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Spending her life in Los Angeles, Morgan Andersen knows natural disasters all too well. In college, an earthquake shook her home hard. Her grandfather was affected by recent wildfires in neighboring Orange County. “It’s just that constant reminder, ‘Oh yeah, we live somewhere where there’s natural disasters and they can strike at any time,’” said the 29-year-old marketing executive. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has calculated the risk for every county in America for 18 types of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, volcanoes and even tsunamis. And of the more than 3,000 counties, Los Angeles County has the highest ranking in the National Risk Index. The way FEMA calculates the index spotlights places long known as danger spots, like Los Angeles, but some other places highlighted run…

Amazon said this week that it bought 11 jets from Delta and WestJet airlines to boost its growing delivery network and get orders to shoppers faster. The company said it’s the first time it has purchased planes for its delivery network. Over the past couple of years, Amazon has been leasing planes to build its fleet. “Having a mix of both leased and owned aircraft in our growing fleet allows us to better manage our operations,” said Sarah Rhoads, vice president of Amazon Global Air, in a blog post. Seattle-based Amazon has been working to deliver most of its packages itself and rely less on UPS, the U.S. Postal Service and other carriers. Besides its fleet of planes, Amazon has also built several package-sorting hubs at airports, opened warehouses closer…

A group of Google engineers and other workers announced they have formed a union, creating a rare foothold for the labor movement in the tech industry. About 225 employees at Google and its parent company Alphabet are the first dues-paying members of the Alphabet Workers Union. They represent a fraction of Alphabet’s workforce, far short of the threshold needed to get formal recognition as a collective bargaining group in the U.S. But the new union, which will be affiliated with the larger Communication Workers of America, says it will serve as a “structure that ensures Google workers can actively push for real changes at the company.” Its members say they want more of a voice not just on wages, benefits and protections against discrimination and harassment but also broader ethical…

The world’s richest person made the single-largest charitable contribution in 2020, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of top donations, a $10 billion gift that is intended to help fight climate change. Amazon’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, whose “real-time” worth Forbes magazine estimates at roughly $188 billion, used the contribution to launch his Bezos Earth Fund. The fund, which supports non-profits involved in the climate crisis, has paid out $790 million to 16 groups so far, according to the Chronicle. Setting aside Bezos’ whopping gift, though, the sum total of the top 10 donations last year — $2.6 billion — was the lowest since 2011, even as many billionaires vastly increased their wealth in the stock market rally that catapulted technology shares in particular last year. According…

Pete Docter’s “Soul” features stairway-to-heaven visions of the afterlife, a pre-birth “before” realm where souls are glowing turquoise orbs and an in-between spiritual realm trafficked by some kind of psychedelic pirate. And yet, kind of magically, it’s about “just regular old living.” Pixar may have started simple with talking toys, but their concepts have grown increasingly elaborate over the years, giving abstract shape to interior consciousness (“Inside Out”), brightening a peopled world of the dead (“Coco”) and conjuring a mythical suburban land with a father’s half-resurrected body (“Onward”). “Soul” is a step further, again: a grand metaphysical whatsit — a mid-life crisis movie, a New York jazz fantasia and a body-swap comedy, all in one. Part of the fun, of late, with Pixar’s more ambitious movies is following a plate-spinning…

California police agencies should routinely review officers’ social media, cellphones and computers for racist, bigoted or other offensive content that contributes to disproportionate police stops of Black people, a state advisory board said Monday. The controversial recommendation comes from community and law enforcement representatives who analyzed nearly 4 million vehicle and pedestrian stops by California’s 15 largest law enforcement agencies in 2019. The Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board report was unveiled amid calls to defund police and promises from state lawmakers to renew efforts to strip badges from bad officers, make more police misconduct records public, and allow community groups to handle mental health and drug calls where police powers may not be needed. People who were perceived as Black were more than twice as likely to be stopped…

Wanted: Spies from all backgrounds and walks of life. Striving to further diversify its ranks, the CIA launched a new website this week to find top-tier candidates who will bring a broader range of life experiences to the nation’s premier intelligence agency The days of all American spies being white male graduates from Ivy League schools are long gone. The CIA director is a woman and women head all five of the agency’s branches, including the directorates of science and technology, operations and digital innovation. But while the CIA has been diversifying for years, intelligence agencies still lag the federal workforce in minority representation. With thousands of job applicants annually, the CIA wants to do more to ensure its workforce reflects national demographics. The revamped website has links for browsing…

