Tag: news

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Delivery giant UPS confirmed Thursday it found a lost trove of documents that Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said would provide revelations in the ever-growing scandal involving Joe Biden’s son Hunter and his overseas business dealings.

UPS Senior Public Relations Manager Matthew O’Connor told Business Insider on Thursday afternoon that the documents are located and are being sent to Carlson.

“After an extensive search, we have found the contents of the package and are arranging for its return,” he said in a statement.

 “UPS will always focus first on our customers, and will never stop working to solve issues and make things right. We work hard to ensure every package is delivered, including essential goods, precious family belongings and critical healthcare.”

It came after Glenn Zaccara, UPS’s corporate media relations director, confirmed Carlson used the company to ship the materials before they were lost.

“The package was reported with missing contents as it moved within our network,” Zaccara said before they were located. “UPS is conducting an urgent investigation.”

During his Wednesday night broadcast, Carlson said that a UPS employee notified them that their package “was open and empty … apparently, it had been opened.”

“The Biden documents never arrived in Los Angeles. Tuesday morning we received word from our shipping company that our package had been opened and the contents were missing,” Carlson also remarked. “The documents had disappeared.”

On Tuesday night, Carlson interviewed former Hunter Biden associate Tony Bobulinski, who claimed that the former Democratic vice president could be compromised by the Chinese Communist Party due to Hunter and brother James Biden’s business dealings in the country.

Joe Biden has not responded to Bobulinski’s allegations. Last week during his debate with President Donald Trump, he said he had “not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.”

Biden’s campaign earlier this month said Biden never had a meeting with an executive at a shady Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, while he was the vice president and his son sat on the board of the firm. A report from the New York Post, citing alleged Hunter Biden emails, suggested Hunter Biden had arranged a meeting between him, the executive, and Joe Biden.

It’s now possible that a special counsel will investigate Joe Biden should he win the presidency.

“You know, I am not a big fan of special counsels, but if Joe Biden wins the presidency, I don’t see how you avoid one,” Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) said. “Otherwise, this is going to be, you know, tucked away, and we will never know what happened. All this evidence is going to be buried.”

UPS did not provide further details about the apparent mishap.

A massive surge in early voting across Texas has given Democrats hope that they can flip the historically red state blue.

The Lone Star sate – which has seen a flood of Californians over the last several years, has seen voting records shattered in major cities. From Austin to Houston, polls suggest that Joe Biden may be within striking distance of President Trump – something which hasn’t happened in Texas since 1976.

And according Wednesday’s Cook Political Report, Texas has now moved from “leans Republican” to “toss up” – which comes as Biden running mate Kamala Harris embarks on a tour of Houston, McAllen and Fort Worth this week. 

Almost 8.5 million Texans had cast ballots by Wednesday, representing about 95% of the entire vote in 2016. Rapidly growing and increasingly diverse suburbs are the sites of some of the biggest upticks in early voting, and Democrats point to a surge in female voters as cause for optimism. Unmarried women make up a third of the Texans voting in this election who didn’t cast a ballot in 2016, the party’s state headquarters said earlier this week. –Bloomberg

“We as Democrats are voting like our lives depend on it,” said Cynthia Ginyard, Fort Bend Democratic Party chair, a fast-growing county which includes sprawling Houston suburbs.

Across the country, nearly 80 million early votes have been cast – including 27.5 million in-person votes and 51.3 million mail-in ballots. There are currently 39.6 million mail-in ballots outstanding. Texas, California and Florida have led the charge.

In Travis County, TX – which includes Austin and its suburbs, early voting has already exceeded the total of all ballots cast in 2016, while Democratic Dallas County is on track to do the same.

For more than a quarter-century, Texas was firmly conservative, producing gun-toting, church-going politicians like President George W. Bush and Rick Perry, a former governor and U.S. energy secretary. Dallas, Austin, Houston and San Antonio were liberal blips on an expansive red radar. But a population boom driven by immigrants and newcomers has put the state’s politics up for grabs. –Bloomberg

the state’s shift to blue coincides with an influx of outsiders, along with corporations such as Apple and Toyota Motor Corp. In Harris County, the most common surname of in-person voters so far has been Nguyen.

