fortune--2020-06-10--He turned down Softbank money at 23. Now he’s set to become a billionaire

At 23, Shunji Sugaya had what he calls a “life-changing episode.”
It was March 2000, and Sugaya had just won an award at a business contest where Masayoshi Son, the founder of what was then called SoftBank Corp., was a judge. He sent Son an email to thank him, the two met up, and before long SoftBank offered to buy Sugaya’s idea for $2.8 million or for Sugaya to join the company and receive stock options.
Sugaya turned it down.
“It gave me a big boost in confidence as I was a student — I was so happy I could dance,” he said in a video interview. “We were very grateful for the offer but we politely declined and decided to do it ourselves.”
So Sugaya started his own company, Optim Corp., which now provides business-management platforms using artificial-intelligence and internet-of-things technologies. The bet has paid off, with Sugaya moving ever closer to joining the ranks of billionaires in Japan alongside Son.
Optim’s shares have gained 79% this year after rising as much as 7.9% Wednesday, as doing business remotely became a necessity during the coronavirus pandemic. Sugaya’s net worth, derived mainly from his roughly 64% stake in the company, has surged to about $990 million, according to a calculation by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index that excludes shares pledged as collateral.
The virus has accelerated a shift from analog to digital business practices at companies in Japan, according to Sugaya, who is Optim’s president.
“Digitalization has progressed at great speed during the past three months,” he said. “It feels like quite a tailwind.”
Sugaya, now 43, was a computer programmer as far back as elementary school, when he created games and sold them to his friends for a few hundred yen.
Optim, which he founded in 2000, started out providing internet video-advertising services. It got into AI and IoT as it worked with telecommunications giant Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. to create an internet-connection service. Optim came up with software so that subscribers could set up the connection themselves and later developed remote support services.
Optim has since expanded its remote-control technologies. Its Optimal Biz line, a management platform for multiple devices including smartphones and tablets, helps companies control and secure employees’ mobile equipment, with functions such as remote locking and the ability to wipe lost or stolen devices to prevent data leakage.
The product accounts for about 40% of Japan’s mobile device management market, according to the company.
Remote Support
“This is a technology that can be applied in a wide range of fields,” said Kaname Fujita, an analyst at Ichiyoshi Research Institute Inc.
The company also develops remote support tools that allow sharing of screens with devices at different locations and remote operation.
With the Japanese government handing out 100,000 yen ($928) to all residents as part of its virus relief efforts, Optim decided to provide free use of its Optimal Remote product, which connects PCs to smartphones by screen sharing. That will help people avoid unnecessary trips to local government offices in the process of claiming the money, company spokesman Keiichi Yokoyama said.
Optim’s technologies are now used in industries including construction, health care, retail and finance. Major business partners include SoftBank, KDDI Corp., and Komatsu Ltd., according to the company’s website. Optim has ventured into Southeast Asia, starting with Vietnam, and it’s starting to expand into North America and Europe, according to Sugaya.
Optim also offers agricultural drones equipped with AI-based image-analysis capabilities. They can recognize insects and pest damage and spray agricultural chemicals only on the affected areas, reducing labor and the amount of chemicals used.
To be sure, while the company’s stock has surged, so has its valuation. Optim trades at about 57 times book value, and about 172 times estimated earnings. The company posted revenue of $62.5 million last fiscal year, and made $1.1 million in profit. It has a market value of about $1.6 billion.
“I really don’t care” about the money, Sugaya said. Some two decades after he turned down Son’s offer, he says that if the company continues to create new things, revenue and profit will follow.
“In 20 years, I want us to be a company that people would point to and say, ‘Optim changed all kinds of industries with AI and IoT,’” he said.


fortune--2020-06-10--5G won’t be a financial cash cow for wireless carriers, report says

Small-business owners considering bankruptcy may be shocked to learn they could lose their homes

The spread of superfast 5G wireless networks will provide a boon to the economy, although the revenue generated by wireless carriers from the emerging technology could be modest, according to a new report.
Companies in manufacturing, health care, transportation, environmental monitoring, and gaming will get major financial benefits from 5G’s speedier connections, according to consulting firm KPMG. Increased spending on connectivity, hardware, software, and services could drive more than $140 billion of new annual revenue in those sectors worldwide by 2023.
But for telecommunications carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, which are spending tens of billions of dollars to build 5G networks, KPMG’s forecast was less generous. Only about 11% of spending from the introduction of 5G will go to connectivity. “It’s a sobering prospect for telcos,” the report notes. “The dire economic impact of becoming a ‘dumb-pipe’ is real and requires immediate action for those not already positioned to benefit.”
The carriers have already struggled to charge consumers more for 5G, with Verizon eliminating an extra charge for 5G last year and T-Mobile pledging not to charge for the faster service for at least three years as part of its deal to gain approval for merging with rival Sprint.
At the same time, the carriers have also tried to take advantage of 5G, which provides connections that are 10 to 100 times as fast as current 4G LTE, in new ways. With the help of its 2018 acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T will be able to offer video streaming and other entertainment over its 5G network. Meanwhile, Verizon runs a large digital media unit which is designing programming specially for 5G. Verizon is also partnering with Amazon to create small cloud computing data centers to host 5G apps and services. And T-Mobile plans to offer wireless home Internet service nationwide via its 5G network.
Among the five business sectors analyzed in the report, manufacturing will gain the most new revenue as a result of 5G, with robots and other autonomous machines helping factories become more efficient with higher-quality output and reduced maintenance costs. Gaming will also produce considerable additional revenue thanks to 5G, as both virtual reality and cloud-based gaming get a boost, the report noted.
The software industry will also be a big winner from 5G, as manufacturers buy apps that use A.I. to run automated factories, hospitals use programs to gather and analyze wireless sensor data, and video gamers opt for the latest titles to play via streaming, the report noted.
(Correction: This story was updated on June 10, 2020 to correct the percentage of spending on 5G connectivity after KPMG corrected the figure in its report.)


fortune--2020-06-10--‘Cops’ is canceled by Paramount Network after 33 seasons

After 33 seasons on the air, “Cops” has been dropped by the Paramount Network as protests against police proliferate around the world.
“Cops is not on the Paramount Network and we don’t have any current or future plans for it to return,” a spokesperson for the cable channel said in a statement Tuesday.
The show had been pulled temporarily from the air in late May, when protests aimed at police over the death of George Floyd began to gain momentum. That move was made permanent Tuesday.
It’s not clear whether the company that makes the show, Langley Productions, would try to find a new home for it. A voicemail at a company phone number was not accepting messages.
The reality show, with its widely known reggae theme song “Bad Boys,” allowed viewers to ride along with police officers on patrol in various cities.
It ran on the Fox network for 25 years until 2013, when Viacom-owned Spike TV picked it up. The show remained on the air after Spike was re-branded as the Paramount Network in 2018.


fortune--2020-06-10--The fall of CrossFit founder and CEO Greg Glassman, who resigned after racist remarks

Sweden to drop daily coronavirus briefings as scandal grows over its loose handling of the pandemic

How often have we seen this scenario play out? A brilliant and charismatic company founder who refuses to play by the rules enjoys considerable success, only to be hoisted by their own petard after making an off-color remark or engaging in scandalous or erratic behavior. We could be talking about American Apparel’s Dov Charney, or perhaps Uber’s Travis Kalanick, or Adam Neumann of WeWork. Today’s it’s Greg Glassman, founder of the global fitness craze CrossFit.
Glassman stepped down as CEO of CrossFit, the company he founded with his ex-wife Lauren 20 years ago in Santa Cruz, Calif. and which now licenses its name to more than 14,000 gyms worldwide. The 63 year old said he has retired.
Dave Castro, director of the CrossFit Games and co-director of training, will take over as CEO. Glassman will retain full ownership of the company.
In a statement on CrossFit’s corporate website Glassman wrote: “On Saturday I created a rift in the CrossFit community and unintentionally hurt many of its members. Since I founded CrossFit 20 years ago, it has become the world’s largest network of gyms. All are aligned in offering an elegant solution to the vexing problem of chronic disease. Creating CrossFit and supporting its affiliates and legions of professional trainers has been a labor of love.
“Those who know me know that my sole issue is the chronic disease epidemic. I know that CrossFit is the solution to this epidemic and that CrossFit HQ and its staff serve as the stewards of CrossFit affiliates worldwide. I cannot let my behavior stand in the way of HQ’s or affiliates’ missions. They are too important to jeopardize.”
On June 6, Glassman sparked outraged among CrossFit gym owners, their members, and the larger fitness community after belittling the racial strife highlighted in America in the wake of George Floyd’s death, calling it “FLOYD-19” on Twitter and reportedly saying on a Zoom call with gym owners, “I do not mourn George Floyd.”
It's FLOYD-19. — Greg Glassman (@CrossFitCEO) June 6, 2020
A day later, Glassman apologized through the company’s official Twitter account but denied being racist. “I, CrossFit HQ, and the CrossFit community will not stand for racism,” he wrote. “I made a mistake by the words I chose yesterday. My heart is deeply saddened by the pain it has caused. It was a mistake, not racist but a mistake.”
.@CrossFitCEO: "I, CrossFit HQ, and the CrossFit community will not stand for racism. I made a mistake by the words I chose yesterday.
My heart is deeply saddened by the pain it has caused. It was a mistake, not racist but a mistake. — CrossFit (@CrossFit) June 8, 2020
By then the damage was done.
Reebok, which has licensed the CrossFit name for an apparel line since 2010 and also sponsors its flagship competition event The CrossFit Games, said it was ending its agreement with the company. High profile CrossFit athletes including Tia Clair said that their future association with the brand remained unclear. And more than 1,000 owners ended their CrossFit affiliations, according to a crowdsourced document reviewed by Fortune. CrossFit Inc. did not respond to emails from Fortune.
Privately held CrossFit Inc. does not disclose its financials, but valuations for the company have been estimated as high as $4 billion. The company licenses its names to gyms it calls “boxes” for a $3,000 per year fee and charges $1,000 to license an instructor. In addition, it collects entrance fees for the CrossFit Games, which has been broadcast on ESPN, and other sanctioned events.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly named Glassman’s ex-wife as Linda. She is Lauren Jenai.


fortune--2020-06-09--The Nasdaq is on a bull run for the ages. Will the Fed keep the rally going?

