 14 national delegates from Iowa to Bernie Sanders’ 12. Elizabeth Warren got eight, Joe Biden had six and Amy Klobuchar received, one.
But the Associated Press said it still can’t declare a winner because the results “may not be fully accurate and are still subject to potential revision.”
The race was so close that Buttigieg won by 0.09% of state delegate equivalents, the official yardstick for victory in Iowa. But Sanders has also declared victory because 6,103 more Iowans caucused for him before the process of eliminating nonviable candidates, recounting and converting to state delegates.
The party released its projected delegate tally Sunday after reviewing complaints of irregularities from the Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren campaigns. The issues included mathematical and tabulation errors and disputes over the rules for counting delegates.
The party changed results in some precincts based on the complaints but kept others intact.
In some cases, precinct officials signed inaccurate tally sheets. But Iowa Democratic Chairman Troy Price said Friday those are legal records and cannot be altered under state law.
Party officials briefing reporters Sunday provided additional explanations for some of the irregularities. For example, precincts can choose fewer delegates to the county convention than they’re allotted if supporters for a given candidate decline to serve as a county delegate.
Sunday’s results ended a chaotic, six-day counting process that was marred from the beginning by problems with a smartphone app that didn’t work and a backup telephone hotline that was jammed by calls from supporters of President Donald Trump.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—2020 candidates’ positions, and records, on economic issues that affect women
—How a company with 120 Facebook likes ended up at the center of the Iowa caucus firestorm
—Europe’s refugee crisis is getting worse—for these children
—Fortune Explains: The debt ceiling
—America’s young voters could sway 2020 results. What will it take to get them to the polls?
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-02-10--Google’s head of HR to step down

Google’s head of HR to step down

Trump is proposing nearly $ 3 billion in additional funds for a 2024 moon landing .
Will it be enough @

Google’s head of human resources, Eileen Naughton, will step down later this year amid rising tensions between the company’s top executives and rank and file employees.
Naughton, who has been at the company for 14 years, four of which have been as vice president of people operations, has had to deal with intensifying employee anger over the company’s alleged handling of sexual harassment claims, the firing of employees who organized protests against the company, and the elimination of weekly all-hands meetings at which employees confronted executives about sensitive topics (the meetings are now monthly, and the permitted topics are limited). She’s also had to manage worker complaints about the company’s decision to work on secret projects like a censored search engine for China and a lack of employee diversity.
Google told Fortune that Naughton is relinquishing her post to be closer to her family. The company said she will take another role within Google, but it did not provide a specific date or disclose what job she will take.
Sundar Pichai, who was recently elevated to lead Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and chief financial officer Ruth Porat plan to search for Naughton’s replacement both internally and externally, with Naughton helping with the transition.
“I’m at the very beginning of the process, and wanted to let everyone know upfront,” Naughton said in statement about her plans to step down. “I’ll be working with Sundar and Ruth to find a great leader for the people operations team.“
Last month, David Drummond, the top lawyer for Alphabet, stepped down following claims that he had inappropriate relationships with coworkers. One woman, a subordinate who allegedly had Drummond’s baby, wrote a Medium post expressing her frustration about how the situation was handled by Drummond and the company, which she claimed did little to resolve the matter.
In 2018, 20,000 Google employees walked out for several hours over Google’s alleged mismanagement of sexual misconduct complaints. The event was a huge turning point in the tech industry, which continues to face backlash from workers.
In the months that followed, Naughton led an effort to make it easier for employees to report misconduct. She also introduced a new program that allows victims to bring a buddy with them to HR when filing a complaint as well as during the investigative process.
Naughton also tried to respond to criticism about how Google treated its U.S. temp workers and vendors, who lacked many of the generous benefits enjoyed by staff. She implemented new standards that included a $15 minimum wage, healthcare, and parental leave for non-employees who worked at the company.
Despite Naughton’s efforts, Google’s problems with its workers continue, with current and former employee activists regularly taking to Twitter and Medium to air their concerns.
Naughton’s leadership of HR coincided with a huge period of growth a Google. Its workforce grew by more than 65% to nearly 119,000 globally, the equivalent of a small city.
Along with former Google executive Sheryl Sandberg, Naughton helped establish an employee resource group called Women@ in 2011 that has become one of Google’s largest with more than 10,000 global members.
Prior to serving as HR chief, Naughton held various leadership positions, based in Mountain View, Calif., London, and New York, including vice president of sales and operations in the U.K. and Ireland, vice president of global sales, and managing director of media strategy and operations for the Americas.
