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B.1.1.7 is projected to become the dominant variant in the US by the end of this month or early April, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Monday. Because it is highly contagious, it could cause a surge in cases, and vaccination levels are not high enough to stop such a spike, experts have said.

"Then we can truly let go of some of the restrictions that are in place. But if we do this too quickly, we could see an increase in cases, we could see a backslide that is occurring in many European countries and that does not have to be the outcome here in America," he added.

A subsequent analysis in the study that accounted for missing and potentially miscategorized test results found the overall increased risk of death may be somewhat higher — around 61% more than earlier strains.

In what would be a first, the White House is drawing up plans to surge vaccines to emerging hotspots in an attempt to blunt the virus' trajectory and protect those at highest risk, two senior administration officials told CNN.

That focus has increased in recent weeks as the decline in new daily cases slowed, leveling off at a worryingly high level.

A fourth surge would be the first on President Biden's watch and a major test for the new administration. And while some constraints still remain — including the lopsided authority of state and local officials over the federal government in implementing public health restrictions — a half-dozen Biden administration officials told CNN they believe the federal government is better prepared than ever before to handle a surge.

The CDC reported Tuesday that 110,737,856 doses have been administered – about 77% of the 142,918,525 doses delivered.

The seven-day average remains above 2.4 million doses per day.

Nearly 22% of the population – about 72 million people – has received at least one dose of vaccine

An average of recent Georgia polls show both races within the margin of error and way too close to call, CNN's Harry Enten writes.share with Facebookshare with Twittershare with emailshare linkREAD MOREBiden says electing Georgia's Ossoff and Warnock would lead to $2,000 stimulus checksBy Kate Sullivan, CNNDemocrats may make history in Georgia's Senate runoffsAnalysis by Harry Enten, CNNHow Georgia got to the center of the US political universeBy Zachary B. Wolf, CNNMore people are moving to Georgia than ever before. Many are bringing their Democratic politics with themBy Christina Maxouris, CNN

Consider Yahoo. The company bought back shares worth $6.6 billion from 2008 to 2014, according to Robert L. Colby, a retired investment professional and developer of Corequity, an equity valuation service used by institutional investors. These purchases helped increase Yahoo’s earnings per share about 16 percent annually, on average.

a company’s overall profit growth is unaffected by share buybacks. And comparing increases in earnings per share with real profit growth reveals the impact that buybacks have on that particular measure. Call it the buyback mirage.

Those who run companies like buybacks because they make their earnings look better on a per-share basis. When fewer shares are outstanding, each one technically earns more.

But a good bit of that performance was the buyback mirage. Growth in Yahoo’s overall net profits came in at about 11 percent annually

Given these figures, Mr. Colby reckoned that Yahoo, if it had invested that same amount of money in its operations, would have had to generate only a 3.2 percent after-tax return to produce overall net profit growth of 16 percent annually over those years.

But Mr. Colby pointed out that buybacks provide only a one-time benefit, while smart investments in a company’s operations can generate years of gains.

Mr. Colby said his research “confirms my suspicion that while buybacks are not universally bad, they are being practiced far more broadly and without as much analysis as there should be.”

Perhaps the crucial flaw in buybacks is that they reward sellers of a company’s stock over its long-term holders. That’s because a company announcing a repurchase program usually sees its stock price pop in the short term. But passive investors, such as index funds, and other long-term holders gain little from the programs.

Another hazard: companies that spend billions to repurchase stock without substantially shrinking the number of shares outstanding. That’s because in these circumstances, prized corporate cash is used to buy back shares that offset stock grants bestowed on company executives in rich compensation plans.

And there are plenty of companies whose buybacks have simply left them with less money to invest in more promising opportunities. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “By throwing away money on buybacks, companies are giving up on the ability to grow in the future,”

proposals ask the companies to adopt a policy of excluding the effect of stock buybacks from any performance metrics they use to determine executive pay packages.

At 3M, for example, research and development expenditures plus strategic acquisitions have totaled $22 billion over the last five years, Mr. Kanzer said. In the meantime, the company’s buyback program has cost $21 billion.

“You really have to ask why a company’s board decides to return a big chunk of capital instead of replacing managers with ones who can figure out how to develop the operations,”

“If the board doesn’t think it’s worth investing in the company’s future,” Mr. Lutin added, “how can a shareholder justify continuing to hold the stock, or voting for directors who’ve given up?”

"The aim of the operation in Nangarhar was to root out IS from the area," said Afghan Army Lt. Col Sharin Aqa, a spokesman for the 201 Corps.

