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World

Netanyahu and Biden: Israeli leader’s wait for a call from the new President raises questions about US priorities

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While Israel is still a critical ally, one source familiar with the White House thinking said there is some sense of payback in making Netanyahu wait for a call.

The Israeli leader’s cool treatment of former President Barack Obama, his close alignment with former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, as well as the length of time it took him to congratulate Biden on his victory are not without significance, said the source.

Biden and Netanyahu last spoke on November 17, when the Israeli leader congratulated then-President-elect Biden on his victory. The call was noteworthy because Netanyahu had struggled to find the rights words to congratulate Biden a week earlier, talking about his personal connection between the two without calling Biden the President-elect.

Publicly, however, the White House has said that the President is making calls to fellow leaders by region and will soon be reaching out to those in the Middle East.

Biden, who has made 11 calls to foreign leaders plus the NATO secretary general so far, has also deployed his national security team to quickly engage with Israel out of the gates. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has spoken with Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi twice. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has spoken with Defense Minister Benny Gantz and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has spoken with his Israeli counterpart, Meir Ben Shabbat. There is constant communication between the governments, multiple officials familiar with US-Israeli relations said.

The fact that Biden has not yet called Netanyahu is not a cause for concern, five of the officials said, pointing to the numerous other conversations between the governments.

A source with knowledge of the relationship says the lack of a phone call has not affected the dynamics of the relationship. It is not a point of friction between the countries during ongoing conversations, according to the source. “That’s part of being normal and normalized relations,” the source said.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters at Thursday’s White House briefing that “the President looks forward to speaking with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He’s obviously somebody that he has a long-standing relationship with and obviously there’s an important relationship that the United States has with Israel on the security front and as a key partner in the region.”

“He’ll be talking with him soon,” Psaki added, but declined to provide a specific date or time on when they would speak.

‘I presume he will call me. Believe me, I have no doubt about it.’

In a rare press conference from the long-time Israeli leader Monday, Netanyahu downplayed the delay. “[President Biden] calls leaders in the order that he finds acceptable, North America, then Europe,” Netanyahu said. “He hasn’t reached the Middle East yet. I presume he will call me. Believe me, I have no doubt about it.”

Netanyahu went on to say that the alliance between Israel and the United States was strong, even though “it doesn’t mean we will agree on everything.”

Meanwhile, Israel is waiting.

The country’s former ambassador to the UN Danny Danon tweeted directly to Biden Wednesday, prompting a face palm moment across parts of the Israeli political spectrum.

“Joe Biden,” Danon tweeted, “you have called world leaders from #Canada, #Mexico, #UK, #India, #Japan, #France, #Germany, #Australia, #SouthKorea, #Russia. Might now be the time to call the leader of #Israel, the closest ally of the #US? The PM’s number is: 972-2-670555.”

Danon told Israeli Army Radio on Thursday that he “didn’t formulate the tweet, but I take responsibility for it,” adding that “the choice of words was not successful, but I stand behind the message.”

Three officials said the Danon tweet was largely driven by internal Israeli politics and long-simmering tension between Danon and Netanyahu. But the blowback came swiftly, with many using Danon’s tweet to interpret Biden’s silence as politically driven.

Josh Marshall, the founder of Talking Points Memo, prodded Danon, tweeting, “glad you’re seeing that Netanyahu making Israel an affiliate of the Republican party has been noticed and has consequences.”
As others took to Twitter to chastise Danon for “trolling” the US President, Israelis rapped him for “embarrassing us in front of other nations,” and the spokesman for opposition leader Yair Lapid added his own message to Danon’s tweet to Biden: “Sorry about this. Signed, Everyone in Israel.”

Biden is ‘right sizing’

Current and former US officials point to the decades-long, close relationship between Netanyahu and Biden, and say that if there’s any signal being sent, it’s about US strategic priorities. Biden is “right sizing” the US relationship with Israel, they say, and that with the challenges posed by China, Russia, climate change and other problems, the Middle East is not a top priority.

Aaron David Miller, a CNN contributor who is a former Mideast peace negotiator and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, suggested US priorities have quickly changed in the Biden administration’s first few weeks in office.