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, Bull Sheeters. The Nasdaq made history yesterday. Again. What records will it set next? That may very well depend on what the Fed has to say later today.
In the meantime, let’s check in on the action.
Markets update
Asia
Asia’s major indices are mixed in afternoon trade. Shanghai and Hong Kong are down; the Nikkei ( 0.15% ) clings to gains.
( ) clings to gains. Here’s a data point for those of you piling into airlines stocks and expecting it to take you to the moon: IATA, the airlines trade body, forecasts carriers will lose a combined $84 billion this year, and almost $16 billion next year .
and expecting it to take you to the moon: IATA, the airlines trade body, forecasts carriers will a combined this year, and almost . Asian airlines appear to be the most precarious of the bunch, prompting calls for direct government intervention and/or capital-raising schemes to save the likes of Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and AirAsia.
Europe
The European bourses opened in the green this morning. The bluechip Euro Stoxx 50 edged 0 . 2% higher in the first minutes of trade.
opened in the green this morning. The bluechip Euro Stoxx 50 . higher in the first minutes of trade. It’s been a record year for European sovereign debt . Already, investors have snatched up $1 trillion worth of European bonds, the fastest it’s ever hit that milestone. What could possibly be the reason? Yep, the ECB .
. Already, investors have snatched up worth of European bonds, the fastest it’s ever hit that milestone. What could possibly be the reason? Yep, the . EU-U.K. trade talks went nowhere last week, and that’s freaking out some eurozone economies which fear a hard Brexit could further batter the region as it struggles to rebound from coronavirus.
U.S.
The Dow , S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures point to a positive open. Of the trio, the Nasdaq was the only one to close in positive territory yesterday, extending its record gains.
, and futures point to a positive open. Of the trio, the Nasdaq was the only one to close in positive territory yesterday, extending its record gains. It’s Fed decision day. There will almost certainly be no change on interest rates. Investors will be paying close attention to whether the central bank plans to scale back, or continue to pad its balance sheet . When the Fed gets out its checkbook, stocks typically outperform.
day. There will almost certainly be no change on interest rates. Investors will be paying close attention to whether the central bank plans to scale back, or continue to . When the Fed gets out its checkbook, stocks typically outperform. 🎵 “When you’re sure you’ve had enough/ Of this junk/ Well hang on/ …Cause everybody, HERTZ!” 🎵 All apologies to Michael Stipe, but the story of traders piling into the bankrupt car rental company just makes my heart sing. 🎵 “You are not alone.” 🎵
Elsewhere
Gold is up.
is up. The dollar is down.
is down. Crude is falling again, with Brent hovering around $40.50/barrel.
Big Tech
The Nasdaq closed yesterday at 9,953.75. But at around 1:42 pm New York time yesterday, history happened. The tech index topped 10,000, before retreating. By the final bell, it had ratcheted up another all-time high. It’s up nearly 11% on the year.
Today’s chart breaks down the Nasdaq’s incredible run.
Big Tech has weathered the pandemic better than most sectors. And it’s the high-growth FANG stocks that are driving up the broader S&P 500.
In the darkest days of the shutdown, it was Big Tech that kept much of the global economy ticking along. And so the euphoric investor interest in tech stocks makes some sense in a market where logic is hard to find most days.
Okay, there are days in which that enthusiasm might startle the pros. For example, over a recent three-day stretch, the volume of Nasdaq-listed shares trading hands topped 6 billion per day. 6 billion per day. Yes, those count as records too.
Hitting the 10K mark has me a bit nostalgic. I remember when the index first topped 5,000 in March, 2000. I was sitting at my desk in New York, a few blocks from the Twin Towers. It was the height of the dot-com boom and I was writing for The Industry Standard, a mag that was growing fat on ad pages of e-commerce solution providers and portal plays and banner-ad designers and clicks-measuring outfits. This was before Amazon had made its first profit. Before Google had gone public. Before the iPhone, and before 4G, let alone 5G.
We all know what happened next. The bubble popped, and the Nasdaq sunk. It took 15 years for the Nasdaq to climb back to 5,000. It’s taken a little over five years to add another 5K on top of that.
So, who’s got a bet on Nasdaq 20K?
***
Have a nice day, everyone. The incomparable Rey Mashayekhi will take the keys to Bull Sheet tomorrow and Friday. I’ll see you here next week.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
A note from my Fortune colleagues on a timely new initiative:
Many companies are speaking out against racial injustices right now. But how do they fare in their own workplaces? Black employees in the corporate world, we want to hear from you: Please submit your anonymous thoughts and anecdotes here. https://bit.ly/WorkingWhileBlack
As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.
Today's reads
Calling the resistance. There's growing consensus the S&P 500 rally is reaching—if it hasn't already hit—its upper limits. Marc Chaikin, founder of quantitative investment research firm Chaikin Analytics, sees the S&P ceiling at 3,300. Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, is even more cautious, pegging the benchmark's top at 3,250.
Here's why the markets are going up... There's actually a perfectly sensible explanation to the great disconnect between the equities market and the global economy, Fortune's Geoff Colvin explains. "As stock indexes rise or fall in the months ahead, it’s worth remembering that indexes don’t pretend to be anything more than what they are, a gauge of investor sentiment." Exhibit A: the Nasdaq.
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Market candy
21 trillion
The globe-spanning stocks rally from the March low until now has been a monster. A $21 trillion monster. However, there's some disagreement over whether it's a true bull run or a bear market bounce. Here's why some markets observers look at the data and don't like what they see.


fortune--2020-06-11--Amazon bans police from using its facial-recognition technology for a year

The coronavirus has now killed more Americans than every war since the start of the Korean War—combined

Amazon will bar police from using its facial recognition technology for a year amid the nationwide protests over racial injustice and law enforcement bias.
The company said on Wednesday that it would pause selling its nearly four-year-old Rekognition service, which could be used by law enforcement to identify potential criminal suspects.
Many civil rights activists and A.I. researchers worry that A.I.-powered technology like facial recognition software is prone to bias and that it is more inaccurate when used on people of color and on women. They’re also concerned that police, some of whom have a history of racial discrimination, will use the technology to target black and Latinx neighborhoods.
“We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge,” Amazon said in a statement. “We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested.”
Amazon’s moratorium comes days after IBM said it would stop selling facial recognition technology for the foreseeable future. On Monday, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna sent a letter to Congress that called for police reform and also applauded members of the U.S. House for recently introducing legislation intended to curtail police misconduct.
A number of civil rights organizations and even some of Amazon’s investors have urged the e-commerce giant to stop selling facial recognition services to law enforcement. In 2018, The American Civil Liberties Union discovered that Amazon’s Rekognition technology matched 28 members of Congress to criminal mug shots, highlighting flaws in the service in accurately identifying people of color.
At the time, Amazon disputed the ACLU’s facial recognition tests, saying that the organization had used a setting that was too low, resulting in poor accuracy.
Nicole Ozer, the ACLU’s technology and civil liberties director, said in a statement about Amazon’s announcement, “It took two years for Amazon to get to this point, but we’re glad the company is finally recognizing the dangers face recognition poses to Black and Brown communities and civil rights more broadly.”
She continued: “This surveillance technology’s threat to our civil rights and civil liberties will not disappear in a year. Amazon must fully commit to a blanket moratorium on law enforcement use of face recognition until the dangers can be fully addressed, and it must press Congress and legislatures across the country to do the same.”
Meanwhile, Evan Greer, the deputy director of advocacy group Fight for the Future, said in a statement that Amazon’s retreat is “nothing more than a public relations stunt.
“They’ll spend the next year ‘improving’ the accuracy of their facial recognition algorithms, making it even more effective as an Orwellian surveillance tool,” Greer said. “Then they’ll unleash their army of lobbyists to push for industry-friendly ‘regulations’ that assuage public concern while allowing them to profit.”
Although it will bar police, Amazon said it would continue to make its facial recognition technology available to other groups. They include the anti–human trafficking organization Thorn, the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, and Marinus Analytics, which partners with law enforcement to rescue human trafficking victims.


fortune--2020-06-10--The coronavirus has now killed more Americans than every war since the start of the Korean War—combi

The coronavirus has now killed more Americans than every war since the start of the Korean War—combined

More aid ‘ absolutely ’ needed for businesses , says Mnuchin .
Here ’ s what form that could take

