Archives for April 2021

Tesla 1Q sales of 185K more than double last year’s numbers

DETROIT (AP) — Tesla says it delivered nearly 185,000 electric vehicles in the first quarter despite a shortage of computer chips that has hit the global auto industry.

The number was more than double the deliveries for the same period last year. And it beat Wall Street estimates of 168,000 for January through March. The company says in a statement that the Model Y small SUV in China has been well received.

Tesla lists no production figures for its older models, the S sedan and X SUV, during the quarter, but it delivered just over 2,000 of them. It says new equipment has been installed at the Fremont, California, factory and production of new versions is in the early stages.

The strong sales are a sign that demand for the company’s relatively expensive vehicles remains strong despite the pandemic. Analysts polled by data provider FactSet estimate that the average selling price of a Tesla is $49,100.

Shares of Tesla Inc. are down more than 9% so far this year as some of the shine wore off electric vehicle and tech stocks, which had experienced a big runup last year. The stock closed Thursday down just under 1% at $661.75. Markets are closed for the Good Friday holiday.

Tesla sold just under 500,000 vehicles last year, barely missing a target set by CEO Elon Musk. The company hasn’t given much guidance for this year’s sales figures.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives called the first-quarter numbers a “jaw dropper,” and a huge home run in the eyes of bullish investors. “We believe China and Europe were particularly robust this quarter as the trajectory now puts Musk & Co. to exceed 850k for the year which is well ahead of whisper expectations,” he wrote Friday.

The Model 3 small car and the Model Y accounted for nearly all of the Palo Alto, California, company’s first-quarter sales. Tesla said it sold 182,780 of both models combined.

Ives wrote that analysts expected more than 12,000 sales of Models S and X, with the miss driven by the chip shortage.

The strong sales came even though the company shut down much of its Fremont production for several weeks in late February and early March. It did not say why, but it’s likely that the company ran short of computer chips.

President Joe Biden’s announcement this week of $174 billion in spending on electric vehicle incentives and charging stations, and rising global demand for electric vehicles should shift sentiment toward Tesla stock, Ives wrote.

“It’s been a brutal sell-off for Tesla and EVs, but we believe that will now be in the rearview mirror,” he wrote.

Deadly breach could delay decisions on Capitol fencing

WASHINGTON (AP) — A deadly breach of the U.S. Capitol’s perimeter could delay the gradual reopening of the building’s grounds to the public just as lawmakers were eyeing a return to more normal security measures following the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Capitol Police officer William “Billy” Evans, an 18 year veteran of the force, was killed Friday when a man rammed his car into a barrier immediately outside the U.S. Senate side of the building. The driver, identified as 25-year-old Noah Green, was shot and killed after he got out of his car and lunged at police with a knife.

The incident came fewer than two weeks after the Capitol Police removed an outer fence that had cut off a wide swath of the area off completely from vehicular and police traffic, an effort to secure the complex after thousands of former President Donald Trump’s supporters marched on the building Jan. 6 and around 800 of them broke inside. That violence lead to five deaths, including a Capitol Police officer.

While lawmakers hated the fencing in bipartisan fashion – with some calling it an overreaction – the police who took the brunt of the siege that day have still left an inner fencing perimeter intact, as they try to ensure the safety of the complex and the lawmakers who work there.

The tall, dark fencing – parts of it covered in razor wire until recently — was not only a nuisance to those who lived in the area, blocking major arteries that cross the city, but also a stark symbol of the fear many in the Capitol felt after the violent mob laid siege to the Capitol. Lawmakers said the seat of American democracy was meant to be open to the people, even if there was always going to be a threat.

But after Friday’s incident, lawmakers said they needed to procced with caution.

“It’s an eyesore, it sucks,” Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, the chairman of a House spending committee that oversees security and the Capitol, said of the fencing in the hours after Officer Evans and the driver were killed. “Nobody wants that there. But the question is, is the environment safe enough to be able to take it down? In the meantime, maybe that fence can prevent some of these things from happening.”

