fortune--2020-02-11--Singapore urges calm—but its tourism industry is being pummeled by the coronavirus outbreak

How do you seal a deal without a handshake? Attendees as the Singapore Airshow are about to find out.
As fears over novel coronavirus spread throughout the city, organizers of the airshow—which runs February 11-16 and is the largest aerospace and defense expo in Asia—are encouraging attendees to adopt a “no contact” policy.
“For the welfare of all attendees, please adopt alternative greetings. Let’s all play our own part to stay safe!” the event organizers posted on Twitter yesterday, along with a helpful video on how to perform alternatives to the conventional handshake, such as a “brief hand wave.”
For some attendees, however, the “hands off” approach is not enough. More than 70 exhibitors, including Lockheed Martin Corp, pulled out of the air show, which drew 54,000 attendees and over 1,000 exhibitors in 2018, and contributed $247 million to the local economy.
The relative quiet of the air show is just one symptom of the strain the coronavirus is exerting on the vulnerable city state of Singapore, where the government is attempting to maintain business as usual while infections slowly rise.
Keep calm and carry on
“There is no need to panic. We are not locking down the city or confining everybody to stay at home. We have ample supplies, so there is no need to stock up with instant noodles, tinned food, or toilet paper, as some people did yesterday,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Saturday, after concerned citizens emptied supermarkets in a spate of panic buying—similar to events seen in Hong Kong.
The rush on supplies was sparked by the Ministry of Health’s decision to increase its Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (Dorscon) rating to Orange—the second highest level of public health alert.
The ministry raised the alert after three new cases of coronavirus were discovered to have been transmitted locally—as opposed to being brought into the city by a tourist—increasing the total number of confirmed cases in Singapore to 43. Dorscon Orange was also implemented during SARS, which infected 238 and killed 33 in the city during 2003. The warning indicates that the outbreak is “severe and spreads easily from person to person” but is not yet pandemic in the city.
Singapore currently has the second highest number of confirmed infections outside of China. The highest number is in Japan, but that’s largely due to the presence of a coronavirus-carrying cruise ship docked in Yokohama.
A woman wears a protective mask walks on the observation deck of Marina Bay Sands hotel and casino in Singapore in early February. Singapore authorities urged residents to relax on their shopping sprees that have emptied supermarket shelves, saying supplies aren’t under threat even as the coronavirus outbreak escalates. SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Despite having more confirmed cases than Hong Kong, Singapore officials haven’t followed Hong Kong’s lead in encouraging citizens to stay home or promoting widespread use of surgical masks.
Singapore authorities acquired five million masks and distributed just four to each household, advising them to only use the mask if they become sick. Meanwhile, there’s no advice on working from home, but the government has mandated that body temperature check points be deployed at the entrances of office towers.
“I think what the government has been doing right now, such as restricting the use of masks and keeping a calm tone, is a plus. That’s something they’ve learned through SARS that over communication is better than no communication at all,” said Lian Jye Su, principal analyst at Singapore-based ABI Research.
But amid its measured response to the outbreak, Singapore appears to have become an unwitting hub for the novel coronavirus’ global transmission.
Super spreader event?
Over the weekend, France confirmed that five Britons sharing a ski chalet in the alps had contracted the virus from another British man who had recently attended a conference in Singapore. One of the skiers then travelled to Mallorca before discovering he had contracted the coronavirus. The conference attendee, meanwhile, travelled back to England and is thought to have infected 11 people across three countries on his journey.
The Singapore conference was hosted at the Grand Hyatt in late January by a British company called Servomex. A spokesperson for Servomex, a gas analytics firm, confirmed several of its employees have contracted the coronavirus and are undergoing “self-isolation.”
“We are working closely with all relevant public health authorities and are following their advice to ensure the welfare of our people, including supporting our affected employees, and the wider community,” the spokesperson said.
The employee believed to have carried the virus across seas is being referred to by various media as a “super spreader,” but Olivia Lawe-Davies, communications manager for the World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific office, seems to disapprove of the term.
“Super spreader isn’t an official public health term. If used, it shouldn’t refer to an individual, but you may see it used in reference to ‘super spreading events’,” Lawe-Davies said.
According to Lawe-Davies, Singapore authorities informed WHO of the hotel outbreak, and WHO is “aware of cases in other countries that may have epidemiological links.”
“However,” she said, “based on current information, there is not evidence of effective and sustained community transmission.”
Tourism troubles
Although Singapore’s official guidance doesn’t advise people to avoid public gatherings until Dorscon Red is implemented, a number of conferences across Singapore are being cancelled and the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) predicts tourist arrivals will drop by up to 30% this year. Singapore implemented a ban on arrivals from mainland China, which account for 20% of visitors, on January 31.
“Tourism is a significant component of Singapore’s economy, which has been responsible for a large part of growth in the country, because the government has placed a huge emphasis on developing the industry,” said Antonio Fatas, professor of economics at INSEAD. A report last year from the World Travel and Tourism Council said tourism was responsible for 10% of Singapore’s GDP in 2018.
Even still, the city state may be well-positioned to endure whatever blow the coronavirus ultimately delivers.
The government has already announced some measures to help the tourism industry—such as waiving licensing fees for hotels and travel agencies in 2020—and full details will be announced in the annual budget, due for release on February 18.
“Singapore is a very rich economy with a large surplus, tons of savings and an infinite amount of foreign assets, so it has buffers it can use in a crisis,” Fatas said. “It’s not ideal, but relative to any other country in the world, it has a lot of room for maneuver.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Why China is still so susceptible to disease outbreaks
—Coronavirus risks universities’ reliance on Chinese students
—Stock scammers are using coronavirus to dupe investors, SEC warns
—A new coronavirus red flag on the horizon—a stronger dollar
—WATCH: Coronavirus outbreak has disrupted global economy
Subscribe to Fortune’s Brainstorm Health for daily updates on biopharma and health care.


fortune--2020-02-11--Can you catch the coronavirus twice? Answers to 5 pressing questions about the worldwide outbreak

Amid rocky transition to electric cars , Daimler cuts its dividend to lowest in a decade