The operation was aided by local residents who set up checkpoints to help maintain security in their villages. These so-called "local uprisings" had supplemented the Afghan forces, which have been stretched since the drawdown in 2014 of the international combat mission, he said.

The Afghan government is attempting to end the war on its territory with hopes of drawing the Taliban into a dialogue and eventual peace talks. The ISIS presence has been principally in the east, where they have also fought the Taliban for territory.

On the religious front, just as in those other arenas, the groups that favor Democrats are clearly growing. Not only have the religiously unaffiliated expanded since 2009 from about 1 in 6 to 1 in 4 adults, but the share of Americans who ascribe to non-Christian faiths, a group that also leans strongly Democratic, has edged up from 5% to 7% of the population over that time, Pew found. Simultaneously, white Christians have fallen as a share of all American adults -- from just over half in 2009, according to Pew and other data, to around two-fifths today.

The challenge for Democrats is that their potential gains from the growing groups are being muted by an increasing tilt toward the GOP among the groups that are shrinking, in this case whites who identify as Christian. (The same dynamic is evident among other contracting groups such as whites without college degrees.) The combined result has left the parties on something of a treadmill, as Republicans offset at least some of the demographic change that benefits Democrats with improved performance among the key groups of shrinking white voters.

But even as white Christians have declined as a share of the population, more of that shrinking group is aligning with Republicans. In 2009, Pew found 51% of white Christians identified as Republicans, while 37% considered themselves Democrats (the rest were independents). Today that 14-point partisan gap has more than doubled: In the latest Pew results, 63% of white Christians identify as Republicans, compared with 30% who identify as Democrats.

The movement has been even sharper among white evangelical Protestants. Their share of the overall population is also shrinking: It fell to 16% in the latest Pew results, down from 19% in 2009. In 2009, they were about twice as likely to identify as Republicans (61%) as Democrats (30%), according to figures provided by Gregory Smith, Pew's associate director of research. Today 75% of white evangelicals call themselves Republicans, while just 19% identify as Democrats, a ratio of nearly 4 to 1.

As a result, even as white Christians have fallen below majority status in the country, they remain a clear majority of Republicans. In all, 64% of Republicans identify as white Christians in the latest Pew data. (The PRRI findings put the figure even slightly higher, at nearly 70%). That means white Christians now represent about the same share of Republicans as they did in the country overall in 1998. White evangelical Protestants alone represent 30% of Republicans, about double their share in the general population, Pew found.

The Democrats' religious profile could not be more distinct. White Christians now make up only 25% of Democrats, Pew found, down sharply from 40% in 2009. (White evangelicals compose only 7% of all Democrats.) Today, a larger share of Democrats in the Pew results are either not affiliated with any religion (34%) or are nonwhite Christians (30%), Pew found. Another 9% of Democrats adhere to non-Christian faiths. In each of those three latter cases, that's about double the share of Republicans in those categories.

While two-thirds of white evangelicals, for instance, say discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against minorities, more than 7 in 10 among the religiously unaffiliated disagree. Two-thirds of white evangelicals say immigrants are "invading" America; three-fourths of the religiously unaffiliated disagree. Three-fourths of white evangelicals say socialists have taken over the Democratic Party; two-thirds of the unaffiliated say racists now control the Republican Party.

The groups diverge in their assessment of every element of Trump's performance. Three-fourths of the unaffiliated say Trump has encouraged white supremacy; 70% of white evangelicals say he has not. Four-fifths of the unaffiliated disapprove of Trump's job performance; more than three-fourths of the evangelicals approve. More than three-fifths of the unaffiliated support Trump's impeachment and removal; nearly 9 in 10 evangelicals oppose it.

That means that if Republicans can't make more inroads with the diverse groups that are growing, they will constantly need bigger margins from their diminishing white groups just to stay in place. As Jones, of the Public Religion Research Institute, noted in an email, "Republicans look about like 65-year-old America or about like America did back in the mid-1990s, while Democrats look about like 30-year-old America or about like [what the] country is going to look a decade from now, if current trends continue."

the council confirmed that 200 items, believed to be from the Bronze Age, were found.

The Bronze Age in Britain lasted from 2,300 B.C. to 800 B.C., during a period referred to as prehistoric England, before there were written records,

Bronze axes, she said, are “common enough that you would expect to find one, but rare enough to be excited when you do.” She added, “What’s unique about this one is the number of finds in one place, making it a hoard.”

Over the last two decades, museums around Britain have acquired more than 5,000 artifacts that were found by members of the public, including Bronze Age axes, Iron Age cauldrons and Roman coin hoards.