Ryan stressed that no decisions had been made, and that lawmakers would be “reviewing everything” after Friday’s breach. His committee, along with others, is looking at not only the fence but at the staffing, structure, and intelligence capabilities of the Capitol Police.

“The scab got ripped off again here today,” Ryan said. “So we’ve got to figure this out.”

The breach happened inside the perimeter, as the driver slipped through a gate that had opened to allow traffic in and out of the Capitol and rammed a barrier that had protected the building long before Jan. 6. And there was no evidence that Green’s actions were in any way related to the insurrection.

Still, it was a reminder that there is always a target on what may be the country’s most visible – and maybe the most fraught – public building, especially after the public attention over the broad security failures three months ago.

“This may just cause everybody to pump the brakes a bit on taking the fence down entirely because of the sense of security that it provides us,” said Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton of Virginia, another member of the spending panel that oversees the legislative branch.

As a lawmaker who represents the suburbs of Washington, Wexton said she wants to see the Capitol open back up again to visitors. While the indoor parts of the building have been closed for the last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, the plazas, roads and sidewalks that surround the Capitol were only closed after the insurrection – keeping the public away from the area completely.

“I would like to see it come down at the earliest possible moment,” Wexton said of the fencing.

While lawmakers were initially supportive of the fencing to secure the area, and the thousands of National Guard troops sent to the Capitol to back up the overwhelmed police force, they soon said they were ready for a drawdown.

“I think we’ve overdone it,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell last month. “It looks terrible to have the beacon of our democracy surrounded by razor wire and National Guard troops.“

Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, the top Republican on the Senate Rules Committee, said the fencing should come down because the next security problem is “highly unlikely to be a carbon copy of the last problem.” Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida told Fox News he believed Democrats were keeping the fence up for “political reasons.”

But hatred of the fence is a rare issue the two parties agreed on.

“It’s just ghastly, it’s an embarrassment,” said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Republican. “If there’s a better way to protect us, I want to see it. I want to work to get it.”

Security officials, though, say that the Capitol can’t return to status quo. In February, Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman testified that even before the 9/11 attacks, security experts, including former chiefs of police, argued that more needed to be done to protect the Capitol complex. “The Capitol’s security infrastructure must change,” she said.

A sweeping security review conducted in the aftermath of the riot by a task force led by retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré recommended eventually replacing the barrier with mobile fencing and “an integrated, retractable fencing system” that could be deployed as needed. But it’s unclear if such an expensive proposal could win approval from Congress.

Ryan said his committee was doing extensive research, including a recent call with Israeli security officials to see how they keep their government secure.

“We’ve got to figure out what the sweet spot is with the security,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

Russia fines Twitter for not taking down calls to protest

MOSCOW (AP) — A court in Moscow on Friday fined Twitter for not taking down calls encouraging minors to take part in unauthorized rallies, the latest in a series of moves against the social media giant that has been used to amplify dissent in Russia.

The court found Twitter guilty on three counts of violating regulations on restricting unlawful content, ordering the company to pay three fines adding up to 8.9 million rubles (about $117,000).

The ruling comes two weeks after Russia’s state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor threatened to block Twitter within 30 days if it doesn’t take steps to remove banned content.

Roskomnadzor last month accused Twitter of failing to remove content encouraging suicide among children, as well as information about drugs and child pornography. The agency announced on March 10 it was slowing down the speed of uploading photos and videos to the platform because of that. Twitter in response has emphasized its policy of zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation, the promotion of suicide and drug sales.

Less than a week later, deputy chief of Roskomnadzor Vadim Subbotin argued that Twitter still wasn’t complying with the demands of the Russian authorities, adding that “if things go on like this, then in a month it will be blocked.”

Russian authorities earlier this year criticized social media platforms for bringing tens of thousands of people into the streets across Russia in January to demand the release of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most well-known critic. The wave of demonstrations was the largest in years and posed a major challenge to the Kremlin.