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The coronavirus has infected nearly 2 million Americans and claimed 112,311 lives, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
The 112,311 Americans killed by COVID-19 as of Wednesday is higher than the 104,404 troops killed in every war since the start of the Korean War. And soon coronavirus deaths in the U.S. will surpass the 116,516 American lives lost in World War I.
And COVID-19 has already killed more Americans than the 1968 pandemic, which claimed 100,000 lives. But it’s still far below the 675,000 killed by the 1918 Spanish flu.
The deaths resulting from this pandemic and soldiers killed in wars are two very different types of loss. But it does help to understand the sheer magnitude of the virus and its devastating effect on U.S. lives.
The virus is still well below the leading causes of death in the country. Every year, heart disease and cancer are the U.S.’s two leading causes of death. Those are likely to be the top two killers again this year. But COVID-19 deaths are still increasing at a fast clip and will probably be higher than causes like diabetes and Alzheimer’s. States across the nation are easing their stay-at-home orders, including New York starting phase 1 this past Monday. But the easing of lockdowns comes as some states see their coronavirus cases and hospitalizations rise, including in Arizona, Texas, and North Carolina. This has increased fears that the U.S. could see another wave of outbreaks.


fortune--2020-06-10--Coronavirus cases are rising significantly in nine reopened states

For the latest data on coronavirus cases by state, please check out our updated map here.
With businesses and services continuing to open up across the country, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, issued a reality check about the current state of the coronavirus pandemic:
“In a period of four months, it has devastated the whole world,” he said to an audience of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. “And it isn’t over yet.”
Indeed. As summer begins and city and state governments lift COVID-19 related restrictions, statistics in many places appear to be trending the wrong way.
In nine states, the total number of new cases of COVID-19 reported on June 9 was at least 150 more than two weeks prior according to a Fortune analysis of New York Times data. Texas—one of the first states to lift pandemic restrictions—had the largest increase in new cases, reporting 1,945 on June 9 compared to 1,053 new cases on May 26. North Carolina, which reported just 191 new cases on May 26, posted 812 new cases yesterday. Aside from Utah (where gubernatorial candidate John Huntsman, Jr. is among the newly infected), the states with the most worrying figures are in the South. Some leaders have cited increased testing as a factor in the increased case numbers.
Other states, primarily in the Northeast and Northwest, offer a more hopeful picture. New cases reported on those dates had decreased by more than 150 in 10 states. Virginia had the most dramatic decline, with new case reports falling from 1,615 on May 26—a record high, due in part, reportedly, to a delay in reporting—to 487 on June 9. New cases reported in Illinois, meanwhile, dropped by 460 cases between those dates, reporting 776 new cases on June 9, down from 1,258 two weeks prior.
The number of new cases reported across the country yesterday was essentially flat from two weeks prior—18,644 compared to 18,825 on May 26. With the nation’s total cases of COVID-19 fast approaching 2 million, and disease rates across the globe, rising faster than ever, this pandemic is, alas, far from over.


fortune--2020-06-10--Grubhub to be acquired for $7.3 billion as food delivery wars heat up

Europe’s Just Eat Takeaway.com agreed to acquire U.S.-based Grubhub for $7.3 billion, in a deal that creates one of the world’s largest meal-delivery companies as the coronavirus pandemic drives a surge in orders.
Amsterdam-based Just Eat Takeaway said it will pay $75.15 per share for Grubhub in an all-stock deal with an equity value of $7.3 billion. Grubhub’s stock price rose about 6% in extended trading to more than $62, while the European company fell about 13%.
The deal sidelines Uber Technologies, which had been in acquisition talks with Grubhub for at least a month. Political pressure raised questions about whether U.S. regulators would approve such a deal. The two companies had nearly aligned on a price but remained at odds over other issues, including terms of a breakup fee for Grubhub if the deal couldn’t be completed, people familiar with the matter said last month.
Grubhub will launch Just Eat Takeaway into the U.S. market, broadening its already-global reach that includes Australia, Brazil and Canada, in addition to its home base in Europe. Jitse Groen, the Dutch billionaire who created Takeaway in 2000 in his university dorm room, has been looking to expand aggressively over the last year. Less than two months ago, Takeaway received antitrust clearance from the U.K. for its $8 billion acquisition of Just Eat.
Matt Maloney, Grubhub’s chief executive officer, helped start the company in 2004 and led a merger with a competitor, Seamless, in 2013 to create what was then a dominant food delivery website. But Grubhub has fallen far since then. DoorDash Inc., the current leader in the U.S., and Uber have eaten up market share, leaving Grubhub with 23% as of the end of April, according to market research firm Second Measure.
Even as the pandemic has led to a surge in demand for food delivery as people spend more time at home, the industry has been defined by fierce competition. Profit margins are tight or nonexistent due to the stiff competition to sign the most popular restaurants and add customers. Gross food sales for Grubhub rose 8% to $1.6 billion in the first quarter, and the company reported a net loss of about $33 million. Uber’s gross bookings for food delivery increased 52% to $4.68 billion in the same period, but the division’s loss also rose.
Analysts have long said the unprofitable model in food delivery is unsustainable and expected consolidation. For Uber, losing the deal is a blow to the company’s plan to increase revenue and eventually turn a profit from food delivery. That strategy was especially urgent with the pandemic lifting food delivery while decimating Uber’s main business of ride hailing. The company has cut jobs and side businesses as a result. It was relying on deals to achieve a top position in the markets where it operates.
In an emailed statement, a spokesman for Uber said the company believes the industry needs consolidation but that it’s not interested in “doing any deal, at any price, with any player.”
Tensions between management of Uber and Grubhub were boiling over in recent weeks, a person familiar with the discussions said. Among the points of contention: the roles for Maloney and other Grubhub executives at Uber and the fate of a Washington charm offensive to win over regulators that was expected to take a year and a half, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.
Just Eat Takeaway said Maloney will join the board and run the North America business. “Matt and I are the two remaining food delivery veterans in the sector, having started our respective businesses at the turn of the century, albeit on two different continents,” Groen, the Just Eat Takeaway founder, said in a statement. “Both of us have a firm belief that only businesses with high-quality and profitable growth will sustain in our sector.”


fortune--2020-06-10--More aid ‘absolutely’ needed for businesses, says Mnuchin. Here’s what form that could take

More—and more targeted—aid is necessary for businesses hard-hit by shutdowns and struggling to reopen, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said before the Senate Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee on Wednesday.
As lawmakers examine what further needs to be done to help businesses through the crisis, the secretary said, “We’re open-minded, but we absolutely believe small businesses, and, by the way, many big businesses in certain industries, are absolutely going to need more help,” Mnuchin said at the first oversight hearing alongside Small Business Administration administrator Jovita Carranza on the progress of the implementation of the $670 billion Paycheck Protection Program and other relief programs on Wednesday.
The secretary said the administration wants to work on providing further help, whether through the PPP, tax credits, or other options. He added that “another bipartisan legislation to put more money into the economy” was likely going to be needed, targeting the restaurant, hotel, and travel industries, which are struggling to reopen.
As a central piece of the small-business emergency aid, the Paycheck Protection Program thus far has doled out over $511 billion in funds, as nearly 4.5 million small businesses have received loans, per the latest data from the SBA. Mnuchin also said Wednesday that more direct stimulus and a reexamination of enhanced unemployment benefits may also be necessary.
Although the program’s rollout has been mired in controversy and confusion, senators on both sides of the aisle agreed the latest unemployment report from May, which saw the unemployment rate drop to 13.3% with some 2.5 million jobs regained, was the result, in part, to jobs saved through the PPP, and Mnuchin said he was “pleasantly surprised” at the numbers. Sen. Marco Rubio, the committee’s chair, estimated during the hearing that at the current loan numbers, the PPP saved roughly 50 million jobs, and declared, “Without PPP, we would have faced the extinction of small business as we know it.”
Still, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said 13% unemployment was “unacceptable” and that while extra funds remain untapped from the PPP, “this is an opportunity that we should take advantage of for those businesses that need continued help.”
More targeted aid
Lawmakers mulled additional aid and stimulus for businesses, as senators including Ben Cardin, Chris Coons, and Shaheen are planning to propose a bill enabling businesses that already received and spent a PPP loan to get another one, meant for “genuinely” small businesses that had taken a “significant” hit to their revenue owing to the crisis. Mnuchin backed the idea of more funding for businesses in general, but noted it “needs to be much more targeted, particularly to the industries and small businesses that are having the most difficulty reopening,” he said, restaurants and hospitality businesses chief among them.
Senators also want to direct more funds to minority-owned businesses and provide easier access to the funds for small-business owners with prior felony convictions.
Senators raised concerns at the hearing about the program’s reach among minority-owned businesses, as Sen. Ben Cardin, the committee’s ranking member, said in an opening statement, “While the PPP’s success is a laudable accomplishment, there have been challenges in the program that have come into sharper focus given the massive protests our nation has witnessed over the past two weeks…For black small-business owners and other underserved entrepreneurs, the wealth gap is exacerbated by disparities in small-business lending.” He urged the SBA and Treasury to provide guidance to lenders to “prioritize underserved markets,” as recent reports show that black employees were hurt far more by unemployment.
Lack of transparency
Senators have continually asked for more transparency and information from the SBA, including the SBA recipients for the PPP and demographic breakdowns of who received loans. Cardin said during the hearing that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has also had issues getting information about the small-business programs from the administration, but Mnuchin indicated the administration was working with the office to get the necessary information. Although the senators and Mnuchin agreed that more aid would likely be necessary, Cardin asked, “How can we know which businesses still need help if we do not know which businesses have received help?”
Yet despite continual requests for more information, Mnuchin said during testimony that names and amounts of recipients would not be provided as they are “proprietary” and in some cases “confidential.”
Meanwhile, the program recently got a complete revamp—Congress passed a bill last week that extends the deadline to use funds from eight to 24 weeks and requires businesses to use 60% of funds on payroll (down from 75%). With those new rules in place, Mnuchin indicated more businesses who had been on the “sidelines” would likely now take the loans.
As of SBA’s latest report, there are still over $130 billion of funds yet to be allocated. But with the June 30 deadline to apply approaching, Mnuchin indicated he would be working with Congress to use the funds in other ways.