The growing popularity of metal detecting as a hobby meant that more historical objects were being found, including some of archaeological significance that did not meet the previous “treasure” definition, which had been in place since the 1990s. In 2019, 1,311 pieces went through the process in which a committee determines whether an item should be considered treasure, the highest number on record. In 1997, 79 pieces were found.

Since her discovery, Milly has gone out on most Sundays with her grandfather and father in search of more items. She says that when she grows up, she wants to be an archaeologist.

“The Romans have been there, everyone has been there — and we’re the ones to find it,”

Although the office didn't respond to a question about why the tweet was sent out when it was, it came a day after Trump tweeted praise of a business and encouraged people to shop there. Thank you to Linda Bean of L.L.Bean for your great support and courage. People will support you even more now. Buy L.L.Bean. @LBPerfectMaine— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2017

Shaub — a political appointee of President Obama in his fourth of a five-year term and a career civil servant — described Trump's announced plans to turn over management of his businesses to his sons as "meaningless" as it relates to conflicts of interest.

Over the weekend, Senate Democrats released a letter Shaub sent raising alarms about nominees who hadn't completed their ethics reviews being scheduled for confirmation hearings.

The ethics agency director ended the letter, "For as long as I remain Director, OGE's staff and agency ethics officials will not succumb to pressure to cut corners and ignore conflicts of interest."

Conflict-of-interest laws that apply to executive branch employees don't apply to the president. Trump has made it clear he believes he is going above and beyond what is required by law, but Shaub and others have been quite critical of those steps, saying they are insufficient.

"The Oversight Committee has not held one hearing, conducted one interview, or obtained one document about President-elect Donald Trump's massive global entanglements," Cummings said in a statement,

This also comes after House Republicans pushed to reduce the influence of the independent Office of Congressional Ethics

The economics community just hasn't spent much time over the past couple of decades focusing on the effect that machine intelligence is likely to have on the labor marke

The Digital Revolution is different because computers can perform cognitive tasks too, and that means machines will eventually be able to run themselves. When that happens, they won't just put individuals out of work temporarily. Entire classes of workers will be out of work permanently. In other words, the Luddites weren't wrong. They were just 200 years too early

while it's easy to believe that some jobs can never be done by machines—do the elderly really want to be tended by robots?—that may not be true.

Robotic pets are growing so popular that Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor who studies the way we interact with technology, is uneasy about it: "The idea of some kind of artificial companionship," she says, "is already becoming the new normal."

robots will take over more and more jobs. And guess who will own all these robots? People with money, of course. As this happens, capital will become ever more powerful and labor will become ever more worthless. Those without money—most of us—will live on whatever crumbs the owners of capital allow us.

Economist Paul Krugman recently remarked that our long-standing belief in skills and education as the keys to financial success may well be outdated. In a blog post titled "Rise of the Robots," he reviewed some recent economic data and predicted that we're entering an era where the prime cause of income inequality will be something else entirely: capital vs. labor.

We're already seeing them, and not just because of the crash of 2008. They started showing up in the statistics more than a decade ago. For a while, though, they were masked by the dot-com and housing bubbles, so when the financial crisis hit, years' worth of decline was compressed into 24 months. The trend lines dropped off the cliff.

In the economics literature, the increase in the share of income going to capital owners is known as capital-biased technological change

The question we want to answer is simple: If CBTC is already happening—not a lot, but just a little bit—what trends would we expect to see? What are the signs of a computer-driven economy?

if automation were displacing labor, we'd expect to see a steady decline in the share of the population that's employed.

Second, we'd expect to see fewer job openings than in the past.

Third, as more people compete for fewer jobs, we'd expect to see middle-class incomes flatten in a race to the bottom.

There will be no place to go but the unemployment line.

Fifth, as a result of all this, we'd expect to see labor's share of national income decline and capital's share rise.

Fourth, with consumption stagnant, we'd expect to see corporations stockpile more cash and, fearing weaker sales, invest less in new products and new factories

The next step might be passenger vehicles on fixed routes, like airport shuttles. Then long-haul trucks. Then buses and taxis. There are 2.5 million workers who drive trucks, buses, and taxis for a living, and there's a good chance that, one by one, all of them will be displaced

in another sense, we should be very alarmed. It's one thing to suggest that robots are going to cause mass unemployment starting in 2030 or so. We'd have some time to come to grips with that. But the evidence suggests that—slowly, haltingly—it's happening already, and we're simply not prepared for it.

the first jobs to go will be middle-skill jobs. Despite impressive advances, robots still don't have the dexterity to perform many common kinds of manual labor that are simple for humans—digging ditches, changing bedpans. Nor are they any good at jobs that require a lot of cognitive skill—teaching classes, writing magazine articles

in the middle you have jobs that are both fairly routine and require no manual dexterity. So that may be where the hollowing out starts: with desk jobs in places like accounting or customer support.