Microsoft said in a blog pos t that hackers tied to a massive intrusion of dozens of U.S. government agencies and private companies sneaked further into its systems than previously thought, although the intrusion doesn’t appear to have caused any additional harm. The company said the hackers were able to view some of the code underlying Microsoft software, but weren’t able to make any changes to it. Microsoft played down any risk associated with the additional intrusion, noting that its software development relies on code sharing within the company, a practice called “inner source.” Likewise, Microsoft said it doesn’t rely on keeping program code secret as a security measure and instead assumes that adversaries have seen its code and uses other defensive measures to frustrate attacks. The company said it…

Slack, the messaging service used by millions of people for work and school, suffered a global outage on Monday, the first day back for most people returning from the New Year’s holiday. It’s the latest tech glitch to show how disruptive technical difficulties can be when millions of people are depending on just a few services to work and go to school from home during the pandemic. The company stopped releasing its daily user count after topping 12 million last year. “Our team is currently investigating and we’re sorry for any troubles this may be causing,” Slack said in a prepared statement. The outage began around 10 a.m. Eastern time and disrupted service in the U.S., Germany, India, the U.K., Japan and elsewhere. At 12:30 p.m., service was still sporadic…

The global economy will experience a subdued recovery this year from the devastating pandemic, the World Bank predicted, but it warned that the near-term outlook is highly uncertain and growth could be imperiled if coronavirus infections and delays in the rollout of vaccines continue. In its new Global Economic Outlook, the World Bank forecast 4% growth this year following a 4.3% decline in 2020, the biggest plunge in global output since a contraction of 9.8% in 1945 as nations demobilized at the end of World War II. By comparison, the global recession triggered by the Great Depression of the 1930s saw growth shrink by 4.8% on average from 1930 through 1932. The 2008 financial crisis triggered a 1.8% drop in global output in 2009. “If history is any guide, the…

Songbird In 2024, the world still faces the coronavirus pandemic, with COVID-19 having mutated. Motorbike courier Nico (KJ Apa), who is immune to the virus, is romantically involved with artist Sara (Sofia Carson), who he attempts to save after she is thought to have become infected. FIVE FACTS: 1. Work on Songbird began in March 2020, after its director and co-writer Adam Mason received a call from his writing partner Simon Boyes about an idea for a COVID-inspired film. 2. “It’s a dystopian, scary world, but it’s a romantic movie about two people who want to be together, but they can’t,”Mason told Entertainment Weekly about the plot . 3. The movie was shot in Los Angeles from July 8 and made in only 17 days. 4. The strict safety measures…

Tom Hanks rides a horse and blasts a six-shooter in his new film, “News of the World.” Some of you might be thinking this must be his first cowboy role. To those, we respond: Have you forgotten about Woody so soon? All of Hanks — not just his voice — is employed in this second cowboy role, playing Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd in 1870, a gentle Texan whose quiet and itinerant life is interrupted by the arrival of a girl. Director and co-screenwriter Paul Greengrass reunites for the first time with Hanks since their 2013 outing “Captain Phillips.” This time, they’ve ditched the open water for an ambitious adventure firmly on land, based on the novel by Paulette Jiles. It’s a visually stunning film with a soulful message about forgiveness…

As U.S. health officials try to get COVID-19 vaccines to people more quickly, it’s already time for some people to get their second shots. So who’s keeping track to make sure you get the correct second dose, and on time? And who can see that information? It’s one of the many logistical issues health officials have been sorting out to pull off the country’s largest vaccination campaign. The first COVID-19 vaccines available in the U.S. require two doses taken weeks apart. Other vaccines in the pipeline might not require two doses, but the record keeping for those would work the same way. Here’s a look at how vaccinations are being tracked. WHAT’S NEEDED FOR MY FIRST SHOT? Once vaccines become widely available in coming months, the pharmacy, health clinic or…

The mass exodus of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s top staff over accusations of bribery against their former boss has left the Republican seeking $43 million in public funds to replace some of them with outside lawyers to lead a high-profile antitrust lawsuit against Google. Former Paxton aides told The Associated Press that before they reported him to the FBI in September and began resigning, the lawsuit against the search engine giant was set to be handled internally by what is one of the largest state attorney general’s offices in the U.S. The outside lawyers’ contracts put a price tag on the fallout from Paxton’s deputies accusing him of crimes in the service of a wealthy donor who employs a woman with whom the attorney general allegedly had an extramarital…