fortune--2020-06-10--J.K. Rowling says she won’t ‘bow down’ to critics of her comments about the transgender community

“Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling said she refuses to “bow down” to criticism about her recent comments on transgender people.
Rowling published a lengthy post on her blog website Wednesday in response to the backlash and her concerns over “new trans activism.” She has been under hefty scrutiny about her thoughts on transgender identity from the LGBTQ community along with Eddie Redmayne and Daniel Radcliffe, who starred in the Harry Potter film franchise.
“I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it,” she said.
Rowling drew outrage Saturday on Twitter when she criticized an opinion piece published by the website Devex, a media platform for the global development community, that used the phrase “people who menstruate.” Rowling implied it should have said “women.”
The famed author continued with another thread speaking about the concept of biological sex. She said she felt compelled to tweet her thoughts about her experience with domestic abuse and sexual assault.
“I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces,” she said in her post Wednesday.
Rowling’s tweets caused a firestorm of responses from the LGBTQ community and others who were upset with her words. A Harry Potter fan group tweeted its disapproval of Rowling’s post and encouraged followers to donate to a group that supports back transgender women.
Redmayne, who starred in two “Fantastic Beast” films of the “Harry Potter prequel series, disagreed with Rowling’s comments on Twitter. The Oscar-winning actor said that his transgender friends and colleagues are tired of the “constant questioning of their identities.”
“Trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary identities are valid,” said Redmayne, who played a transgender woman in the 2015 film “The Danish Girl,” which earned him an Oscar nomination. He joined Radcliffe who also disapproved of Rowling’s thoughts on transgender identity.
On Monday, Radcliffe published a lengthy essay about Rowling’s tweets on a website for a nonprofit organization dedicated to crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBTQ people. He said “transgender women are women.”
“Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I,” the actor said.


fortune--2020-06-10--A second wave of COVID-19 is emerging as states reopen

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A second wave of COVID-19 cases is emerging in the U.S., raising alarms as new infections push the overall count past 2 million Americans.
Texas on Wednesday reported 2,504 new coronavirus cases, the highest one-day total since the pandemic emerged.
A month into its reopening, Florida this week reported 8,553 new cases — the most of any seven-day period.
California’s hospitalizations are at their highest since May 13 and have risen in nine of the past 10 days.
A fresh onslaught of the novel coronavirus is bringing challenges for residents and the economy in pockets across the U.S. The localized surges have raised alarms among experts even as they’re masked by the nation’s overall case count, which early this week rose just under 1%, the smallest increase since March.
“There is a new wave coming in parts of the country,” said Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “It’s small and it’s distant so far, but it’s coming.”
Though the outbreaks come weeks into state reopenings, it’s not clear that they’re linked to increased economic activity. In Georgia, where hair salons, tattoo parlors and gyms have been operating for a month and a half, case numbers have plateaued, flummoxing experts.
Puzzling differences show up even within states. In California, which imposed a stay-at-home order in late March, San Francisco saw zero cases for three consecutive days this week, while Los Angeles County reported well over half of the state’s new cases. The White House Coronavirus Task Force has yet to see any relationship between reopening and increased cases of COVID-19, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said on a podcast.
But in some states, rising numbers outpace increases in testing, raising concerns about whether the virus can be controlled and whether it could overwhelm hospitals. It will take a couple of weeks to know, but by then “it’s going to be pretty late” to respond, Toner said.
Since the pandemic initially swept the U.S. starting early this year, almost 2 million people have been confirmed infected and more than 110,000 have died.
After a national shutdown that helped arrest the spread, rising illness had been expected as restrictions loosened. The trend has been observed across 22 states in recent weeks, though for many the increases are steady but slow. Because overall levels are low, outbreaks in settings where the virus spreads easily, like nursing homes or meatpacking plants, could be influencing the numbers in an outsize way.
But experts see evidence of a second wave building in Arizona, Texas, Florida and California. Arizona “sticks out like a sore thumb in terms of a major problem,” said Jeffrey Morris, director of the division of biostatistics at University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
Arizona’s daily tally of new cases has abruptly spiked in the last two weeks, hitting an all-time high of 1,187 on June 2.
This week, its Department of Health Services sent hospitals a letter urging them to activate emergency plans and prepare to staff beds. The department’s director, Cara Christ, told a Phoenix television station that she was concerned about the rising case count and percentage of people tested who are found to be positive. The state, she said, has no current plans to shut down businesses a second time, but she didn’t rule it out.
“That’s not part of our discussion—that’s not on the table for what we’re looking at—but we know that we have a whole range of options,” she said in an interview Tuesday with Fox 10 news.
Mobile Texans
In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott was criticized for an aggressive reopening last month. Mobile-phone data show activity by residents is rebounding toward pre-COVID levels, according to Morris’s collaborators at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab.
That could reflect a perception that the virus wasn’t “ever a big threat,” said Morris, who recently moved to Philadelphia after 20 years in Houston. Brazoria County, near Galveston on the Gulf Coast, has seen just a 6% reduction in visits to nonessential businesses, compared with a roughly 50% reduction in New York City and Los Angeles County, according to the PolicyLab.
Bucking the trend is Georgia, which was the first U.S. state to reopen. COVID cases there have plateaued.
Despite some local outbreaks, “their sea levels did not rise,” said David Rubin, director of the PolicyLab, which has been modeling the virus’s spread in local areas around the country. “They’ve kind of held this fragile equilibrium.”
Creeping in
California was the first state to shut down its economy over the coronavirus, after one of the nation’s earliest outbreaks in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has been slower than most to reopen.
Even so, the state has also seen the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 rebound in the past two weeks, as more commerce picks up. Case counts are climbing too, although state officials attribute that more to increased testing and say it’s a sign of their preparation.
In part, rising numbers represent the virus spreading into places that largely avoided the first round of infections, including rural Imperial County in California’s southeastern desert. Yet the contagion also remains present in some places that bore the brunt of the first wave, including Los Angeles County. Hospitalizations there are lower than at the start of May, but deaths remain stubbornly high, with 500 dying in the past week alone.
Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County public health director, said in an interview that the region has likely not seen the end of the first wave. And despite concerns about infections coming out of mass demonstrations that have gripped the sprawling city, she thinks the reopening of the economy will have a bigger impact.
“We’re not at the tail end of anything,” she said. “We never had a huge peak. We’ve kind of been within this band. We’re not in decline, we’re kind of holding our own in ways that protect the health-care system.” But, she added, “go to Venice and see the crowds, and you’ll understand why I have concerns.”
Another onslaught
The U.S. has long been bracing for another wave of the coronavirus, but future outbreaks are likely to take a different shape. Precautions like social distancing and mask-wearing, as well as careful behavior by individuals, are likely to have staying power in many parts of the country even as economies reopen.
But experts are also steeling for autumn, when changes in weather and back-to-school plans could have damaging repercussions.
“The second wave isn’t going to mirror the first wave exactly,” said Lance Waller, a professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta. “The distancing works to dampen things at the beginning, and it’s not snapping back to exactly the same thing as before, because we’re not exactly the way we were before.”
Daniel Lucey, a fellow at the Infectious Diseases Society of America, compared the virus’ new paradigm to a day at the beach: The U.S. has been bracing for another “high tide” like what engulfed New York City. But today is a low tide and “the waves are always coming in.”


fortune--2020-06-10--Elon Musk’s Boring Company may tunnel under even more of Las Vegas

Elon Musk’s Loop transportation project is gaining a little bit more momentum in Las Vegas.
Less than a month ago, Musk’s tunnel company, the Boring Company, said it had finished digging a pair of tunnels that will link the Las Vegas Convention Center buildings. Now two Las Vegas Strip hotels are making a bid to be part of the planned transit network.
Wynn Resorts and Genting Group submitted applications to authorities in Clark County, Nevada, to connect their hotels to the convention center via Musk’s underground tubes. Last month, Musk previewed the effort, tweeting “Boring Co. will also connect Vegas hotels & airport.” A spokesman for McCarran International Airport said there were no current plans to develop a Loop there.
Genting Group’s Resorts World Las Vegas, whose hotel complex is under construction and is slated to open next year, said it expected construction on its section of the Loop tunnel system would begin later this year, pending approval by county commissioners. The Wynn said in a statement emailed to reporters that it expected travel time to the convention center would take less than two minutes, but didn’t say when it expected the project to start.
A spokeswoman for Resorts World said fares would be affordable but hadn’t been finalized, and she declined to give a figure for the overall cost of the project. A spokeswoman for the Wynn said it was premature to confirm additional details. The Boring Company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Like the convention center, both hotels are located in unincorporated Las Vegas, which means they can bypass city approvals because they are not technically within city limits. Last year, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, who sits on the board of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, cited Boring Company’s lack of experience and opposed the project, but she was outvoted by the other board members.


fortune--2020-06-10--Ava DuVernay is a new member of the film academy’s Board of Governors