In fact, there's even a digital sports writer. It's true that a human being wrote this story—ask my mother if you're not sure—but in a decade or two I might be out of a job too

Doctors should probably be worried as well. Remember Watson, the Jeopardy!-playing computer? It's now being fed millions of pages of medical information so that it can help physicians do a better job of diagnosing diseases. In another decade, there's a good chance that Watson will be able to do this without any human help at all.

Take driverless cars.

Most likely, owners of capital would strongly resist higher taxes, as they always have, while workers would be unhappy with their enforced idleness. Still, the ancient Romans managed to get used to it—with slave labor playing the role of robots—and we might have to, as well.

There will be no place to go but the unemployment lin

we'll need to let go of some familiar convictions. Left-leaning observers may continue to think that stagnating incomes can be improved with better education and equality of opportunity. Conservatives will continue to insist that people without jobs are lazy bums who shouldn't be coddled. They'll both be wrong.

Corporate executives should worry too. For a while, everything will seem great for them: Falling labor costs will produce heftier profits and bigger bonuses. But then it will all come crashing down. After all, robots might be able to produce goods and services, but they can't consume them

we'll probably have only a few options open to us. The simplest, because it's relatively familiar, is to tax capital at high rates and use the money to support displaced workers. In other words, as The Economist's Ryan Avent puts it, "redistribution, and a lot of it."

would we be happy in a society that offers real work to a dwindling few and bread and circuses for the rest?

The modern economy is complex, and most of these trends have multiple causes.

 economist Noah Smith suggests that we might have to fundamentally change the way we think about how we share economic growth. Right now, he points out, everyone is born with an endowment of labor by virtue of having a body and a brain that can be traded for income. But what to do when that endowment is worth a fraction of what it is today? Smith's suggestion: "Why not also an endowment of capital? What if, when each citizen turns 18, the government bought him or her a diversified portfolio of equity?"

In simple terms, if owners of capital are capturing an increasing fraction of national income, then that capital needs to be shared more widely if we want to maintain a middle-class society.

it's time to start thinking about our automated future in earnest. The history of mass economic displacement isn't encouraging—fascists in the '20s, Nazis in the '30s—and recent high levels of unemployment in Greece and Italy have already produced rioting in the streets and larger followings for right-wing populist parties. And that's after only a few years of misery.

When the robot revolution finally starts to happen, it's going to happen fast, and it's going to turn our world upside down. It's easy to joke about our future robot overlords—R2-D2 or the Terminator?—but the challenge that machine intelligence presents really isn't science fiction anymore. Like Lake Michigan with an inch of water in it, it's happening around us right now even if it's hard to see

A robotic paradise of leisure and contemplation eventually awaits us, but we have a long and dimly lit tunnel to navigate before we get there.

He saved himself from larger losses by selling a big chunk of his Amazon shares in February, before the worldwide scale of the coronavirus crisis was fully acknowledged and before the stock market collapse

Bezos sold $3.4bn worth of Amazon shares in the first week of February, just before the stock price peaked.

his timing was near-perfect. The share sales, which represented about 3% of his total holding, were much greater than Bezos had made in previous months. The stock sold was as much as he had sold in the previous 12 months, according to analysis by the Wall Street Journal.

Other US executives that have been either lucky or smart by selling large chunks of their shareholdings in February include Larry Fink, the chief executive of fund manager BlackRock, who saved potential losses of $9m, and Lance Uggla, CEO of data firm IHS Markit, who sold $47m of shares on 19 February that would have dropped to $19m if he had held on to them.

In total US executives sold about $9.2bn in shares of the companies they run in the five weeks before the start of the stock market rout. Selling before the 30% collapse in the market saved them from paper loses of $1.9bn.

"I do believe that the US is obligated to share vaccines with other countries," said Keisha Ray, an assistant professor and bioethicist at UTHealth McGovern Medical School in Houston, "especially those countries we might consider poorer countries or what we call underdeveloped countries."

From an ethical perspective, everyone should have access to protection from Covid-19, Kathy Kinlaw, associate director for Emory University's Center for Ethics, told CNN.

many countries lack vaccine access because of the "diminished purchasing power for healthcare in general, but also for Covid-19 treatments and vaccin

"I think the United States is definitely in a position where we should be sharing, absolutely,"

The US is not simply obligated to share vaccines by virtue of its resources, Ray said. Wealthier countries like the US have historically benefited by hindering other countries, she said, whether through government relations or colonialism.

