Archives for February 2021

Orders for U.S. durable goods climb 3.4% in January

WASHINGTON (AP) —

Orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket goods shot up 3.4% in January, pulled up by surge in orders for civilian aircraft. A category that tracks business investment posted a more modest gain, the Commerce Department rpeorted Thursday.

Orders for goods meant to last at least three years have now risen nine straight months, another sign that manufacturing has proven resilient in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. The January gain — triple what economists had expected — followed upticks of 1.2% in December and 1.3% in November.

Orders for civilian aircraft and parts jumped 389.9%. Excluding transportation equipment, which can bounce wildly from month to month, durable goods orders were up 1.4%.

A category economists watch for hints at future investment — orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft — rose 0.5%.

Amnesty International: Hackers attacking Vietnam dissidents

BANGKOK (AP) — Amnesty International says it has found that a hacking group known as Ocean Lotus has been staging more spyware attacks on Vietnamese human rights activists in the latest blow to freedom of speech in the communist-ruled country.

The human rights group said Wednesday that Amnesty Tech’s Security Lab found evidence of the hacking attempts in phishing emails sent to two dissidents, one in the Philippines and one in Germany.

Cybersecurity firms earlier identified hacking attempts by Ocean Lotus targeting dissidents, governments and companies across Southeast Asia. The hackers are suspected of having ties to Vietnam’s government, which has been cracking down on dissent.

Amnesty urged the Vietnamese government to investigate.

The report said that blogger and pro-democracy activist Bui Thanh Hieu was targeted with spyware at least four times between February 2018 and December 2019. He left Vietnam and has lived in Germany since 2013. It said another blogger based in Vietnam, who was not named due to fears for their safety, was targeted three times last year.

A Philippines-based nongovernmental organization, the Vietnamese Overseas Initiative for Conscience Empowerment, or VOICE, was targeted by hackers in April 2020, the report said.

It said former staff and volunteers for VOICE were harassed, prevented from traveling and had their passports confiscated when they returned to Vietnam.

The Amnesty report also said the hacking efforts involved emails pretending to share an important document with a link to download a file.

An analysis of the phishing emails indicated they were generated by Ocean Lotus, based on the tools and techniques they used, it said. The hacking targets Mac OS, Android and Windows operating systems.

“More recently Ocean Lotus was found to have created fake online media websites based on content automatically gathered from legitimate news websites,” the report said.

Vietnam is one of the handful of the world’s remaining communist single-party states that tolerate no dissent.

Human rights groups have been urging Vietnam to cease its repressive activities towards critics, seen especially in severe punishments of bloggers.

According to the cybersecurity company Volexity, OceanLotus was identified as a Vietnam-based hacking group in 2015. The group is suspected of staging sophisticated, widespread digital surveillance and attack campaigns since 2013 against some Asian countries, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and many people and groups linked to the media and human rights groups.

6N: France-Scotland to be postponed after another virus case

MARCOUSSIS, France (AP) — The Six Nations match between France and Scotland on Sunday will be postponed, organizers said on Thursday after an 11th French player tested positive for the coronavirus.

The Six Nations testing oversight group unanimously recommended the match in Paris be postponed and “this will be ratified later today by the Six Nations council,” it said in a statement.

“We will be working on the rescheduling of this fixture and will communicate the date in due course.”

The game was given the go-ahead on Wednesday despite 10 France players — including captain Charles Ollivon and star scrumhalf Antoine Dupont — testing positive for COVID-19 in checks over the past week.

An 11th player, as yet unnamed, then tested positive following another round of checks late Wednesday, prompting training to be suspended on Thursday and the French squad to go back into isolation.

The decision to postpone the game now puts Scotland in a difficult position, especially if it is rearranged for next week.

Scottish Rugby said this week that such a rearrangement could leave the team without 10 players because those based in England and France will be released back to their clubs for domestic duty under World Rugby’s player-release regulations.

The rest week for the tournament lies outside of World Rugby’s designated international window.

France leads the Six Nations after away wins over Italy and Ireland. Scotland has one win and one loss.

___

More AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Funky electronics chain Fry’s is no more

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Fry’s Electronics, the go-to chain for tech tinkerers looking for an obscure part, is closing for good.

The company, perhaps even more well known for outlandish themes at some of its stores, from Aztec to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” said Wednesday in an online posting that the COVID-19 pandemic had made it impossible to continue.

Fans immediately took to Twitter to post images and memories (good and bad).

The chain was concentrated on the West Coast, but had 31 stores in nine states. It was founded 36 years ago.

Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData, called it “the end of an era, and a sad day” for an army of loyal customers.

The pandemic has done heavy damage to retailers, but Fry’s was already getting hammered by online competition and a battle between heavy-hitters Best Buy and Amazon.com.

The wild themes became more of a burden than an experience, Saunders said, and when the chain began to struggle, gaps began to appear on shelves in the the cavernous stores, making them a shell of what they once were.