“Memo to all interested parties,” he tweeted. “A call will come. But a clear message is being sent. Netanyahu was Trump’s 3rd call. To quote Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

“I feel confident that this is not about Israel or about anything that happened in the Obama or Trump years,” said Daniel Shapiro, Obama’s ambassador to Israel. “It is simply about what Biden’s priorities are: Covid, economic recovery, climate change, and racial justice. And on foreign policy, it is revitalizing core alliances in Europe and Asia, restoring US leadership on multilateral issues, preparing for the challenge of China, and confronting the challenge of Russia. He has been absolutely disciplined on those priorities. But I’m sure the call will happen fairly soon.”

The Biden administration has also sent early reassuring signals to Israel on a number of fronts, making it publicly clear they will not roll back some of Trump’s more controversial policy moves, including moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and declaring the holy city the capital of Israel. And Blinken has made clear the US will stand by the normalization agreements the Trump administration brokered between Israel and countries in the Gulf region and elsewhere.

But Blinken’s comments about the Golan Heights to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday raised some eyebrows. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and has administered it ever since, but under international law it is considered occupied territory. Trump broke with international consensus when he recognized Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights.

Asked if the Biden administration will continue to see the Golan Heights as part of Israel, Blinken said, “Leaving aside the legalities, as a practical matter, the Golan is very important to Israel’s security as long as Assad is in power in Syria, as long as Iran is present in Syria, militia groups backed by Iran, the Assad regime itself … over time, if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we would look at. We are nowhere near that.”

The next day, Netanyahu said: “The Golan Heights has been and will continue to be a part of the State of Israel. With an agreement or without an agreement, we are not leaving the Golan. It will remain under the sovereignty of the State of Israel.”



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World

Biden raises concerns with Chinese president in first official phone call

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping by phone Wednesday evening for the first time since he took office, the White House said.

The White House said in a statement that Biden raised “fundamental concerns” about Beijing’s “coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan.”

The statement said the leaders also discussed countering the Covid-19 pandemic and “the shared challenges of global health security, climate change, and preventing weapons proliferation.”

Officials said Biden also planned to express his hope that the two leaders could cooperate on such issues as nuclear nonproliferation and climate change.

Biden doesn’t plan for now to lift tariffs on China that were imposed by the Trump administration, senior administration officials said before the call, and he is unlikely to reduce the U.S. military presence in Asia, as former President Donald Trump had threatened to do.

The call between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies, coming three weeks after Biden’s inauguration, follows a review of core elements of U.S. policy toward China during the Trump administration and extensive consultation with America’s allies, the officials said. One of them described Biden as being “in a strong position” to have a substantive conversation with Xi.

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Joe Biden, then the vice president, in Beijing in 2013.Lintao Zhang / Pool via Reuters file

Officials said the call was aimed at signaling a new U.S. strategy that maintains a core tenet of the Trump administration’s policy — intense competition — but takes a dramatically different approach.

“We looked at what the Trump administration did over four years and found merit in the basic proposition of an intense strategic competition with China and the need for us to engage in that vigorously, systematically, across every instrument of our government and every instrument of our power,” a senior administration official said. “But we found deep problems with the way in which the Trump administration went about that competition.”

Officials said one difference in Biden’s approach will be an emphasis on engaging with U.S. allies, both in Europe and in the Asia Pacific region. Biden is expected, for example, to attend international forums for countries in the region, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, and the East Asia Summit, although it’s unclear whether his appearances would be virtual given the pandemic. Former President Barack Obama regularly attended the ASEAN summit, for example, but Trump skipped it after his first year in office.

A second senior administration official said America’s partners in Asia have expressed concerns about recent U.S. actions, including the unpredictability of the Trump administration and its “weird interactions with North Korea.”

Officials were also adamant that Biden’s China policy isn’t a continuation of Trump’s, saying he wasn’t criticizing the toughness of Trump’s approach but rather “that he was doing so alone while also fighting our allies and partners.”

The review of policy toward China continues in several areas, including a Defense Department effort announced Wednesday and a study of the Trump administration’s tariffs.

Biden will decide about tariffs after extensive consultation with agencies across his administration and with U.S. partners in Asia and Europe — which a senior administration official said “is going to take some time.”

“There will be changes to the trade policy towards China,” the official said. “And in the meantime, we are not lifting the tariffs.”

Among the policies the administration plans to continue is to further restrict China’s access to certain types of sensitive technology. Officials said new restrictions on such exports would be coordinated with U.S. allies.

Officials said Biden didn’t plan to raise the issue of Beijing’s hosting the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

Biden first got to know Xi as vice president at a time when it was clear that Xi would rise to the presidency. A senior administration official said Biden went into the phone call “practical, hard-headed, clear-eyed.”