The numbers make headlines every day: 43,000 people sickened by the novel coronavirus traced to Wuhan, China; a death toll over 1,000. But as the outbreak continues, another number is on the rise: those who’ve recovered.
Over 4,000 people have overcome the virus, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins’ Center for Systems Science and Engineering. The majority of recovered cases are in China, where the majority of cases are occurring.
Other recoveries include the 35-year-old man in Washington state who became the first coronavirus case in the U.S., and seven people in Singapore.
As the nature of the crisis evolves, new, pressing questions are emerging, like, can those who’ve recovered get coronavirus again?
Nearly two weeks after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global health emergency, Fortune posed that big question and four others to experts to better understand the concerning outbreak that’s captured the world’s attention.
1. How does the coronavirus spread?
The main route of infection is droplets expelled in the coughs and sneezes of an infected person. Any surfaces and objects that the droplets fall on will be contaminated, which is why experts recommend you sneeze into your elbow, not your hands.
“That’s how it passes—when someone else comes into contact with the contaminated objects or through handshakes, and then accidentally touches their nose or mouth,” said Eng Eong Ooi, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School.
Ooi said that theoretically the coronavirus could spread through airborne aerosols, but so far its spread is “very unlike an airborne transmission” like the measles, a far more infectious virus that can travel hundreds of feet through the air.
2. What are the best ways to avoid it?
Consistent hand-washing, above all else, is the best way to avoid catching and spreading the virus. Hand sanitizer is fine, Ooi said, but regular hand-washing with soap and water is paramount.
“Between the two I would still say hand-washing is better because you literally wash the virus away; you’re not relying on something else to kill the virus,” Ooi said.
A masked shopper wears a plastic bag outside a supermarket in Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak. Drastic preventative measures have emerged amid the virus’s spread, but hand-washing remains the best method. Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Ooi added that surgical face masks—which have seen global shortages in recent weeks—are designed for doctors and nurses to wear during surgical procedures, not to protect the wearer out in public day-to-day.
“Hand hygiene is a lot more efficient in preventing the spread,” Ooi said. “If anything, masks would lull the wearer into complacency and forget all about the more important things that they can do to prevent infection.”
Even if a mask did shield a wearer from coming into contact with infected droplets, then the person would need to be very careful taking off the mask to avoid touching the infected surface, and then immediately wash their hands.
3. If you catch the coronavirus and recover, can you get it again?
Based on existing knowledge of the body’s immune response to infection, individuals who recover should be protected against re-infection “definitely in the short-term, likely also in the long-term, and possibly for life,” said Ooi.
Though officials from China’s National Health Commission said it is “possible” for individuals sickened by the coronavirus to contract the illness a second time, because scientists do not know how long the antibodies produced to fight the infection will last, according to a news report from Chinese state media outlet CGTN. Officials encouraged recovered individuals to remain vigilant about their hygiene and health.
The question Ooi wants to explore is whether any post-infection immunity from the novel coronavirus will protect individuals from other animal-borne viruses—like this coronavirus and SARS before it—in the future.
“Will this new coronavirus prevent another SARS-like outbreak in the future?” Ooi said. “That we don’t know, and that will require a lot of research to answer the question.”
Ooi added that once the coronavirus is under control and the infection risk recedes, there will be a continued impact on recovered patients, especially people deemed “super spreaders.” Ooi encouraged compassion towards such individuals.
“They’ve been isolated for so long, and even when they’re discharged, if people stigmatize them and stay away from them…how would that label ‘super spreader’ affect their psychological well-being?” Ooi said.
4. How should businesses respond?
Spain has just two confirmed cases of the coronavirus, but Amazon, Ericsson, LG, ZTE, and NVIDIA have all pulled out of the Mobile World Congress, the high-profile tech show held this year in Barcelona, due to coronavirus-related concerns.
MWC organizers are banning visitors from Hubei province, where the outbreak originated, and has told attendees of the networking meetup to forgo handshakes.
A Chinese man wears a protective mask as he cycles on a quiet road during the usual rush hour in Beijing, China, in February. Businesses have reevaluated their plans and presence in China amid the virus’s spread. Kevin Frayer—Getty Images
Conferences and events across Asia, from Art Basel Hong Kong to a United Nations biodiversity conference, have been postponed, cancelled, or moved out of China over worries about the coronavirus.
In assessing coronavirus risks, public health officials and businesses should do what likely comes naturally: conduct cost-benefit analyses to the situation, said Ooi. “Everything we’re doing right now is literally with that goal in mind,” he said.
Companies have to consider whether employees working from home will affect productivity, or if the risk of the virus spreading is high enough to cancel an important conference.
“There’s a cost to everything and sometimes the cost is much more than the benefit you can derive from not having that meeting,” Ooi said. “In that instance, by all means you should go ahead, but where possible I think avoiding congregations of large numbers of people would be a good idea at this time.”
Millions of white-collar workers in China and all government employees in Hong Kong are working from home in an effort to halt the spread of the virus.
Eugene Hung, a molecular virologist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said working from home is an effective policy because it minimizes contact with other people, and the virus spreads through close contact with infected individuals.
“It makes sense to play safe,” Hung said.
Hung added that given the fatality rate of the disease, which is much lower than that of SARS, and the fact that the spread of the virus is “not out of control in places other than Hubei,” there is no reason for people to be “overly scared,” provided public health officials “deal with it carefully.”
“I have to say, the chance of catching the disease in Hong Kong is lower than the chance of winning the second prize in Mark Six,” said Hung, referring to a popular lottery in Hong Kong. The special administrative region has reported 42 cases of the coronavirus and one death.
5. How long will it last?
“Bringing this outbreak under control is going to require a global effort,” Ooi said.
Vaccines and symptom-reducing drugs are in the pipeline in various countries, but they will take time. Even if drug development is fast-tracked to bypass the standard regulations, which can take years to bring a drug from the lab to the clinic, “[i]t’s not something that we should expect in the next few months,” Ooi said.
“Forecasting epidemics is a little bit like trying to forecast the stock market—you’ll probably get it wrong most of the time,” Ooi said. “The best thing is to do whatever we can, focus our attention on whatever we can to prevent spreading the virus.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Stock scammers are using coronavirus to dupe investors, SEC warns
—Credit Suisse making a comeback, but spying scandal drags down outlook
—Why China is still so susceptible to disease outbreaks
—A new coronavirus red flag on the horizon—a stronger dollar
—Fortune Explains: Tariffs and trade wars
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-02-11--How a cruise ship turns into a coronavirus breeding ground

For 3,700 passengers quarantined on a cruise liner off Japan, it began as a carefree voyage. For the new coronavirus, it was an opportunity to run rampant.
As the number of confirmed cases aboard the Diamond Princess nearly doubled to 135, health authorities evacuated infected travelers. The rest hunkered in their cabins, waiting to find out whether they’d come down with an illness that has killed more than 1,000 people in China and beyond. Operator Carnival Corp. stepped up efforts to disinfect the liner.
Keeping the new virus from spreading on land is hard enough. At sea, with thousands of passengers in close quarters on a ship with self-contained systems, it’s a whole different challenge. Every interaction with another passenger or crew member becomes a possible source of transmission. And the virus has many places to hide.
“If you’re going on a big cruise ship with 3,000 people, you’ve increased your chances of picking up the virus,” said Peter Andrew White, a professor of microbiology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney who has studied norovirus outbreaks on board boats. “The cruise industry will need a new regimen on how to deal with this.”
The most pressing challenge is to separate the growing number of infected passengers aboard the Diamond Princess in Yokohama harbor from the apparently healthy. Japanese authorities have been taking those who are ill to hospitals onshore.
Ship Cleaning
With most passengers confined to their cabins, sanitizing the liner is more complicated. Authorities have approved Princess Cruises’ proposed methods for cleaning staterooms and providing fresh linens when guests are allowed outside for fresh air, the line’s President Jan Swartz said in a Feb. 8 YouTube video.
The trade group Cruise Lines International Association projected its members had 30 million cruise passengers last year. Passenger capacity in Asia almost tripled in the five years through 2018 to 4.26 million, although the industry cut back slightly last year. Thirty-nine companies now sail Asian waters in a total of 79 ships, according to the group.
In an emailed response to questions, the organization — whose members make up 90% of global capacity — said cruises are unique among modes of transportation in that they have on-board medical facilities. The group also noted that air travel is much more prevalent than cruise travel, with 4.5 billion people flying last year.
Still, cruise ship sanitation is of such importance that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a Vessel Sanitation Program governing all boats carrying more than 13 passengers. There’s a 291-page operations manual to keep ships clean and prevent gastrointestinal illnesses.
The industry has learned from repeated outbreaks of norovirus, putting in place protocols to deal with the highly contagious gastrointestinal illness. Measures including hand sanitation stations placed throughout ships have probably kept the coronavirus from spreading even more, White said.
Onboard the Diamond Princess, Kent Frasure of Oregon said his wife tested positive for the coronavirus and remained in their room for another five to six hours until she was transported to a hospital north of Tokyo on Feb. 6. His test came back negative, and he has remained in the same room, which hasn’t been cleaned since Feb. 3.
“I wish they would at least give me Clorox wipes or something,” Frasure said.
Norovirus Outbreaks
Normally, after a norovirus outbreak, passengers would all disembark and the ship would be sanitized top to bottom, said Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a professor of transit geography at Hofstra University in New York.
“They would empty the ship and wipe the whole thing down and clean the entire ship,” said Rodrigue, who’s written about maritime pandemics. “Some even do fumigation.”
Passengers on the Diamond Princess are being quarantined for 14 days to prevent the further spread of the virus, so emptying the ship isn’t an option. Onboard, ways to lower the risk of transmission include extra cleaning and delivering meals individually to cabins, Rodrigue said.
In Hong Kong, 3,600 passengers on Sunday were allowed to leave another liner, the World Dream. The ship had been quarantined since Feb. 5 after Hong Kong authorities found passengers on an earlier trip had tested positive for coronavirus.
After the quarantine announcement, operator Dream Cruises Management Ltd. put in place new sanitation procedures and screened the temperature of all guests and crew members coming aboard. Passengers reported that the cleaning crew was mopping down decks more frequently and studiously cleaning railings and doors.
Norovirus appears to be tougher to wipe out than the coronavirus, which the CDC says is thought to spread from person to person through droplets from coughs or sneezes, similar to influenza and other respiratory pathogens. Normal cleaning procedures with Lysol disinfectant or bleach should be sufficient to kill it, Rodrigue said.
The gastrointestinal infection is more contagious, with those infected shedding “billions of norovirus particles while only a few virus particles can make other people sick,” according to the CDC.
New Procedures
Still, the coronavirus may require the industry to put in place new procedures for similar outbreaks requiring quarantines of an entire boat — a rarely used measure. Fleets might also look into using new materials, such as plastics that are less conducive to germs. Since the most effective protection against the virus is frequent hand-washing, experts said, ships might also need to look into whether their systems can accommodate extra water and sanitation stations.
“A cruise ship is a an enclosed self-sufficient system, down to its water system, so any change will need to be looked at,” said Rodrigue. “This virus is something that’s entirely something new. It will require new strategies and methods.”
Each new case of coronavirus on the Diamond Princess potentially extends the 14-day quarantine for some passengers, Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, said in a media briefing Feb. 7.
Frasure said the government and cruise operator haven’t said anything to passengers about the possibility of a longer quarantine. The guests had initially been told the quarantine would end Feb. 19, before more passengers were found to be infected.
“That’s what I’m most concerned about — that new cases will extend our quarantine,” said Frasure. “It’s on all of our minds.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Why China is still so susceptible to disease outbreaks
—Coronavirus risks universities’ reliance on Chinese students
—Stock scammers are using coronavirus to dupe investors, SEC warns
—A new coronavirus red flag on the horizon—a stronger dollar
—WATCH: Coronavirus outbreak has disrupted global economy
Subscribe to Fortune’s Brainstorm Health for daily updates on biopharma and health care.