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay has been elected to the film academy’s Board of Governors for the first time.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its new members Wednesday, which include the “Selma” filmmaker, “A Star is Born” producer Lynette Howell Taylor and casting director Debra Zane. The academy has increased the number of women and people of color on the board.
Incumbent governors reelected include Whoopi Goldberg, “Dolemite Is My Name” screenwriter Larry Karaszewski and Participant Media CEO David Linde among others.
The organization that puts on the Oscars said that the number of women on the 54-person board has gone from 25 to 26 and people of color from 11 to 12.
The Board of Governors represent each of the academy’s 17 branches and work to set the organization’s strategy, finances and “fulfillment of its mission.”
DuVernay, who was nominated for her documentary “13th,” has been an active and vocal member of the film academy for years. She recently backed up David Oyelowo’s assertion that members of the academy threated to squash “Selma’s” awards chances after they wore T-shirts with the words “I Can’t Breathe” to the film’s New York premiere in 2014 in honor of Eric Garner.
The academy responded on Twitter condemning the threats, writing, “Ava & David, we hear you. Unacceptable. We’re committed to progress.”
The Oscars this year are facing unprecedented challenges as a result of the pandemic. In April, over a month after theaters closed and a number of film festivals were cancelled as a safety precaution, the Academy announced revised eligibility requirements for this year, allowing movies that debuted on a streaming service to be considered for an Oscar.
Academy president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson told the AP at the time that their response to COVID-19 will continue to be fluid. No decisions have been made yet as to plans for the annual Governors Awards, which are typically held in the fall in Los Angeles. And at the moment the 93rd Academy Awards are still a go, set for Feb. 28, 2021, in Los Angeles.


fortune--2020-06-10--Fed says interest rates likely to stay near zero through 2022

The Federal Reserve says it will keep buying bonds to maintain low borrowing rates and support the U.S. economy in the midst of a recession. And it says nearly all the Fed’s policymakers foresee no rate hike through 2022.
The Fed has cut its benchmark short-term rate to near zero. Keeping its rate ultra-low for more than two more years could make it easier for consumers and businesses to borrow and spend enough to sustain an economy depressed by business shutdowns and high unemployment.
The central bank noted in a statement after its policy meeting ended Wednesday that the viral outbreak has caused a sharp fall in economic activity and surge in job losses.
Fed officials estimate that the economy will shrink 6.5% this year, in line with other forecasts, before expanding 5% in 2021. It foresees sees the unemployment rate at 9.3%, near the peak of the last recession, by the end of this year. The rate is now 13.3%.
At a virtual news conference Wednesday afternoon, Chairman Jerome Powell is expected to drive home the message that the economy remains in need of extraordinary help despite recent despite glimmers of a possible recovery, including a government report Friday that employers surprisingly added jobs in May.
Since March, the Fed has slashed its benchmark short-term rate, bought $2.1 trillion in Treasury and mortgage bonds to inject cash into markets and rolled out nine lending programs to try to keep credit flowing smoothly. Most analysts expect the Fed to pause and assess the economic landscape before embarking on any further actions, which could come at September’s meeting.
The Fed’s actions are credited with having helped fuel an extraordinary rally in the stock market, which has nearly regained its pre-pandemic high after a dizzying plunge in March.
And by committing to buy corporate bonds, thereby reinvigorating the market for such securities, the Fed has also ensured that corporations can continue to borrow. Its initiatives also include a first-ever program through which the Fed is buying state and local government debt to support the municipal bond market.
Many economists say those steps have prevented the downturn from worsening, by keeping credit flowing. This week, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of recessions, declared that the U.S. economy entered a recession in February.
One challenge for the Fed now is to shift its focus from the emergency actions it took in March and April to try to carry the economy through a shutdown, to what steps it will take to stimulate a recovery as businesses increasingly reopen.
In remarks last month, Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida stressed that the viral outbreak remains a menace to the economy. But he also indicated that Fed officials want to see a few more months of data to gauge the economy’s health before determining their next steps.
For now, Fed officials likely feel little pressure to act further because few investors expect them to make any changes to their benchmark rate anytime soon. Though the Fed could technically cut rates into negative territory, Powell has largely rejected negative rates as an option.
Still, there are additional steps the Fed can take. The Fed could specify how long it’s prepared to keep short-term rates near zero and how much bond buying it will do to hold down longer-term rates. This guidance can help the economy by reducing the likelihood that investors will send longer-term rates up.
In 2011, as the economy struggled to recover from the 2008-2009 recession, the Fed for the first time set a specific date for any potential rate hikes, saying it would keep rates low “at least through mid-2013.” That date was then extended twice until mid-2015.
But the Fed in 2012 replaced its date-based guidance. Instead, it said it would keep rates at nearly zero “at least as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6.5%.” Most economists considered this approach more effective because it assured that economic progress would have to be made before the Fed would tighten credit.
The Fed has bought $2.2 trillion in bonds since March, when financial markets locked up as investors rushed to unload Treasurys and other securities in exchange for cash. The markets are now largely functioning. and the Fed’s purchases have slowed.
Yields on the 10-year Treasury note, which are near historic lows, could rise as the government issues trillions in Treasury securities to fund an annual deficit projected to reach $3.7 trillion this budget year.


fortune--2020-06-10--Best Buy ends appointment-only shopping

Best Buy ends appointment-only shopping

Ultimately, big-box stores are too big to fill with an appointment-only service.
Best Buy said on Tuesday it was ending its requirement next week to have an appointment to enter its stores, something it had implemented a few weeks earlier to ensure the safety of customers during the pandemic. Under that practice, a shopper had a renewable 30-minute appointment, during which the person was chaperoned by a Best Buy employee.
Now, the electronics retailer said in a new blog post, people can “safely and freely” roam the stores, but the company will limit the number of shoppers inside at any one time to 25% of capacity—typically 60 shoppers—depending on the individual store.
“We’re now confident we can provide a safe experience for shoppers who want to visit our stores to browse, see tech products firsthand, and get helpful advice from our Blue Shirts or Geek Squad Agents,” said Ray Sliva, president of retail, referring to Best Buy’s sales staff.
Best Buy tried to put a positive spin on appointment shopping, saying it would give customers coming in for high-ticket items that required expertise an employee’s undivided attention. But the tactic, introduced at a time Best Buy was offering only curbside pickup and direct e-commerce, was destined to be a short-term way to drum up more in-store business and limit lost sales of more involved items like appliances and home theaters.
As Fortune reported last week, retail analysts thought the move would cost Best Buy impulse buying and create impediments to shopping: If you were in the market for both a new camera and a home theater, would you have needed to make two appointments? Or if you’re the kind of shopper who feels super guilty if you don’t buy something after spending time with a sales associate, you might not bother at all.
At the same time, it was clear that it was better than having no in-store sales. Best Buy was among the most successful brick-and-mortar retailers at preserving a good chunk of its business while it voluntarily closed its stores, but given the size of its stores and margins, it needs a certain amount of volume from in-store shopping. (Best Buy was deemed essential at the start of the pandemic.) The company’s strong e-commerce will help it pick up the slack from lower in-store sales, much as has been the case for Target and Home Depot, which are also limiting store traffic.
Waiving the appointment requirement does not mean Best Buy’s cash registers will be ringing up big sales. But at least it brings the company a step closer to normal at a time when brick-and-mortar chains are trying to keep shoppers safe—catching a virus is not a good customer experience, after all—even though getting back to pre-pandemic business levels seems far off because of concerns about the economy and the pandemic. The spike in new infections reported Wednesday in Arizona and Texas are a reminder of how volatile a situation this is for any business.
Macy’s, for instance, said this week that business was recovering more quickly than normal at its 450 reopened stores so far. But the department store, which said it had an operating loss of nearly $1 billion in the first quarter, remains very far from normal business levels that could make operating its massive stores profitable again. Macy’s executives themselves suggested a full sales recovery remained far off.
“We do not see a return to normalized trends until well into 2021 and possibly not until 2022,” interim chief financial officer Felicia Williams said in an interview on Tuesday with Cowen analyst Oliver Chen.


fortune--2020-06-10--The Coronavirus Economy: A Colorado fly-fishing shop owner’s hopes for a new season