“He obviously has spent a lot of time with Xi Jinping over the years,” one of the senior administration officials said. “The two leaders know each other very well.”

The strategy Biden plans to adopt, the official said, “will play out not over the course of days or weeks or even months. It will play out over the course of years.”

“That doesn’t mean there isn’t urgency,” the official said. “There is urgency, and we are acting urgently. But it also means that we need to stick with this, and we need to play the long game.”

Carol E. Lee

Carol E. Lee is an NBC News correspondent.



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Health

Misinformation between COVID vaccine and infertility raises alarm for women

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New York — As widespread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and infertility took hold on social media, the rumors spread as rapidly as the virus itself and scared some women from getting a shot.

Jay Huber, a fertility doctor in New Orleans, is asked daily by his patients if the vaccine causes infertility. He said there’s no evidence of that happening.

“I think it’s important to debunk the myths because patients should have access to accurate information,” Huber told CBS News.

So then, what is the biggest misconception?

“This concept that the vaccination will actually train the human immune system to create an antibody that would cross-react with the vital placenta protein, which would ultimately cause infertility,” he said.

The unfounded fear, Huber said, is that an antibody would not only attack the virus but the placenta as well.

Stacey Clarke, a 36-year-old nurse, is receiving fertility treatments from Huber. She fears the vaccine could somehow affect her ability to get pregnant.

“It’s just too soon to put something foreign in my body going through what I’m going through,” she said. “There’s a lot of emotion. Because I’ve done this twice before and it was not successful.”

Clarke said the thought of becoming infertile has crossed her mind, but Huber reassured her.

“He, of course, very much feels that there’s enough evidence for me to get the vaccine,” she said of their discussions. “So we’ve come to an agreement for the time being.”

Clarke said many of her female colleagues share those fears. 

“We very much have the same feeling on the vaccine … We just don’t know the long-term effects on ourselves or on the fetus,” she said.

Huber addressed that issue: “I don’t think reproductive women should be concerned about their future fertility if they get this COVID-19 vaccine. The data we have thus far is that the vaccine is very safe.”

Clarke said she doesn’t think there is anything that would change her mind about the vaccine. Not even this cautionary tale from 35-year-old Anna Almendrala. She became ill with COVID after her fertility treatment.

In a video she can be seen lying prone, gasping for air.

“The scary thing is that things can change on a dime with this virus,” she said.

Days later, she was in the hospital, writing a goodbye letter to her daughter.

When asked what she would say to women who do not want the vaccine at all, Almendrala referenced how prevalent COVID is across the U.S.

“I’d say at this point … with the virus so widespread, you’re either choosing between getting the vaccine or getting COVID,” she said.

Almadrala said that she’s relieved there’s a vaccine and she will gladly take it — when it’s her turn.

“I think what this experience has really shown us is that we already have so much to be grateful for,” she said. “I almost felt like I was a couple of days away from losing everything.”

Read more from our CBS News series “Women and the Pandemic” below:

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Health

Misinformation between COVID vaccine and infertility raises alarm

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New York — As widespread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and infertility took hold on social media, the rumors spread as rapidly as the virus itself and scared some women from getting a shot.




© Credit: CBSNews
women-covid-vaccine.png

Jay Huber, a fertility doctor in New Orleans, is asked daily by his patients if the vaccine causes infertility. He said there’s no evidence of that happening.

“I think it’s important to debunk the myths because patients should have access to accurate information,” Huber told CBS News.

So then, what is the biggest misconception?

“This concept that the vaccination will actually train the human immune system to create an antibody that would cross-react with the vital placenta protein, which would ultimately cause infertility,” he said.

https://wus-streaming-video-msn-com.akamaized.net/c11b133a-627f-4ca1-8179-7b7410a1836b/6f867098-26d7-4fdf-979d-731ec067_650.mp4

False links between COVID vaccine and infertility raise alarm among women

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The unfounded fear, Huber said, is that an antibody would not only attack the virus but the placenta as well.

Stacey Clarke, a 36-year-old nurse, is receiving fertility treatments from Huber. She fears the vaccine could somehow affect her ability to get pregnant.

“It’s just too soon to put something foreign in my body going through what I’m going through,” she said. “There’s a lot of emotion. Because I’ve done this twice before and it was not successful.”