fortune--2020-02-11--T-Mobile is said to win court’s nod for Sprint takeover

T-Mobile US is poised to win court approval for its $26.5 billion takeover of Sprint, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, defeating a state-led lawsuit that sought to block the industry-altering wireless deal.
U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan is expected to rule as soon as Tuesday morning, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing the case. The judge’s office informed both sides earlier Monday that he was ruling in favor of the companies, the person said.
The decision is a huge win for T-Mobile and its owner Deutsche Telekom as well as SoftBank Group, Sprint’s parent. The combined company, which will operate under the T-Mobile name, will have a regular monthly subscriber base of about 80 million — in the same league as AT&T Inc., which has 75 million subscribers, and Verizon Communications Inc., which has 114 million.
The deal is also a victory for Dish Network Corp. co-founder and Chairman Charlie Ergen, who is buying assets from the two carriers to set up a new wireless network. With his company’s core satellite TV business in decline, Ergen has amassed a trove of airwaves to build a state-of-the-art network.
Shares of Sprint soared as much as 70% to $8.16 in extended trading. The stock closed at $4.80 Monday in New York. T-Mobile rose as much as 12% to $93.99
T-Mobile and the New York Attorney General’s office, which led the state lawsuit with California, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Dish and Sprint declined to comment.
After the merger, T-Mobile will have more spectrum — the frequencies through which wireless signals are transmitted — than any other carrier. This larger capacity will give the combined company an advantage as the industry transitions to the next generation of wireless technology, the much-faster 5G standard.
The court victory comes almost two years after the deal was first announced. The states’ lawsuit was the last major hurdle to the deal after it secured the blessing of regulators at the Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department’s antitrust division. It still needs approvals from California’s utility board and a federal judge in Washington who must sign off on the Justice Department settlement.
Concessions
To win federal approval, T-Mobile and Sprint had agreed to sell multiple assets to Dish in order to create a new fourth competitor. The new Dish wireless network will start life with about 9 million subscribers.
T-Mobile and Sprint had been the most aggressive U.S. wireless companies in terms of price competition in recent years, forcing AT&T and Verizon to follow moves like ending service contracts and adopting unlimited data plans. The proposed combination came under fire from lawmakers and consumer advocates who said it would lead to higher prices and fewer services, especially for poor and rural consumers.
The companies had pursued a combination for several years, but a proposed deal was twice rejected as anti-competitive under the previous administration. After the FCC approved the deal, the all-Democratic group of attorneys general filed suit. The Justice Department then gave its approval, leading to a rare split between states and the federal government over antitrust enforcement.
“This is exactly the sort of consumer-harming, job-killing mega-merger our antitrust laws were designed to prevent,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said at the time.
Tackling concerns
T-Mobile Chief Executive Officer John Legere tried to address these concerns by promising to not raise prices for three years.
Legere the shaggy-haired self-styled industry rebel helped remake T-Mobile into an industry maverick, and pitched the Sprint takeover as a way to compete against industry leaders Verizon and AT&T.
He announced in November that he will be handing off the job to Chief Operating Officer Mike Sievert in May, but plans to remain on the combined company’s board.
One of their central pitches was that the deal would advance the introduction of 5G. The companies pledged to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in May that they would deploy a 5G network covering 97% of the U.S. population within three years and 99% within six.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—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--2020-02-11--Kaiser’s 2019 growth should help expand former CEO Bernard Tyson’s legacy of investing in communitie

Kaiser’s 2019 growth should help expand former CEO Bernard Tyson’s legacy of investing in communities

This is the web version of Brainstorm Health Daily, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top health care news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Happy Monday, readers. I hope you had a wonderful weekend.
Kaiser Permanente suffered an unexpected loss in 2019. Not in the financial sense—in fact, the nonprofit health system nearly tripled its net income between 2018 and 2019.
This was a much deeper, and profound, loss. Last October, longtime CEO Bernard Tyson suddenly passed away in his sleep at the age of 60.
The news hit the medical community hard. I met Tyson on a number of occasions, and the sorrow following his untimely death is unsurprising—he was one of the kindest and most thoughtful health care leaders I’ve ever spoken with.
No matter what you thought of his ideas, you were bound to be impressed and inspired by how much he cared about the communities Kaiser served (for a much more eloquent and thoughtful reflection on Tyson, please read my colleague and Fortune editor-in-chief Clifton Leaf’s remembrance of him).
It feels a bit weird to talk about financials given this still-recent history. But Kaiser, which has a network of both health plans and hospitals, pulled off the unlikely feat of tripling its net income between 2018 and 2019 (from $2.5 billion to $7.4 billion).
Revenues swelled from about $80 billion to $85 billion. That stems from a combination of robust investments and operational returns. Since Kaiser is a nonprofit, a swell in its profits means more money for such investments. And the organization’s new leadership has previously sworn to carry on Tyson’s legacy of investing in community health, mental health, and digital health programs.
Last year’s impressive numbers will, hopefully, help Kaiser live up to that legacy.
Read on for the day’s news.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
Cerner and Boston Children's Hospital want to speed up immunizations. This one's a little in the weeds, but important from a practical health care standpoint—Healthcare IT News reports that Boston Children's Hospital and tech giant Cerner have entered a collaboration to speed up the process of getting vaccines to kids. The organizations were aiming to cut down on immunization wait times by taking the due dates for certain vaccines and putting them into an electronic forecasting system to fast-track the whole process. This just goes to show the myriad hassles of the U.S. health system you may never even think about. (Healthcare IT News)
INDICATIONS
Yet another hit to Alzheimer's drugs. Biogen investors were, at least temporarily, shaken on Monday as Eli Lilly reported a trial failure for its Alzheimer's disease drug, which follows roughly the same thesis as a treatment that Biogen has submitted for FDA approval. (For the long, complicated history on that latter point, read this.) But Lilly's latest clinical trial failure for solanezumab could, in the eyes of more bearish investors, be a bad signal for Biogen. On the flip side, some stakeholders are clearly betting that an FDA that's been approving treatments left and right may push just about anything past the finish line, especially in a field with a dearth of treatments.
THE BIG PICTURE
Wuhan aims to test all suspected coronavirus cases by Tuesday. The Chinese city of Wuhan is aiming to have all suspected cases of the new coronavirus outbreak tested by Tuesday, the country's government said on Monday. On the same day, authorities reported that the global death toll from the respiratory illness has surpassed 1,000, and while the outbreak is still overwhelmingly affecting China, international health agencies must be vigilant, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). (Reuters)
REQUIRED READING
ARM unveils two new A.I. computer chip designs, by Jeremy Kahn
Airbnb suspends all check-ins in Beijing amid the coronavirus outbreak, by Bloomberg
Layoffs start rippling though the Boeing 737 Max supply chain, by Dan Catchpole
Sign up for other Fortune newsletters.


