President Joe Biden on the campaign trail in 2020. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesAmerica’s vaccine rollout isn’t going well. Here’s how Biden can fix it. As President Biden settles into the Oval Office, his immediate challenge is fixing America’s botched vaccine rollout. The current vaccine campaign is not going well. Former President Donald Trump and his administration promised to get 20 million Americans vaccinated and 40 million doses out by the end of 2020. Three weeks into the new year, the country hasn’t reached either goal, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I’ve talked to a lot of experts over the past few weeks about what’s going wrong. They caution that a massive vaccine campaign was always going to be difficult, including in the US. But they poin

Summary List PlacementAmazon will open a pop-up COVID-19 vaccination clinic at its downtown headquarters in Seattle on Sunday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced Thursday. The one-day clinic, which is being launched through a partnership between Amazon and Virginia Mason Medical Center, aims to administer 2,000 vaccines to members of the public who are eligible through the state's distribution plan.  Inslee said Monday that the state aims to reach 45,000 daily vaccinations. Washington state is currently in Phase 1B, which includes anyone 65 and older or anyone over 50 in a multigenerational household. The pop-up vaccine site announcement comes just days after Amazon offered to help the Biden administration distribute vaccine doses. The company said it is willing to use all of its res...

Summary List PlacementCostco will continue selling My Pillow products despite the CEO's support of former President Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud that have lead many other retailers to drop the brand.  "We have contractual commitments to MyPillow that we intend to honor, as we seek to do with all of our suppliers, a Costco representative told SFGate on Thursday.  Costco's continuation of MyPillow sales comes as CEO Mike Lindell continues to push baseless claims that rigged voting machines helped President Joe Biden steal the 2020 race. Lindell also confirmed on Thursday to USA Today that Costco will still sell MyPillow products. The retailer is also showcasing MyPillow at "special events" through the end of February at select clubs in eight states including Colorado, Mo...

Cars drive on an unlit street during a blackout in Tehran, Iran (Credits: AP)Tehran, the capital of Iran, has plunged into darkness in recent weeks as rolling outages left millions without electricity for hours. Other cities have also been affected by the outages. Traffic lights died. Offices went dark. Online classes stopped. With toxic smog blanketing the skies and the country buckling under the pandemic and other mounting crises, social media has been rife with speculation about what was to blame. Soon, fingers pointed at an unlikely culprit: Bitcoin. Within days, as frustration spread among residents, the government launched a wide-ranging crackdown on bitcoin processing centers, which require immense amounts of electricity to power their specialized computers and to keep

Summary List PlacementThere's no doubt Tesla is a big deal, and perhaps one of your regrets is not getting in on its story (read: stock price) 10 years ago. As a consolation prize, here's your chance to take home one of the earliest pieces of the carmaker's saga. Way back in the land of 2008, Tesla was a little-known electric carmaker whose first production car was the Roadster, an all-electric sports car based on the Lotus Elise. The first 100 of those Roadsters were sold as limited-edition "Signature One Hundred" models. This Radiant Red example is No. 38 of those original 100, now for sale on car auction website Bring a Trailer. As of this writing, there are four hours left to bid and the price is just shy of $90,000. Read on to see more. SEE ALSO: Everything you need to know about ...

Summary List Placement UBS says the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations will be a key driver of stocks in 2021.  The firm estimates the S&P 500 could gain 5% by the spring if the current pace of doses doubles. Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell. UBS sees the pace of vaccinations as a key driver of stocks through 2021, similar to how shifts in mobility and COVID-19 cases drove markets in 2020. Using a model that tracks the relationship between equities and the pace of the vaccine rollout, the world's largest wealth manager forecasts the S&P 500 could gain up to 5% by middle of the second quarter if the US ramps up vaccination rates. As of Wednesday, the current pace of over 800,000 doses per day in the US is well below original government es...

By Daniel Dale (CNN) — President Joe Biden delivered a factually accurate Thursday speech about the coronavirus pandemic. But then, after he signed a series of executive actions intended to address the crisis, he was asked by a reporter whether the vaccination goal he announced in December — 100 million doses administered in 100 days — is sufficiently ambitious. The question of whether the goal is too modest has arisen in part because the United States is approaching a 1-million-doses-administered-per-day level even before Biden gets to implement his plans. The nation has averaged 914,000 doses administered per day over the last week, according to data published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In defending his goal, Biden told the reporter: “When I announced it,

By Veronica Stracqualursi | CNN Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday that the lack of truthfulness from the Trump administration regarding the Covid-19 pandemic “very likely” cost American lives. “Particularly when you’re in the situation of almost being in a crisis with the number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths that we have — when you start talking about things that make no sense medically and no sense scientifically, that clearly is not helpful,” Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said on CNN’s “New Day” Friday. Asked by CNN’s John Berman if the lack of candor over the last year and lack of facts, in some cases, cost lives, Fauci said, “You know, it very likely did.” He warned that it’s “not helpful” when “you’re starting to go down paths that are not based on a...

Summary List PlacementGoldman Sachs has been going through some massive changes under CEO David Solomon. It's taken big steps involving transparency and inclusion to change up its culture. After its first-ever investor day in early 2020, the firm is looking to execute on targets including multi-year cost-cutting plans. And it's making big pushes into businesses like wealth management and consumer banking.  The bank reported fourth-quarter earnings this week and gave an update on its strategic plans.  Solomon, who took the reins as CEO in 2018, has also looked to reduce the number of partners at the firm in order to make the status more elite and exclusive. In 2018, there were 484 partners. But as of the latest announcement of the newest partner additions, Goldman's total partners amount...

Despite a raging pandemic that shuttered businesses and idled workers, the Southern California housing market stumbled in 2020, then came galloping back. Home prices continued their eight-year march upward, with 2020’s average median price rising 8.3% in the region, according to annual average figures from CoreLogic/DQ News released Friday, Jan. 22. And home sales for the year totaled 233,289 transactions. While that’s below the average for the previous decade, the market still eked out a 1.6% gain from the year before. Despite early expectations, 2020 was a year of bidding wars and soaring prices, as mortgages and the number of homes for sale fell. “The market in Southern California in 2020 has been nothing short of remarkable,” said Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist for Hauz.com, a co-in

The Bay Area-based Pacific Catch seafood chain has announced that it hopes to open its long-planned Santa Clara restaurant in March. The location at Santa Clara Square, a mixed-used development that fronts Highway 101, will be the 11th in the group. The expansion was announced in early 2020, just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic limited operations at restaurants in California and across the nation. Pacific Catch, which bills itself as a “West Coast fish house,” specializes in fresh, sustainable fish and seafood dishes inspired by Asia, Latin America and Polynesia — Hawaiian poke bowls, fish tacos, pan-Asian rice bowls and daily fish specials — and offers a full bar with specialty cocktails, California wines and microbrews. The restaurant was founded in 2003 on San Francisco’s Chestnut S...

Summary List PlacementNew York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading an antitrust case against Facebook, said a breakup of the company is "on the table," Bloomberg Businessweek reported. In an interview with the publication, James described Facebook as a monopoly and said the social media giant's users have "nowhere else to go."    "Facebook's monopoly hurts consumers, it hurts the marketplace, it hurts advertisers," she said. Breaking up the company is "one of the many remedies that are on the table," she said. She also cited precedents, including the government mandated breakup of AT&T into eight smaller companies in 1984. "We want Facebook to stop its anticompetitive conduct and undo the harm it's caused," James told Bloomberg.   Facecbook did not immediately respond to...