“Over the past 13 years, Eileen has made major contributions to the company in numerous areas,” Pichai said in a statement to Fortune. “We’re grateful to Eileen for all she’s done and look forward to her next chapter at Google.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Inside Google’s civil war
—The strange tale of Jeff Bezos’s $16,840 parking ticket bill
—Post-Brexit U.K.’s surveillance practices could spell problems for business
—Governments deploy surveillance tech to track coronavirus victims
—How marketers are increasingly using A.I. to persuade you to buy
—Predicting the biggest tech headlines of 2020
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-02-10--How history-making wins for ‘Parasite’ and ‘The Farewell’ can shift Hollywood’s diversity narrative

In the days leading up to director Bong Joon Ho’s history-shattering Oscar wins for Neon’s Parasite, which earned four trophies including Best Picture, there was a rare giddiness in the air among pundits as they debated one key question: Could the year’s most audacious, thrilling movie actually beat Universal’s World War I epic 1917?
Bong’s incendiary satire about a poor Korean family whose con of an upper-class couple ends in tragedy didn’t just sweep this year’s Oscars. The film may have also forever changed how the Academy, and Hollywood, defines excellence: Parasite, and Indie Spirits Best Feature winner The Farewell by Asian-American director Lulu Wang, both achieved greatness by telling modern, specific stories about their communities that ultimately were stories about all of us.
Where Barry Jenkins’s 2016 Best Picture winner Moonlight broke ground in its depiction of contemporary African-Americans (after decades of Oscar predominantly acknowledging slavery-and-civil-rights narratives for its black actors and storytellers), Parasite and The Farewell were also conspicuously timely in their themes of class divide and the duality of immigrant identity. Oh, and the characters are also funny, sexual, bawdy, and despicable, too—multi-dimensionality rarely afforded to nonwhite performers.
Lulu Wang poses in the press room with the Best Feature award for the film “The Farewell” during the 2020 Film Independent Spirit Awards on Feb. 8. The film, which stars Awkwafina, focuses on a Chinese family that chooses not to tell their grandmother that she’s dying. Phillip Faraone—Getty Images
And if Moonlight was unique in its depiction of young, black male queerness, Parasite and Farewell (about a Chinese family whose grandmother is dying, but they don’t tell her) are equally game-changing for their broad universality. It’s fun, and easy, actually, to imagine either film set anywhere else in the world, in any culture, in any language. And we may not have realized when we first saw them, but that’s exactly what made both films ultimately so damn good, despite featuring casts generally unknown to American audiences (apart from The Farewell’s lead, Awkwafina).
If Hollywood and its awards engine, a giant, multimillion-dollar business, hope to rectify their ongoing inclusion conundrum, the narrative has to shift away from a diversity-scorecard approach. Instead, it needs to move toward a broader commitment to developing, acquiring, promoting, and awards-funding more globally minded narratives in which viewers can potentially most see themselves. Whether fair or not, the year’s most traditional Oscar contenders—Netflix’s The Irishman, Sony’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and Fox’s Ford v Ferrari, for three—likely suffered for their lacking in emotional relatability, despite their impressive talent pedigrees.
But this doesn’t mean Hollywood stalwarts should be put out to pasture. It just means that for every Martin Scorsese there must now be a Bong Joon Ho; that for every Quentin Tarantino there is a Lulu Wang (and more women at the helm overall, please).
And for those brave enough to dare the most difficult task of all—writing—hopefully the resounding successes of Parasite and The Farewell will inspire a new credo: A good story can never be too daring, personal or, in Parasite’s case, totally, wonderfully crazy.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Summertime director and cast on crafting a “love letter” to Los Angeles
—The best movies that came out of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival
—HBO’s McMillion$ shows how cheaters scammed McDonald’s Monopoly game
—Taika Waititi on Kiwi humor, directing as Hitler, and why kids should see Jojo Rabbit
—The Assistant director Kitty Green on capturing in-office power dynamics
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-02-10--Trump is proposing nearly $3 billion in additional funds for a 2024 moon landing. Will it be enough?

How history-making wins for ‘ Parasite ’ and ‘ The Farewell ’ can shift Hollywood ’ s diversity narrative

The White House has released President Donald Trump’s 2021 federal budget request, which includes a 12% windfall to NASA.