Clarke said the thought of becoming infertile has crossed her mind, but Huber reassured her.

“He, of course, very much feels that there’s enough evidence for me to get the vaccine,” she said of their discussions. “So we’ve come to an agreement for the time being.”

Clarke said many of her female colleagues share those fears. 

“We very much have the same feeling on the vaccine … We just don’t know the long-term effects on ourselves or on the fetus,” she said.

Huber addressed that issue: “I don’t think reproductive women should be concerned about their future fertility if they get this COVID-19 vaccine. The data we have thus far is that the vaccine is very safe.”

Clarke said she doesn’t think there is anything that would change her mind about the vaccine. Not even this cautionary tale from 35-year-old Anna Almendrala. She became ill with COVID after her fertility treatment.

In a video she can be seen lying prone, gasping for air.

“The scary thing is that things can change on a dime with this virus,” she said.

Days later, she was in the hospital, writing a goodbye letter to her daughter.

When asked what she would say to women who do not want the vaccine at all, Almendrala referenced how prevalent COVID is across the U.S.

“I’d say at this point … with the virus so widespread, you’re either choosing between getting the vaccine or getting COVID,” she said.

Almadrala said that she’s relieved there’s a vaccine and she will gladly take it — when it’s her turn.

“I think what this experience has really shown us is that we already have so much to be grateful for,” she said. “I almost felt like I was a couple of days away from losing everything.”

Read more from our CBS News series “Women and the Pandemic” below:

Continue Reading

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Technology

Nintendo raises Switch sales forecast after monster holiday quarter

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Nintendo has posted earnings for a huge holiday quarter in which the Switch sold more consoles than ever. 11.57 million consoles were moved in total, bringing the Switch close to 80 million sold since its 2017 launch. Nintendo has increased its forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31st to 26.5 million Switch units, also boosting its net profit estimate 33 percent to 400 billion yen, or about $3.82 billion.

The Switch has now outsold the 3DS in terms of lifetime sales, with the older handheld reaching a total of 75.94 million units before production was ended. Only 730,000 3DS games were shipped during the last quarter, underlining that the platform really is dead at this point.

It was also a massive quarter for Nintendo in terms of software sales, with nearly 76 million units sold. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons both crossed the 30 million mark for the first time, while The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Pokémon Sword/Shield have now sold more than 20 million each.

Nintendo already raised its fiscal year forecast to 24 million Switch units from 19 million three months ago, citing increased demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But with more than 12 million consoles shipped already at that point in the year, it was still a fairly conservative prediction; last year’s holiday quarter saw Nintendo ship almost 11 million consoles.

The biggest Switch title coming in the next quarter is likely to be Capcom’s Monster Hunter Rise, while expanded Wii U port Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is also coming later this month. Both games will be offered as part of Switch hardware bundles, which could further boost Switch sales for the rest of the fiscal year.

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US

A city’s problematic vaccine rollout raises larger questions

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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — When Philadelphia began getting its first batches of COVID-19 vaccines, it looked to partner with someone who could get a mass vaccination site up and running quickly.

City Hall officials might have looked across the skyline to the world-renowned health providers at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University or Jefferson Health.

Instead, they chose a 22-year-old graduate student in psychology with a few faltering startups on his resume. And last week, amid concerns about his qualifications and Philly Fighting COVID’s for-profit status, the city shuttered his operation at the downtown convention center.

“Where were all the people with credentials? Why did a kid have to come in and help the city?” said the student, Andrei Doroshin, in an interview with The Associated Press.

“I’m a freaking grad student. But you know what? We did the job. We vaccinated 7,000 people,” the Drexel University student said. “This was us doing our part in this crazy time.”

City officials said they gave him the task because he and his friends had organized one of the community groups that set up COVID-19 testing sites throughout the city last year. But they shut the vaccine operation down once they learned that Doroshin had switched his privacy notice to potentially sell patient data, a development he calls a glitch that he quickly fixed.

It’s not clear when the city will find a new site operator.

“They were doing a reasonably good job on giving the vaccinations. They decided apparently that they were going to monetize some of this information, which was wrong, and we terminated our relationship with them,” Mayor Jim Kenney said at a news conference Tuesday, citing the work of local news outlets in raising the concerns. “And that’s the end of them.”