Tim Hill owns Colorado Fly Fishing Guides in the Rocky Mountain town of Leadville. He had a thriving two-season business, running a fly-fishing shop in the warmer months, and renting ski gear in the winter to tourists flocking to the region’s famous slopes.
Then came COVID-19.
Gov. Jared Polis ordered ski resorts in Vail, Breckenridge, and other parts of Colorado to shut down on March 14, crippling Hill’s operation even before a general stay-at-home order further closed the state weeks later. Local merchants, including Hill, received more bad news in May when authorities announced the cancellation of the Leadville Race Series, a series of extreme competitions that draws athletes from around the world.
As he reopens for fly-fishing season, Hill shared his thoughts with Fortune for a special series, The Coronavirus Economy, on how to run a business in times of crisis, and how those in charge should protect public health while also preserving the economy.
Here is a record of the conversation, lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Tim Hill owns Colorado Fly Fishing Guides, in the Rocky Mountain town of Leadville, Colo. Courtesy of Tim Hill
Fortune: How are you feeling about the coming season?
Hill: That’s the big question. I want to say we’ll probably be all right for the summer just because fly-fishing naturally lends itself to social distances in the first place. I think we’ll have more in-state clientele and probably see more customers looking to do something within driving distance—I don’t anticipate people are going to major attractions like Hawaii or Disneyland, and I’m hoping that it might be to our advantage.
We usually guide a few hundred people a year. Typically, our guiding customers are from out of state: the Midwest, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, a lot of folks from Texas. Later in the season, we get a lot of the people who come up for the race series, which we won’t have this summer. We’d guide some of the athletes and the people who support them. It’ll be interesting to see what happens this season without those events.
Interestingly enough, May has been stronger than in the past. We were able to let people in the store on May 1, but not guide anyone out of county until May 15 or so. After that, we’ve actually ended up guiding more people than we ever had. I don’t know if it’s because people aren’t doing other things, not traveling and stuff. Most of those people have been from in state.
How did the COVID-19 outbreak affect your business?
What was most affected was the ski shop part of it. When the ski areas closed down, we missed spring break, which counts for 30% of our net income. We took a pretty big shot there.
We were impacted pretty harshly. I haven’t spent any advertising dollars since the outbreak. That part of the budget went away. That’s just part of the reality of it, know what I mean? Some things get cut out.
How did this affect the people you employ? Did the Paycheck Protection Program help?
I had to put staff on unemployment insurance until I got a PPP loan. The first round of funding was pretty confusing for a guy like me because I don’t really deal with that kind of stuff. I’m not really connected with lenders and that whole process. The guidance was really unclear until it was too late to apply. Once I got better guidance, I was able to apply for the second round. It took a couple weeks. I used my local bank, Pueblo Bank & Trust. They were submitting applications 24 hours a day.
Then I was able to put these guys back to work. But that only covers two months’ payroll. I don’t think a lot of people realize what the cost of business is. You have supplies, equipment, licensing, advertising, fees, inventory you have to keep stocked. And PPP doesn’t cover that.
Are you afraid of another outbreak?
Yes, that’s my biggest fear right now—what the ski season will look like next winter. They may limit capacity. And if it gets bad, they could shut them down again. And if that happens, we’ll be in trouble.
What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs? For government officials?
I guess what I would share is about the ability to stay patient and stay persistent, and don’t give up.
The other thing I would say is that I think it’s important to communicate with your local health departments. Local governments have left all the policy on reopening and keeping the community safe in their hands. And health departments are run by health experts, not economic experts.
It helps if business owners remind them they have a responsibility to protect economic health too. In other words, you can’t take one side or the other. You’re not going to save every life just like you’re not going to save every business, but you have to come to somewhere in between.


fortune--2020-06-10--Why black women are taking over white women’s Instagram accounts today

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As you scroll through Instagram today, you may see some new faces and hear some new voices. That’s the point of the #ShareTheMicNow campaign running June 10.
“When the world listens to women, it listens to white women,” #ShareTheMicNow’s mission statement reads. “For far too long, Black women’s voices have gone unheard, even though they’ve been using their voices loudly for centuries to enact change.”
To center black women’s voices, work, and experiences, black activists and academics are taking over white women’s feeds. For instance, campaign organizer and Endeavor chief marketing officer Bozoma Saint John will speak to Kourtney Kardashian’s followers all day today.
Over 40 pairs of women, with a reach of more than 300 million followers, will share the mic today with the aim of amplifying black voices working toward change in America’s racist systems and reaching an audience they previously hadn’t.
The campaign also hopes to build relationships among women “so that our future activism is born from relationships,” the campaign’s press release reads.
The group of women includes household names such as actress Julia Roberts, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Soccer’s Alex Morgan, model Ashley Graham, comedian Chelsea Handler, and designer Diane Von Furstenberg. It also spotlights some of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, including Chase consumer banking CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett, Endeavor CMO Bozoma Saint John, and Thrive Global CEO Arianna Huffington.
To participate, you can follow the white women in the graphics below and @sharethemicnow on Instagram today. But make sure to follow the black women taking over their feeds via their personal handles to keep up with the conversation on race and change beyond today.
Courtesy of #ShareTheMicNow
Courtesy of #ShareTheMicNow
Courtesy of #ShareTheMicNow
Courtesy of #ShareTheMicNow
Courtesy of #ShareTheMicNow
Courtesy of #ShareTheMicNow
Courtesy of #ShareTheMicNow
Courtesy of #ShareTheMicNow
Courtesy of #ShareTheMicNow


fortune--2020-06-10--There’s been a strange fluctuation in the health care job market during the pandemic

At the end of May, the health care sector found itself in a weird situation.
An industry that has been one of the major drivers of job growth over the past decade has seen precipitous declines related to the coronavirus pandemic. Hospitals have lost revenue as Americans have been reluctant to go into medical facilities; insurers have experienced a strange windfall, largely thanks to the complicated nature of U.S. health care.
But the situation seems to be changing as states and locales begin to reopen businesses. And, weirdly enough, the dentistry business seems to be leading the way for the resurgence.
For context: “Across all health care services, which do not include pharmaceutical drugs, [health care] expenditures were down 12% in March 2020 relative to last year, with particularly sharp drops in expenditures on dental services (–27%) and medical laboratories (–28%),” reads a report published about health care spending by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
The latest jobs report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) paints a picture of how things are changing.
Nuances abound here given the strange times and questions about methodology. But the federal government’s numbers indicate that the gradual reopening of health care businesses, especially for dental services, is driving a major increase in the numbers.
“Health care employment increased by 312,000 over the month, with gains in offices of dentists (+245,000), offices of other health practitioners (+73,000), and offices of physicians (+51,000),” wrote the BLS in its latest update. “Elsewhere in health care, job losses continued in nursing and residential care facilities (–37,000) and hospitals (–27,000).”
The decline for hospitals and residential nursing homes may not be surprising given that many people are nervous about physically going to a large medical facility of any kind in the midst of a pandemic.
On the flip side, urgent-care centers appear to be attracting more patients as cities begin their reopening processes.
What’s less clear is the long-term effect the pandemic will have on the industry at large. Health care is a strange collection of interdependent yet combative entities—the current situation appears to be exposing its rifts.


fortune--2020-06-10--Netflix adds Black Lives Matter collection as platforms grapple with outdated racist content

Netflix is promoting a new Black Lives Matter category in an effort to highlight “powerful and complex narratives about the Black experience.”
“When you log on to Netflix today, you will see a carefully curated list of titles that only begin to tell the complex and layered stories about racial injustice and Blackness in America,” the streaming giant tweeted Wednesday.
The collection promoted by the streaming media company includes original programming such as Dear White People (the series), When They See Us, and Michelle Obama’s Becoming documentary as well as noteworthy films such as Malcolm X, Moonlight, and She’s Gotta Have It.
The collection does not feature The Help, which went to No. 1 as the streamer’s most-watched movie last week, amid global protests that broke out after George Floyd, a black man, died in police custody. The 2011 film, based on the 2009 book by Kathryn Stockett, has been criticized for its white savior narrative by people from critics to star Viola Davis.
“When we say ‘Black Lives Matter,’ we also mean ‘Black storytelling matters,’” Netflix tweeted.
Denzel Washington in a scene from Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X.” The 1992 film is among the titles promoted under the new Black Lives Matter collection on Netflix. Largo International NV—Getty Images
Netflix isn’t alone in trying to elevate black stories at this time—films like Just Mercy and Selma are now available to rent for free this month. Music streaming services like Spotify also adjusted their playlists in response to the protests.
Content providers are also removing or making adjustments to shows and movies that feature racist stereotypes. HBO Max has temporarily removed 1939’s Gone With the Wind from its catalog, saying that when the film returns, it will feature “a discussion of its historical context.” (Similar moves have been done before—Disney+ included such disclaimers for films like Dumbo and Peter Pan when it launched, while DVD releases of Looney Tunes featured Whoopi Goldberg explaining the history of the prejudiced imagery seen in those cartoons.)
Meanwhile Netflix has taken down four Chris Lilley comedy shows from its Australia and New Zealand platforms, and Little Britain has been pulled by Netflix, the BBC, and Britbox because of blackface sketches. Additionally, as public outrage continues over police misconduct, long-running series Cops has officially been canceled by Paramount Network.


fortune--2020-06-10--Dr. Fauci’s worst nightmare? We’re living it

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The top U.S. infectious disease specialist called the coronavirus pandemic his “worst nightmare” and warned that the deadly outbreak is far from over.
In just a few months, COVID-19 has devastated countries around the world, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday in online comments to the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, an industry group.
Societies, businesses and economies have all suffered as people have sequestered themselves to prevent the spread of the virus and inundation of health systems with severely ill patients. Now that some nations and states are emerging from lockdowns, there’s still a risk that the virus will also return, Fauci said.
The infection won’t “burn itself out with mere public health measures,” he said. “We’re going to need a vaccine for the entire world, billions and billions of doses.”
The U.S. federal government is planning to fund and undertake large-scale studies of three experimental coronavirus vaccines starting this summer, Dow Jones reported, citing an interview with John Mascola, director of the vaccine research center at NIAID.
Three projects
Moderna Inc.’s final-stage trial is expected to start in July, followed by a test of Oxford University and AstraZeneca PLC’s shot in August. Johnson & Johnson said in a statement that it has accelerated its schedule, with the first human trial now set to begin in the second half of July, instead of the previous schedule for starting trials in September. The trial will include 1,045 healthy adults and will be conducted in the U.S. and Belgium.
With small studies already underway and definitive trials on the verge of starting, it may be possible for some high-risk people to get access to the immunizations under expedited policies from regulators before the end of the year. If the initial signs suggest the injections can protect against infection and no signs of harm emerge, public health officials believe it may be possible to start vaccinating larger groups of people, including health-care workers, by early next year.
Ultimately, even if vaccines work well in trials, the big challenge will be producing and distributing enough of the shots to meet demand from around the world.
Fauci, the head of the infectious disease agency since 1984, has emerged early on as one of the leading voices in the battle by President Donald Trump’s administration against the pandemic. His statements have sometime run counter to the president’s on topics such as when and whether restrictions should be eased, and he and the White House virus task force have recently been sidelined with fewer appearances before the media.
The U.S. has more coronavirus cases than any other country, with about 2 million, and leads the world in pandemic deaths with more than 112,000. Meanwhile, as states such as New Jersey lift stay-at-home orders, Trump has cheered the revival of U.S. employment numbers and stock-market gains.
More than 130 vaccines are in development against the coronavirus, according to the World Health Organization.