At $25.2 billion, the next fiscal year’s NASA budget would be its fattest in years. Most of the nearly $3 billion is earmarked for Artemis, a lunar exploration program that aims to land a man and woman on the moon in 2024 as a “testbed” for exploring Mars.
“If the President’s support for NASA wasn’t clear before, it sure is now,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said during an event Monday unveiling the budget.
In June 2019, Bridenstine told CNN Business that the U.S. space agency would need an estimated $20 billion to $30 billion (on top of that year’s budget of $21.5 billion) over the next five years for Artemis.
On the surface, Bridenstine’s goal is about to be reached.
The 2020 fiscal year’s $22.6 billion budget—plus Trump’s proposed 2021 bump—equals the $4 to $6 billion boost he said NASA needed. But this would involve the request being passed by Congress, which, critics contend, would only dig a nearly $50 billion, NASA-shaped hole deeper.
Even as NASA uses the money to develop Orion, a deep-space capsule, and the Space Launch System (SLS), a heavy-lift rocket, the fact remains that the last Apollo mission was nearly 48 years ago. Lawmakers may see NASA’s lack of a moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972 as not justifying taxpayers’ investment.
And given that Trump’s 2021 budget would slash both civilian and foreign aid programs, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers may find reasons to shoot it dead in the water.
“It’s one thing to have the support of a presidential administration, but it’s another to have the support of the actual appropriators of the funding,” Laura Forczyk, space scientist and founder of space consulting firm Astralytical tells Fortune. “At this point, we have not seen Congress being willing to fund Artemis the way they have indicated they need.”
In January, two weeks before the 2021 budget proposal, a House subcommittee on space produced a NASA authorization bill that would somewhat derail Artemis’s efforts, questioning the construction and ownership of its lunar lander and, ultimately, moving the initiative’s goalpost to Mars rather than the moon.
“I am concerned that the [House] bill imposes some significant constraints on our approach to lunar exploration,” Bridenstine responded in a blog post.
Despite everything hobbling Trump’s proposal, Forczyk still sees it as major step forward, comparing it to the Space Exploration Initiative, the George H.W. Bush administration’s push to land humans on the moon and Mars; and the Constellation Program, which promised to return to the moon by 2020 before shuttering in 2009, as “great programs that were not funded.”
But we landed on the moon in 1969, one might say. Why don’t we have the proper technology in 2020? The answer is because Artemis wants to use the moon as a stepping stone to Mars.
“The goal is not to repeat Apollo. Nobody wants to do that,” Forczyk explains. “We want to be able to test the new technology we developed on the moon.”
Congress has been skeptical of a number of Trump’s space initiatives, including attempting to turn the International Space Station (ISS) into a commercially-run, profit-seeking venture (which Trump reiterates in his 2021 federal budget request) and zeroing out funding to the station entirely in his 2019 budget request.
Plus, “We have not seen Congress being willing to fund NASA that much above and beyond what it already gives [them],” Forczyk says, calling the process “a real uphill battle.” (NASA budget reports in recent years show incremental growth of roughly 1 billion per year, and only in 2021 would NASA scrape 0.5% of the total U.S. budget.)
According to a NASA press teleconference Monday, NASA will be testifying before the House Committee on Appropriations beginning in March, “possibly into April,” and hopes its appropriations bills will be approved by August or September 2020.
But let’s say lawmakers do the unlikely and accept Trump’s proposal. Nearly $3 billion is already above and beyond, and besides, the U.S. is in an election year. Will this threaten the Artemis program?
“I think that the leadership in both the House and Senate have stated that they are committed to moving all 12 appropriations bills through the [Senate] Floor by September,” Mary Kerwin, NASA’s deputy chief financial officer for appropriations, told Fortune during the conference. “It is certainly possible that the bills could be conferenced and enacted before the election.”
“We’re enjoying bipartisan support for this effort,” Deputy Administrator of NASA Jim Morhard tells Fortune. “NASA was set up to expand knowledge for all humankind. That hasn’t changed. And we’re continuing to do that. It’s not just in human exploration. It’s in science, it’s in aeronautics, and it’s developing new technologies. That’s our strategy. We’re trying to help everybody, and it’s not just the United States. We’re trying to help the world. That’s how this was set up in 1958 and we continue to do the same thing today.”
If President Trump is reelected, will he be able to pull off the feat enough times to grant the needed $20 to $30 billion? If 2021 brings President Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg, or Warren, will any of them be as gung-ho about interplanetary travel?
