“Heavy ash fall has halted the process somewhat since visibility is extremely poor,” NEMO said, adding it continues to respond “to the many challenges of the process.”
“The ash plume extended vertically to about 10 kilometers,” Prime Minister Ralph Everard Gonsalves said at a press conference on Friday.
Once there is one explosive eruption, it is likely others can occur and could continue “for days and possibly weeks,” authorities said.
The areas closest to the volcano will be affected by pyroclastic flows and surges, authorities said. Teams are collecting data to understand the pattern of eruption.
“La Soufrière Volcano erupted the second Friday in April (Friday April 13) in 1979,” NEMO said. “Four days shy of its anniversary it has again erupted on the second Friday in April (9) in 2021.”
La Soufrière is located on the largest island of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines chain.
Prime Minister Gonsalves on Thursday declared a disaster alert prompted by a change in the volcano’s eruptive activity. The island was placed on red alert, meaning an eruption was “imminent now,” NEMO said.
“Please leave the red zone immediately. La Soufrière has erupted. Ash fall recorded as far as Argyle International Airport,” it said.
On Friday, Dora James, director general of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Red Cross, told CNN the eruption sounded like a “large jet engine,” and that there was a “consistent flow of smoke” from the ash plume.
Boats and some vehicles picked up last-minute evacuees from the area shortly after the explosion, she said. James, too, evacuated from the area but is heading back to see if there is damage.
She said that phone lines are currently jammed in the area because so many people are calling to try to get news and check on anyone that may have stayed behind.
James lived through the April 1979 eruptions and remembers them well. She said that the 1979 eruptions had more fires and mushrooming of ash.
Kenton Chance, a freelance journalist, told CNN that he was about five miles away from the volcano in the town of Rosehall on St. Vincent.
“Normally, you would have a very commanding view of the volcano,” he said. “But because of the amount of ash in the air, you can’t see it.” Ash was still falling but in decreasing amounts, he said.
Chance heard rumbling from the mountain when he arrived, but it has since subsided.
Evacuation orders were put into place in about a dozen districts of St. Vincent, affecting roughly 6,000 to 7,000 people, a spokesperson for the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre, or UWI-SRC, told CNN.
While en route to Rosehall, Chance said he witnessed a number of people stopped on the side of the road, which he believes were evacuees.
He said so far he hasn’t seen reports of property damage, injuries or deaths.
Wall Street’s finest are so bullish on stocks that a contrarian sentiment gauge is on the verge of sending a sell signal.
BofA analysts led by Savita Subramanian said in a Thursday note that the bank’s Sell Side Indicator, which tracks the average recommended equity allocation by Wall Street’s sell-side strategists, rose for a third straight month in March to hit 59.4%, up from 59.2% in February.
That puts the indicator at a 10-year high and less than a point away from a contrarian “sell” signal, its closest since May 2007, when the S&P 500 index
SPX,
+0.88%
fell 7% over the subsequent 12-month period (see chart below).
BofA Global Research
Investors and analysts pay close attention to a range of sentiment measures. Extreme bullish or bearish readings are often viewed as contrarian signals that markets are due for a either a bounce or a pullback.
The S&P 500 on Thursday pushed above the 4,000 milestone for the first time, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.42%
traded not far off its all-time high. U.S. stocks rallied in the first quarter, with cyclically sensitive shares leading the way as aggressive fiscal stimulus measures and rapid vaccine rollouts stoked expectations for a post-COVID economic boom.
“Increasingly euphoric sentiment is a key reason for our neutral outlook as the cyclical rebound, vaccine, stimulus, etc. is largely priced into the market,” the analysts wrote. Stocks have rebounded sharply after plunging into a bear market that bottomed out last March as the pandemic began to take hold.
The analysts noted that since last March, the average recommended equity allocation has risen by over three times the typical rate. It’s up 450 basis points, or 4.5 percentage points, over the last 12 months versus the average of 138 basis points following previous bear markets.
“We’ve found Wall Street’s bullishness to be a reliable contrarian indicator,” they wrote.
For now, the indicator remains in “neutral” territory. What does that mean for returns?