fortune--2020-02-11--Why Amazon wants to depose President Trump about cloud computing

Amazon believes President Trump is key to understanding why it lost a Defense Department contract that is worth up to $10 billion.
In legal documents filed in January but unsealed on Monday, the retail-giant’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, revealed that it’s seeking to depose President Trump and six other individuals about the hotly contested Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract. The Pentagon handed Microsoft the coveted cloud computing contract in October, a surprise to many technology analysts who had considered Amazon to be the favorite.
The new publicly available filings mark yet another development in Amazon’s quest to challenge the Defense Department’s bidding process and potentially overturn the agency’s selection of Microsoft as the cloud contract winner.
Why does Amazon want to depose President Trump?
Amazon has previously complained that President Trump’s public animosity toward the company and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, had biased the bidding process for the JEDI contract. Trump has publicly sparred with Amazon and its founder. For instance, in 2018 and again in 2019 Trump tweeted that the Bezos-owned Washington Post should register as a “lobbyist” because he claimed that the newspaper is slanted against him in its coverage.
Another totally Fake story in the Amazon Washington Post (lobbyist) which states that if my Aides broke the law to build the Wall (which is going up rapidly), I would give them a Pardon. This was made up by the Washington Post only in order to demean and disparage – FAKE NEWS! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019
…does not include the Fake Washington Post, which is used as a “lobbyist” and should so REGISTER. If the P.O. “increased its parcel rates, Amazon’s shipping costs would rise by $2.6 Billion.” This Post Office scam must stop. Amazon must pay real costs (and taxes) now! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 31, 2018
In its legal filings, Amazon noted several instances of Trump’s public attacks on Bezos and Amazon, and claimed that Trump directed the Defense Department to probe the JEDI procurement process after he had publicly stated that he heard “tremendous…complaints” about AWS. Amazon then alleged that after Secretary of Defense Mark Esper began an “examination” of the JEDI bidding process, “DoD evaluators’ reports shifted in favor of Microsoft and against AWS.”
In explaining its desire to depose Trump, Amazon noted circumstantial evidence that Trump may be biased against the company and then said that he “has unique knowledge about the totality of his conversations and the overall message he conveyed.”
“Accordingly, AWS seeks discovery and supplementation that are narrowly tailored to include the public record of bias and to develop facts not currently known or accessible to AWS demonstrating exactly how President Trump’s order to ‘screw Amazon’ was carried out during the decision-making process,” Amazon’s legal filings said.
Still, it seems unlikely that Trump will be deposed, George Washington University law expert Steve Schooner, who specializes in government procurement, told the Associated Press. Schooner said that the while Trump’s deposition would be “clearly relevant,” he “can’t imagine this president sitting for that deposition.”
Who else does Amazon want to despose?
The cloud computing giant also wants six other people to discuss the inner workings of the JEDI bidding process. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, for instance, “has highly relevant, first-hand knowledge about President Trump’s animus towards Mr. Bezos and Amazon,” Amazon said. Other individuals that Amazon wants to hear from include Esper, Defense Department chief information officer Dana Deasy, and three others whose names have been redacted.
Why is Amazon continuing to question the JEDI bidding process?
The JEDI contract is significant for a number of reasons besides being worth billions of dollars. Landing a 10-year contract could pave the way for Amazon to win lucrative cloud computing contracts with other government agencies.
Winning a Defense Department contract is considered particularly prestigious for tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft because of advanced technology that the agency uses, including for combat. The perception of being the most tech-savvy and reliable could also lead to additional corporate customers.
In a statement to Fortune, Amazon said, “President Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to use his position as President and Commander in Chief to interfere with government functions – including federal procurements – to advance his personal agenda.” The company added, “The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends.”
The White House did not respond to emailed requests for comment. A Defense Department spokesperson told Fortune in an email that, the department “strongly opposes the Amazon Web Services request to depose senior DoD leaders.”
“The request is unnecessary, burdensome and merely seeks to delay getting this important technology into the hands of our warfighters,” the spokesperson added.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—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--2020-02-12--Trump distorts gains in retirement accounts

Twitter aims to curb misinformation about the U.S. census with new tool

President Donald Trump is telling a skewed story when he boasts about workers who’ve seen their personal retirement savings nearly double under his administration. Gains in the overall stock market are only half of what he implied.
Trump made the assertion at his New Hampshire rally Monday, where he also tried to snatch victory from defeat by claiming a shutout victory in the House impeachment vote, which he actually lost.
TRUMP, on workers’ 401(k) investments: “Up 90%, up 104%. Is there anybody doing badly with the 401(k)? … Don’t put up your hand, I don’t believe you. The 401(k)s, they’re up 90%, 95%.”
THE FACTS: That’s misleading at best.
There have indeed been 401(k) increases of 100% or more since 2017, but those were largely among workers with fewer than four years at their job, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute. The increases are big for recent and younger employees because they generally start with meager savings. The gains come in part from workers setting aside money from their own paychecks and contributions from their employers, not just market returns.
In that circumstance, it’s unremarkable to see a $1,000 401(k) account double in a year, for example, when a young worker and perhaps the employer is paying into it.
Older workers with more than 20 years on the job have seen gains of roughly 50% over three years in their retirement accounts, thanks both to contributions from paychecks and market gains.
Moreover, the S&P 500 — the broadest measure of the U.S. stock market — was up 47.6% from Trump’s inauguration through Monday’s close.
Some 401(k) averages are problematic for Trump’s claims to be generating prosperity because many workers lack the savings for a comfortable retirement. The median account balance was $22,217 in 2018 in 401(k) and similar plans for which investment giant Vanguard was the recordkeeper. That’s down from $26,331 in 2017.
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fortune--2020-02-11--4 prosecutors on Roger Stone case quit after DOJ interferes on sentencing

