Archives for April 2021

FINANCIAL MARKETS

Asian shares mostly lower on strong China price data

BANGKO (AP) — Shares are lower in most Asian markets today after China reported stronger than expected inflation data.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index rebounded after falling the day before.

On Thursday, stocks closed moderately higher on Wall Street, lifted by gains in large technology companies that benefit from lower bond yields. The S&P 500 index gained 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.2% and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite climbed 1%.

Stocks have benefited this week as bond yields, which had been steadily ticking higher, retreated from highs hit earlier in the month. But higher than expected jobless claims dented some of the buying enthusiasm.

RELIEF CHECKS-SPENDING HABITS

Americans use stimulus to save, pay off debt more than spend

UNDATED (AP) — Americans are proving remarkably reliable in how they are spending their federal stimulus payments. The New York Federal Reserve released a study this week that shows Americans are using most of the money for paying down debt and for savings, with a smaller portion going to actual spending.

According to the report, households, on average, are using or plan to use about 41.6% of the latest relief payment toward savings, 33.7% toward debt and 24.7% for spending.

The percentage for each category has stayed relatively stable for each of the three rounds of payments. Researchers found there were variations by income level: Lower-income households tended to use more of the money for debt or spending than higher-income counterparts.

As the economy reopens and fear and uncertainty recede, the authors say the high levels of saving should facilitate future spending.

CHIP WOES

Starving for more chips in a tech-hungry world

SAN RAMON, Calif (AP) — As the U.S. economy awakens from its pandemic-induced slumber, a vital cog is in short supply: the computer chips that power our phones and wireless networks, cars and other vehicles, and a vast number of other items we take for granted.

The shortage has already created delays for people who want to buy laptops, the iPhone 12 and the latest video game consoles.

Things are still getting worse, especially in the auto industry, which has been closing down factories and stockpiling nearly completed vehicles in lots while they await the chips that they need to roll them into showrooms.

These snags are likely to frustrate consumers who can’t find the vehicle they want and sometimes find themselves settling for a lower-end models without as many fancy electronic features. And it threatens to leave a big dent in the auto industry, which by some estimates stands to lose $60 billion in sales during the first half of his year.

CHINA-US TECH SANCTIONS

US sanctions Chinese computer makers in widening tech fight

BEIJING (AP) — The Biden administration has added seven Chinese supercomputer makers and research labs to a U.S. export blacklist in a spreading conflict with Beijing over technology and security.

The measure adds to signs President Joe Biden is sticking to the tough line taken by his predecessor, Donald Trump, toward Chinese tech industries seen by Washington as potential threats.

The decision is part of mounting conflict over the ruling Communist Party’s industrial plans, access to American technology and accusations of computer attacks and theft of business secrets. The latest penalties target researchers and manufacturers the Commerce Department said build supercomputers used by the Chinese military in weapons development.

PERSIAN GULF-TENSIONS

South Korean tanker once held by Iran now on the move

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A South Korean oil tanker held for months by Iran amid a dispute over billions of dollars held in Seoul has been freed.

It happened early today ahead of further talks between Tehran and world powers over its tattered nuclear deal.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry says Iran released the MT Hankuk Chemi and its captain after seizing the vessel in January. Iran had accused the vessel of pollution but the seizure was widely seen as an attempt to pressure Seoul to release billions of dollars in Iranian assets tied up in South Korean banks amid heavy American sanctions on Iran.

SOUTWEST AIRLINES-FLIGHT ATTENDANTS

Southwest to recall flight attendants before summer season

DALLAS (AP) — Southwest Airlines says it’s bringing back more than 2,700 flight attendants who took leaves of absence last year. The airline’s announcement Thursday is the latest sign that the industry feels confident that travel is rebounding after being hammered for the past year by the pandemic.

A Southwest spokesman says the flight attendants will be recalled effective June 1. Just last week, Southwest said it will recall more than 200 pilots who also took voluntary leave as the airline tried to cut costs in 2020.

The Dallas-based airline lost more than $3 billion last year — its first money-losing year since the early 1970s — but CEO Gary Kelly said last month that it could return to break-even by June as more people get vaccinated against COVID-19.

J&J VACCINE

North Carolina sites halt J&J shots after adverse reactions

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Three vaccine clinics in North Carolina have suspended administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after some people had adverse reactions, including fainting.

Four people were taken to hospitals for further examination, and state and federal health officials are reviewing the matter. All four are expected to recover.

One of the vaccination sites was at PNC Arena in Raleigh and two others were at clinics run by UNC Health.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is examining reports of adverse reactions in multiple states, but says fainting is not uncommon. Colorado recently saw two people go to the hospital after receiving the single-dose shot.

The decision to halt J&J vaccines at PNC Arena was made with less than two hours of appointments left to be administered. People who were at the site were then given Pfizer vaccines or allowed to reschedule their existing J&J appointments.