Doroshin also conceded that he took home four doses of the Pfizer vaccine and administered it to friends, although he is neither a nurse nor licensed health practitioner. He said he did so only after exhausting other options. There were 100 extra doses set to expire that night, and the site was able to round up just 96 eligible recipients, he said.

“They either had to go into an arm or be thrown out,” said Doroshin, who said he had done intramuscular injections before. “I felt OK ethically. … There’s nothing that I did that was illegal.”

State and local prosecutors are now pondering the question.

Many believe the situation speaks to a larger point about the health care system, in Philadelphia and nationwide.

Public health budgets had been hard hit before the pandemic, leaving local and state governments ill-equipped to roll out a mass vaccination program. That left them scrambling for COVID-19 partners.

“I think there is a place in our health system for our innovative partners,” said Julia Lynch, a health policy expert who teaches at Penn. “But maybe this isn’t the time to be experimenting with disruptors? Maybe this is the time we should be turning to a health service delivery infrastructure that operates like a well-oiled machine?”

She is also distressed that city data shows just 12% of the city’s vaccinations have gone to Black residents, who make up 42% of the city’s population. She, like others, hoped the job might have gone to a more established group such as the Black Doctors Consortium, which has been testing and vaccinating people in low-income areas of the city this past year.

Lucinda Ayers, 74, had jumped at the chance to book a Feb. 12 appointment through Doroshin’s website at the Pennsylvania Convention Center and wonders if the city shouldn’t have helped him get in compliance.

“They were vaccinating people. I’m on the fence about it,” said Ayers, who hasn’t had any luck finding another appointment despite spending hours online. “There’s so much lack of clarity on the information coming out.”

Doroshin, while working on his graduate degree, switched gears from the COVID-19 testing operation to the vaccine work when he heard about the city’s need. He said he borrowed $250,000 from a family friend for startup costs, and the city — through nothing more than a verbal agreement — gave him a cut of its vaccine supply, with the top priority being health care workers.

He said he agreed to pay $1 million to lease the convention center for six months and expected to charge the city $500,000 a month once he was fully up and running. He hired about 30 people, although at least some of the doctors, nurses and nursing students doing the injections were volunteers, he said.

“I was going to take a salary,” he said. “In a perfect world, I wanted to vaccinate Philly in six months and then apply for my Ph.D.”

Dr. Thomas Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said this week the group had a good track record of doing the testing, so “we decided to give them the opportunity to run mass clinics, and the first mass clinic went quite well.”

For now, the city has pledged to make sure people who got their first vaccines there can get their booster shots.

“It certainly shows why we need a real public health care system,” said Council Member Helen Gym, who noted that two private hospitals in the city have closed since 2019, while the city remains one of the few large U.S. cities without a public hospital.

She called the aborted vaccine rollout “an egregious, profound failure.”

___

Follow Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale.



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Business

Robinhood raises $1 billion, will reopen GameStop stock purchases on Friday

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Despite denials of any arrangement with big money Wall Street backers, there’s still widespread belief that the inability to purchase these specific companies has been coordinated to disadvantage retail stock traders. Meanwhile, some explanations dug into what happened with the Wallstreetbets subreddit, and the business model of a company like Robinhood, pointing out that their moves caused marketmakers and hedge funds to also participate and potentially profit from the frenzy.

Aptly named WeBull CEO Anthony Denier spoke to Yahoo Finance and said that temporarily restricting Koss, AMC and GameStop trades was not a “political decision” and instead had to do with “settlement mechanics in the market.” As he explained, they have to fund each trade with a central clearing house for two days, and the cost of the collateral to WeBull’s clearing firm became to expensive to front the cost on their trader’s behalf.

In a blog post, Robinhood said it made “a risk-management decision” and similarly stated in interviews that “We have SEC net capital requirements and clearing house deposits…Some of these requirements fluctuate quite a bit based on volatility in the market and they can be substantial in the current environment where there’s a lot of volatility and a lot of concentrated activity in these names that have been going viral on social media.”

In response to reports that Robinhood tapped its credit lines, CEO Vlad Tenev said his company had no liquidity issue, and that “we pulled those credit lines so that we could maximize within reason the funds we have to deposit at the clearing houses.” The New York Times reports Robinhood drew on credit lines of $500 to $600 million to meet lending requirements, and separately raised $1 billion in emergency funding on Thursday night in order to avoid having to place further limits on trades.