That said, according to liberal pollster Nate Silver, citing an Asian American Voter Survey, Vietnamese voters largely favor Trump.

Most common surnames of in-person Harris County (#Houston) voters so far (994k total)
– Nguyen 8.8k
– Smith 8.0k
– Williams 7.6k
– Johnson 7.4k
– Jones 6.0k
– Garcia 5.7k
– Rodriguez 5.7k
– Martinez 5.1k
– Brown 5.0k
– Davis 4.8k
🗳️☑️🇺🇸
(We can tell you how many with your name!)

— Zach Despart🖊️ (@zachdespart) October 28, 2020

Former Presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg has spent $15 million to support Biden in Texas and Ohio – with his Texas Independence USA PAC will air TV ads in both English and Spanish slamming Trump over the coronavirus.

And as Bloomberg notes, “Even if Biden falls short, cinching competitive races for the state House of Representatives could give Democrats a strong hand in redistricting after the census.”

That said, University of Texas professor Jim Henson cautions liberals not to get too excited just yet.

“You have to be impressed by the volume,” said Henson, adding “But at the same time, I think until we see what the actual Election Day numbers look like, it’s not clear whether or how much this is going to carry through.”

Red counties have also seen a spike in early voting, with Denton, in North Texas, reaching 60% turnout as of Wednesday. In suburban Dallas, closely watched Collin County, which has emerged as a battleground even though Trump won it by double digits in 2016, saw turnout of 62%.

After converging to show Trump and Biden as even over the weekend, an updated average of 2020 polls by FiveThirtyEight widened slightly this week, with Trump holding a 1-point lead as of Thursday. And the state’s senior U.S. senator, Republican John Cornyn, is running well ahead of his Democratic challenger, former U.S. Air Force helicopter pilot MJ Hegar. –Bloomberg

Hispanics are key

According to the report, a key decider of whether the state flips blue for Biden are Latinos, which make up 30% of all eligible voters in Texas. Notably, Latino early voting is up double what it was in 2016 on a national level, with the majority expected to vote Democratic. That said, it’s still a toss-up.

“In Texas, the Latino vote has tended to lean Democratic, but that’s exactly it: It leans Democratic,” said Renée Cross, senior director at the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that the majority of Hispanics will vote for Biden, but the question is how many of the ones who vote Republican will vote for Trump.”

Just in time for the next round of lockdowns, Netflix is raising prices for its standard and premium plans, sending its shares surging more than 4% during the last hour of the trading day.

The company’s share price broke back above $500, which it lost after its disappointing Q3 earnings report earlier this month.

Submitted by Market Crumbs

Markets were a sea of red yesterday as Covid-19 continues to dominate the news with the U.S. reporting its third consecutive record in average daily cases and Europe imposing additional lockdowns.

While publicly traded equities were selling off on Covid-19 fears, privately held Whoop announced it raised $100 million in Series E funding at a $1.2 billion valuation. Whoop, which sells fitness trackers and offers a monthly subscription plan, has actually seen a boost in sales as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The membership, which begins at $30 per month, includes the Whoop Strap 3.0 for monitoring vitals such as sleep and movements as well as a coaching platform. The company says customers who wear the device for more than one year experience longer and more consistent sleep, improved physiology and enhanced physical performance.

“We will continue to make Whoop the best product experience for measuring and improving health,” Whoop Founder & CEO Will Ahmed said. “Human performance is a new category and Whoop has emerged as both the pioneer and market leader. We’re proud to partner with IVP and other prominent investors who share our vision.”

Whoop made the news earlier this year after PGA Tour player Nick Watney saw his respiratory rate jump on the Whoop app, prompting him to get a Covid-19 test. Watney tested positive despite not showing any of the symptoms. Whoop is even working with researchers from the likes of Harvard Medical School, Brigham Health, and CQUniversity to understand how its products could help with Covid-19.