J&J VACCINE-MILITARY

J&J vaccine problems hamper US military vaccines overseas

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military leaders say that recent problems with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine have made it more difficult to provide shots for forces overseas. They also say that vaccines have been offered to service members’ families or other tier two beneficiaries in only 40 percent of the military sites outside the U.S.

Military officials say they are making up for the Johnson & Johnson shortfall by shipping more Moderna vaccines to forces outside the country.

The cold temperature and other requirements for the Pfizer vaccine make it more difficult to send overseas.

AMAZON-UNION

Amazon union organizers deflated as vote tilts against them

UNDATED (AP) — Amazon is heading into the final stretch of a union push in Bessemer, Alabama with a sizeable lead over labor organizers.

With nearly half the ballots counted Thursday night, 1,100 warehouse workers had rejected the union while 463 voted in favor of it. The count will resume this morning in Birmingham, Alabama, where agents for the National Labor Relations Board are counting each vote by hand.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which is organizing the Amazon workers in Bessemer, said that 3,215 votes were sent in — about 55% of the nearly 6,000 workers who were eligible to vote.

OJ SIMPSON-DEFAMATION LAWSUIT SETTLED

OJ Simpson, Las Vegas Strip hotel settle defamation case

LAS VEGAS (AP) — O.J. Simpson and a Las Vegas hotel-casino have settled a lawsuit alleging that unnamed employees defamed Simpson by telling a celebrity news site he had been banned from the property in November 2017 for being drunk and disruptive.

Attorneys for the resort had argued the former football star couldn’t be defamed because his reputation was already tarnished by his trials in the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend in Los Angeles decades ago and his conviction and imprisonment in Nevada in a 2007 armed robbery case.

Terms were not made public in the court dismissal filed March 31 in Clark County District Court. It said both sides agreed to bear their own legal costs and fees.

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BEIJING (AP) — China’s government on Friday criticized the Biden administration’s curbs on access to U.S. technology for its supercomputer developers and said sanctions “only strengthen China’s determination” to invent its own.

The sanctions announced Thursday are the latest sign President Joe Biden is sticking to the tough line taken by his predecessor, Donald Trump, toward Chinese tech industries seen by Washington as potential threats.

The step adds to conflict over the ruling Communist Party’s industrial plans, access to American technology and accusations of computer attacks and theft of business secrets.

A foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, accused Washington of misusing phony security warnings to “maliciously suppress” Chinese industry.

“Containment and suppression by the United States cannot stop the pace of China’s scientific and technological progress, but will only strengthen China’s determination and will to innovate independently,” Zhao said.

Zhao said Beijing would protect its companies, echoing Chinese warnings after previous U.S. trade penalties that often are followed by no action.

The latest penalties block access to U.S. technology for researchers and manufacturers the Commerce Department said build supercomputers used by the Chinese military in weapons development. They can be used to simulate nuclear explosions and the aerodynamics of high-speed or stealth aircraft and missiles.

Biden has said he wants better relations with Beijing but has given no indication he will roll back sanctions imposed by Trump on Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei and other companies.

The Communist Party has responded by declaring that accelerating efforts to transform China into a self-reliant “technology power” will be this year’s top economic priority.

Chinese supercomputers have set speed records but use U.S.-supplied processor chips and other hardware. They can support weapons development by simulating nuclear explosions and the aerodynamics of high-speed or stealth aircraft and missiles.

“The United States has implemented a technical blockade of China in the supercomputer field for a long time, but China’s supercomputers still lead the world due to independent innovation,” Zhao said.

The U.S. penalties apply to National Supercomputing Centers in the cities of Jinan, Shenzhen, Wuxi and Zhengzhou, Tianjin Phytium Information Technology, Shanghai High-Performance Integrated Circuit Design Center and Sunway Microelectronics.

Meanwhile, American telecom regulators are in the process of stripping three Chinese phone carriers of the right to operate in the United States.

Trump also tried to force the Chinese owner of video service TikTok to sell its U.S. unit and issued an order barring Americans from investing in securities of companies deemed by the Pentagon to be linked to China’s military.

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BEIRUT (AP) — They are boisterous, argumentative and at times downright hilarious.

Hundreds of thousands of people in the Arab world are turning to Clubhouse, the fast-growing audio chat app, to mock and vent against longtime rulers, debate sensitive issues from abortion to sexual harassment, or argue where to find the best and cheapest shawarma sandwich during an economic crisis.

The discussions are endless as they are breathless.

More than 970,000 people from the Middle East have downloaded the new platform since it launched outside the U.S. in January. It has offered space for in-person conversations in an age where direct contact is at the mercy of the pandemic and it’s brought together those at home and the many in exile or abroad.

But mostly, it has offered a release for bottled-up frustration in a region where violent conflicts and autocrats have taken hold and where few, if any, avenues for change — or even for speaking out — seem tenable.