“Sanders’ NASA plan is definitely Earth first,” The Hill wrote in 2019. “When someone like Elizabeth Warren gets elected, what [is Artemis] going to do?” a source asked Ars Technica the same year. “Are they going to say ‘We love the Trump space idea’? Hell no.” Biden and Buttigieg have said little about space on the campaign trail.
Trump is bound to bluster more and more about “America’s manifest destiny in the stars,” as he put it during his recent State of the Union address.
But Congress’s reticence to humor his space dreams—and the 2020 election throwing NASA’s future in the air—may make Artemis fire a blank rather than a moonshot.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—2020 candidates’ positions, and records, on economic issues that affect women
—How a company with 120 Facebook likes ended up at the center of the Iowa caucus firestorm
—Europe’s refugee crisis is getting worse—for these children
—Fortune Explains: The debt ceiling
—America’s young voters could sway 2020 results. What will it take to get them to the polls?
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-02-10--Will summer kill the coronavirus?

Will summer kill the coronavirus?

With governments declaring mass quarantines and travel bans in an effort to stop—or at least slow—the spread of the world’s newest novel coronavirus, many outbreak watchers—Presidents Xi and Trump included—have lodged hope in a bit of circulating conventional wisdom: the idea that, like a seasonal flu, nCoV-2019 will peter out when warmer weather arrives.
….he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 7, 2020
Can we count on that? Do we just need to make it to April?
“It’s speculation because this is a new virus, and we have no idea,” says Peter Hotez, Professor and Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “But it’s educated speculation.”
The new virus that emerged in Wuhan, China late last year—best known as 2019-nCoV—is a coronavirus, one in a large family of viruses that are found in animals and humans. While a handful of coronaviruses commonly circulates among the population and tend to cause mild respiratory illnesses like the common cold, this virus—like SARS, which emerged in 2002 and MERS, in 2012—only recently took hold in humans and is so considered a novel coronavirus.
“Coronaviruses have seasonality,” says Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist with the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. “We do know that certain environmental conditions favor the transmission of viruses and that cold weather, the humidity, all of that, affect trajectory. There’s a good reason to believe [this virus] will have that seasonality.”
When thinking about seasonality, Adalja reminds outbreak watchers that the world has two hemisphere with opposite seasons and cases will likely cluster accordingly. Wuhan, China—considered the epicenter of the outbreak—has temperatures in the 40s and 50s right now, and temperatures typically start rising in March. Tropical countries, meanwhile, tend not to see stark seasonality.
Adalja says it may take years to establish precisely how seasonality factors into this virus’ spread. He notes at the moment, because 2019-nCoV is an emerging pathogen, “there is not much population immunity, and so when it does appear in places, it’s going to find victims.”
Why viruses spread more efficiently in such conditions remains a matter of study. Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard says the going hypothesis for why warmer seasons tend to decrease the spread of viruses includes higher vitamin D levels, resulting in better immune responses; higher absolute humidity which, in the case of flu, impairs virus transmission; and no school in the summer (when children are clustered together, transmission rates of flu and measles increase). Lipsitch notes that while work to better understand the seasonality of coronaviruses is ongoing, current thinking is “speculative.”
Meanwhile, Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease and Policy at the University of Minnesota, says it’s premature to count on warmer weather impacting this coronavirus’ trajectory.
“A lot of people assume that because the SARS epidemic ended in the summer,” he says. “We have no idea if that was a coincidence of not. That just may have happened to be the time we controlled it.”
In a 2004 Lancet article looking at seasonality and SARS, Scott Dowell and Mei Shang Ho indicated the case wasn’t clear. They wrote: “It is true that most established respiratory pathogens of human beings recur in wintertime, but a new appreciation for the high burden of disease in tropical areas reinforces questions about explanations resting solely on cold air or low humidity.” They added, “newly emergent zoonotic disease such as Ebola or pandemic strains of influenza have occurred in unpredictable patterns.”
Osterholm notes that MERS, another coronavirus that emerged in humans in 2012, does not follow the pattern of expected seasonality at all. “MERS cases continue when temperatures are 110 degrees in the Arabian Peninsula,” he says, noting that “several of the [virus’] peaks have been in the middle of the summer.”
As with so many things with this novel coronavirus, whether it will peter out with warmer temperatures, is something we just don’t know.
While that may make the anxious feel only more so, Adalja warns against that and makes the case that the world is currently overreacting given what we’ve learned about this virus.
