* * * * * WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2020 ~ VOL. CCLXXVI NO. 142 WSJ.com HHHH $4 .00

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MAIDUGURI, Nigeria—Sixyears after the abduction of276 schoolgirls ignited theglobal #BringBackOurGirlscampaign, Nigeria is again reel-ing from a mass kidnapping,this time of more than 300boys.

Jihadist group BokoHaram on Tuesday said it hadseized students from an all-boys boarding school in Kat-sina, in northwest Nigeria, topunish them for “un-Islamicpractices.” Local officialssaid 333 of the school’s 800students were missing and as-sumed captive, a number someanalysts say could mark one ofthe largest mass kidnappingsof schoolchildren in his-tory. Nigerian surveillance air-craft and American droneshave been dispatched over thesprawling forest where survi-vors say the captors forcedthem to march.

One of the students who es-caped the captors—17-year-oldUsama Male—said the abduc-tion began just after 10 p.m. onFriday. Dozens of men in mili-tary fatigues shooting Kalash-nikovs into the air poured intothe sand-caked school cam-pus and ordered the entire stu-dent body to march into theforest. After almost two daysof walking in a hundreds-strong column with no foodand little water, he was one ofthe lucky few who escaped.

“They said they would killwhoever tried to flee, but I po-sitioned myself near the backand waited for a chance torun,” he said, sitting alongsidehis father, Aminu, in the townof Kankara. “Hundreds of myfellow pupils are still in captiv-ity somewhere in the forest.”

PleaseturntopageA8

Source: TankerTrackers

Iran’s average crude andcondensates exports

2.0

0

0.5

1.0

1.5

million barrels a day

Jan. ’20 Nov.Feb. 2019

PHOENIX—As if the pandemic weren’t dis-ruptive enough, many American schools arefacing a growing shortage of teachers.

School districts are recruiting parents assubstitute teachers, online class sizes aresoaring to 50 children or more and bus driv-ers are baby-sitting classrooms. Some areconsidering allowing asymptomatic teacherswho were exposed to Covid-19 to continue toshow up.

Public-school employment in Novemberwas down 8.7% from February, and at itslowest level since 2000, according to the Bu-reau of Labor Statistics.

That includes teachers who quit, retiredearly or took leaves of absence due to thepandemic, and layoffs of support staff suchas teachers’ aides and clerical workers. The

BY VALERIE BAUERLEIN AND YOREE KOH

Candace Thompson, man-ager of the Stuyvesant CovePark in lower Manhattan, waspulling on a giant bindweedone day when a woman eatinglunch nearby of-fered some advice.

“She went, ‘Youneed goats,’ ” Ms.Thompson remem-bers.

The park man-ager was intrigued.She placed an orderfor 20 of the ani-mals, which arrivedin early Septemberin a trailer from Rhinebeck,N.Y. Two and a half days later,most of the weeds were gone.

Goatscaping, as this trick iscalled, has grown in popular-ity in recent years as an envi-ronmentally friendly way toclear overgrown lots. Covid-19

Well-Employed During the Crisis:Landscaping Goats

i i i

Hired for their insatiable love of weeds,they’re able to work through lockdowns

has boosted the demand.Goats can be on the job duringlockdowns. Ms. Thompsonturned to goats after NewYork City’s spring restrictionsforced the park’s usual groupof volunteers to stay home

and left it full ofweeds.

Goats at workalso offer instantentertainment forchildren stuck athome during re-mote learning.When Lansing Da-vis of Mill Valley,Calif., hosted threegoats from Sep-

tember to early December onhis 2-acre property, his daugh-ters aged 4, 7 and 9 were ex-cited to have them and got toknow their different personali-ties, while neighborhood kidsfed them through the fence.

PleaseturntopageA12

BY KONRAD PUTZIER

Yummy

BY SAM SCHECHNER

EU SeeksTougherOversightOf TechFirmsProposals aim to boostsocial-media policing,levy huge fines forcompetitive abuses

European officials want newpowers to oversee internalworkings at large technologycompanies such as FacebookInc., backed by threats of multi-billion-dollar fines, as they seekto expand their role as globaltech enforcers.