The analysts noted that when the indicator has been at or below its current level, subsequent 12-month returns have been positive 89% of the time. While that’s encouraging, they observed that the current reading of the indicator is in line with 12-month returns of just 6%, well below the average 12-month forecast of 14% since the end of the 2008 global financial crisis, adding the standard caveat that past performance isn’t an indication of future results.
The analysts said investors would be best served by focusing on areas sensitive to the real economy, including cyclical and value stocks, capital-expenditure beneficiaries and small-caps as President Joe Biden attempts to push through his $2 trillion infrastructure spending plan.
“But it’s not all blue skies. The market appears to already be pricing in additional stimulus and the focus is shifting to paying it back (i.e., higher taxes),” they warned. “Valuations today are signaling anemic long-term returns and rising rates are also a headwind for both income investors, who have piled into equities amid low rates, and corporate margins.”
They also see room for volatility to pick up in the second half of the year. That said, “staying invested is an underappreciated way to avoid losses,” they wrote, with a focus on fundamental factors over momentum and positioning factors winning over the long run. A focus on quality stocks, which are “cheap and neglected” can also provide a hedge against volatility, they said.
Intense discussions are taking place following a request for doses from both countries and, for Mexico at least, an agreement could be announced as soon as Friday, according to the Mexican Foreign Minister.
“I’d say we’ve made good progress, but the details, figures, provisions, won’t be known until Friday,” Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told reporters on Tuesday morning, according to Reuters. “We requested as many (AstraZeneca doses) as possible.”
The Biden administration has committed to having enough vaccines for all Americans before sharing doses, and if this agreement comes together it would be the first time the US has shared vaccines directly with another country. It would also likely give a major boost to vaccination efforts in Canada and Mexico who are struggling with their vaccine roll-out in comparison to the US.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that requests have been received from both Mexico and Canada and said that they are being considered carefully. She provided no details on when a decision would be reached.
The administration official told CNN that one option under consideration is a swap agreement with the two countries: an agreement to share the AstraZeneca doses now with the condition that Mexico and Canada will share excess vaccines with the US in the future.
There are tens of millions of AstraZeneca doses stockpiled in the US and the company believes it will have roughly 50 million Covid-19 vaccine doses available to the US government by the end of April. None of those doses are available to Americans now because AstraZeneca has not applied to the Food and Drug Administration for an emergency use authorization, and the vaccine is still going through clinical trials in the US.
AstraZeneca has been approved for use in both Canada and Mexico, and the company itself has asked the Biden administration to consider requests to donate inventory to other nations.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced Monday that he was close to reaching two agreements on vaccines, but he didn’t specify which countries would be sending them. Another top official in Mexico publicly asked the US to share AstraZeneca vaccines earlier this week.
A Canadian Embassy spokesperson said that there have been “great engagements” with the Biden administration about Covid-19 and added that “conversations are ongoing” when it comes to getting more Canadians vaccinated. The spokesperson did not comment on the possible swap agreement.
Tensions over vaccine diplomacy
These conversations come as political leaders in both Mexico and Canada are under increasing pressure to secure vaccines amid a wider global scramble for doses.
The US is now ahead of almost every other country in the world when it comes to vaccinating its population and having secured contracts with vaccine producers. Biden said last week that by May 1 all adults will be able to receive vaccines.
The US has contributed $2 billion in total to a global coronavirus vaccine initiative called COVAX, and has pledged to release an additional $2 billion “as we work with other donors to elevate pledge commitments.” It has established bilateral agreements with certain countries for vaccine storage efforts, and is working alongside the allies in the Asia-Pacific region to increase production in India.
The Biden administration will eventually share excess vaccines — beyond the AstraZeneca doses — and does not see joint efforts alongside US allies as precluding them from unilaterally donating vaccines to other countries down the road, according to the senior administration official.
“We are giving $4 billion to COVAX. But we also know once we get our own country vaccinated, since we have suffered worse than virtually any country besides Brazil — we are both way up there with over 530,000 deaths — then we will make any surplus vaccine available to the countries who have not the resources to be able to make it themselves,” Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday.
Biden made the same commitment last week.