Four lawyers who prosecuted Roger Stone quit the case Tuesday after the Justice Department said it would take the extraordinary step of lowering the amount of prison time it would seek for President Donald Trump’s longtime ally and confidant.
The decision by the Justice Department came just hours after Trump complained that the recommended sentence for Stone was “very horrible and unfair.” The Justice Department said the sentencing recommendation was made Monday night—before Trump’s tweet—and prosecutors had not spoken to the White House about it.
The four attorneys, including two who were early members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia team, had made up the Justice Department’s trial team and had signed onto a Monday court filing that recommended up to nine years in prison for Stone.
The department’s decision to back off the sentencing recommendation raised questions about political interference and whether Trump’s views hold unusual sway over the Justice Department, which is meant to operate independently of the White House in criminal investigations and prosecutions.
Attorney General William Barr has been a steady ally of Trump’s, clearing the president of obstruction of justice even when special counsel Robert Mueller had pointedly declined to do so and declaring that the FBI’s Russia investigation—which resulted in charges against Ston—had been based on a “bogus narrative.”
On Monday night, prosecutors had recommended Stone serve seven to nine years behind bars after being convicted of charges including lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to tip the 2016 election. The recommendation raised the prospect that Stone could receive the harshest sentence of any of the half-dozen Trump aides charged in Mueller’s probe.
In a tweet early Tuesday, Trump said the case against Stone was a “miscarriage of justice.” A Justice Department official said authorities decided to step in and seek a shorter sentence because they had been taken by surprise by the initial recommendation. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said prosecutors had told the department to expect a shorter recommendation.
It is extremely rare for Justice Department leaders to reverse the decision of its own prosecutors on a sentencing recommendation, particularly after that recommendation has been submitted to the court. Normally, United States attorneys have wide latitude to recommend sentences on cases that they prosecuted.
The departures came abruptly after the decision by Justice. Jonathan Kravis resigned his position as an assistant U.S. attorney. He had been a veteran prosecutor in Washington, and though not part of Robert Mueller’s original team, was nonetheless involved in multiple cases brought by the special counsel’s office. Besides the Stone prosecution, Kravis had also signed onto the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, which resolved with a guilty plea, and against a Russian troll farm accused of sponsoring a cover social media campaign aimed at dividing public opinion during the 2016 presidential election.
Aaron Zelinsky quit the case and his job in Washington, and would go back to his job as a federal prosecutor in Baltimore. He was working there when he was selected in 2017 for the Mueller team.
He was involved in cases aimed at determining what knowledge the Trump campaign had about Democratic emails that were hacked by Russia and what efforts Trump aides made to get information about them. He was also involved in the prosecution of George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign aide who played a critical role in the FBI launching its investigation in the summer of 2016.
A third prosecutor, Adam Jed, who was an early member of Mueller’s team, also withdrew from the case. His status at the Justice Department was not clear. Before joining Mueller’s team, he worked on civil cases there.
By Tuesday evening, a fourth prosecutor, Michael Marando, had left the case.
After the attorneys quit the case, Justice Department officials filed a revised sentencing memorandum with the judge, arguing its initial recommendation could be “considered excessive and unwarranted under the circumstances,” but that it would defer to the court. None of the original prosecutors in Stone’s case signed onto the revised memo.
Sentencing decisions are ultimately up to the judge, who in this case may side with the original recommendation. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has repeatedly scolded Stone for his out-of-court behavior, which included a social media post he made of the judge with what appeared to be crosshairs of a gun.
The judge barred Stone from social media last July after concluding that he repeatedly flouted his gag order.
Meanwhile, Democrats decried the decision, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling for an investigation by the DOJ’s Inspector General.
“The rule of law and this grand, grand tradition of this wonderful Justice Department is being totally perverted to Donald Trumps’ own personal desires and needs,” the New York Democrat said. “And it’s a disgrace.’’
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said it would be a blatant abuse of power if the Justice Department intervened on behalf of Trump.
“Doing so would send an unmistakable message that President Trump will protect those who lie to Congress to cover up his own misconduct, and that the Attorney General will join him in that effort,” the California Democrat said.
Trump later told reporters that he didn’t speak to Justice officials. “I would be able to do it if I wanted,: he said. ”I have the absolute right to do it. I stay out of things to a degree that people wouldn’t believe, but I didn’t speak to them.”
Federal prosecutors also recently softened their sentencing position on former national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying that they would not oppose a probation of punishment after initially saying that he deserved up to six months in prison for lying to the FBI. The Flynn prosecution is also being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington.
In the the initial memorandum Monday evening, prosecutors asked for Stone to serve between 87 and 108 months in federal prison—the sentence they said was in line with federal guidelines. Such a sentence would send a message to deter others who might consider lying or obstructing a congressional probe or tampering with witnesses, they said.
The prosecutors wrote in the court papers that “Stone’s actions were not a one-off mistake in judgement” and that he “decided to double– and triple–down on his criminal conduct by tampering with a witness for months in order to make sure his obstruction would be successful.”
Stone has denied wrongdoing and consistently criticized the case against him as politically motivated. He did not take the stand during his trial and his lawyers did not call any witnesses in his defense.
Witnesses in the case testified that Trump’s campaign viewed Stone as an “access point” to the anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks, which was in possession of more than 19,000 emails hacked from the servers of the Democratic National Committee and tried to use him to get advance word about hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton.
Prosecutors charged that Stone lied to Congress about his conversations about WikiLeaks with New York radio host Randy Credico—who had scored an interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016—and conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi.
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fortune--2020-02-11--Jussie Smollet indicted on new charges in relation to alleged 2019 attack

A grand jury returned a six-count indictment accusing actor Jussie Smollett of lying to Chicago police, a special prosecutor announced Tuesday.
The charges stem from Smollett’s assertion that he was the target of a racist and homophobic attack in January 2019. Special prosecutor Dan Webb issued a statement announcing the indictment.
Smollett, who is black and gay, was originally charged the following month with disorderly conduct for allegedly staging the attack and lying about it to investigators. The charges were dropped in March 2019 with little explanation, angering police officials and then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Cook County Judge Michael Toomin in August appointed Webb, a former U.S. attorney, as a special prosecutor to look into why the charges were dropped. Webb was also charged with looking into whether Foxx’s calls with a Smollett relative and an ex-aide of former first lady Michelle Obama unduly influenced the decision to drop charges. Foxx recused herself from the case but continued to weigh in.
Smollett told police he was walking home early on Jan. 29, 2019, when two masked men approached him, made racist and homophobic insults, beat him and looped a noose around his neck before fleeing. He said his assailants, at least one of whom he said was white, told him he was in “MAGA country” — a reference to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
Several weeks later, authorities alleged that Smollett had paid two black friends $3,500 to help him stage the attack because he was unhappy with his salary as an actor on “Empire” and wanted to drum up publicity for his career.
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—HBO’s McMillion$ shows how cheaters scammed McDonald’s Monopoly game
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fortune--2020-02-11--White House proposes big increase in A.I. and quantum spending while cutting other sciences

President Donald Trump proposed a big increase in government spending on artificial intelligence and quantum computing while slashing funding of other scientific research.
In its federal budget request for next year, the White House on Tuesday detailed plans to double spending on cutting-edge computer science for civilian uses by 2022, to over $2 billion annually.
Some of the areas the White House highlights includes increasing the National Science Foundation’s spending on A.I. by 70%-year-over-year to over $830 million, bumping A.I. research spending by 76% at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science to $125 million, and calling on the National Institutes of Health to spend “$50 million for new research on chronic diseases using AI and related approaches.”
But the increase in A.I. and quantum computing comes at a tradeoff to investing into other areas of science. For instance, the White House’s proposal would cut funding to the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 26% year-over-year to $6.7 billion, while providing “just $478 million for science and technology, a decrease of 33%,” noted scientific publication Nature. And while the White House is increasing the Energy Department’s A.I. spending, it’s reducing overall funding to the agency’s office of science by 17% to $5.8 billion.
Sridhar Tayur, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who specializes in business technology and quantum computing, told Fortune the White House’s proposed budget is geared toward building the infrastructure for sophisticated data analysis that could potentially impact multiple disciplines. Although some areas of scientific research are being cut, the White House hopes that A.I. and quantum computing’s potential impact could be so big, it would make up for the reduced overall spending.
Tayur commends the proposed federal spending increase in A.I. and quantum because he believes the government is crucial for funding transformative research, which tech giants like Google and Facebook don’t do despite spending billions of dollars annually on A.I.
“I don’t think they are doing fundamental research,” Tayur said. “They are doing research in A.I. that benefits their business models.”
Martijn Rasser, a senior fellow for public policy at the think tank Center for a New American Security, is distraught about the White House’s proposed research budget. Although Rasser commends the A.I. spending increase, he believes “it is really rolling the dice to put all your money behind artificial intelligence and quantum information sciences for being the things to bet on in the future.”
“What about biotech, what about genomics and all these areas where they are cutting funding?” Rasser asked.
Stunning R&D funding numbers coming out of @WhiteHouse today. How will this have America compete?
NIH: -7%
DOE: -17%
NASA: -11%
ARPA-E: -173% (not a typo – agency is eliminated, plus $311 million must be returned to Treasury)
1/4 — Martijn Rasser (@MartijnRasser) February 10, 2020
Rasser imagined the uncomfortable scenario of A.I. faculty members receiving federal grant money instead of professors in other university departments.
“As an A.I. scientist, you have to look at your colleagues in the faculty lunch room and say, ‘Well sorry, your work in aeronautics is not considered important to the United States economy and national security anymore,” Rasser said.
Especially concerning for Rasser is that the National Institutes of Health’s funding could decline 7% to $38.7 billion if the White House’s 2021 budget proposal is passed. It’s not good timing considering that the world is “in the midsts of perhaps the major epidemic of the coronavirus,” he added.
But Darrell West, the vice president and director of the left-leaning policy think tank Brookings Institution, believes the White House is right in placing its bets on A.I. and quantum computing, saying that cutting-edge data crunching will be the core technology that drives other fields.
Still, West cautions, “We do want to be careful we don’t end up in a situation where one hand gives while the other hand takes away.”
Last year when the White House first proposed its plans on “Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” some critics slammed the initiative for failing to provide specific policy recommendations or detailed spending plans. West acknowledged that last year’s first proposal was “vague,” but said the new proposal is an improvement, especially considering that “A.I. is the transformative technology of our time.”
“People today are applauding the fact that we will be getting an increase in government expenditures,” West said. “I haven’t seen a lot of details on how that money will be targeted but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.”
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fortune--2020-02-11--Twitter aims to curb misinformation about the U.S. census with new tool