The authorities alleged that social media platforms failed to remove calls for children to join the protests. Putin has urged police to act more to monitor social platforms and to track down those who “draw the children into illegal and unsanctioned street actions.”

Twitter on Friday offered no comment on the Moscow court ruling.

The Russian government’s efforts to tighten control of the internet and social media date back to 2012, when a law allowing authorities to blacklist and block certain online content was adopted. Since then, a growing number of restrictions targeting messaging apps, websites and social media platforms have been introduced in Russia.

The government has repeatedly aired threats to block Facebook and Twitter but stopped short of outright bans, probably fearing the move would elicit too much public outrage. Only the social network LinkedIn, which wasn’t very popular in Russia, has been banned by the authorities for the failure to store its user data in Russia.

However, some experts have said Russian authorities might be seriously considering the possibility of bans this time around.

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Associated Press writer Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.

UK: Benefits outweigh risks for AstraZeneca despite 7 deaths

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s medicines regulator is urging people to continue taking the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, despite revealing that seven people in the U.K. have died from rare blood clots after getting the jab.

The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency, or MHRA, said it wasn’t clear if the shots are causing the clots, and that its “rigorous review into the U.K. reports of rare and specific types of blood clots is ongoing.”

Though the agency said late Friday that seven people had died as a result of developing blood clots, it didn’t disclose any information about their ages or health conditions.

In total, MHRA said it had identified 30 cases of rare blood clot events out of 18.1 million AstraZeneca doses administered up to and including March 24. The risk associated with this type of blood clot is “very small,” it added.

“The benefits of COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca in preventing COVID-19 infection and its complications continue to outweigh any risks and the public should continue to get their vaccine when invited to do so,” said Dr. June Raine, the agency’s chief executive.

Concerns over the AstraZeneca vaccine have already prompted some countries including Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands to restrict its use to older people.

The U.K., which has rolled out coronavirus vaccines faster than other European nations, is particularly reliant on the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed by scientists at the University of Oxford. It has also been using the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, of which the agency has not seen any reported blood clot events.

Figures Saturday showed that the U.K. has given a first dose of vaccine to 31.4 million people, or around 46% of its population, a much higher rate than the rest of Europe. Delivering second doses is the priority for April, with 5.2 million people now having received two jabs.

The relative success of the country’s vaccination program has been credited for helping to sharply reduce new coronavirus infections in the U.K. after a winter surge, paving the way for a modest easing of lockdown restrictions on gatherings.

On Saturday, the U.K. recorded another 3,423 infections, slightly up on the previous day’s six-month low of 3,402. It also recorded only 10 coronavirus-related deaths, its lowest daily total since early September.

Despite the improved coronavirus backdrop, the U.K. has recorded Europe’s highest COVID-related death toll, with over 126,500 deaths.

In France, which has restricted use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to people over 55, the family of a 38-year-old woman who died after suffering post-vaccination blood clots in the brain filed a criminal complaint in Toulouse on Saturday seeking a manslaughter investigation.

She is among four people in France who died after suffering blood clots in the weeks after getting an AstraZeneca vaccine shot. France’s national medicine safety agency says it is investigating those cases and eight other cases of severe blood clotting in people who survived.

MHRA’s view about the relative benefits of the vaccine is shared by the European Medicines Agency. It has said a causal link between unusual blood clots in people who have had the AstraZeneca vaccine is “not proven, but is possible,” and that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks of side effects. The World Health Organization has also urged countries to continue using the jab.

Adam Finn, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Bristol, said the “extreme rarity” of the blood-clotting events in the context of the millions of jabs administered in the U.K. makes the decision very straightforward.

“Receiving the vaccine is by far the safest choice in terms of minimizing individual risk of serious illness or death,” he said.