“If we have a surplus, we’re going to share it with the rest of the world,” Biden said. “We’re going to start off making sure Americans are taken care of first.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also said last week that “until everyone in the world is vaccinated, then no one is really fully safe.”
The Biden administration’s decision to focus inward on vaccines, particularly given the dire need globally and the administration’s top priority to re-assert US global leadership, is putting the Biden administration in a somewhat awkward position in comparison to a global rivals.
China has taken a different approach to the US and is exporting vaccines widely before making vaccines widely available at home. Russia and India are also sharing vaccines but not on the same scale as Beijing. The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced March 3 that it is providing free vaccines to 69 countries and commercially exporting them to 28 more.
Some US allies and partners are worried that China’s global effort to ramp up vaccine exports and vaccine production agreements so quickly will make it hard for the US to catch up, diplomats told CNN.
Mexico has received AstraZeneca shots from India and is also the focus of China’s vaccine diplomacy. Mexican media reported March 9 that the country will receive 22 million doses of China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines.
Beijing’s push to aggressively export vaccines has been characterized by US officials as an attempt to spread China’s influence and soft power.
When asked on Wednesday if the US will be able to surpass China’s efforts on vaccine diplomacy after fulfilling the commitment of vaccinating Americans, Deputy State Department Spokesperson Jalina Porter did not answer the question.
A State Department spokesperson said that while Biden has made the priority to vaccinate Americans clear he is also “deeply focused on the issue of expanding global vaccination, manufacturing, and delivery, which will all be critical to end the pandemic.”
CNN’s Nicole Gaouette and Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.
“The US is participating in the force generation process for NATO Mission Iraq and will contribute its fair share to this important expanded mission,” Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Jessica L. McNulty told CNN. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke about the mission with his NATO counterparts during a meeting with defense ministers on Thursday.
Late Thursday night, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby clarified that there are “no plans” to send more US troops into Iraq itself. However, US troops could also support the mission from outside the country, a defense official told CNN.
“We support NATO’s expanded mission in Iraq and will continue to do so, but there are no plans to increase U.S. force levels there,” Kirby said on Twitter.
Such a move would have been a reversal of the previous administration’s policy which reduced the number of troops in the country to 2,500 following former President Donald Trump’s election defeat. The Biden administration is also weighing whether to stick to a May deadline to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan.
At a press conference Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the NATO mission would increase in size from 500 personnel to about 4,000.
“The US and its partners in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS remain committed to ensuring the enduring defeat of ISIS, and the Department looks forward to continued consultations with Iraq, NATO, and the Global Coalition going forward,” McNulty added.
Austin “welcomed the expanded role” of the NATO mission in Iraq, according to a readout of the discussions provided by the Pentagon. He “expressed confidence that all of the work done to date with the Iraqi government and security forces will lead to a self-sustainable mission.”
Stoltenberg stressed the importance of the NATO mission to prevent the resurgence of ISIS.
“Not so long ago, ISIS controlled territory as big as the United Kingdom and roughly 8 million people. They have lost that control,” Stoltenberg said. “But, ISIS is still there. ISIS still operates in Iraq, and we need to make sure that they’re not able to return. And we also see some increase in attacks by ISIS. And that just highlights the importance of strengthening the Iraqi forces.”
The increase in NATO forces would be incremental and comes at the request of the Iraqi government, he added.
Trump’s acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller touted the withdrawal of troops prior to Biden taking office as a sign of the mission’s success, saying, “The drawdown of US force levels in Iraq is reflective of the increased capabilities of the Iraqi security forces. Our ability to reduce force levels is evidence of real progress.”
In early February, Austin announced a global force posture review, in which military leaders would examine US troop levels around the world, including the “military footprint, resources, strategy and missions.”
Austin stressed the importance of alliances and partnerships as part of the review.
“From Afghanistan and the Middle East, across Europe, Africa and our own hemisphere, to the wide expanse of the Western Pacific, the United States stands shoulder-to-shoulder with allies old and new, partners big and small,” Austin said. “Each of them brings to the mission unique skills, knowledge and capabilities. And each of them represents a relationship worth tending, preserving and respecting. We will do so.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that no final decisions or recommendations have been made as part of the global force posture review.