“The fact that we now understand this is a community-spreading coronavirus with 40,000 cases in 20-some countries with a spectrum of illness that definitely tilts more towards the mild than the severe, it really argues against these travel bans being enacted by countries, including the United States,” he says. “There has to be consideration of when we’re going to move from containment to mitigation.”
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—The first coronavirus drug candidate is set for testing in China
—The Gates Foundation is pledging up to $100 million to fight coronavirus
—Brewers tally costs of coronavirus outbreak as beer sales suffer
—Governments deploy surveillance tech to track coronavirus victims
—Asia worries about big events like the Olympics amid coronavirus spread
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fortune--2020-02-10--Buttigieg and Sanders campaigns request Iowa caucus recanvass

Bernie Sanders’ and Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaigns filed requests Monday for a partial recanvass of the results of Iowa’s Democratic caucuses.
The Sanders campaign cited “mathematical errors and inconsistencies” in more than two dozen locations that it says would change the results if amended. And the Iowa Democratic Party said the Buttigieg campaign requested the party check the results in 66 precincts.
On Sunday, the state party released updated caucus results that gave the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor a lead over Sanders of two state delegate equivalents out of 2,152 counted, or 0.09 percentage points.
Iowa awards 41 national delegates in its caucuses. As it stands, Buttigieg has 13 and Sanders has 12. Trailing behind are Elizabeth Warren with eight, Joe Biden with six and Amy Klobuchar with one.
The 41st and final delegate from Iowa will go to the overall winner. While the state party said Sunday that it belongs to Buttigieg, the caucus won’t formally come to an end until the campaigns’ requested recanvass — and any potential recount to follow — is complete.
The Sanders campaign has outlined 25 precincts and three satellite caucuses where it believes correcting faulty math could swing the delegate allocation in Sanders’ favor and deliver him, not Buttigieg, that final delegate.
The Associated Press reviewed updated results of the Iowa caucuses provided Sunday evening and decided that it remains unable to declare a winner based on the available information. The results, the AP says, may not be fully accurate and are still subject to potential revision.
The caucuses were roiled by significant issues in collecting and reporting data from individual precincts on caucus night. There were also errors in the complicated mathematical equations used to calculate the results in individual caucus sites that became evident as the party began to release caucus data throughout the week.
A recanvass is not a recount, but a check of the vote count against paper records to ensure the counts were reported accurately. Iowa Democratic Party volunteers have already undertaken this process with most of the precincts, and the party has told Iowa Democratic activists it will not correct any faulty math recorded by volunteers in each precinct because changing the paper documentation would amount to criminally tampering with a legal document.
A recount would require the party to check the results reported by volunteers in each individual caucus against cards used by each caucusgoer to record his or her picks.
In a statement, Sanders senior adviser Jeff Weaver said the campaign does not expect the recanvass to change the results of the caucuses, but he also suggested the campaign may ask for a full recount in the future.
“Once the recanvass and a subsequent recount are completed in these precincts, we feel confident we will be awarded the extra national delegate our volunteers and grassroots donors earned,” he said.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—2020 candidates’ positions, and records, on economic issues that affect women
—How a company with 120 Facebook likes ended up at the center of the Iowa caucus firestorm
—Europe’s refugee crisis is getting worse—for these children
—Fortune Explains: The debt ceiling
—America’s young voters could sway 2020 results. What will it take to get them to the polls?
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fortune--2020-02-10--Mall developer Simon’s purchase of Taubman shows that the high-end is the last refuge

Simon Property Group, the largest U.S. mall operator, has been out shopping again.
On Monday, the company, founded in the 1960s by a trio of brothers just as suburbanization was fostering the growth of malls, said it was buying its much smaller rival Taubman Centers in a $3.6 billion deal that will strengthen its hold on the high-end mall business.
Over the years, Simon built itself into a mall behemoth via a number of acquisitions, including its $6 billion 1998 blockbuster deal for Corporate Property Investors (CPI). Simon has 233 malls, outlets, and other properties in North America, Europe and Asia, valued by Green Street Advisors at about $100 billion.
The real estate investment trust has taken two previous runs at Taubman, a mall operator founded by a rival real estate family in 1950, with a heavier concentration in high-end malls, including Short Hills in New Jersey, home to a Nordstrom and a Neiman Marcus.
The Taubman acquisition underscores how much the high end—challenged as it is, too—is a safer haven in the mall industry, and for Simon, it offers a new source of growth amid a radical reshaping of retail.
Simon has been deft at navigating the turmoil in the mall world in the last decade: the implosion of the department store sector, the struggles of specialty apparel players like The Gap and Victoria’s Secret, and the rise of e-commerce that has hurt in-store visits.