fortune--2020-06-10--Starbucks speeding up rollout of pickup-only stores in response to pandemic

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Smaller is likely to be better for Starbucks when it comes to a chunk of its future fleet of cafés in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The coffee shop giant said on Wednesday that it is fast-tracking its plan to build a sizable fleet of U.S. and Canadian Starbucks Pickup stores, smaller locations where customers can only collect a mobile order placed ahead of time but not sit, within 18 to 24 months. That is faster than the initial goal of three to five years and reflects what is expected to be the public’s enduring wariness of sitting in close quarters in cafés, coupled with the original goal of faster and more efficient service, particularly for rush-hour customers in big cities.
“This strategy aligns closely with rapidly evolving customer preferences that have accelerated as a result of COVID-19, including higher levels of mobile ordering, more contactless pickup experiences and reduced in-store congestion, all of which naturally allow for greater physical distancing,” Starbucks chief executive Kevin Johnson and finance chief Patrick Grismer wrote in a letter to investors and employees.
As of now, the company has only a pair of Starbucks Pickup locations up and running, one near New York’s Penn Station, a major transportation hub, and the other in Toronto. A third, at New York’s Grand Central Terminal is coming soon. While Starbucks had planned to fine-tune the concept before expanding it, the company is now putting its foot on the gas to roll them out.
All told, Starbucks plans to renovate or move 400 traditional cafés in the U.S. and Canada in the next 18 months, many of which will be turned into pickup stores. In addition, the company aims to open 40 to 50 new pickup-only stores in that time. Some 80% of Starbucks’ U.S. transactions were on-the-go (mobile orders and drive-thru) prior to the pandemic, and that has risen to more than 90% now.
As much as Starbucks has touted its cafés as “third places,” where people can relax in a venue that is neither home or the office (which today are one and the same for millions of Americans), and has opened a few lavish Roastery stores, the truth is that harried commuters and office workers at rush hour just want to get their coffee and food and go. And Starbucks’ push toward dedicated spaces for mobile orders inside its stores and the new store concept even before the pandemic were a recognition of the frustrating bottlenecks many people experienced at Starbucks as they waited for several minutes for things like a blueberry muffin.
Ultimately, the pickup stores will be focused on larger metro areas and located near its regular cafés in a hub-and-spoke model, so if someone does want to sit while having their Starbucks products, that person can do so.
For now, the company’s strength in mobile ordering—the adoption of which Starbucks expects will hit a higher percentage permanently—has mitigated some of the disastrous effects of having stores closed for weeks. Yet, even though the vast majority of its stores in the U.S. have reopened for curbside pickup, business remains slow: Comparable store sales fell 32% in the last week of May, most of that from drive-thru and curbside pickup. That was much better than the 65% drop a few weeks earlier but still a punishing decline. That is only spurring interest in having more productive stores.
In its letter on Wednesday, Starbucks said it expected current-quarter operating income to fall as much as $2.2 billion, with sales continuing to decline for the rest of the year despite stores largely reopening.


fortune--2020-06-10--A cyberattack ‘pandemic’ would be devastating—and may be inevitable

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Why is the stock market on such a tear when the economy appears to be in ravages?
The reason is partly due to a quirk in the way major stock indices, like the S&P 500, are calculated, as Fortune’s Geoff Colvin explains. Because many indices are weighted by market capitalization—meaning that businesses with higher stock market valuations factor in the most—highly prized tech companies tend to dominate.
This situation has created something of a positive feedback loop. Since tech companies have generally benefited the most from the recent coronavirus pandemic—they’ve been lofted by people shifting commercial activities online—the strongest index players have only been getting stronger. As the tech industry surges, so does its bellwether stocks, so too does the stock market at large—at least as measured by many major indices.
It’s as though, instead of a rising tide lifting all boats, the swelling waves somehow caused the largest Carnival Cruise megaships to grow more mammoth in size, even as lesser seafaring vessels capsized.
To illustrate how the situation might have been different, Colvin conjures a nightmare scenario—a Y2K, but real. “Suppose a novel computer virus rather than a coronavirus had struck the economy, aimed at the tech giants, hobbling them.” If such a catastrophe were to occur, the tech giants would be brought to their knees, and “their sudden crisis would initially cause the whole S&P 500 index to drop like a cannonball.”
Perhaps that imagined devastation is not so far-fetched. A particularly bad string of software vulnerabilities enabling a “wormable” cyberattack—one capable of self-propagating—could cause unprecedented destruction. The WannaCry cyberattack of 2017 gave the world a minor taste of what that might look like. Later that same year, the NotPetya cyberattack wreaked havoc, causing billions of dollars in damage and crippling several multinational corporations including Maersk and Merck.
In a blog post earlier this month, the World Economic Forum warned that the world should start planning for such a contingency now. “Our ‘new normal’ isn’t COVID-19 itself—it’s COVID-like incidents. And a cyber pandemic is probably as inevitable as a future disease pandemic,” the authors wrote. “We should prepare for a COVID-like global cyber pandemic that will spread faster and further than a biological virus, with an equal or greater economic impact.”
Of course, if that happened, we would have bigger problems than a crashing stock market.
Robert Hackett
Twitter: @rhhackett
Email: robert.hackett@fortune.com
THREATS
Bellatrix Lestrange for hire. Researchers at Citizen Lab, an Internet watchdog group at the University of Toronto, exposed a sprawling hack-for-hire operation that it has attributed to an obscure Indian company called BellTroX InfoTech Services. The New Delhi-based firm, whose CEO denied the allegations, is believed to have targeted thousands of people around the world, including government officials, businesspeople, journalists, and others. Federal prosecutors are reportedly undertaking a criminal investigation.
Land of the Rising (Ransom) Sum. Japanese automaker Honda is in the midst of recovering from a ransomware attack. The incident has forced the carmaker temporarily to shut down some production plants, and its customer and financial services remain offline. Also in Japan, Nintendo doubled its estimate of the number of so-called Nintendo Network ID accounts impacted by a recent hacking attempt from 160,000 to 300,000. The hackers potentially obtained people's personal information, and could have spent people's virtual funds.
Black Lives Matter. Last week Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian stepped down from the company's board and urged it to replace him with a black candidate. The forum website has abided his request, selecting Michael Seibel, CEO of Y Combinator and cofounder of Justin.tv, a startup that became Twitch, as his replacement. Elsewhere in Silicon Valley, Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has declared Juneteenth, aka June 19, a day recognizing the emancipation of slaves in the U.S., as a company holiday.
Make them pay. The latest multimillion dollar class action lawsuit settlement for credit bureau Equifax's 2017 data breach has received preliminary approval by a federal judge. Of the $30.5 million Equifax will be ordered to pay, $25 million will go...to Equifax itself! If the decision receives final approval in October, the money will be put toward making data security improvements at the company. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $225 million fine for two health insurance marketers who spammed people with a billion robocalls.
*Knock, knock* Who's there? A TikTok terrorshow.
ACCESS GRANTED
"If we can bank online, why can’t we vote the same way?" The question nags at members of modern-day democracies. Turns out we can't have nice things because the digital world is so terribly, horribly, mind-numbingly insecure, as Politico's Eric Geller lays out in an excellent piece of explanatory journalism.
Some West Virginians voting in Tuesday’s primary will be allowed to tap on their phones or laptops instead of heading to the polls. Some in Delaware will get to do the same next month. And the trend may spread into November, as the coronavirus pandemic inspires a search for voting methods that don’t expose people to the deadly disease. But moving elections to the internet poses huge risks that the United States is unprepared to handle — endangering voters’ privacy, the secrecy of the ballot and even the trustworthiness of the results.
FORTUNE RECON
Uber CEO and Rockefeller Foundation chief: American workers need a better safety net by Dara Khosrowshahi and Rajiv J. Shah
I’m a black tech CEO. Diversity shouldn’t be our end goal; ending the current corporate culture should by Travis Montaque
The Coronavirus Economy: A Methodist minister on preaching to the iPhone (and losing the choir) by Erika Fry
Could Windows PC makers follow Apple’s lead away from Intel chips? by Aaron Pressman
How Instacart fixed its A.I. and keeps up with the coronavirus pandemic by Jonathan Vanian
Insurtech Lemonade looks for sugar in IPO markets. Its biggest expense? Marketing by Lucinda Shen
ONE MORE THING
To keep healthy—and, perhaps, as an antidote to cabin fever—I have been trying to up my push-up game. GQ has tips for people looking to boost the number of plank-to-floor exercises they can knock out. Now drop and give us 20 "eccentric loaded push series."


fortune--2020-06-10--RNC likely will hold part of August convention in Jacksonville