This story has been updated with additional comment from Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.
(Bloomberg) — Palantir Technologies Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. are uniting in a partnership that will dramatically expand the reach of Palantir’s sales force while making IBM’s own artificial-intelligence software easier for non-technical customers to use, the companies plan to announce Monday.
The global partnership is the largest of its kind for Palantir, the maker of data-analysis software whose shares have more than quadrupled since its September debut on the New York Stock Exchange. Palantir gains access to a sales team of more than 2,500 people, up from its current 30. Palantir’s stock rose as much as 12% in pre-market trading.
The relationship is the payday for the project Palantir started more than a year ago to break its data integration and analysis software into smaller, less pricey modules. The Denver-based company mainly mainly sells to companies with revenue in excess of $500 million — many of which already have relationships with IBM.
Reselling Palantir’s software to augment the data and AI tools that IBM already offers and make them easier for more people to use was “a natural” fit, said Rob Thomas, IBM’s senior vice president of software, cloud and data. “We’re going to sell it to 180 countries and thousands of customers.”
Palantir’s software requires little to no coding, enabling less technical employees to use it, Thomas said. To expand IBM’s cloud and AI business, half the revenue will need to come through partnerships like the one struck with Palantir. “That’s a pretty fundamental change for us,” he said.
Expanded Access
Without providing a time frame, Thomas said he expects the partnership to help boost IBM’s customers using AI to 80% from its current 20%.
Palantir Chief Operating Officer Shyam Sankar said the technical fit with IBM and its reach are part of his company’s long-term effort to finally ramp sales. In addition to commercial customers, government contracts have surged both in number and size during the pandemic.
“This is the biggest [partnership[ we’ve announced — expect more,” Sankar said. He said he expects to triple Palantir’s direct-sales team to about 100 this year, a significant hike for a company whose management once prided itself on not employing a single salesperson.
Started with funding from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel in 2003, Palantir found early success with users at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and went on to sign the Defense Department and Internal Revenue Service, which, respectively, have used the software to locate roadside bombs and hunt tax cheats.
Government Contracts
More recently the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention use Palantir’s software to help predict Covid-19 outbreaks, distribute protective gear and allocate vaccines.
While Palantir’s government contracts have grown — sometimes amid privacy and surveillance concerns — the company’s commercial business has been slower to evolve.
Palantir last reported 132 total government and commercial clients, a concentrated pool that includes BP Plc, Merck KGaA and Airbus SE. Early customers like American Express Co. and Coca-Cola Co. which experimented with low-cost Palantir software trials and later ditched them, aren’t necessarily top of Palantir’s list now, Sankar said.
“We hope to win all this business back in the fullness of time,” Sankar said, adding there is no “pride list” of former customers it hopes to now re-engage.
Palantir reports financial results for 2020 on Feb. 16. A shareholder lockup expires three days later, unleashing the remaining 80% of all shares that have not been eligible to trade. Palantir shares rose $2 to $34.05 on Feb. 5, giving it a stock-market value of $59.3 billion.
(Updates with shares in the second paragraph.)
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WASHINGTON—President Biden indicated in a call with House Democrats that he was open to sending $1,400 payments to a smaller group of Americans in the next round of coronavirus relief legislation and changing the overall price tag of his $1.9 trillion plan, according to people familiar with the call.
Mr. Biden told House Democrats on Wednesday that he wouldn’t change the amount of the proposed $1,400 payments, saying people had been promised that amount, according to the people.
Instead, he said he would consider targeting them differently than the previous two rounds of direct aid to Americans. Members of both political parties have questioned whether the $1,400 payments he has proposed would go to people who don’t need the aid.
“We can better target that number. I’m OK with that,” Mr. Biden said, according to the people.
White House press secretary
Jen Psaki
said later Wednesday that Mr. Biden is open to changes in the threshold for who would qualify for the $1,400 stimulus checks.”That’s something that has been under discussion,” she said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaking to reporters Wednesday outside the West Wing following the meeting with President Biden.