It acted earlier than other REITs to shed its weak malls, doing so more than a decade ago, and Simon has been continually repurposing space left vacant by department stores like J.C. Penney, Sears and Macy’s closing, replacing them with chains like Whole Foods Market or renovated food courts. (Last week, Macy’s said it was closing 125 more stores.)
Simon currently has 15 former department store redevelopment projects underway, and said last week that sales per square foot at its U.S. malls and outlet centers rose 4.8% to $693 in its most recent quarter, compared to a year earlier. Its centers were 95.1% occupied, a slight increase. Simon executives told Wall Street analysts last week that it has already re-leased approximately 60% of the space vacated by 2019 tenant bankruptcies.
Still, anxiety about the seemingly endless stream of retail bankruptcies, many by mall-based companies, or ongoing declines at mall fixtures like Banana Republic have pressured Simon’s stock and led it to look for new sources of growth. Those same pressures have decimated Taubman’s shares (which were trading at $26.24 only 10 days ago, a post financial crisis low, and will be bought by Simon for $52.50), making this long sought after acquisition easier for Simon. (Forever 21, the bankrupt fast fashion retailer, was Taubman’s biggest tenant before it sought Chapter 11 protection, according to Bloomberg.)
In recent years, Simon has sought to diversify its holdings, taking up stakes in retailers like Aéropostale and flash sales site pioneer Rue Gilt Groupe, and is bidding with two other companies for Forever 21 in a bankruptcy auction. But its bread-and-butter business is malls, and Simon needs to shore up that part of its business.
In 70-year-old developer Taubman, Simon will get 24 higher end centers, including the Beverly Center in central Los Angeles, which recently got a $500 million renovation. The battle to upgrade malls can reach arms race levels: Westfield Corp (itself bought in 2018 by France’s Unibail-Rodamco) spent $1 billion revamping the Century City Mall in Los Angeles, a project completed in 2017. The Taubman family will keep a 20% stake in its real estate holdings.
Ultimately, the deal will strengthen Simon, as well as Taubman’s properties. When reports of potential Taubman deal surfaced, Green State said in a research note Friday that Simon “has an unrivaled platform and scale in the U.S. mall industry” to cut costs and invest in the properties. And in doing so, Simon can strengthen its moat against the retail forces decimating countless U.S. malls.
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—Stock scammers are using the coronavirus outbreak to dupe investors, SEC warns
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fortune--2020-02-10--‘Parasite’ and Bong Joon Ho win big at the Oscars

This is the web version of raceAhead, Fortune’s daily newsletter on race, culture, and inclusive leadership. To get it delivered daily to your inbox, sign up here.
Most of the diversity at the 2020 Academy Awards in Hollywood occurred during last night’s on-stage performances. That said, there were still some breakthrough moments.
The always resplendent Janelle Monae opened the show with a musical tribute to the mostly white, mostly male nominees. She began with a nod to Mister Rogers on a recreated version of his show’s iconic set, even sharing a moment with Tom Hanks, who recently portrayed Fred Rogers in the biopic, Won’t You Be My Neighbor. Pose’s Billy Porter created a mood by singing Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing,” and then joined Monae in an adapted-for-the-Oscars version of her 2009 song “Come Alive.”
Monae was surrounded by dancers who were dressed as the nominees—so many Jokers, 1917 soldiers, and Little Women—but also by characters from films that had been overlooked. Dancers dressed up in Queen & Slim, Us, and Dolomite Is My Name costumes were the not-so-subtle reminders that plenty of worthy work had been left on the sidelines this year.
“Tonight we celebrate the art of storytelling,” said Monae in her introduction. “The misfits, the outcasts, the misunderstood, those voices long deprived. Be loud, be seen, be lit, be heard, because tonight we come alive!”
But only some of them, get it?
As I thought about it later, greenlighting that number—and the similar jibes then yet to come—felt like a cynical wink from the A cademy, a performative concession to a problem not solved. The obligatory diversity panel at every conference. The blackeyed peas hot dish in corporate cafeterias during Black History Month. The retention issue that gets a line item, but not a budget.
Monae, like many of the other presenters or performers, said the quiet parts out loud. “We celebrate women who directed great films!” shouted Monae, leavin g unsung the fact that none of them were nominated. Then finally: “Everyone come ALIVE,” she belted out. “Because Oscars are so WHITE!”
