159732463
submission
gollum123 writes:
The Biden administration is restoring California’s authority to set its own rules on greenhouse gas emissions from cars, pickups and SUVs, a move that rolls back a Trump-era decision and puts California at the forefront of combatting climate change in the U.S. The decision reinstates a Clean Air Act waiver that allows California to adopt stronger fuel economy standards than those of the federal government and set the precedent for the rest of the country on how to mitigate vehicle emissions. The state’s past ability to control vehicle emissions led to some innovative strategies in the auto industry, such as catalytic converters, which convert toxic gases and pollutants in exhaust gas into less-toxic pollutants, as well as “check engine” lights. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have adopted California’s tighter standards. Under the Clean Air Act, the state has the ability to receive permission from the federal government to set its own rules on tailpipe standards that help lower emissions from gas-powered vehicles. California established the first tailpipe emissions standards in the country in 1966.
157863819
submission
gollum123 writes:
Major international airlines are canceling flights to the United States over aviation industry fears that 5G technology could interfere with crucial onboard instruments. But it's business as usual in Europe, where the latest generation of high speed mobile networks is being rolled out without a hitch. Why is there a potential problem in the United States, but not Europe? It comes down to technical details. Mobile phone companies in the United States are rolling out 5G service in a spectrum of radio waves with frequencies between 3.7 and 3.98 GHz. The companies paid the US government $81 billion in 2021 for the right to use those frequencies, known as the C-Band. But in Europe, 5G services use the slower 3.4 to 3.8 GHz range of spectrum. There are other differences in how 5G is being rolled out, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Other countries are using lower power levels, restricting the placement of 5G antennas near airfields and requiring them to be tilted downward to limit potential interference with aircraft.
156540493
submission
gollum123 writes:
More than 800,000 Americans have now died from the coronavirus, the highest recorded national death toll from the global pandemic.The milestone means nearly twice as many Americans have died during the pandemic as in World War 2. It comes as the US reached 50 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 on Monday.Most deaths have been recorded among the unvaccinated and the elderly, and more Americans died in 2021 than in 2020.The elderly have always been the most vulnerable, and despite being the most vaccinated group one in 100 Americans over the age of 65 has died during the pandemic.
150842573
submission
gollum123 writes:
workers who want to stay at home forever have been especially vocal about their demands, a silent majority of Americans do want to get back to the office, at least for a few days a week. But as the latest coronavirus surge has led employers to delay return-to-office plans, that larger group is growing increasingly glum. In a national survey of more than 950 workers, conducted in mid-August by Morning Consult on behalf of The New York Times, 31 percent said they would prefer to work from home full time. By comparison, 45 percent said they wanted to be in a workplace or an office full time. The remaining 24 percent said they wanted to split time between work and home. Morning Consult surveyed workers from a variety of industries, so white-collar office workers were represented alongside those working in other fields, like retail. The data intelligence company’s findings echoed recent internal surveys by employers like Google and Twitter, as well as outside surveys by firms like Eden Workplace. Many workers are back in offices already. Just 13 percent of Americans worked from home at some point in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated, down from a pandemic peak of 35 percent in May 2020.
