• Executives at Facebook debated whether it would look bad to release a report showing that the most-viewed link on the site contained misleading information about the Covid vaccine. The company decided to shelve it. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 22:07

    When Facebook this week released its first quarterly report about the most viewed posts in the United States, Guy Rosen, its vice president of integrity, said the social network had undertaken “a long journey” to be “by far the most transparent platform on the internet.” The list showed that the posts with the most reach tended to be innocuous content like recipes and cute animals.

    Facebook had prepared a similar report for the first three months of the year, but executives never shared it with the public because of concerns that it would look bad for the company, according to internal emails sent by executives and shared with The New York Times.

    In that report, a copy of which was provided to The Times, the most-viewed link was a news article with a headline suggesting that the coronavirus vaccine was at fault for the death of a Florida doctor. The report also showed that a Facebook page for The Epoch Times, an anti-China newspaper that spreads right-wing...

  • The recall of Chevrolet Bolts now covers 2017-2022 models. G.M. and its battery maker, LG Chem, have linked fires to two manufacturing defects that occur on rare occasions. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 21:32

    General Motors said on Friday that it was expanding its recall of Chevrolet Bolt electric cars that have been found to be at risk of overheating and catching fire as a result of manufacturing defects.

    The company said it was recalling Bolts from the 2020 through 2022 model years and a few 2019 Bolts that were not covered under a previous recall. The move means all 141,000 Bolts that G.M. has produced — going back to the 2017 model — are under recall.

    The Bolt’s troubles are a setback from G.M. and its chief executive, Mary T. Barra, who is betting heavily that consumers will rapidly switch to electric vehicles in the years ahead. The company plans to spend $35 billion on electric and autonomous vehicles from 2020 to 2025, build four battery plants in the United States and end production of gasoline-powered cars and trucks by 2035.

    G.M. said the move announced on Friday would cost the company $1 billion on top of the $800 million it had allocated for previous...

  • “Tesla has not delivered what it promised.” More problems are emerging for the electric carmaker as complaints among customers that they have been sold an additional driver-assistance option that doesn’t operate as advertised accumulate. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 21:07

    As federal investigators escalate their scrutiny of Tesla’s driver-assistance technology, another problem is emerging for the electric carmaker: complaints among customers that they have been sold an additional driver-assistance option that doesn’t operate as advertised.

    Over the years, Tesla owners have paid as much as $10,000 for the package, called Full Self-Driving. F.S.D., which can be purchased as an extra on Tesla cars, is a collection of services that add to Tesla’s Autopilot, the driver-assistance technology that government investigators are taking a look at after a string of crashes.

    Critics say F.S.D. hasn’t lived up to its name since its debut more than two years ago. It can help a car navigate off one highway and onto another, and respond to traffic lights and stop signs. It also includes a service for summoning a car out of a parking space or parking lot with a mobile app. But full self-driving? Not quite.

    When Joel M. Young paid $6,000 for...

  • Stanley Aronowitz, a professor, social theorist and champion of the labor movement, has died at 89. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 20:32
    Stanley Aronowitz in 2002, when he was the Green Party candidate for governor of New York. “We’ve been relying for so long on politicians to solve problems,” he once said of organized labor, “that the union membership no longer really relies on its own power.”Credit...Nancy Siesel/The New York Times
  • In the weekend edition of the DealBook newsletter, @katekelly looks at the state of SPACs, and what happens next for blank-check firms.  Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 20:02

    The DealBook newsletter delves into a single topic or theme every weekend, providing reporting and analysis that offers a better understanding of an important issue in the news. If you don’t already receive the daily newsletter, sign up here.

  • "Quiero que hagamos una pausa y nos sentemos a pensar en lo incómodo que resulta que las potencias de internet funcionen en gran medida como departamentos de Estado que no rinden cuentas". Link por @ShiraOvide
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 19:32

    Una manera en la que los talibanes podrían intentar ganarse la confianza de los afganos es aparentar ser un gobierno legítimo en las redes sociales y, ante esa posibilidad, las compañías de internet intentan descifrar cómo manejar la situación.

    Desde hace años, Facebook ha prohibido las cuentas relacionadas con los talibanes como parte de su política de tres niveles para “organizaciones peligrosas”. Además, la compañía dijo esta semana que continuaría eliminando las cuentas de talibanes y publicaciones que apoyen al grupo. Eso incluye una línea de ayuda para ciudadanos afganos de los talibanes en WhatsApp, de la cual Facebook es propietaria (los talibanes ahora controlan un país, pero no tienen permitido iniciar un grupo de Facebook).