The Academy has worked hard to diversify their membership ranks, and more diversity in the industry may eventually help. But as these two anonymous Hollywood Reporter interviews with Academy voters show, many seem to treat it more like a right than a privilege, a subjective act performed without rigor or science, only to settle on stories mostly about themselves.
They’re not even required to watch all the films.
“Quentin Tarantino’s film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, was even better the second time than the first. I was in L.A. in the ’60s, and I thought he captured that era perfectly,” said one female voter and member of the Academy’s actor branch in her interview . On Best Director: “I thought Quentin did a great job, and I want an American director to win.” She also didn’t like American Factory because it showed Americans “as big fat slobs.” She voted for Honeyland in the documentary category, “because it’s a beautiful story about saving the environment that is told so simply, without hammering us over the head like Greta whatever.” She didn’t vote for an Animated Short—the category that included Hair Love—because she didn’t have time to watch any.
One male Academy member from the producer ranks did finish the movies, not that it mattered.
“We all have our ups and downs in this business—I’m not at the high-point of my career right now, so I could identify very much with the characters, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood gave me hope,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “And it leaves you thinking about what could have been in a better world: What would Sharon Tate’s life have been if this hadn’t happened? What would [Roman] Polanski’s life have been?! It puts tears in my eyes when I think about it.” Also: “Hair Love, to me, was shallow—I didn’t get it.”
It confirmed the worst fears of many observers that a movie like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was destined to win because it was about Hollywood being in love with the sound of its own mythmaking.
This is all partly why it was such a surprise that Parasite, the fairy-tale-like story of greed and inequality from director Bong Joon Ho, won so decisively. Bong won or shared four big awards: Best Original Screenplay, Best International Feature, and most pointedly, Best Director, and Best Picture. Parasite is the first non-English language film to win Best Picture and t h e first award for South Korean cinema.
Bong also bested the broader cultural zeitgeist. “Three of the four most-nominated movies—The Irishman, Joker, and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood—are stories about white men who feel culturally imperiled,” observes Mark Harris in Vanity Fair. “The fourth, 1917, is about white men who are literally imperiled.”
Parasite’s Best Picture win was a legitimate breakthrough and an opportunity to demonstrate how stories from all cultures can have universal resonance—and how, as Bong clearly believes, that proximity without intention will never be enough to drive true equity or inclusion.
He leaves you thinking about what can be in a better world.
“We currently live in this fantasy that people are equal, that the class system is obsolete, that we live in a free democratic society,” he recently told Fortune. “I think the second half of this film shows the brutal truth that we still live in a cruel, classist society where these borderlines can never be eradicated. Jobs like tutoring, housekeeping, and driving create situations where people of different classes come so close to each other that they can smell one another, but they still can’t overcome the line that divides them.”
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On Point
“Hair Love” wins Best Animated Short and our hearts NFL-er turned filmmaker Matthew A. Cherry’s animated short film, “Hair Love,” produced along with Karen Rupert Tolliver, tells the sweet story of Black father who learns to do his daughter’s hair in advance of a special event. It has come to represent so much more. The “Hair Love” journey to the Oscars started as a dream Cherry first spoke into existence on Twitter and Kickstarter. The final product ultimately became a rallying cry for natural Black hair and universal dignity. In his speech, Cherry called for federal passage of the CROWN Act, a California law that ends discrimination based on hair style or texture. Accompanying Cherry to the Oscar show was Deandre Arnold and his family; Arnold is the Texas high school student who became a national story after has was suspended from high school and barred from walking in his graduation ceremony for refusing to cut his dreadlocks.
Washington Post
The first Indigenous filmmaker wins Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar Director Taika Waititi won for his work adapting Jojo Rabbit, which is based on Christine Leunens’ 2008 novel Caging Skies about a young boy growing up without a father in Hitler-era Germany. Waititi is of Māori heritage, making him the first Indigenous person to win this award. “This is really great, and I dedicate this to all the indigenous kids who live in the world who want to do art, and dance, and write stories,” he said during his speech. “We are the original storytellers and we can make it here as well.” Waititi, who is known for his sense of humor and original style, used his backstage interview time imploring Apple to build better keyboards for their MacBooks, and was later caught by actor Brie Larson safely stowing his Oscar under the seat in front of him. Please give more Oscars.