Amazon is jumping into the podcast business. The online shopping giant is buying Wondery, a 4-year-old producer of popular true crime podcasts such as “Dr. Death” and “Dirty John,” which was later turned into a TV series. An explosion of new podcasts has led to a number of acquisitions as competing platforms try to grow their audiences and their ad revenue. The music streaming platform Spotify bought two podcast companies in 2019 and it’s added high-profile hosts to its roster, including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Wondery podcasts will be part of Amazon’s music streaming service, but it will still be available on other platforms as well. “This is a pivotal moment to expand the Amazon Music offering beyond music as listener habits evolve,” Amazon said in a blog post.…

With consumers encouraged to upgrade their smartphones on a near-annual basis and the throwaway culture of technology continuing apace, e-waste is fast-becoming one of the key environmental concerns. Less than 40% of our phones, tablets, and laptops are recycled, with the rest destined for landfill. The key to change lies with us - and our technology giants. THE RISE OF E-WASTE Though e-waste has been a concern for a number of years, it’s only in the past decade that consumers have adopted technology in such a way that is causing catastrophic damage to our environment. According to one recent study, the average home now contains 19 devices , with IoT technologies such as smart speakers ballooning that figure. Data out of Europe suggests just 40% of e-waste in the European…

The coronavirus pandemic has forced many people to work from home, but there are signs that office life will continue in North Carolina’s Research Triangle. The Raleigh News & Observer reported that some tech firms are planning new offices in the region despite the recent trend of working from home. For instance, Epic Games announced last week that it would buy Cary Towne Center for $95 million. The firm has promised to redevelop the dying mall into a world-class headquarters for potentially thousands of workers. Two other technology companies are also going full-speed ahead with their new headquarters. Those firms are Pendo and Bandwidth. Leaders of those companies have called office-based work a big part of their culture. And they say they are eager for their employees to eventually gather…

evermore Taylor Swift Only five months after the surprise arrival of her reflective eighth studio album folklore, Taylor Swift has released her second studio album recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, evermore – with bands Bon Iver, HAIM and the National all making guest appearances. FIVE FACTS: 1. When announcing the new album on Instagram, Swift called evermore a “sister record” to folklore . 2. She admitted that, after folklore, “we just couldn’t stop writing songs,” adding that she had sought to “travel further into the forest of this music”. 3. Swift’s boyfriend Joe Alwyn co-wrote three of evermore’s tracks and is credited under the pseudonym “William Bowery”. 4. The album’s first single, “willow”, was released on the same day as the album itself: December 11, 2020. 5. The Apple Music…

We streamed, we Zoomed, we ordered groceries and houseplants online, we created virtual villages while navigating laptop shortages to work and learn from home. In many ways, 2020’s pandemic-induced isolation threw our dependence on technology into overdrive, snipping away at our real-life connections while bringing digital relationships to the fore. But for every life-changing Zoom, there was at least one soon-forgotten Quibi. Here’s a look at the year’s tech winners and losers. LOSERS: — Virtual Reality As the world adjusted to a new stuck-at-home reality, the pandemic could have been virtual reality’s chance to offer an escape. With the use of special headsets and accouterments like gloves, the technology lets people interact with a 360 degree view of a three-dimensional environment, seemingly a good fit for people stuck indoors. But…

Sales of new vehicles in the U.S. fell 14.6% last year, but a second-half rebound from a coronavirus-related plunge in the spring kindled optimism for a recovery later this year. Automakers reported selling 14.57 million new vehicles for the year, a far cry from the five previous years with sales over 17 million. But the 2020 performance was better than most forecasters had expected when the pandemic forced auto factories and many dealerships to shut down in April and May. General Motors Chief Economist Elaine Buckberg said she expects sales to recover in the spring. With warmer weather and widening novel coronavirus vaccinations, life should return more toward normal, lifting the job market and auto demand, she said in a statement. “We feel like there’s light at the end of…

China’s best-known entrepreneur, e-commerce billionaire Jack Ma, made his fortune by taking big risks. The former English teacher founded Alibaba Group in 1999, when China had few internet users. Online payments service Alipay launched five years later, before regulators said such businesses would be allowed. Both long shots grew to dominate their industries. Ma’s latest gambit backfired after he called regulators too conservative in an Oct. 24 speech and urged them to be more innovative. They halted the impending stock market debut of Ant Group, an online finance platform that grew out of Alipay. Alibaba’s share price sank, possibly costing Ma his status as China’s richest tycoon. Since then, the normally voluble Ma has stayed out of the public eye, canceled a TV appearance and avoided social media. That has…