    Con base en las sanciones de Estados Unidos a los talibanes afganos, YouTube dijo que también eliminará cuentas que crea que son operadas por el grupo. Twitter no tiene una prohibición total, pero le dijo a CNN que cualquier...

  • Earlier this summer, travel’s comeback meant travelers often paid more for flights, resorts and rental cars. But the Delta variant has somewhat clouded predictions about costs remaining high. @ElaineGlusac looks at shifting travel costs. Link https://t.co/dhmGUnHr3w
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 19:02

    The cost of travel climbed this summer, but the Delta variant is weighing on demand. We looked into travel’s murky crystal ball to find out how prices will fare in the future.

  • Tom Hanks has never starred as a used-car salesman, but he had a convincing turn as one at an auto auction. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 18:31

    CARMEL, Calif. — In an acting career spanning four decades and dozens of roles, Tom Hanks has never starred as a used-car salesman. But last week, he had a convincing turn as one, selling off four vehicles from his private collection at a Bonhams classic car auction.

    The autos that Mr. Hanks put on the block, and that he had kept at his backwoods ranch in Ketchum, Idaho, fetched over half a million dollars, at least twice as much as expected.

    The centerpiece was a unique Airstream 34-foot travel trailer from the 1992 model year, bought new in the days before Airstreams would become wildly popular in all shapes and sizes. The sales price was $235,000, including buyer premiums, especially notable since the Airstream was not lavishly equipped as a new one that size would be.

    “I got it in the days when movies moved slower,” Mr. Hanks said in an interview before the auction when he was preparing it for the auctioneer.

  • “Yes, we are highly concerned, but we have resources that we can tap that we didn’t have last year,” one middle school principal said. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 18:01
  • Several studies found only a modest increase in employment in states that abandoned unemployment benefit programs. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 17:31

    The cutoff of federal unemployment benefits in much of the country was meant to bring a flood of workers back to the job market. So far, that flood looks more like a trickle.

    A total of 26 states, all but one with Republican governors, have moved to end some or all of the expanded unemployment benefits that have been in place since the pandemic began. The governors, along with many business owners, have argued that the benefits discourage returning to work when many employers are struggling to hire.

    Several recent studies, however, have concluded that the extra payments have played only a small role in this year’s labor shortages. And they found at most a modest increase in employment in states that abandoned the programs — most of them in June — even as millions of jobless workers have had to cut spending, potentially hurting local economies.

    “The idea was that there were lots of jobs — it was just that people weren’t looking. That was the narrative,” said...

  • Hospitals have faced chronic nursing shortages for decades, but the pandemic has tested staffing like never before. “Our nurses are at their wits' end,” a Miss. hospital chief said. “They are tired, overburdened, and they feel like forgotten soldiers.” Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 17:01

    Cyndy O’Brien, an emergency room nurse at Ocean Springs Hospital on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, could not believe her eyes as she arrived for work. There were people sprawled out in their cars gasping for air as three ambulances with gravely ill patients idled in the parking lot. Just inside the front doors, a crush of anxious people jostled to get the attention of an overwhelmed triage nurse.

    “It’s like a war zone,” said Ms. O’Brien, who is the patient care coordinator at Singing River, a small health system near the Alabama border that includes Ocean Springs. “We are just barraged with patients and have nowhere to put them.”

    The bottleneck, however, has little to do with a lack of space. Nearly 30 percent of Singing River’s 500 beds are empty. With 169 unfilled nursing positions, administrators must keep the beds empty.

    Nursing shortages have long vexed hospitals. But in the year and a half since its ferocious debut in the United States, the coronavirus...

  • Drugs that need to be administered by physicians were once a rarity. Now they are more than one-fifth of all Medicare drug spending. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 16:31

    In the endless struggle to rein in high drug prices, one glaring failure has been grabbing the headlines: the exorbitant cost of drugs that need to be administered by physicians.

    Such drugs were once a rarity. But they are now more than one-fifth of all Medicare drug spending and growing rapidly, thanks in part to the biotechnology revolution, which has yielded an array of drugs that must be injected, infused or inhaled.

    One of them, an Alzheimer’s drug called Aduhelm, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June and is being priced by its maker, Biogen, at $56,000 annually. That’s roughly equivalent to the cost of 45 hours of home health care for an Alzheimer’s patient each week for an entire year.