The funding round was led by IVP and includes a handful of notable athletes such as Kevin Durant, Patrick Mahomes, Eli Manning and Rory McIlroy. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Two Sigma Ventures are among the notable participating investors in the round.

Whoop has now raised more than $200 million since its founding and has more than 330 employees, with more than 200 of them hired this year. The funds will be used to improve the membership through additional coaching tools and to expand globally.

“I’ve always loved Whoop the product, but I learned that Whoop the business was just as good. I’m proud to be investing again in this round of financing and very excited about the company’s prospects,” McIlroy said.

As Whoop becomes the latest member of the unicorn club, it’s the latest example of money flowing into the health and fitness space following the likes of Peloton and Lululemon’s $500 million acquisition of Mirror.

The Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald resigned from the outlet on Thursday, after ‘editors censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.’

“The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.”

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 29, 2020

Greenwald writes at his new home (greenwald.substack.com):

The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.

I had no objection to their disagreement with my views of what this Biden evidence shows: as a last-ditch attempt to avoid being censored, I encouraged them to air their disagreements with me by writing their own articles that critique my perspectives and letting readers decide who is right, the way any confident and healthy media outlet would. But modern media outlets do not air dissent; they quash it. So censorship of my article, rather than engagement with it, was the path these Biden-supporting editors chose.

Apparently he’s also blocked from publishing the article elsewhere, though he’s “asked my lawyer to get in touch with FLM to discuss how best to terminate my contract.”

What did The Intercept do in response to Greenwald leaving? They’re attempting to raise money off of it!

Greenwald has found support across the political spectrum for his decision to walk.

.@ggreenwald and i have disagreed about lots of things over the years — he’s taken shots at me and vice versa — but i have always respected his mind, courage and voice. today, i respect him even more. https://t.co/MyWWy7W3S6

— Andrew Ross Sorkin (@andrewrsorkin) October 29, 2020

Much respect for the principled move, Glenn.

It’s been a tragedy to see The Intercept increasingly abandon adversarial reporting and adopt Democratic orthodoxy, especially in its international coverage of Washington-appointed bogeymen.

I look forward to seeing your future work.

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 29, 2020

It’s sad that it’s come to this. As I’ve said, I do not always agree with you, but you are one of very few people who says exactly what they believe and can be trusted to call things exactly how you see them without fear or favor. That is rare and vital. I wish you all the best.

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) October 29, 2020

With Larry Kudlow back in front of the cameras on Thursday talking up Thursday’s record-breaking GDP report and promising – with a newsman’s confidence – that the American economy will have made a “full recovery” by the Spring of next year.

Though he acknowledged that his take was “optimistic”, he reiterated that the president doesn’t want to shut down the economy again, adding that he doesn’t think shutdowns are “helpful”.

It’s unsurprising to see the White House dispatch Kudlow to carry out a string of TV interviews: Because as the Trump Campaign pushes its message that Trump’s response to the pandemic wasn’t as fatally flawed as critics have claimed, Dr. Fauci is on the other end, claiming that President Trump’s projections for when a vaccine might be approved are fanciful. And as the outbreak has accelerated these past few weeks (with Europe hit much harder than the US), the good doctor has been pushing his estimates for when we might expect a vaccine to be widely available further and further back.

On Wednesday evening, Dr. Fauci appeared on CNBC for an interview with Shep Smith, the latest Fox News refugee to try his luck as restarting his career, only to be hectored by the reporter who repeatedly pressed Dr. Fauci to unreservedly declare that a mandatory mask order must be passed across all of the US.

Nationwide, Covid has never been this bad. “This is going to get worse,” Dr. Fauci told us last night. Follow the latest pandemic news here: https://t.co/zjSdSomZ5F #FollowTheFauci pic.twitter.com/bBHImV5LpF

— The News with Shepard Smith (@thenewsoncnbc) October 29, 2020

After acknowledging last night that he “hasn’t spoken to the president in quite a while”, on Thursday, Dr. Fauci is cranking up his warnings to ’11’, claiming that life in the US might not go “back to normal” until 2022, or late 2021 at the very least, and that mask wearing would likely continue until around this time next year.