Jussie Smollet indicted on new charges in relation to alleged 2019 attack

Twitter has rolled out a new tool to help users find accurate information about this year’s U.S. Census.
People who search for census-related terms will automatically see a link to the federal government’s census website, which contains information about participating in the census, what information is collected and how it is used.
It’s the latest example of how technology companies are trying to staunch the flow of misinformation related to the census, which is used to apportion seats in the U.S. House and allocate billions of dollars in federal funding.
“Ensuring the public can find information from authoritative sources is a key aspect of our commitment to serve the public conversation on Twitter,” the company said Tuesday in a statement announcing the change.
False claims about the census could skew the results if they discourage participation. On Monday, a prominent Latino organization urged the Census Bureau to do more to stamp out rumors that it includes a citizenship question.
President Donald Trump’s administration had sought to include a question asking for census participants’ citizenship, but it was overruled by the Supreme Court. Advocates for immigrants say the question would have discouraged immigrants from participating and led to an undercount of minorities.
Twitter will also add a tool making it easier for people to report content that contains inaccurate or misleading census claims.
All the major platforms — Twitter, Facebook and Google — have announced that they are working directly with the Census Bureau to reduce the amount of census-related misinformation circulating on their platforms.
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fortune--2020-02-11--Can Amazon convince a federal court to depose Trump over a $10 billion Pentagon contract?

A competition between Microsoft and Amazon to supply $10 billion worth of cloud computing services to the Department of Defense was decided—controversially—in October.
Despite Amazon Web Services (AWS) dominating nearly half of the public cloud market, the DoD opted to give Microsoft—whose “intelligent cloud segment” Azure is a smaller piece of the pie—the JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) project. Citing the President’s misgivings with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the tech giant responded with a lawsuit against the Pentagon claiming that the decision process was tainted by bias.
Now, Amazon is taking things a step further by petitioning a federal court to make Trump, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and five other parties, including chairpersons of the Source Selection Advisory Council and Source Selection Evaluation Board, all explain themselves in depositions.
“President Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to use his position as President and Commander in Chief to interfere with government functions—including federal procurements—to advance his personal agenda,” an AWS spokesperson tells Fortune. “The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends.”
It’s without question that Trump has harbored animosity toward Bezos. In 2015, he opined on Twitter that the Amazon founder has “the power to [screw] the public.” While in the Oval Office, he’s repeatedly lobbed insults at the Bezos-owned Washington Post, citing Trump-unfriendly coverage.
The knife twist reportedly came in the summer of 2018, when, according to Mattis’s ex-speechwriter, Trump personally told the ex-secretary of defense to “screw Amazon” out of the $10 billion cloud contract.
Besides, Trump is unbound by presidential norms, the AWS representative says. He once revoked a CNN correspondent’s press credential, tried to block a merger between Time Warner and AT&T, and interfered with bids to move the FBI Headquarters away from the Trump International Hotel.
So, it’s beyond doubt that Trump interfered with the JEDI project, right? Not so fast, the Department of Defense says.
“We have kept the identities of every member of the source selection team anonymous throughout this process,” Dana Deasy, CIO at the Department of Defense, who Amazon wishes the court to depose, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2019. (“These assurances are in fact no assurance at all,” the AWS spokesperson says. “The President’s directives and biases were broadcast to the entire nation.”)
For the sake of argument, let’s say Trump meddled with the Department of Defense to award the contract to Microsoft. Was this unethical? That depends on who you ask. At odds with the GOP’s idea of free enterprise? Arguably.
Most importantly, is it illegal—and can a federal judge be convinced to depose Trump, Esper, and the others?
In its filing to the Court of Federal Claims, AWS insinuates that the DoD is violating U.S. procurement law.
“[Our] allegations of bad faith and bias are more than ‘sufficiently well-grounded’ [as per legal requirement] to warrant supplementation,” the filing says.
AWS goes further, calling the source selection advisory council “irrational,” and their decision-making process “[not] reasoned.” “Taint manifests itself in various forms,” it says, “but one obvious way is through shoddy analysis calculated to reach a predetermined outcome.”
When asked to elaborate on whether the Pentagon broke U.S. procurement law, Amazon did not immediately respond for comment. Nor did they cite a claim in their statement that “the DoD set aside concrete evidence showing that AWS was the technically superior provider.” (Most of the filing’s technical specifics are blacked out as confidential.)
“DoD strongly opposes the Amazon Web Services request to depose senior DoD leaders,” Lt. Col Robert Carver, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, told Fortune in a statement. The request is unnecessary, burdensome and merely seeks to delay getting this important technology into the hands of our warfighters.”
“There were no external influences on the source selection decision,” he continued. “We will not comment on the specific claims in the litigation.”
Microsoft, for its part, said in court filings that AWS “only provided the speculation of bias, with nothing approaching the ‘hard facts’ necessary.”
Without more specific invocation of a U.S. law that the Department of Defense is breaking by choosing one private company or another, AWS will be forced to blow the horn of “bias,” “bad faith,” and little else to a federal judge.
Granted, Microsoft Azure, with its comparative lack of market share, is the more unconventional choice for the role. Its come-from-behind JEDI award is bound to change the landscape of cloud computing and send Amazon packing.
But for Bezos’ Big Four company to successfully overturn the DoD’s decision, it’s safe to say Amazon needs more than speculation and accusation on its side.
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fortune--2020-02-11--Under Armour shares plunge 17% on grim forecast

So much for Under Armour switching to offense.
The sports apparel and footwear brand warned investors on Wall Street on Tuesday to expect revenue to decline sharply this year in North America, by far its biggest market, in a forecast that reignited fears about the prospects for Under Armour’s turnaround. Shares plummeted 17%.
Under Armour expects revenue to fall by a mid- to high-single-digit percentage in North America in 2020, continuing the deterioration of a business that has become too reliant on discounting, hurt by an e-commerce site not up to today’s technology standards, and a brand that has fallen out of favor with many customers.
“Our transformation is taking longer than we had originally expected,” newly minted chief executive Patrik Frisk conceded to analysts on a conference call. He blamed a number of factors, including what he euphemistically called “ongoing demand challenges.”
Adding to its woes, Under Armour said it expects the coronavirus outbreak in China to dent sales by approximately $50 million to $60 million in the first quarter of 2020.
Only three months ago, when Under Armour announced founder Kevin Plank would step down as CEO and hand the reins to Frisk on January 1, the company spoke of finally going on offense after a few years of fixing its business.
But on Tuesday, it said it may undertake a highly defensive move: it is considering another company restructure for 2020 that would imply between $325 million and $425 million in charges. What’s more, Under Armour is considering abandoning plans to open a flagship store in New York City just a few blocks away from Nike’s massive emporium on Fifth Avenue given the expense, in what would be a symbolically tough concession to reality.
The company has made strides on some fronts in the last three years. It has improved operationally and become more disciplined about factors such as costs and inventory better aligned with sales levels. For the full year in 2019, Under Armour returned to profit, posting a net income of $92.1 million on revenue of $5.3 billion, after reporting a loss the year before.
But operational strength can only help so much if consumer interest in a brand and its products wanes.
Under Armour has been hurting since 2017, when a 26-quarter streak of revenue growth of 20% or more came to a halt, outmaneuvered by rivals like Nike, Lululemon Athletica and Adidas, that deftly jumped on the athleisure trend emphasizing fashion and casual clothing, and the emergence of a crop of new contenders such as Vuori, Rabbit, and Tracksmith.
Still, Frisk again insisted on Tuesday that Under Armour’s path to prosperity continues to focus on the technical aspects of clothing, which are the company’s foundation. Plank founded Under Armour in 1996, and its first product was a sweat-wicking shirt for football players he made in his grandmother’s basement.
“We are committed to staying centered in athletic performance,” he said.
That appears to be costing it some market share. In the 12 months ending last June, NPD Group’s tracking service estimated that Under Armour’s share of the U.S. activewear market had fallen 1.2 percentage points to 5.6%. Some 60% of Under Armour’s revenue comes from wholesale accounts (sales to other retailers). But Wall Street analysts worry that it continues to lose shelf space at some retailers.
“Earning our way back on the shelves at retail is taking longer than we thought it would,” Frisk told the Wall Street analysts.
And years of its products being discounted online or at its outlet stores has dented Under Armour’s “premium” aura, and as Frisk put it, “impacted consumers’ willingness to pay full price for our brand to a higher degree than we originally anticipated.”
But as the cases of Coach, Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors in the last decade have shown, it can take years for a brand to wean shoppers off of discounts, if it even does, including a long period of sales declines.
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fortune--2020-02-11--Robot surgery could be the future of health care in remote areas