    The F.D.A.’s approval of Aduhelm has come under close scrutiny and protest. The agency has already reversed itself, narrowing the drug’s suggested use to those with early symptoms of dementia, as opposed to everyone with Alzheimer’s.

  • Dealing with staff vaccination and the Delta variant, four school principals reflect on how they are handling this abnormal season. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 16:01
  • The Taliban have turned social media into a powerful tool to tame opposition and broadcast their messages. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 15:31

    In one video, a Taliban official reassured female health workers that they could keep their jobs. In another, militants told Sikhs, a minority religious group, that they were free and protected. Still others suggested a new lawfulness in Kabul, with Talib fighters holding looters and thieves at gunpoint.

    The Taliban, who banned the internet the first time they controlled Afghanistan, have turned social media into a powerful tool to tame opposition and broadcast their messages. Now firmly in control of the country, they are using thousands of Twitter accounts — some official and others anonymous — to placate Afghanistan’s terrified but increasingly tech-savvy urban base.

    The images of peace and stability projected by the Taliban contrast sharply with the scenes broadcast around the world of the chaotic American evacuation from the Kabul airport or footage of protesters being beaten and shot at. They demonstrate the digital powers the militants have honed over years...

  • The vehicles that Tom Hanks put on the auction block fetched over half a million dollars, at least twice as much as expected. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 15:01

    CARMEL, Calif. — In an acting career spanning four decades and dozens of roles, Tom Hanks has never starred as a used-car salesman. But last week, he had a convincing turn as one, selling off four vehicles from his private collection at a Bonhams classic car auction.

    The autos that Mr. Hanks put on the block, and that he had kept at his backwoods ranch in Ketchum, Idaho, fetched over half a million dollars, at least twice as much as expected.

    The centerpiece was a unique Airstream 34-foot travel trailer from the 1992 model year, bought new in the days before Airstreams would become wildly popular in all shapes and sizes. The sales price was $235,000, including buyer premiums, especially notable since the Airstream was not lavishly equipped as a new one that size would be.

    “I got it in the days when movies moved slower,” Mr. Hanks said in an interview before the auction when he was preparing it for the auctioneer.

  • Nexstar Media Group said it had acquired The Hill, a Beltway political news website, for $130 million. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 09:21

    The local television behemoth Nexstar Media Group announced Friday that it had acquired The Hill, a Beltway political news website, for $130 million.

    Nexstar, the largest operator of local TV stations in the country, said in a news release that the deal would expand its digital reach and coverage of political news. The deal also unites two companies that have sought, with mixed results, to present themselves as neutral arbiters in a partisan moment.

    “I like to say that we’re as far to the left as the right will go and as far to the right as the left will go,” Jimmy Finkelstein, who took a controlling stake in The Hill in 2014, said in an interview. Nexstar, he added, is “very much interested in that fit — they’re very balanced.”

  • The Beltway news site The Hill goes to Nexstar, a local TV giant, in a $130 million sale. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 09:06

    The local television behemoth Nexstar Media Group announced Friday that it had acquired The Hill, a Beltway political news website, for $130 million.

    Nexstar, the largest operator of local TV stations in the country, said in a news release that the deal would expand its digital reach and coverage of political news. The deal also unites two companies that have sought, with mixed results, to present themselves as neutral arbiters in a partisan moment.

    “I like to say that we’re as far to the left as the right will go and as far to the right as the left will go,” Jimmy Finkelstein, who took a controlling stake in The Hill in 2014, said in an interview. Nexstar, he added, is “very much interested in that fit — they’re very balanced.”

  • La campaña de China para generar buena voluntad con su diplomacia de vacunas ha perdido algo de atractivo. El revés ha creado una apertura diplomática para los Estados Unidos. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 08:11
    El ministro de Salud de Malasia dijo que dejarían de emplear la vacuna Sinovac una vez que se terminaran las existencias del país. En mayo se usó la vacuna AstraZeneca en Kuala LumpurCredit...Ahmad Yusni/EPA, vía Shutterstock
  • La renovada presencia de los talibanes en redes sociales pone a Twitter, Facebook y YouTube en una posición delicada, escribe @sheeraf. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 06:36

    Más de 100 cuentas nuevas y páginas oficiales de los talibanes, o de sus simpatizantes, han aparecido en Facebook, YouTube y Twitter, a pesar de que esas plataformas han prohibido los mensajes de esa organización.