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Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at:

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Lawsuits: SC officials ignored risks ahead of prison riot

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A slew of new lawsuits accuse South Carolina prisons officials of negligence and constitutional rights violations in a 2018 riot in which seven inmates were killed and more than a dozen others injured.

In the lawsuits, filed in federal court this week and provided to The Associated Press, attorneys for inmates affected by the violence at Lee Correctional Institution accuse top Department of Corrections officials of knowing about security flaws at the maximum-security men’s prison, yet not repairing them, therefore putting inmates’ lives at risk.

The lawsuits specifically target a locking system at Lee, which has been the center of much of the critique of security flaws that existed prior to the insurrection.

At the time of the riot, attorneys wrote, “all of the cell doors” in one of Lee’s units “were easily compromised,” meaning inmates could rig them so they could be opened or closed at any time. These issues, ongoing for as long as five years before the riot, were known to agency Director Bryan Stirling and other officials, who, the attorneys wrote, “made absolutely no effort” to ensure the doors worked properly, creating “a fundamentally unsafe condition for all inmates” there.

Officials have said the violence — the worst U.S. prison riot in 25 years — began as a battle over contraband and territory. Dozens of inmates have been charged in connection to the revolt, which raged for more than seven hours in Bishopville, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of Columbia.

Most of the slain were stabbed or slashed; others appeared to have been beaten. One inmate described bodies “literally stacked on top of each other, like some macabre woodpile.”

The suits specifically name top officials, including Stirling, saying his response to knowledge that subordinates were engaged in activity potentially harmful to inmates was “so inadequate as to show deliberate indifference.”

Those allegations match up with complaints directly from Lee inmates. For several months ahead of the melee, the AP communicated with a Lee prisoner who used a contraband cellphone to offer insight into life behind bars. Describing frequent gang fights with homemade weapons, he said prisoners roamed freely, had easy access to cellphones and drugs, and were often left to police themselves.

“ALL of the doors to the cells are broken,” wrote the inmate, who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because his cellphone was illegal and he feared retribution from other prisoners. “At any time, I can let myself out of my cell.”

Video obtained from the same inmate backed up claims about plentiful homemade weapons and broken locks.

The lawsuits mention the lack of a system that would have allowed security officers to disperse chemical agents to help quell an uprising and also accuses several officers of knowing that inmates “were seen and heard sharpening shanks/knives” before the riot, but failing to confiscate the weapons.

Stirling and other officials, attorneys wrote, “knew or should have known that their conscious failure to provide adequate security measures would result in unsafe conditions for the inmate population.” After the riot, the lawsuits noted, a national assessment team brought in by Corrections officials “concluded that the major contributing factors leading to the insurrection” included staff shortages, “facility defects” and an “atmosphere of fear and intimidation.”

The Corrections Department didn’t immediately comment on the new allegations, which join dozens of other state and federal lawsuits already pending against prisons officials related to the riots.

Improvements have since been implemented. A year after the violence, officials invited reporters to tour Lee, where they demonstrated a $1 million cell door locking system. Other measures included perimeter netting, scanning devices and drone monitoring to shut cellphones down. Officials still aren’t able to fully use cell signal-jamming technology Stirling wants, however.

State Rep. Justin Bamberg, attorney for some of the inmates, said so much information about the violence, and what led to it, remains unknown.

“It’s a damn shame that people are still left fighting for justice, and the public is still in the dark as to the true events of that day,” Bamberg told AP. “These men accepted responsibility for the actions that originally sent them to prison, so why is it our prison system cannot accept responsibility for creating the horrendous conditions that caused this to occur in the first place?”

Carter Elliott, who also represents inmates suing the agency, said systemic issues at Lee, including security problems, should have made it clear to officials that a violent outburst was imminent.

“The operations and administrative staff were legally required to take some action to protect these human beings, properly serving their time, from extreme danger,” Elliott said. “Instead, nothing was done, which allowed a powder keg to develop and explode on April 15, 2018.”

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

Archives for April 2021

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