The European Union’s execu-tive arm proposed two bills onTuesday—one focused on illegalcontent, the other on anticom-petitive behavior—that wouldempower regulators in somecases to levy fines of up to 6%or 10% of annual world-widerevenue, or break up big techcompanies to stop certain com-petitive abuses.

The bills don’t mention anyspecific company but, asdrafted, one or both wouldlikely apply to several large U.S.tech companies including Al-phabet Inc.’s Google, Ama-zon.com Inc. Apple Inc. andFacebook.

At the same time, the U.K.,which has exited the bloc, saidTuesday that it is advancingsimilar legislation coveringwhat it calls “online harms.” Itwould require social-media

PleaseturntopageA2

NigerianJihadistsRe-emergeWith MassAbductionBY JOE PARKINSONAND GBENGA AKINGBULE

Sanctions FailTo Curb Iran OilCrude exports have climbed,providing a lifeline to thecountry’s economy. A8

Teacher ShortageWorsensPandemicWoes in Schools

Administrators scramble to staff classrooms; ‘it’s all hands on deck’

The Food and Drug Admin-istration said the Covid-19vaccine developed by ModernaInc. was “highly effective,”setting the stage for an emer-gency authorization later thisweek that would add a secondvaccine to the arsenal againstthe pandemic.

The agency on Tuesdayposted online documents, pre-pared by its staff and by Mod-

erna, analyzing the safety andeffectiveness of the vaccine in alarge clinical study. The find-ings will go before an indepen-dent advisory panel that willvote on Thursday on whether torecommend FDA authorization.

Barring complications, theFDA is aiming to authorizeemergency use of the Modernavaccine on Friday, following thesame timetable as last weekwith the Covid-19 vaccine, fromPfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE.

Moderna’s analysis, posted

by the FDA, also included newdata suggesting the first doseof its vaccine can reduce infec-tions that don’t cause symp-toms.

If this finding holds up infurther analysis—including af-ter the second of the two-doseregimen—it could mean thevaccine not only protects indi-viduals from disease, but alsocurbs transmission of the vi-rus from person to person.

A vaccine that prevents as-ymptomatic infections and

curbs viral transmission couldhasten the end of the corona-virus pandemic, if enough peo-ple get vaccinated.

“If we could demonstratethat they reduce transmission,that would accelerate the timewhen we can take off ourmasks and go back to a more

PleaseturntopageA6

BY THOMAS M. BURTONAND PETER LOFTUS

FDA Sets Stage to AuthorizeModerna’s Covid-19 Vaccine

Holiday Lockdown Looms in London as Cases Surge

IN LIGHTS: London taverns like the Churchill Arms prepared for new restrictions that will take effect Wednesday, limitingrestaurants and pubs to takeaway and delivery. The move followed a surge in Covid-19 cases in the U.K. capital.

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� Leaders move closer toCovid-19 relief pact................ A2

� Challenges await Biden’svirus czar ..................................... A6

� Twitter fined in Europe overdata breach................................. B4

� Heard on the Street: Newrules will bite, eventually... B14

staffing crunch leaves teachers educatingchildren in person and online simultane-ously, deep-cleaning their own classroomsand taking turns as crossing guards.

The consequences are burnout for teach-ers, frustration for parents and scant prog-ress for students.

The shortage isn’t uniform nationwide,but rather concentrated in some regions andspecialties. More than 40 states reportedshortfalls in math, science and special edu-cation in 2018, but fewer states reportedshortages in elementary grades, according tothe latest federal data. There are shortagesin some cities with a high cost of living andsome rural areas with low teacher pay.

Nowhere is the impact more stark thanPleaseturntopageA12

� Schools speed up internet for rural students... A14

Salesforce.#1CRM.