In 2001, surgeons in New York removed the gallbladder of a patient in France utilizing a remote-controlled robotic system. The Lindbergh operation, as it’s widely known, was the world’s first such tele-surgery.
In the nearly 20 years since the Lindbergh operation, medicine has failed to live up to the promise of using tele-robotics to treat patients in rural areas or parts of the globe that lack access to health care. The proliferation of smartphones and wearables has driven tele-health’s emergence as a tool to diagnose conditions, and in some instances, prescribe medications to patients. But the Lindbergh operation proved modern medicine and technology can intersect to treat patients using remote robotics, not just diagnose a patient or dispense a prescription.
Now it’s time to put the potential of tele-robotics into practice. New treatment models could allow tele-health to dramatically improve medical treatment for people living in remote areas.
Since 2001, physicians have explored remote procedures with greater sophistication. For instance, with the help of other researchers at my organization, in June 2018 I utilized an Internet-connected robotic system to successfully place stents in non-human coronary arteries from over 100 miles away.
In December that same year, world-renowned cardiologist Tejas Patel completed five remote coronary procedures with the same technology and robotic device. Intending to demonstrate the viability of using remote-operated robotics to treat heart conditions in humans, he controlled the robot with joysticks and a video monitor.
Widespread adoption of tele-robotics in health has the potential to drastically curb the damage caused by cardiovascular disease, the most common cause of death in the world. The International Labour Organization reported last year that developing countries desperately need improved access to cardiovascular care to save patients from permanent disability or death. But even in the U.S., patients in rural areas lack efficient access to the best therapies. They often require timely transfers by ambulance or helicopter over long distances to undergo an emergent procedure, which is problematic since delays increase the risk of mortality and morbidity.
Robotic technology has inspired several treatment models that could bring high-level care to underserved patient populations and expedite time to treatment. Those models are likely to manifest in one of two forms over the next 10 years.
The first and most likely version would connect a network of hospitals to one centralized location in a hub-and-spoke model. Physicians at a health system’s flagship location could perform traditional on-location procedures and remote procedures via tele-robotics on patients at spoke locations. Hub-and-spoke models currently exist for the treatment of heart attacks and strokes, but existing models necessitate patients presenting at a spoke location before being transferred to the hub to undergo a procedure. The tele-robotic hub-and-spoke model could dramatically increase the volume of patients one physician could treat, enable patients to stay close to home while undergoing treatment, and reduce morbidity and mortality by providing more rapid access to care for acute conditions.
The second potential model would more aggressively address the lack of treatment options in rural U.S. states and developing countries. It consists of planting a treatment facility with a tele-robotic device and a small staff of operating room technicians in a remote area. This model would allow renowned physicians at the most prestigious hospitals to treat patients all over the world. 5G wireless Internet will play a key role in making this adaptation a reality, because hard-wired connections hardly exist in remote areas.
My recent experience strongly supports the concept of relying on wireless technology to support a heart procedure. I used a 5G connection late last year to complete 36 test remote coronary procedures. In these experiments, I was located close to Boston and used a robotic system connected to a 5G network to manipulate a robotic arm in San Francisco. Despite the robotic signals traveling approximately 3,000 miles, I did not perceive any mechanical latency, or a delay between the moment I made a command and the moment the robot responded.
The complex logistics of remote procedures, combined with concerns about Internet reliability, bandwidth, speed, and security have all prevented widespread implementation of tele-robotic surgeries to date. Multiple risks related to these concerns still need to be addressed, including what might happen if the Internet connection conducting the robotic signals was abruptly lost. If the signal loss occurred in the middle of a surgical procedure, then significant patient harm could result if the on-site surgical team did not have the expertise to complete the procedure.
Another potential risk relates to delays in signal transmission across slow networks. In the case of remote robotic coronary procedures, delays in signal transmission could lead to adverse consequences such as artery perforation, bleeding, and death.
However, the emergence of ultra-fast, high-bandwidth networks and advancements in robotic technology in recent years have created an opportunity for researchers, engineers, and health systems to develop creative solutions to overcome those barriers. The ultra-fast signal transmission of contemporary networks may eventually negate concerns over delays in signal transmission, even over vast distances. And the ability to develop multiple network connections between any two locations could be leveraged to mitigate the risk of abrupt signal loss.
While improving access to care lies at the heart of the tele-treatment movement, the standard of care might improve around the world as a welcomed byproduct. Introducing widespread tele-treatment models with robotics will give more sick people immediate access to highly effective state-of-the-art treatments.
The Lindbergh operation provided a peek at a future application of tele-health at a time when few even knew what that word meant. With the benefit of nearly two decades of innovation, including advancements in robotics and the speed of network connectivity, the concept of tele-treatment is no longer an idea reserved for comic books and science fiction movies. The technology available today makes it a potential reality. If done correctly, it could democratize high-level care for patients worldwide.
Ryan Madder is the section chief of interventional cardiology at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, Mich., and performed the first transcontinental coronary test procedures in the U.S.
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fortune--2020-02-11--Samsung Unpacked 2020: New phones, folding phones, and earbuds

Samsung on Tuesday unveiled three new flagship phones in the Galaxy S20 line, plus a new smaller folding phone called the Galaxy Flip. The company also used the occasion, its annual Unpacked event in San Francisco, to introduce upgraded earbuds called Galaxy Buds Plus.
The Galaxy S20 phone
Surprising no one, Samsung unveiled the latest phones in its flagship Galaxy line that includes three models.
The S20, which costs $1,000, includes a 6.2-inch screen. The slightly higher-end S20 Plus has a 6.7-inch screen and a starting price of $1,200. Meanwhile, an even larger model, the S20 Ultra, comes with a 6.9-inch screen, even better cameras, and a starting price of $1,400. The screens for all three use OLED HDR+ displays at a 120Hz refresh rate to make moving images and games appear sharper.
All three phones also will be fully compatible with new, faster 5G wireless networks. The phones will be available for pre-order on Feb. 21 and ship on March 6.
All three phones can record video in 8K resolution. The two smaller phones have lenses with three-times optical zoom and 30X zoom using digital software. The camera on the Ultra has a 10X optical zoom pushed to 100 times with digital software.
The Galaxy Z Flip phone
First unveiled in a commercial during the Super Bowl, the Galaxy Z Flip is a smartphone with a 6.7-inch screen that folds in half. That allows the phone to fit more easily in a pocket while still featuring a large screen comparable to those of other smartphones.
The Flip, which has a hinge that Samsung said is designed to last for hundreds of thousands of opening and closings, goes on sale Feb. 14 for almost $1,400.
Galaxy Buds Plus
Samsung also had a new version of its popular earbuds that debuted last year. But instead of the five or six hours of play time like the original, the new model will last for 11 hours on their own and can be recharged for another 11 hours from their case. The speakers and microphones have been upgraded for improved sound quality from last year’s model.
The Plus model costs $150, up $20 from the original and comes in four colors: black, white, blue and red.
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fortune--2020-02-11--Universal Pictures will release controversial film ‘The Hunt’

Universal Pictures said Tuesday that it will release the social satire “The Hunt,” a film it canceled in the wake of criticism about its premise of “elites” hunting people for sport in red states.
A trailer announcing the film’s March 13 release date presents the “elites” hunting regular people as a conspiracy theory. Star Hilary Swank says at one point that “it wasn’t real” amid images of shootings, explosions and other violence.
The trailer includes the line, “The most talked about movie of the year is one nobody’s seen yet.”
In August, Universal Pictures canceled a September release for “The Hunt” after criticism, including from President Donald Trump. The president, without mentioning the film by name, said it was intended “to inflame and cause chaos.”
The cancellation came after the studio had already paused the ad campaign for the R-rated film in the wake of mass shootings in Texas, Ohio and California.
The film features 12 strangers who awake in a clearing who don’t yet know they’ve been chosen for The Hunt, but one of them manages to turn the table on the pursuers, a synopsis released Tuesday stated.
“The Hunt,” produced by Jason Blum’s Blumhouse, stars Oscar winner Swank and Betty Gilpin, and is directed by Craig Zobel. It was written by Damon Lindelof and his “Watchmen” collaborator Nick Cuse.
News of the film’s release was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
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fortune--2020-02-11--Samsung’s new Galaxy S20 phone has a zoom lens that’s better than any rival’s