That is, unless Americans change things up and start taking the virus more seriously. The comments were apparently made during a live virtual interview held by the NIH “in cooperation with Facebook and Twitter live”.

I will be joined by my colleague @NIAIDNews Director Dr. Anthony Fauci for a LIVE Q&A today (10/29) at 12:00 pm ET to provide updates on the #COVID19 @Moderna_tx #clinicaltrial, other vaccine research, & answer questions about vaccine safety. Tune in on @NIH & #NIH’s Facebook! pic.twitter.com/C3UBiSuG7e

— Francis S. Collins (@NIHDirector) October 29, 2020

Earlier, some news outlets reported that Dr. Fauci has just come out in favor of a national mask mandate – Joe Biden’s stated preference for combating COVID-19 – for the first time, which is of course nonsense. He’s essentially been advocating for a national mandate since it became clear that restrictions and enforcement would vary dramatically from place to place.

When it comes to evaluating how much faith we should place in Dr. Fauci’s warnings, just remember, we’ve been here before…

1. Fauci doing all he can to sabotage Trump election with endless dire predictions; the same Fauci who failed the American people by saying early on the coronavirus wasn’t any worse than a flu and told the public not to wear masks;

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) October 29, 2020

2. and to this day has not even commented on the decision by Cuomo and others to send coronavirus positive patients into nursing homes. The same Fauci who blew the swine flu in 2009 with his buddies Obama and Biden. He’s a disgrace and a political hack. https://t.co/4xSJx9PqTo

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) October 29, 2020

As Dr. Joseph Ladapo argued in a commentary piece published Thursday by WSJ, data garnered so far shows that widespread mask wearing has made little difference (one widely cited study claimed just a 2% difference in the rate of growth. Though compounding is certainly a factor, the circumstances of the study are hardly definitive. As Dr. Lapado writes: “By paying outsize and scientifically unjustified attention to masking, mask mandates have the unintended consequence of delaying public acceptance of the unavoidable truth. In countries with active community transmission and no herd immunity, nothing short of inhumane lockdowns can stop the spread of Covid-19, so the most sensible and sustainable path forward is to learn to live with the virus.”

It was less than a month ago that we reported Disney was laying off 28,000 employees as a result of continued economic pressure and lockdowns resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Now, “thousands of cast members” – which include workers in Entertainment, Transportation, Merchandise, and Food & Beverage – are being hit with “another wave of layoff emails”, according to Walt Disney News Today. 

“As heartbreaking as it is to take this action, this is the only feasible option we have in light of the prolonged impact of Covid-19 on our business,” Josh D’Amaro, the chairman of the parks division, said in a memo to workers in late September.

The late September cuts spanned across the company’s various businesses including theme parks, cruise ships and retail businesses. While the layoffs also include executives, they were focusing on part-time workers: 67% of those getting a pink slip are part-time workers.

As part of its farewell package, Disney offered benefits to the workers being cut, including 90 days of severance. The 28,000 layoffs followed the furloughing of a massive 43,000 workers in April, when the company was first impacted by the pandemic. 

In July, Disney triumphantly reopened several of its shuttered parks, including in Florida, although visits were a fraction of their pre-pandemic levels. Disney still hasn’t received clearance to restart operations at its two theme parks in Anaheim, California.

Before the pandemic, Disney’s domestic parks alone employed more than 100,000. And, as we noted back in September, while one can “understand” the plight of management, which is scrambling to boost cash flow after it saddled the company with record debt in recent years…

…it probably would make all those soon-to-be-laid off workers feel a little bit better if most of that newly issued debt hadn’t gone to pay for stock buybacks the benefited upper management.

“Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park remain closed and will reopen at a later date, pending state and local government approvals,” the website says as of October 29, 2020. 

Meanwhile, Disney had restored the salaries of its senior executives back in August, while thousands of employees remained furloughed.