In March last year, a top venture capital firm described Covid-19 as the “black swan of 2020.” “Private financings could soften significantly, as happened in 2001 and 2009,” Sequoia Capital told portfolio company founders and CEOs in a memo reminiscent of its “R.I.P. Good Times” presentation in the 2008 crisis. Fast forward to July 2021, […] Read more
People who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 are still getting infected with the delta variant, but global health officials said the shots have protected most people from getting severely sick or dying. “There are reports coming in that vaccinated populations have cases of infection, particularly with the delta variant,” Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the World Health […] Read more
President Joe Biden pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call Friday morning to take action to stem recent ransomware attacks from Russia-based groups. “I made it very clear to [Putin] that the United States expects, when a ransomware operation is coming from their soil even though it’s not, not, sponsored by the state, that we expect […] Read more
The World Health Organization is urging “extreme caution” against lifting public health measures in countries around the world as the Covid pandemic rages in countries with low vaccination rates and puts other regions at risk for the spread of variants. Countries with high vaccination rates like the United States and the United Kingdom have been gradually lifting […] Read more
GUANGZHOU, China — China’s government has opened a new battlefront with the country’s technology giants, looking to target their collection and use of data. On Monday, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) also opened a cybersecurity probe into U.S.-listed Boss Zhipin and subsidiaries of Full Truck Alliance. It came a day after the CAC ordered app stores in the country to […] Read more
Stocks rose on Friday and the S&P 500 hit another record high after the June jobs report showed an accelerating recovery for the U.S. labor market. The broad market index rose 0.75% to 4,352.34, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.81% to notch its own record at 14,639.33. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 152.82 […] Read more
OPEC heads into Thursday’s meeting with Russia and other allies with a better command of world oil prices than it has had in years, analysts said. OPEC+, the organization of oil-producing countries and its allies, is expected to consider adding between 500,000 and 1 million barrels per day, but analysts said there is some talk […] Read more
The U.S. lags behind China and Europe when it comes to production and uptake of electric vehicles domestically, according to a new study by the International Council on Clean Transportation — and that gap widened from 2017 to 2020. The world manufactured more than 10 million electric passenger vehicles between 2010 and 2020, according to […] Read more
The U.S. launched airstrikes into parts of Iraq and Syria overnight, targeting Iranian-backed militias there in response to what the Biden administration says were drone attacks against American personnel in Iraq. The strikes targeted operational and weapons storage facilities in two locations in Syria and one in Iraq, though it is not immediately clear if […] Read more
The “delta variant” has come to dominate headlines, having been discovered in India where it provoked an extreme surge in Covid-19 cases before spreading around the world. But now a mutation of that variant has emerged, called “delta plus,” which is starting to worry global experts. India has dubbed delta plus a “variant of concern,” and […] Read more