Smartphone photography is about to take a huge leap forward—and I got a sneak peek at that future last week.
Using a new Samsung phone that comes with a powerful zoom lens, I was able to read tiny writing on a label stuck to a light stand 15-feet away. Without the zoom, I could barely see the label, let alone the writing on it.
Samsung unveiled that phone, the Galaxy S20 Ultra, on Tuesday, with pre-orders starting on Feb. 21 and shipments on March 6. It has a lens that can magnify by 10 times everything it focuses on. With the additional help of software that digitally enhances image quality, the phone can magnify scenes by 100 times, according to Samsung.
It’s easily the most powerful zoom lens ever in a phone. And the external design still looked like a pretty ordinary phone, despite the telephoto upgrade.
There’s a simple truth about telephoto lenses: They require multiple, internal lenses placed one in front of the other. Those components can take up a lot of space, forcing manufacturers to produce phones with ugly bumps.
Even with the bump, current phones, including last year’s Samsung Galaxy S10 and Apple’s iPhone 11 Pro, come with lenses that make subjects appear only twice as big, or a two-times zoom. Software tricks and A.I. can increase magnification, but that usually comes with obviously reduced picture quality.
The new Ultra, which costs $1,400, has a few other tricks besides the zoom lens. It’s larger than any previous Galaxy phone, with a 6.9-inch screen. It also has built-in 5G compatibility to connect to the fastest wireless networks for uploading high-resolution pictures and videos rapidly.
In addition to announcing the Ultra at an event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Samsung unveiled a few other phones. Those include the S20, a $1,000 5G phone that comes with a 6.2-inch screen, and a larger S20+ that also comes with 5G compatibility and a 6.7-inch screen, for $1,200. Those two phones have zoom lenses that feature three-times optical magnification, or 30 times when software enhancement is used.
Also on Tuesday, Samsung unveiled a folding phone dubbed the Z Flip, which will go sale later this year. The phone, hinted at during a recent Super Bowl commercial, is smaller than Samsung’s folding phone from last year, the Galaxy Fold, and is designed to easily fit into a pocket when folded.
How did they fit the lens?
The better zoom lens isn’t the only lens on the new S20 line of phones. All three models also have a traditional lens for taking typical shots and a wide-angle lens that is suitable for group shots or landscapes. And, of course, all three have a selfie camera on the front.
To fit the new lens with the 10-times optical zoom in the S20 Ultra without creating a bump, Samsung invented a new way to install the lens. Instead of it emerging from the back of the phone, as all prior phone lenses did, the longer lens is tucked inside the phone and placed sideways instead of facing straight out of the back of the phone. To bring the image into the lens, the phone includes a prism to reflect light at an angle through the sideways lens.
It’s the same principle that allows a submarine skipper to use a periscope to see what’s happening on the ocean’s surface.
Telephoto lenses are one of the few areas of photography remaining in which the quality of smartphone pictures still lags far behind traditional cameras. To get 10-times magnification on a full frame D-SLR camera requires a 500 mm lens, which can cost close to $10,000 and weigh seven pounds or more.
Recently, Fortune was allowed to test the camera on the Ultra for about an hour. The picture quality with the 10-times optical zoom was comparable to the best smartphone pictures available on current models with much lesser zooms. Lines and lettering were sharp, and colors were accurate.
The even greater 100-times zoom using software quickly degraded the image quality, however. Still, it was about as crisp and vibrant as regular smartphone pictures from four or five years ago.
The bigger problem with the massive 100-times zoom is holding the phone steady. Even the slightest shake caused the deeply zoomed picture to bounce around, making focusing difficult. Even propping the phone on a table failed to eliminate all of the shakiness.
Samsung is touting the 100-times zoom as one of the S20 Ultra’s top features, but it’s still a bit of a gimmick given the fuzzier images and the challenge to hold the phone still. But that shouldn’t diminish the amazing achievement of including the more useful 10-times zoom lens.
With the appeal of the new cameras and pent-up demand after some underwhelming upgrades the past few years from Samsung, the S20 line up should sell 40 million phones this year, analysts at Counterpoint Research noted last week. That would be the most since the S7 line up back in 2016, the research firm says.
And that’s no gimmick.
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—Predicting the biggest tech headlines of 2020
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fortune--2020-02-11--3 strategies women can use to make sure their ideas are heard at work

It happened again: Someone (usually someone male) interrupted you in a meeting and just kept talking, so you didn’t get to make your point. Or piped up with an idea that was yours, until you told him about it, and forgot to give you any credit. Or explained to you, at unnecessary length and in a condescending tone, something you’ve known forever.
Even with all the enormous gains women have made in the workplace, this kind of stuff keeps right on happening. Part of the reason is that so many women keep tolerating it, for fear of being labelled with a b-word—whether the “b” stands for “bitchy” or “bossy.” The trouble is that trying to be liked can hold you back from making your ideas heard and your influence felt.
Lois Frankel, PhD, has been contemplating this dilemma for decades, as founder and chief of Corporate Coaching International, whose clients include executives at Disney, Procter & Gamble, Amgen, and Fidelity. “The key issue is that the rules of engagement, meaning the ways we need to communicate at work, are different for men and women,” she says. “So, in order to compete successfully, women need to keep doing what they’re already doing—but add a few new tools to their toolbox.”
Hence Frankel’s new audiobook, Nice Girls Don’t Speak Up or Stand Out: How to Make Your Voice Heard, Your Point Known, and Your Presence Felt. It’s the latest addition to a popular series of print books, notably Frankel’s 2014 bestseller Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office. Why an audiobook this time? “I wanted to be able to demonstrate tones of voice, and vocal inflections, which can’t be captured on the printed page,” she says. “Most women really need to speak up more—but how you do that can make all the difference.”
Here are three ways to make your voice heard in the office:
1. What’s your headline?
Next time you have a report to deliver, or a plan to propose, get to the most important point quickly. “Women tend to use too many words, in an attempt to soften what they’re saying or avoid coming across as off-puttingly authoritative,” says Frankel. But too long a preamble distracts your audience (even an audience of one) from the main message.
A better structure is similar to a newspaper story. “Put your main point up front, and follow it with more detail,” Frankel suggests. “Then end with a tagline inviting comments.”Asking for others’ thoughts on what you just said, she adds, helps ensure that “no one will see you as ‘bossy’.”
2. Try “contrasting.”
Here’s how to shut down a mansplainer, or anyone else who’s trying to deter you from the goal that you hope a given conversation will achieve. “First, have a clear idea in mind of the result you’re aiming for,” Frankel says.
Then, when the other person tries to bury you in verbiage—particularly the patronizing kind—interrupt politely, and acknowledge his expertise. “Say something like, ‘I know this is a subject that you know a lot about, and I really appreciate your willingness to share it with me’,” she says. “Follow that by stating, or restating, the goal of the discussion. ‘But let’s talk about what we both want, which is [fill in the topic].” Insist, tactfully, on getting back to the point. This technique also works, Frankel notes (speaking from experience), with an auto mechanic who’s trying to snow you.
3. Take back the credit.
Some men’s pesky little habit of publicly claiming other people’s insights as their own is apparently so common it has acquired a nickname: “Bropriating.” As soon as someone does that in a meeting (or anywhere else if other people are around), “speak up and thank him,” says Frankel. “Then say you’d like to add a couple of things that have occurred to you since you first told him about it.”
It’s hard to imagine a more graceful, yet emphatic, way to point out the true source of that smart idea. Unfortunately, it seems habitual bropriators don’t embarrass easily, Frankel adds, so “to prevent it from happening again, meet with him privately afterward and put him on notice that what he did was really not okay.” Repeat both steps as needed.
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