Photo:
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Mr. Biden also said he was flexible on the overall cost of the package, which Democrats have started advancing through Congress through a process that will allow them to pass it along party lines, according to the people familiar with the call. He said Democrats could make “compromises” on several programs in the proposal, one of the people said.
Ms. Psaki said Mr. Biden isn’t expecting the final package to look exactly like what he proposed. “He knows that that’s part of the legislative process,” she said.
Beyond sending money to many Americans, the $1.9 trillion proposal would direct aid to state and local governments, provide funds for distributing Covid-19 vaccines and enhance federal unemployment benefits. Money would go toward schools, child-care facilities and renters under the plan, which also seeks to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Republicans have called Mr. Biden’s plan too expensive and premature after Congress approved roughly $900 billion in aid in December, and they have criticized provisions like raising the minimum wage as unrelated to the pandemic. A proposal advanced by 10 Senate Republicans would provide $618 billion in relief, paring back Mr. Biden’s proposals on unemployment insurance and direct checks and eliminating others.
In meetings with Democrats, Mr. Biden has said the GOP plan is too small to deal with the effects of the pandemic.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said Democrats “seem desperate to make their first act in power the same kind of massive, partisan, poorly targeted borrowing spree that permanently wounded the last Democratic presidency right out of the gate.”
Democrats are divided on who should benefit from a new round of direct payments to Americans. Previous relief bills began phasing out the payments for people making more than $75,000 a year and married couples with incomes of more than $150,000. The Biden administration hasn’t yet detailed the income cutoffs it would put in place, though some Democrats have said they want to stick with the same cutoffs as the previous efforts.
Other Democrats see the current thresholds as too generous, allowing Americans who haven’t been economically harmed during the pandemic to receive government aid.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday after a meeting with Mr. Biden, Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.) said: “We did have a conversation about the direct payments and how those might be modified in a way to ensure they’re targeted.” He added that Mr. Biden is “not going to forget the middle class.”
The Republican plan would reduce the size of the checks to $1,000 per adult and start to phase out the payments for individuals who make $40,000 a year or more and married couples with incomes of $80,000 or more. A bipartisan group of senators involved in kickstarting the last coronavirus relief bill also has discussed how to target the relief checks.
Ten Republican senators have offered a roughly $618 billion coronavirus-relief plan to counter the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill President Biden outlined after taking office. WSJ’s Gerald F. Seib explains the significant differences between the two proposals. Photo illustration: Laura Kammermann
Democrats this week began pushing forward with a process called reconciliation, which would allow them to pass the coronavirus relief bill with fewer than the 60 votes required for most legislation in the Senate. With the Senate split 50-50—Vice President
Kamala Harris
can break ties—Democrats cannot afford to lose a single vote on the package in the Senate.
According to a Penn-Wharton Budget Model estimate, households in the short term would save about 73% of the money they receive from the direct payments if Mr. Biden’s proposal for $1,400 per person uses the same income thresholds as earlier payments. That savings figure includes paying down debt.
Checks more focused on those who lost income would be more likely to be spent, the group said.
“A large portion of people getting checks are people who are just going to save it because they’re not in these industries who are being hurt,” said Rich Prisinzano, the group’s director of policy analysis.
Proponents of sending direct payments argue that casting a wide net helps people who may be slipping through the cracks of other aid programs.
Mr. Biden met with another group of Democratic senators in the Oval Office on Wednesday. After the meeting, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) told reporters it was a substantive discussion, and that Democrats were united on passing a large package.
“We want to do it bipartisan, but we must be strong,” Mr. Schumer said. “We cannot dawdle, we cannot delay, we cannot dilute, because the troubles that this nation has and the opportunities that we can bring them are so large.”
The meetings on Wednesday are the latest in a flurry of meetings the new president has had with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. He spoke with Senate Democrats on Tuesday, urging lawmakers to adopt a large package. On Monday, Mr. Biden hosted the group of 10 Senate Republicans at the White House to discuss their $618 billion alternative plan.
—Tarini Parti and Richard Rubin contributed to this article.
Write to Andrew Duehren at andrew.duehren@wsj.com and Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com.