149525143
submission
gollum123 writes:
The 27 member states of the European Union altogether have now administered more coronavirus vaccine doses per 100 people than the United States, in another sign that inoculations across the bloc have maintained some speed throughout the summer, while they have stagnated for weeks in the United States. This month, the European Union also overtook the United States in first injections; currently, 58 percent of people across the bloc have received a dose, compared with 56.5 percent in the United States. The latest figures provide a stark contrast with the early stages of the vaccination campaigns this year, when E.U. countries, facing a shortage of doses and delayed deliveries, looked in envy at the initially more successful efforts in the United States, Britain and Israel. But the European Union is now vaccinating its populations at a faster pace than most developed countries. More than 70 percent of adults in the bloc have now received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
135977546
submission
gollum123 writes:
Dining out raises the risk of contracting Covid-19 more than other activities, such as shopping or going to a salon, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings come as many states consider the safest ways to reopen businesses, especially restaurants. Those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, “were approximately twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant than were those with negative SARS-CoV-2 test results,” the study authors wrote. And those who were diagnosed without any known exposure to the virus were more likely to report having visited a bar or coffee shop in the previous two weeks. The increased risk makes sense; it’s easy to wear a mask in stores or in places of worship, but it’s nearly impossible to do so while eating and drinking
135378237
submission
gollum123 writes:
Do masks really work? Ask the dozens of Starbucks customers who tested positive for COVID-19 in Seoul this month after a woman with coronavirus sat under one of the cafe’s air-conditioners. According to a local news report, at least 56 coronavirus cases have been linked to that one customer. The kicker: The four masked workers avoided infection. The Starbucks SBUX, +5.13% patrons, according to officials, weren’t consistently wearing masks because, of course, it’s hard to enjoy a latte when you can’t access your mouth. Local authorities made it mandatory this week for everybody to wear masks both indoors and outdoors, as the greater Seoul area has seen a surge in coronavirus cases.
130393266
submission
gollum123 writes:
nearly 43% of full-time American employees say they want to work remotely more often even after the economy has reopened, according to a survey released by business publishing company getAbstract. Of the more than 1,200 employees surveyed between April 16 and April 17, nearly 20% said their employer is actively discussing how they can make remote work more of an option in the future. one of the biggest reasons why employees prefer to work remotely is because they get to save time on their daily commute. On average, Americans spent roughly 27 minutes on their one-way commute to work in 2018, according to the Census Bureau. This equates to over 200 hours spent commuting per year. According to a joint CNBC/Change Research survey of more than 5,000 voters in swing states, 47% said the time they would normally spend on commuting has now been used to spend more time with their family. The survey, which gathered responses between April 17 and April 18, also found that employees have been spending the time they save on their commute to sleep more, focus on various hobbies and get more work done.
129281740
submission
gollum123 writes:
On March 19, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a statewide shelter-in-place order to stem the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus. Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee followed four days later. While they were moving aggressively relative to the rest of the country, the top employers in their states were weeks ahead of them. Twitter was the first to move, strongly encouraging its nearly 5,000 employees to work from home on March 1, because of the rapidly spreading coronavirus, and making the order mandatory on March 11. Amazon told its roughly 50,000 Seattle-area employees on March 4 to work from home if they could. Facebook informed its Bay Area workers the next day that it was “strongly recommending” they work remotely. Over the next week, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce mostly emptied out, keeping about 200,000 people away from the office. Tech has taken a beating in recent years as critics have attacked the industry’s growing power, privacy abuses and executive malfeasance. But the industry’s early social-distancing moves are a big reason that California and Washington, two early U.S. hotspots of virus outbreak, have bent the infection curve while other states are deep in crisis.
129004052
submission
gollum123 writes:
States on the country's East and West coasts are forming their own regional pacts to work together on how to reopen from the stay-at-home orders each has issued to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. The first such group to be announced came Monday on the East Coast. Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Rhode Island each plan to name a public health and economic official to a regional working group. The chief of staff of the governor of each state also will be a part of the group, which will begin work immediately to design a reopening plan. Later on Monday, the West Coast states of California, Washington and Oregon also announced they are joining forces in a plan to begin incremental release of stay-at-home orders. When announcing the three-state coordination of the western governors during his midday briefing on Monday, Newsom quoted an old proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together."
108141478
submission
gollum123 writes:
Last month, the Swiss unveiled a smart new banknote to stash in their wallets. The purple 1,000 franc bill was the latest in the Swiss National Bank (SNB) series to undergo a revamp. But this revamp comes as other nations are phasing out their high-value notes and as cash usage declines in European nations, albeit at greatly differing rates. In Switzerland, cash remains the dominant payment method. Here, there’s an assumption everyone carries cash, even in an increasingly digital economy. Most don’t get caught out buying a sandwich or paying for a haircut when the card payment machine is out of order. If you have to pay for a coffee with a 100 franc note, no need to apologise – no one will ask if you have something smaller. And for those big-ticket items, some banks even allow you to withdraw up to 5,000 francs per day (or 10,000 a month) at the cash machine without advance notice. Buying a car that costs tens of thousands with cash is also not that unusual.