“It is an open coffeehouse that pierces through what is forbidden by the political regimes in the region,” said Diana Moukalled, a Lebanese journalist who closely follows social platforms. “Clubhouse has made people go back to debating one another.”

The Middle East accounts for 6.1% of the 15.9 million global downloads of Clubhouse, which launched in the United States a year ago. Saudi Arabia ranks no. 7 globally for the invitation-only downloads, with over 660,000, just after Thailand and before Italy, according to San Francisco-based mobile app analytics firm Sensor Tower.

One reason for its popularity seems to be the no-holds-barred atmosphere, fueled by the liveliness of group conversation.

Saudis organized rooms to discuss who could replace their aging king instead of his ambitious son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. They argued with Egyptians over what they considered democracy and with Lebanese and Jordanians over their kingdom’s perceived meddling in their affairs.

Other rooms tackle taboo topics ranging from atheism to homosexuality. A Saudi woman discussed whether abortions should be allowed in the kingdom, prompting a heated back and forth.

The platform also became a place to exchange information, challenging the region’s largely state-dominated media.

Minutes after reports of an attempted coup in Jordan last week, Jordanians inside and outside the country congregated in a room to share information on the confusing reports released and controlled by the government. Families of those arrested in the ensuing sweep shared their news. Some users defended King Abdullah while backers of the brother prince accused of the coup vowed to rally behind him.

Previously unimaginable debates took place among parts of society who would otherwise shun or block each other on other social media.

Opponents debated supporters of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group. Elsewhere, Lebanese railed against private banks they blame for their country’s economic meltdown — with bankers in the room.

In another room, Iraqis — mainly exiles — criticized how their country’s many religious militias impacted their lives. The moderator, a woman from the southern Shiite city of Najaf now living in Europe, told how her conservative family tried to mold her into “being like them” and opposed sending her to universities where men and women mingle. She fended off one man who suggested she was exaggerating, telling him he hadn’t experienced what she did.

The moderator went on and named figures from powerful Shiite militias and religious leaders, saying she’d seen how they flout the rules they set for others. In the free-flowing conversation, militia supporters frequently interrupted, sparking a torrent of expletives from the moderator and others until they were forced to leave.

“They controlled the ground with their muscles,” the moderator said of the militias. “But social media need brains. This (space) is ours.”

Among the hundreds of rooms discussing the war in Syria, some users decided to lighten the mood. Opposition activists organized a spoof interview with someone posing as President Bashar Assad.

It drew laughs but also poignant reminders of how the 10-year conflict devastated the country. “I ran away from you and still you follow me to Clubhouse,” one exiled Syrian told the fake “Assad.”

But concerns are mounting that the open space could quickly come under the same government surveillance or censorship as other social media.

A decade ago, activists in the Arab Spring protests flocked to Twitter and Facebook, which offered a similar free space. Since then, authorities have come to use the sites to target and arrest critics and spread their own propaganda.

Oman has already blocked the Clubhouse app. In Jordan, it is obstructed on certain mobile networks, while in the United Arab Emirates, users have described unexplainable glitches.

Pro-government commentators have railed against Clubhouse in TV shows and newspapers, accusing it of helping terrorists plan attacks, spreading pornography or undermining religious and state figures.

First, Clubhouse drew rights defenders and political activists. Then came the government backers.

“This room has grown because Salman’s people are here to defend him,” shouted a participant in a room featuring opponents of the Saudi crown prince.

A discussion of the release of imprisoned Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul’s devolved into panicked mayhem when a few participants threatened to expose attendees and report them to authorities. The chat soon cut off.

Recordings surfaced online from Clubhouse conversations deemed offensive, such as about homosexuality becoming acceptable, fueling fears that pro-government Saudi users were keeping tabs on critics. One participant asked to leave a chat among Lebanese when it was discovered she was Israeli, in part because some users feared they could be prosecuted under Lebanese laws banning mixing with Israelis.

Some fear security agents are secretly in the rooms.

Most participants in the app, which remains exclusive to iPhone users, use real names and sometimes put detailed bios. But growing numbers use fake names.

Without anonymity, Clubhouse disagreements could turn into violence in real life, said Ali Sibai, a consultant with Beirut-based digital rights group Social Media Exchange, SMEX.

Clubhouse’s “vague” policies also raise concerns, he said. The company says it temporarily stores conversations for investigating abuses. But it doesn’t say for how long or who reviews the Arabic content, raising questions whether unknown third parties may be involved, endangering participants’ security, he said.

Moukalled, editor of Daraj, an independent online media, said it would be no surprise if authorities impose surveillance on Clubhouse.

But, she said, something else would come along.

“So long as people don’t feel they are part of the decision-making process, they will find these platforms.”

___

AP writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Isabel Debre in Dubai and Kelvin Chang in London contributed to this report.

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