“Fry’s was really a business build for the 1980s electronics boom. During that era, it was a gathering place for enthusiasts of an industry that was on fire,” Saunders said. “However, those days have long since gone and now too has an icon that represented them.”

Fry’s Electronics Inc. said its operations have ceased and the wind-down of locations will begin immediately. Customers with electronics being repaired in-store store are being asked to pick them up.

The chain’s online presence appears largely to have been shut down.

FDA says single-dose shot from J&J prevents severe COVID

WASHINGTON (AP) — Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine offers strong protection against severe COVID-19, according to an analysis released Wednesday by U.S. regulators that sets the stage for a final decision on a new and easier-to-use shot to help tame the pandemic.

The long-anticipated shot could offer the nation a third vaccine option and help speed vaccinations by requiring just one dose instead of two. Food and Drug Administration scientists confirmed that overall the vaccine is about 66% effective at preventing moderate to severe COVID-19, and about 85% effective against the most serious illness. The agency also said J&J’s shot is safe.

The analysis is just one step in the FDA’s evaluation. On Friday, the agency’s independent advisers will debate if the evidence is strong enough to recommend the shot. With that advice, the FDA is expected to make a final decision within days.

The COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. topped 500,000 this week, and the vaccination drive has been slower than hoped, hampered by logistical and weather delays. So far, about 44.5 million Americans have received at least one dose of vaccine made by Pfizer or Moderna, and nearly 20 million of them have received the second dose required for full protection.

Tests showed the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were 95% effective at protection against symptomatic COVID-19.

Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is part of the FDA advisory panel that will scrutinize the J&J data on Friday and cautions that none of the vaccines have been directly compared. Still, he was encouraged that one dose of the J&J vaccine appears as good at preventing serious illness as its two-dose competitors.

“This is a vaccine to prevent you from going to the hospital and dying at a level that’s certainly comparable” to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, he said.

J&J tested its single-dose option in 44,000 adults in the U.S., Latin America and South Africa. Different mutated versions of the virus are circulating in different countries, and the FDA analysis cautioned that it’s not clear how well the vaccine works against each variant. But J&J previously announced that the vaccine worked better in the U.S. — 72% effective against moderate to severe COVID-19, compared with 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa.

South Africa recently began giving the J&J vaccine to front-line health workers on a test basis after deciding that a vaccine from rival AstraZeneca had not shown strong enough study results against the particularly concerning variant spreading there.

“I was reassured” that despite different variants, the J&J shot still protected against serious illness, said Dr. Jesse Goodman of Georgetown University, a former FDA vaccine chief. “That’s pretty robust data.”

In case the vaccines eventually need to be updated, manufacturers are working on adjustments to their recipes. Moderna announced Wednesday that it is ready to begin testing experimental doses that better match the South African version of the virus.

Across all countries, the analysis of the J&J vaccine showed protection began to emerge about 14 days after vaccination. But by 28 days after vaccination, there were no hospitalizations or deaths in the vaccinated group compared with 16 hospitalizations and seven deaths in study recipients who received a dummy shot.

The FDA said effectiveness and safety were consistent across racial groups, including Black and Latino participants.

All of the world’s COVID-19 vaccines have been tested differently, making comparisons nearly impossible. It would not be surprising if one dose turned out to be a little weaker than two doses, and policymakers will decide if that’s an acceptable trade-off to get more people vaccinated faster.

J&J has another large study underway to see if a second dose of its vaccine works better, raising the prospect that countries could eventually add a booster if one turned out to be warranted.

Like other COVID-19 vaccines, the main side effects of the J&J shot are pain at the injection site and flu-like fever, fatigue and headache. No study participant experienced the severe allergic reaction, called anaphylaxis, that is a rare risk of some other COVID-19 shots, although one experienced a less serious reaction.

The FDA said there were no serious side effects linked to the vaccine so far, although it recommended further monitoring for blood clots. In the study, those were reported in about 15 vaccine recipients and 10 placebo recipients, not enough of a difference to tell if the vaccine played any role.

J&J was on track to become the world’s first one-dose option until earlier this month. Mexico announced it would use a one-dose version from China’s CanSino, which is made with similar technology as J&J’s shot but initially was developed as a two-dose option until beginning a one-dose test in the fall.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines now being used in the U.S. and numerous other countries must be kept frozen, while the J&J shot can last three months in a refrigerator, making it easier to handle. AstraZeneca’s vaccine — widely used in Europe and Britain — is made similarly and also requires refrigeration but takes two doses.

If the FDA clears the J&J shot for U.S. use, it will not boost vaccine supplies significantly right away. Only a few million doses are expected to be ready for shipping in the first week. But J&J told Congress this week that it expected to provide 20 million doses by the end of March and 100 million by summer.

European regulators and the World Health Organization also are considering J&J’s vaccine. Worldwide, the company aims to produce around a billion doses by the end of the year.

___

Associated Press video producer Kathy Young contributed to this report.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Archives for February 2021

Footer