Deadline
Ursula Burns donates $1 million to African American oral history archive The HistoryMakers is the largest video-based collection of stories of Black lives and achievement in the U.S., and housed in the Library of Congress. Burns, who was the first African-American woman to lead a Fortune 500 company, said the work of the organization was critical. “We must continue to support their efforts and help provide the resources to ensure that the legacy of black women is preserved and presented with truth, honor, and integrity,” she said at a lunch to announce the gift. HistoryMakers founder and president Julieanna L. Richardson said that it was essential to get the interviews before it was too late. “We are at risk of losing 20th-century documentation within 10 to 15 years,” she said. “Burns’ million-dollar gift has made it possible for us to move forward with the selection process to secure many significant interviews with Black women.”
Black Enterprise
On Background
Here’s why Antonio Banderas is not a person of color It’s basically the same reason that Pablo Picasso is never described as a “great Hispanic artist.” Antonio Banderas, who was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Pedro Almodóvar's Pain and Glory, is from Spain, which is a country in Europe. Like many countries in Europe, Spain has a large population of white people. Banderas is among them. He is good-natured about the confusion it causes when he’s been asked to identify his race on forms—which is white—and told that he was wrong. "I don't know what I am," he said in an interview with Univision's Jorge Ramos earlier this year. He just goes with the flow now. "When I've gone to the U.S., I've considered myself Latino, because those are the people I've connected with the most."
NPR
White women once wanted a monument to “mammies” Alison M. Parker, a history professor at the University of Delaware, reminds of the time when some members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy lobbied Congress for a “monument to the faithful colored mammies.” It was 1923. Parker says this history “exposes the lie of those who describe Confederate monuments as innocuous celebrations of Southern heritage,” for the cynical maneuver to enforce white supremacy that it is. It was almost built, too. (There are, however, three “faithful slave” monuments.) Click through for the model, which was created by, and I am not making this up, a sculptor named Ulric Stonewall Jackson Dunbar.
New York Times
W.E.B. Du Bois drew his own infographics, among many other things Of all the many things Du Bois is known for, here’s one most don’t know: He was an early data scientist as well. Starting in 1897, after he became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University, he began publishing scholarly works exploring the lives of Black people based on his extensive fieldwork. His work immediately found a wider audience: In 1900, the Paris Exposition hosted the Exhibit of American Negroes, which included 58 gorgeous hand-drawn infographics created by Du Bois and his students. The information focused mostly on the socio-economic lives of the black populations they studied, but the presentation was pure cutting edge, “strikingly vibrant and modern, almost anticipating the crossing lines of Piet Mondrian or the intersecting shapes of Wassily Kandinsky,” according to one expert.
Public Domain Review
Tamara El-Waylly produces raceAhead and manages the op-ed program.
Quote
“The equality in political, industrial, and social life, which modern men must have in order to live, is not to be confounded with sameness. On the contrary, in our case, it is rather insistence upon the right of diversity; upon the right of a human being to be a man even if he does not wear the same cut of vest, the same curl of hair or the same color of skin.”
—W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks


fortune--2020-02-10--Indeed shuts offices in three cities over coronavirus fears

Online job recruitment site Indeed has told more than 1,000 workers in Dublin, Sydney, and Singapore on Monday to work from home because of concerns that an employee’s relatives may have been exposed to the coronavirus.
The company made the decision to close three offices, despite the fact that no Indeed employees have tested positive for the illness, which has caused at least 800 deaths worldwide. The closures came after Indeed management became aware that an employee in its Singapore office “may have been exposed to coronavirus” after relatives visited a facility caring for patients affected by the outbreak, a company spokesperson told Fortune.
“While there are no confirmed cases of infection, out of an abundance of caution for the health and safety of our employees, we have asked all employees in Singapore, along with anyone who has recently visited our Singapore offices, to work from home until February 17th,” a spokesperson told Fortune.
As an additional precaution, employees in Ireland—its European headquarters—and Australia were told to work from home this week, since some employees who recently visited Singapore also traveled to the Dublin and Sydney offices, the spokesperson said.
There haven’t been any cases of the coronavirus reported in Ireland, however more than 15 cases of the deadly virus have been reported in Australia since last month.
While the three Indeed offices will be dark this week, the recruitment service said that its “business continues uninterrupted across the globe.”
The decision to ask thousands of employees to work from home comes as companies around the world are taking precautions to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
In Wuhan, China, a city of 11 million people and the epicenter of the virus, travel has come to a standstill with many major airlines canceling flights.
Last week, Macau, the world’s gambling capital, announced it would shut down 41 casinos for at least 15 days. The closures account for 50% of Macau’s GDP.