"Now we are in a position to give back, we are in a position to go there and help these countries," she said, like "paying our debt." All three agreed it was right for the US to control its virus outbreaks before sharing vaccines. The pandemic is still an issue in the US, Ray said, but conditions have improved greatly.

"You need to stabilize your own nation before you assist others," he said. "And I think we're there. I think we're getting there now."

The US needs to continue to address vaccine hesitancy at home and be responsive to peoples' concerns, Kinlaw said. "But certainly there could be a point where there are people who will not take the vaccine and we have extra vaccine in this country, in which case it should be used and shared."

"Once this happens," the report said, "efforts to encourage vaccination will become much harder, presenting a challenge to reaching the levels of herd immunity that are expected to be needed."

One factor in deciding to release extra vaccines is the issue of supply and demand -- specifically, that the former will soon outstrip the latter in the US, Kinlaw said. And that could mean it's time to start shipping spare doses overseas, she said.

Data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that 30% of the US population is fully vaccinated. Experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have estimated the US needs between 70% and 85% of the country to be immune -- either through vaccination or prior infection -- to reach herd immunity.

"The world's wealthiest nations have locked up much of the near-term supply," wrote Dr. Krishna Udayakumar and Dr. Mark McClellan, health experts at Duke. "At the current rate vaccines are being administered, 92 of the world's poorest countries won't vaccinate 60% of their populations until 2023 or later."

"That is an education, a public outreach and an access issue," she said. "We have other hurdles that are not supply hurdles. So we do have the supply to help other countries."

"Epidemiologically, we should be working to suppress the virus and to decrease transmission and decrease the continue evolution of the virus and the variants," she said. "That is going to be beneficial to every single person."

But vaccinations everywhere could also present economic benefits, Kinlaw said, allowing people to travel more freely and conduct business around the world.

"One of the ethical challenges is, are we going to insist on fair distribution within those countries? Or are we just going to give them vaccine and let them give it to the military and elite?" he said.

"It sounds nice to say we're going to aid others, but its simplistic, because some governments are corrupt," he said. "Some governments have no distribution plan other than to give it first to their own leaders, rather than to those in need."

So last year, as former President Donald J. Trump pushed for rapid troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, the Defense Department and other national security agencies used familiar methods to move numbers around, which made troop levels seem to be dropping faster than they really were. It was comparable to what happened in 2019, when Mr. Trump wanted to pull forces from Syria, U.S. officials said.

Trump provided a powerful accelerant. He stoked the flames amid his ardent supporters who view sports as a last bastion for the good old days and their gauzy myths. The pandemic forced us inside and limited our lives — and also helped give activist athletes and their supporters more time to think and organize. (Hence the walkouts led by the N.B.A. and W.N.B.A. last summer.) All the while, the ubiquitous, hyperbolic power of the internet and social media continued to grow at breakneck speed.

China spent months batting away resentment and distrust as the place where the pandemic began, but in recent weeks its diplomats, pharmaceutical executives and other power brokers have been fielding scores of requests for vaccines from desperate officials in Latin America, where the pandemic is taking a devastating toll that grows by the day.

Mr. Biden pushed back on Monday, saying that after years of calling for infrastructure spending that included power lines, internet cables and other programs beyond transportation, Republicans had narrowed their definition to exclude key components of his plan.

Behind the political fight is a deep, nuanced and evolving economic literature on the subject. It boils down to this: The economy has changed, and so has the definition of infrastructure.

Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard University, is working on a project on infrastructure for the National Bureau of Economic Research that receives funding from the Transportation Department.

“Infrastructure is something the president has decided is a centrist American thing,” he said, so the administration took a range of priorities and grouped them under that “big tent.”

“I couldn’t be going to work if I had to take care of my parents,” said Cecilia Rouse, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “How is that not infrastructure?”

“Much of what it is in the American Jobs Act is really social spending, not productivity-enhancing infrastructure of any kind,” R. Glenn Hubbard, an economics professor at Columbia Business School and a longtime Republican adviser, said in an email.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has called the Biden plan a “Trojan horse. It’s called infrastructure. But inside the Trojan horse is going to be more borrowed money and massive tax increases.”

Likewise, Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said the proposal “redefines infrastructure” to include things like work force development.

The economy has evolved since the 1950s: Manufacturers used to employ about a third of the work force but now count for just 8.5 percent of jobs in the United States.

“Washington has an attention span of several weeks, and this debate is a century old,” he said. These days, he added, it is about digital access instead of clean water and power.

Some economists who define infrastructure more narrowly said that just because policies were not considered infrastructure did not mean they were not worth pursuing.