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Business

Robinhood, in Need of Cash, Raises $1 Billion From Its Investors

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Facing an onslaught of demands on its cash amid a stock market frenzy, Robinhood, the online trading app, said on Thursday that it was raising an infusion of more than $1 billion from its existing investors.

Robinhood, one of the largest online brokerages, has grappled with an extraordinarily high volume of trading this week as individual investors have piled into stocks like GameStop. That activity has put a strain on Robinhood, which has to pay customers who are owed money from trades while posting additional cash to its clearing facility to insulate its trading partners from potential losses.

On Thursday, Robinhood was forced to stop customers from buying a number of stocks like GameStop that were heavily traded this week. To continue operating, it drew on a line of credit from six banks amounting to between $500 million and $600 million to meet higher margin, or lending, requirements from its central clearing facility for stock trades, known as the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation.

Robinhood still needed more cash quickly to ensure that it didn’t have to place further limits on customer trading, said two people briefed on the situation who insisted on remaining anonymous because the negotiations were confidential.

Robinhood, which is privately held, contacted several of its investors, including the venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Ribbit Capital, who came together on Thursday night to offer the emergency funding, five people involved in the negotiations said.

“This is a strong sign of confidence from investors that will help us continue to further serve our customers,” Josh Drobnyk, a Robinhood spokesman, said in an email. Sequoia and Ribbit declined to comment.

Investors who provide new financing to Robinhood will receive additional equity in the company. The investors will get that equity at a discounted valuation tied to the price of Robinhood shares when the company goes public, said two of the people. Robinhood plans to hold an initial public offering later this year, two people briefed on the plans said.

Robinhood’s emergency fund-raising is the latest sign of how trading in the stock market has been upended this week.

An online army of investors, who have been on a mission to challenge the dominance of Wall Street, rapidly bid up the price of stocks like GameStop, entrapping the big-money hedge funds that had bet against the stocks. Some of these individual investors have reaped huge profits, while at least one major hedge fund had to be bailed out after facing huge losses.

Robinhood, which is based in Silicon Valley, has been key to empowering the online investors. Adoption of the app has soared in the pandemic as the stock market surged and people took up day trading in the void of other pastimes. The company has drawn in millions of young investors who have never traded before by offering no-fee trading and an app that critics have said makes buying stocks feel like an online game.

Without fees, Robinhood makes money by passing its customer trades along to bigger brokerage firms, like Citadel, who pay Robinhood for the chance to fulfill its customer stock orders.

In May, Robinhood said it had 13 million users. This week, it became the most-downloaded free app in Apple’s App Store, according to Apptopia, a data provider.

Critics have accused the company of encouraging people to gamble on stock market movements and risk big losses. Brokerages including T. Rowe Price, Schwab and Fidelity have imitated Robinhood by lowering their trading fees to zero. Many of them were also hit by the crush of trading this week.

Robinhood has had no trouble raising money over the last year, drawing $1.3 billion in venture capital backing and boosting its valuation to nearly $12 billion. Its other investors include the venture capital firm DST Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.

Yet the company has faced many issues, including fines from regulators for misleading customers. Last March, it raised more money after its app went down and left customers stranded and nursing big losses, leading to a still ongoing lawsuit.

In recent weeks, many online investors have used Robinhood to make bets that pushed up the price of GameStop, AMC Entertainment and other stocks that had been widely shorted — or bet against — by hedge funds. That changed on Thursday after the company curbed customer trading in the most popular stocks.

“As a brokerage firm, we have many financial requirements,” Robinhood said in a blog post Thursday. “Some of these requirements fluctuate based on volatility in the markets and can be substantial in the current environment.”

In protest, hundreds of thousands of users joined a campaign to give Robinhood’s app the lowest one-star review and drive the company’s rating down. Some investors also sued Robinhood for the losses they sustained after the company cut off trading in certain stocks and several lawmakers urged regulators to exercise more scrutiny of the company.

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World

On first call with Putin, Biden raises election interference, bounties, Navalny poisoning

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Biden also intended to support Ukrainian sovereignty and his goal of extending a nuclear arms treaty for five years with Russia, Psaki said.

The two leaders agreed to “work urgently” to extend the nuclear treaty by Feb. 5, when the deal is slated to expire, according to the Biden administration’s readout of the call. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty limits the two nation’s deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550 each.

“They also agreed to explore strategic stability discussions on a range of arms control and emerging security issues,” the readout said.

Biden and Putin agreed to be transparent and communicate consistently, according to the readout.