The Republican National Committee is likely to move at least part of its August convention to Jacksonville, Florida, after failing to reach an agreement with its initial host over the scope of coronavirus safety precautions, people familiar with the talks said.
Details of the arrangement were still being worked out and party aides are trying to determine if the city has enough hotel rooms to host the event, which draws tens of thousands of people including delegates, media, officials and hangers-on.
Florida is key to Trump’s re-election effort and Republicans familiar with the convention planning noted that while Jacksonville does not have the hotel space and convention infrastructure of other cities like Orlando, it has a friendly Republican mayor.
The convention’s lower-profile meetings would still occur in the original host city of Charlotte, North Carolina, but the marquee event—Donald Trump’s nomination acceptance speech—would be moved to a place where officials said they were willing to host a large gathering despite the virus.
The Washington Post first reported Jacksonville was the likely site.
One possible arrangement is that RNC members, state chairmen and two delegates from each state would meet in Charlotte and formally nominate Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, according to people familiar with the planning.
The following week, the full group of delegates and assorted other attendees would meet in Jacksonville for three days culminating in Trump’s acceptance speech, the people said.
The Republicans would skip amending their policy platform and adopt the one they crafted in 2016, the people said.
Over the last week, Florida has seen rising numbers of new COVID-19 cases, with about 1,000 new people a day testing positive.
White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News Wednesday “no decision had been made” on a new location.
“There have been a number of cities under consideration. The president loves the state of North Carolina, really wanted to have it there, but unfortunately you have a governor there who is not willing to say, yes, you can move forward,” she said. “It’s a grave injustice to his state, taking a lot of economic boom out of there, that comes with a convention.”
The decision to move part of the convention came after North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said his state could not agree to demands for a “‘full convention’ which includes 19,000 delegates,” as well as “full hotels and bars at capacity” due to social distancing requirements.
Trump tweeted that the GOP was “forced to seek” a new city for the party’s convention. A week earlier Trump had threatened to move the convention to a different city if Cooper would not allow all expected participants to come. Locations that were being considered included Nashville, Las Vegas, Orlando, Phoenix, and Savannah.
Dean Black, chairman of the Duval County Republicans in Jacksonville, also said the city had worked hard to get the group to move there.
“The mayor’s office has obviously been very involved in all of this and that’s really one of our greatest strengths: we have a unified Republican government here,” Black said. “They are accustomed to planning large events on the fly.”


fortune--2020-06-10--How a second wave of the coronavirus could impact global GDP and jobs, according to the OECD

With the coronavirus in rapid retreat across Europe and Asia and in parts of the U.S., there is a sense that the worst of the pandemic might finally be over. But two words hover over any prospects for a global recovery: second wave.
The possibility that COVID-19 might come roaring back, either because lockdown measures are ending or because colder weather will return in the fall, is scrambling predictions about how and when the world might emerge from its sharpest economic downturn since the Great Depression nearly a century ago.
The pandemic’s trajectory, say economists, is simply too uncertain—a fact that, of itself, could hobble the willingness of companies and governments to invest and grow.
On Wednesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, said with a second wave of COVID-19, global GDP would drop by more than 7.5%, and about 40 million more people would lose their jobs.
Even without a second wave, the OECD predicted a dire 6% decline in global GDP this year, “larger by far than any we have projected in the 60 years since the OECD was created,” the organization’s Secretary-General Angel Gurría said, launching the organization’s yearly World Economic Outlook; the Paris-based organization collects data on the world’s richest economies, with 37 member countries. The OECD’s chief economist Laurence Boone said a second wave of COVID-19 would “markedly affect” the world economy in 2021, and that “massive uncertainty regarding the virus” suggested long-lasting economic damage, worsened by consumer behavior and trade tensions. “All that will hold back investment,” she said.
The OECD prediction was grim indeed—but it is not the only one to emerge this week.
“The greatest downside risk”
On Monday, a panel of 48 U.S. economists from the National Association of Business Economists predicted a 5.8% GDP drop in the U.S. this year—the steepest decline since the 1940s, and a one-third drop in the second quarter of 2020 over the same quarter last year.
They forecast some economic recovery later this year, but only on one condition: That COVID-19 does not surge back. If it does, it would torpedo all predictions of a recovery. “Eighty-seven percent of panelists view a second wave of COVID-19 as the greatest downside risk through 2020,” said Eugenio Alemán, a Wells Fargo economist who chaired the study.
In fact, the damage could extend far beyond this year or next, according to many economists.
Marc Touati, an economist in Paris, estimates that it could take until 2026 for France to return to pre-pandemic economic levels. The French government predicts that GDP in the world’s sixth-biggest economy will contract about 11% this year. Given that, even if GDP steadily increases by about 2% a year, “it will take about five and a half years to get back to 2019 levels,” Touati, who heads ACDEFI, a Paris economic consultancy, told Fortune on Wednesday. “If we have a second wave, we have no means to make a new recovery,” he said.
The economic disaster comes as no surprise to economists like Touati.
Indeed, Touati said he warned France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire of calamitous consequences from sweeping lockdown measures, and still believes that the decision by dozens of governments around the world to impose broad lockdowns has been a severe error.
He shared his concerns in a crisis meeting with Le Maire and about 10 other economists on March 4—10 days before President Emmanuel Macron announced a nationwide lockdown. “I told him, ‘If you impose a lockdown we will have a big depression,’” Touati said. “Others said ‘No, no, we have to impose a lockdown.’ It was fear. It was panic. We reacted too late.”
How a second lockdown would look
Touati hopes governments will be defter at handling the next outbreak, including a second wave of COVID-19.
That would include imposing limited lockdowns of people regarded as most vulnerable to the coronavirus, rather than broad nationwide restrictions, he said. He also believes governments should prepare extensive contact-tracing systems, ramp up ICU beds, and lay in stocks of protective equipment.
To the dismay of the French, who boast of having first-class public health, the country had no stock of facial masks when the pandemic hit Europe. Compare that to Germany, which had plenty. Three months on, more than 29,000 people in France have died of the virus, compared with 8,000 in Germany, whose population is far bigger. “We were not prepared,” Touati said.
For now, at least in Europe and much of the U.S., the idea that COVID-19 will come surging back feels increasingly remote, as people resume more and more of their pre-pandemic lives.
In Paris, for example, people have poured into the parks since they reopened earlier this month, soaking up the long summery days, and the sidewalk tables are jammed each evening after the cafés reopened for outdoor dining after a 10-week shutdown. In the U.S. and across Europe, thousands have joined street protests against racism since George Floyd’s death on May 25, seemingly brushing off social distancing instructions, as though the pandemic is as good as gone.
Sadly, that might not be the case.
The World Health Organization’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told CNBC on Tuesday that a second wave was “a very real risk,” as countries reopen public spaces and end lockdown measures. “We don’t know if it will be a second wave, a second peak, or a continuing first wave in some countries,” she said. “It really hasn’t come down that much at the time of reopening, and so all of these possibilities are very real.”


fortune--2020-06-10--Recording Academy announces Grammy Award category changes, while addressing conflicts of interest

The Recording Academy is making changes to several Grammy Awards categories, including the often-debated best new artist title, and having nomination review committee members sign disclosure forms to prevent conflicts of interest.
The new rules announced Wednesday will affect the 63rd annual Grammy Awards, which will air live on Jan. 31, 2021.
The best new artist award has been criticized for decades, and the academy has tried to evolve with the ever-changing music industry by continually updating the category’s rules. In recent years, the award has been scrutinized because the academy placed a song and album limit, disqualifying certain performers. But the new rules say, “there is no longer a specified maximum number of releases prohibiting artists from entering” the category.
The change will benefit younger artists, specifically rappers, who tend to release many singles and therefore did not qualify in recent years because they surpassed the 30-song limit. Whitney Houston and Lady Gaga missed out on being best new artist nominees because of the category’s rules in the years they marked their breakthroughs.
The academy also said musicians invited to participate in a nomination review committee — in place to safeguard a specific genre’s integrity and to serve as additional checks and balances — will have to agree to the terms of a conflict of interest disclosure form. Committee participants will have to reveal if they would benefit from an artist’s nomination for that category, whether the ties are financial, familial or creative.
If a conflict is discovered, that person would not be allowed to sit on that committee that year.
Some of the new changes could be a response to former Recording Academy CEO Deborah Dugan, who was fired only months into her job and days before the 2020 Grammys, held in January. Dugan had said the awards show was rigged and muddled with conflicts of interest. Questions have loomed for years around the nominations process for the Grammys, but the doubts reached a new level following Dugan’s comments.
The academy has said that nominees are selected from contenders voted into the top 20 in each category. But critics have called the voting less than transparent, because the choice of finalists happens behind closed doors. That has stirred claims that members of key nominating committees promote projects they worked on or projects they favor based on personal relationships.
The academy’s board of trustees approved the new changes last month. The organization also said it is making its 66-page rules and guidelines book public for the first time, at Grammys.com, starting Wednesday.
Songs and albums released between Sept. 1, 2019 and Aug. 31, 2020 will be eligible for nominations at the 2021 Grammys. There are 84 categories.
Other changes approved by the board:
— The best rap/sung performance Grammy will now be called best melodic rap performance. The category was originally titled best rap/sung collaboration and was established at the 2002 Grammys for collaborations between rappers and R&B or pop singers. For the 2017 Grammys, the academy renamed it and allowed solo artists who sing and rap on a song — from Drake to Chris Brown — to compete. The newly titled category, available to solo performances or collaborations, now “requires a strong and clear presence of melody combined with rap cadence, and is inclusive of dialects, lyrics or performance elements from non-rap genres including R&B, rock, country, electronic or more.”
— The best urban contemporary album award, which debuted at the 2013 Grammys and represented R&B albums that fused elements of other genres, from rock to dance, has been renamed to best progressive R&B album. Qualified albums should “include the more progressive elements of R&B and may include samples and elements of hip-hop, rap, dance, and electronic music.”
— The Latin pop album Grammy has expanded and been renamed to best Latin pop or urban album, while the best Latin rock, urban or alternative album will now be called best Latin rock or alternative album.