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Biden seeks 5-year extension of New START arms treaty with Russia
U.S. President Joe Biden will seek a five-year extension to the New START arms control treaty with Russia, the White House said on Thursday, in one of the first major foreign policy decisions of the new administration ahead of the treaty's expiration in early February.
"The president has long been clear that the New START treaty is in the national security interests of the United States. And this extension makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is adversarial as it is at this time," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a briefing. She also said Biden had "tasked" the U.S. intelligence community for its full assessment of the Solar Winds cyber breach, Russian interference in the 2020 election, Russia's use of chemical weapons against opposition leader Alexei Navalny and alleged bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. "Even as we work with Russia to advance U.S. interests, so too we work to hold Russia to account for its reckless and adversarial actions," Psaki said. The arms control treaty, which is due to expire on Feb. 5, limits the United States and Russia to deploying no more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads each.
In addition to restricting the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons to its lowest level in decades, New START also limits the land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers that deliver them. In a statement, the Pentagon said that Americans were "much safer" with the treaty intact and extended. "Just as we engage Russia in ways that advance American interests, we in the department will remain clear-eyed about the challenges Russia poses and committed to defending the nation against their reckless and adversarial actions," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.
The treaty's lapse would end all restraints on deployments of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear warheads and the delivery systems that carry them, potentially fueling a new arms race, policy experts have said. Earlier, a source familiar with the decision told Reuters that U.S. lawmakers have been briefed on Biden's decision on the New START treaty.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday it remained committed to extending New START and would welcome efforts promised by the Biden administration to reach agreement.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Biden-seeks-5-year-extension-of-New-START-arms-treaty-with-Russia
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Lemonade Inc. sold by General Catalyst Partners: $82.19m-Jan 19
Lemonade, Inc. is a peer-to-peer property and casualty insurance company. The Company offer its products to renters and homeowners in the United States and contents and liability insurance in Germany and the Netherlands. The insurance it offers in the United States covers stolen or damaged property, and also covers personal liability, which protects its customers if they are responsible for an accident or damage to another person or their property. It also offers landlord insurance policies to condo and co-op owners who rent out their property less than five times a year, to protect their real and personal properties. The Company enables homeowners and renters to get insured and settle claims from various devices through its Lemonade application. It uses bots to deliver insurance to consumers through its chatbot-driven application and at lemonade.com. It enables consumers to chat with artificial intelligence to file claims. Number of employees : 279 people.
https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/LEMONADE-INC-109161819/company/
General Catalyst is an American venture capital firm focused on early stage and growth investments. The firm was founded in 2000 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also has offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto and New York City. It has invested in companies including The Honest Company, Outdoor Voices, Grammarly, Snapchat, Neverware, Stripe, Airbnb, Deliveroo, HubSpot, Datalogix, and Warby Parker. General Catalyst also helps to incubate companies, examples including KAYAK, Naturebox, Altiscale and Highfive. General Catalyst sponsors a student-led fund called Rough Draft Ventures for students to invest in their peers on college campuses throughout the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Catalyst
from 2017
Insurance startup Lemonade gets funding from SoftBank, Google Ventures (CapitalG) and others
Lemonade, the New York-based peer-to-peer insurance company, raised $120 million in series C funding. Tokyo-based SoftBank Group led the effort, and was joined by existing investors including General Catalyst, Alphabet Inc.'s Google Ventures (GV), Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, and Tusk Ventures. Lemonade is also backed by Aleph, Allianz, Sound Ventures and XL Innovate. As part of the deal, SoftBank’s David Thevenon will join the Lemonade board of directors.