104580338
submission
gollum123 writes:
With the recent news that both General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. will soon be exiting the sedan market in the U.S., to focus on high margin trucks and SUVs, I got to wondering just how badly things have deteriorated for the U.S. car makers. Much of the analysis about Ford and GM’s exit from the sedan market stressed that sedan sales have lost ground in recent years “as consumers have gravitated toward pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles,” as the New York Times put it. If you look at the historical sales figures of the top Japanese sedans, you’ll see a small decline in recent years, but nothing like the big drop-off in sales that have hammered the American companies. So in addition to the overall decline in sedan sales, there is a second, largely overlooked, dynamic taking place: Americans have only stopped buying American sedans, not Japanese sedans. The American car companies now say they are going to count on profits from trucks and SUVs while moving toward autonomous and all-electric vehicles. They had better hope that transition takes place quickly. the leading American SUV? It’s the Chevy Equinox. Last year, Chevrolet sold 290,000 of them — 100,000 fewer than the Toyota Camry.
103776957
submission
gollum123 writes:
The dire warnings about minimum-wage increases keep proving to be wrong. So much so that in a new paper, the authors behind an earlier study predicting a negative impact have all-but recanted their initial conclusions. However, the authors still seem perplexed about why they went awry in the first place. Seattle, like some other thriving West Coast cities, a few years ago passed an ordinance raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour in a series of steps. The reaction was immediate, strident — and deeply wrong. The increase was an “economic death wish” that was going to tank the expansion and kill jobs, according to the sages at conservative think tanks. Despite their dire forecasts, not only were new restaurants not closing, they were in fact opening; employment in food services and drinking establishments has soared,
102185984
submission
gollum123 writes:
According to a new poll from Gallup, young Americans are souring on capitalism. Less than half, 45 percent, view capitalism positively. "This represents a 12-point decline in young adults' positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68 percent viewed it positively," notes Gallup, which defines young Americans as those aged 18 to 29. While young people have a less upbeat view on capitalism, "older Americans have been consistently more positive about capitalism than socialism," Gallup reports. Of those between 30 and 49 years old, 58 percent have a positive view of capitalism and 41 percent have a positive view of socialism. Of those aged 50 to 64, 60 percent have a positive view of capitalism and 30 percent have a positive view of socialism. "Socialism clearly sounds better as a concept to young people than to those who are older, as it has over the past eight years," Gallup notes. "Whether the appeal of socialism to young adults is a standard function of idealism at that age that dissipates as one grows older, or will turn out to be a more permanent part of the political beliefs held by the cohort of millennials who have come of age over the past decade, remains to be seen."
101881702
submission
gollum123 writes:
Tech workers are the envy of labor market — they earn some of the highest starting salaries and often command top-notch benefits. But money doesn't always buy satisfaction. Entrepreneur reports that tech workers in major American cities earn an average of $135,000 and yet, a survey of 6,000 tech workers conducted by workplace app Blind and reported by Quartz found that over 60 percent feel they aren't being paid enough. The survey also breaks down how tech workers feel about their pay by company. The five tech companies with the highest percentage of employees who felt they were underpaid shared one important characteristic: They were all founded before 1998. Cisco, Intel, Expedia, VMware and Microsoft employees were the most likely to say that they did not make enough money. Cisco had the highest percentage of dissatisfied employees, with 80 percent telling Blind that they did not feel adequately compensated. Facebook employees, on the other hand, were the most like to say that they are overpaid, with 13.8 percent saying that they felt their employer was overly generous.