“His intention was also to make clear that the United States will act firmly in defense of our national interests in response to malign actions by Russia,” Psaki told reporters.

Biden’s agenda for his call with Putin struck a decidedly different tone than former President Donald Trump, who was the subject of significant criticism for his relatively soft rhetoric toward Russia, especially relative to his broader America-first approach to foreign policy. Trump routinely attempted to undermine widely accepted evidence about the Kremlin’s 2016 election interference, at one point telling reporters that he would take the Russian president’s word over that of the U.S. intelligence community on the issue.

Biden has vowed to turn the page from the Trump administration on U.S.-Russia relations and take a stronger stance against the Kremlin.

In April 2018, Trump blamed poor relations between the U.S. and Russia on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion between the Kremlin and Trump’s campaign. The investigation found no Trump-Russia conspiracy but established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in “sweeping and systematic fashion.” Mueller’s report also found repeated communication between Trump associates and people who indicated they had potentially harmful information about Hillary Clinton.

On the large-scale hack into federal agencies uncovered in December — which intelligence agencies said was likely Russia’s doing — Trump baselessly suggested it may have been China. Biden has promised a forceful response to the campaign.

“My administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government,” Biden said in a statement, “and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office.”

After less than a week in office, Biden has now been on calls with several prominent foreign leaders, including U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico.

Biden has pledged to “restore dignified leadership at home and respected leadership on the world stage” in the wake of Trump’s foreign policy.

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US

Biden raises the bar on vaccines and suggests US will get to 1.5 million a day

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“I’m quite confident that we will be in a position within the next three weeks or so to be vaccinating people at the range of 1 million a day or in excess of that,” he told reporters, clarifying that he was referring to 100 million shots, not necessarily 100 million people, since some of the vaccines require more than one shot.

Biden said the key factors in ramping up vaccinations are having enough vaccine, having enough syringes and other necessary equipment and having enough people administering them. He said his administration is working to produce additional vaccinators — people who can administer the vaccine.

“I think with the grace of God, the goodwill of the neighbor and the creek not rising, as the old saying goes, I think we may be able to get that to 1.5 million a day, rather than 1 million a day,” he said.

Biden’s announcement came the same day that officials for Pfizer and Moderna said it will take time to scale up manufacturing for their vaccines.

Moderna President Dr. Stephen Hoge relayed that vaccine makers have an obligation to maintain quality and consistency as they scale up capacity.

“That’s the frustrating thing about scaling up,” Hoge said.

The increase in vaccinations will not necessarily move the target timeline for getting vaccines to anyone in the US who wants one.

The President said that he thinks anyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get it by this spring, a target date similar to one set under the Trump administration.

Biden’s commitment to ramp up coronavirus vaccinations comes among a larger list of efforts discussed the White House on Monday to address the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden signed a presidential proclamation on Monday reinstating the travel restrictions imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic for individuals traveling to the United States from the Schengen Area in Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil and South Africa.

And speaking to reporters, Biden also referenced the importance of creating a forum where Americans “can show up, stand in line, and get their vaccine without having to stand in line for eight hours — being able to pick up the phone, call the pharmacy and get your name on the list(.)”

But the new efforts come amid ongoing confusion and urgent concerns across different states over the country’s coronavirus vaccine supply and distribution.

Earlier Monday, New York City Health Commissioner David Chokshi told CNN that the city “does not have enough doses” of Covid-19 vaccine to “be able to meet the demand we know exists among New Yorkers.”

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, said Florida’s capacity far outweighs the amount of vaccine they have been given by the federal government. And Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker similarly said that the state is “setting up the capacity to administer far more doses, then we are currently receiving or projecting to receive from the (federal government).”

Over the last two days, both Biden’s top spokeswoman, White House press secretary Jen Psaki, and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said they did not know the what the current coronavirus vaccine supply levels are. Both blamed the Trump administration for the problem.

But speaking to press on Monday, Biden claimed that his administration does know how many coronavirus vaccines are available in the US. However, he did not disclose any concrete numbers.

“(W)e are optimistic that we will have enough vaccine. And in very short order. As you know, we came in office without knowledge of how much vaccine was out being held in abeyance are available. Now that we’re here, we’ve been around a week or so, we now have that,” Biden said. “And we’ve gotten commitments from some of the producers that they will in fact produce more vaccine in a relatively short period of time and then continue that down the road.”

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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