https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2017/12/19/insurance-startup-lemonade-gets-funding-from.html
https://www.finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1337122&tc=7&b=2
Square Inc Equity Sales by @jackoff and co-founder: $67.92m
Square Inc. sold by co-founder Jim Mckelvey: $45.14m-Jan19
McKelvey was appointed as an Independent Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in January 2017-term expires 2023
https://www.finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1658460&tc=7
Square Inc. sold by @jackoff: $22.78m-Jan 19
https://www.finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1590945&tc=7
Square, Inc. (Square) is a commerce ecosystem. The Company enables its sellers start, run and grow their businesses. It combines software with hardware to enable sellers to turn mobile devices and computing devices into payments and point-of-sale solutions. Once a seller downloads the Square Point of Sale mobile application, they can take their first payment. With its offering, a seller can accept payments in person via magnetic stripe (a swipe), Europay, MasterCard, and Visa (EMV) (a dip), or Near Field Communication (NFC) (a tap); or online via Square Invoices, Square Virtual Terminal, or the seller's Website. Once on its system, sellers gain access to technology and features, such as reporting and analytics, next-day settlements, digital receipts, payment dispute management and chargeback protection, and Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance. On the consumer (buyer) side, Square Cash offers individuals access to a way to send and receive money. Number of employees : 3 835 people.
https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/SQUARE-INC-24935553/company/
Guardant Helath sold by CEO: $103,127,590-Jan 19,20,21
Guardant Health, Inc. is a precision oncology company. The Company is focused on helping conquer cancer through use of its blood tests, data sets and analytics. It provides Guardant Health Oncology Platform. It provides liquid biopsy tests, such as Guardant360 and GuardantOMNI, for advanced stage cancer. Its liquid biopsy tests fuels its programs developing tests for recurrence and early detection, LUNAR-1 and LUNAR-2. Guardant360 is a molecular diagnostic test that measures 73 cancer-related genes from circulating tumor deoxyribonucleic acid (ctDNA). Its Guardant360 process includes blood collection, laboratory processing, analysis and reporting. Guardant360 is used for a range of applications, including translational science research and identifying target patient populations, drug development and commercialization post-drug approval. Number of employees : 622 people.
https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/GUARDANT-HEALTH-INC-46434671/company/
Helmy Eltoukhy Chief Executive Officer
After receiving his PhD, MS and BS degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, he joined the Stanford Genome Technology Center (SGTC) as a post-doctoral fellow in 2006 to work on low-cost DNA sequencing technologies. During his doctoral studies and at the SGTC, he developed the first semiconductor sequencing platform and first base-calling algorithm for next-generation sequencing under several NHGRI grants. In 2007, he co-founded Avantome to commercialize semiconductor sequencing to help speed up the democratization of high throughput DNA sequencing until its acquisition by Illumina in August 2008. At Illumina, Helmy was Senior Director of Advanced Technology Research, where he developed novel chemistries, hardware and informatics for genetic analysis systems.
https://www.guardanthealth.com/portfolio-item/helmy-e/
https://www.finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1752968&tc=7&b=2
High court denies government responsibility for Fukushima nuclear crisis
The Tokyo High Court on Thursday ordered the operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to pay damages to evacuated residents, but it overturned a lower court ruling that had also acknowledged the central government’s responsibility over the 2011 nuclear crisis.
Among around 30 such lawsuits across the country, the decision of the Tokyo High Court was the first high court ruling absolving the state of responsibility, contradicting an earlier decision of the Sendai High Court in September that ordered both the state and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. to pay damages.
Presiding Judge Akira Adachi said it cannot be said the state could have predicted a huge tsunami like the one that struck the Fukushima plant. He said it is difficult to ascertain that the state’s measures against tsunami was problematic. In March 2017, the Maebashi District Court awarded a total of ¥38.55 million to 62 plaintiffs who evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture, including those who voluntarily left, acknowledging the government and the utility were negligent in preparing for a tsunami.
The district court said the disaster was caused by a failure to cool nuclear fuel as water entered turbine buildings through air supply openings in the wake of the tsunami triggered by a massive earthquake, crippling emergency switchboards. The lawsuit was filed by a total of 137 plaintiffs relocated to Gunma Prefecture and elsewhere. They sought a combined ¥1.5 billion — ¥11 million each — in damages for emotional distress. They were forced to leave their hometowns as three reactors suffered meltdowns at the plant after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011.
The plaintiffs said they had lost their livelihoods and faced inconvenience for an extensive period, and the amount they received under the current state compensation guidelines was not enough.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/01/21/national/crime-legal/government-denies-fukushima-responsibility/