  • Countries across the region are quickly turning elsewhere for shots, @suilee and @stevenleemyers write. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 06:21
    Malaysia’s health minister said the country would stop using China’s Sinovac vaccine once its supply ran out. The AstraZeneca vaccine was used to vaccinate people in Kuala Lumpur in May.Credit...Ahmad Yusni/EPA, via Shutterstock
  • .@benyt and @katie_robertson write that a deal unites two companies that have sought to present themselves as neutral arbiters in a partisan moment. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 06:06

    The local television behemoth Nexstar Media Group announced Friday that it had acquired The Hill, a Beltway political news website, for $130 million.

    Nexstar, the largest operator of local TV stations in the country, said in a news release that the deal would expand its digital reach and coverage of political news. The deal also unites two companies that have sought, with mixed results, to present themselves as neutral arbiters in a partisan moment.

    “I like to say that we’re as far to the left as the right will go and as far to the right as the left will go,” Jimmy Finkelstein, who took a controlling stake in The Hill in 2014, said in an interview. Nexstar, he added, is “very much interested in that fit — they’re very balanced.”

  • In the 1970s, when cable television was still very much an uninspiring local business in rural towns, Gustave M.Hauser undertook a bold experiment that helped usher in the modern era of multichannel digital cable television. He has died at 91. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 05:16

    In the 1970s, when Gustave M. Hauser, an international lawyer, was chairman and chief executive of Warner Cable Communications, cable television was still very much an uninspiring local business in rural towns, providing little more than $5-a-month connections to homes that otherwise had no access to television.

    Prodded by his boss, Steven J. Ross, Warner Communications’ iconoclastic chairman, Mr. Hauser undertook a bold experiment in Columbus, Ohio: building a service that helped usher in the modern era of multichannel digital cable television.

    In December 1977, Warner unveiled QUBE, an experimental cable system offering a package of 30 themed channels that provided movies, sports, children’s programming and documentaries. The system not only offered customers content unavailable on broadcast television; it also introduced new technology to bring that content to them. QUBE’s innovations included the first set-top boxes and remote control devices for cable.

    To...

  • Now the show’s search for a permanent replacement host will start again, @grynbaum and @nicsperling write. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 02:51

    Mike Richards’s first and, as it turned out, last day of filming as the host of “Jeopardy!” began with a gathering that executives at the long-running quiz show hoped would symbolize a fresh start.

    In a taped ceremony on Thursday at the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, Calif., Sony revealed that the “Jeopardy!” studio would be renamed for Alex Trebek, the beloved host who died last year. Mr. Richards smiled as cameras rolled and Mr. Trebek’s widow and children looked on.

    Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Richards had quit his hosting gig, “Jeopardy!” production was placed on hold, and the show’s fans were struggling to understand how a television institution and staple of the American living room could have botched a succession plan after 37 years of stability and success.

    Mr. Richards stepped down on Friday after revelations of offensive and sexist comments he made on a podcast several years ago, just nine days after Sony announced his new role with great...

  • Liz Shuler had been preparing for years to lead the A.F.L.-C.I.O., she said, and plans to be a candidate for a full four-year term in June. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 02:06

    The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has chosen Liz Shuler, its acting president since the death of Richard Trumka this month, to lead the federation until it holds elections next year.

    Ms. Shuler had served as secretary-treasurer, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s second-ranking official, since 2009.

    The decision to name Ms. Shuler president came at a meeting of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. executive council on Friday, which Ms. Shuler was obligated to call within a few weeks of Mr. Trumka’s death under the federation’s constitution. Ms. Shuler is the group’s first female president.

    “I believe in my bones the labor movement is the single greatest organized force for progress,” Ms. Shuler said in a statement. “This is a moment for us to lead societal transformations — to leverage our power to bring women and people of color from the margins to the center — at work, in our unions and in our economy, and to be the center of gravity for incubating new ideas that will unleash unprecedented union growth.”

  • China’s setbacks have created a diplomatic opportunity. Link
    NYT Business Sat 21 Aug 2021 01:46
    Malaysia’s health minister said the country would stop using China’s Sinovac vaccine once its supply ran out. The AstraZeneca vaccine was used to vaccinate people in Kuala Lumpur in May.Credit...Ahmad Yusni/EPA, via Shutterstock
S&P500
VIX
Eurostoxx50
FTSE100
Nikkei 225
TNX (UST10y)
EURUSD
GBPUSD
USDJPY
BTCUSD
Gold spot
Brent
Copper
Last update . Delayed by 15 mins. Prices from Yahoo!

  • Top 50 publishers (last 24 hours)