Ranked #1 for CRMApplications based onIDC 2020H1 RevenueMarket ShareWorldwide.

19.8%

4.8%5.3%

3.8%3.9%

salesforce.com/number1CRMCRM market includes the following IDC-defined functional markets: Sales Force Productivity and Management,Marketing Campaign Management, Customer Service, Contact Center, Advertising, and Digital CommerceApplications. © 2020 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce.com is a registered trademark ofsalesforce.com, inc., as are other names and marks.

2016 2017 2018 2019 2020H1

Source: IDC, Worldwide SemiannualSoftware Tracker, October 2020.

CONTENTSArts in Review... A15Business News...... B3Crossword.............. A16Equities.................... B10Heard on Street. B14Opinion.............. A17-19

Personal Journal A13-14Property Report... B6Sports........................ A16Technology............... B4U.S. News............. A2-7Weather................... A16World News....... A8-9

s 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.All Rights Reserved

>

What’sNews

�The FDA said the Covid-19vaccine developed by Mod-erna was highly effective,setting the stage for an emer-gency authorization later thisweek that would add a sec-ond shot to the arsenalagainst the pandemic. A1� The EU’s chief drug regu-lator will accelerate its re-view of a Covid-19 vaccineafter coming under pressurefrom some governments toauthorize the shot. A7�Congressional leaderssaid theywere coming closerto reaching an agreement onanother virus relief package,aftermonths of fitful effortsto approvemore aid.A2� Jihadist group BokoHaram said it had seized stu-dents from an all-boys schoolin northwest Nigeria to pun-ish them for what it calledun-Islamic practices. A1� Senate Republican lead-ers united in calling Demo-crat Joe Biden the winnerof the presidential race,while warning colleaguesnot to join a long-shot bidto challenge the results inCongress in January. A4� Biden chose one of hisformer Democratic pri-mary rivals, Pete Butt-igieg, to lead the Trans-portation Department. A4�The president-elect plansto tap ex-MichiganGov. Jenni-fer Granholm as Energy chiefand ex-Obama administrationEPA chief Gina McCarthy asnational climate adviser. A4�Mexico’s ruling partypushed through a new lawcurbing the role of foreignlaw-enforcement officersstationed in Mexico. A9

Europeanofficialswantnewpowers to oversee in-

ternal workings at large techcompanies, backed by threatsof multibillion-dollar fines, asthey seek to expand their roleas global tech enforcers. A1� Twitter was fined underthe EU’s current privacy law,a first for a U.S. tech firm in across-border case since therules went into effect. B4�Mnuchin suggested hewas unlikely to support aconsent order to end the gov-ernment conservatorshipsof Fannie and Freddie be-fore Trump leaves office. A2� U.S. stocks rallied, withthe S&P 500, Nasdaq andDow advancing 1.3%, 1.2%and 1.1%, respectively. B12� High-frequency tradersare using an experimentaltype of cable to speed uptheir systems by billionths ofa second, the latest move ina technological arms race. B1� VW shares jumpedTuesday after top share-holders and union leaderspublicly backed CEODiess’s strategy of refocus-ing on electric vehicles. B1� Credit Suisse’s new CEOsaid wealthmanagement willbe a priority for the bank,setting a target for improvedprofits from that activity. B1� Condé Nast named AnnaWintour its first-ever globalchief content officer aspart of the company’s pushto unify its internationaland U.S. operations. B3� China’s economic activityextended its momentum lastmonth with a broad recoveryas the country approaches theend of a tumultuous year. A9

Business&Finance

World-Wide

A2 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 * * * * * THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

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William Barr will resign asattorney general on Dec. 23. Insome editions Tuesday, a PageOne article about Mr. Barr’sresignation incorrectly re-ferred in one instance to hisfiring.

The S.S. Central America,known as the Ship of Gold,sank in 1857. A U.S. Watch ar-ticle in some editions Tuesdayabout a former deep-sea trea-sure hunter’s confinement forcontempt of court incorrectlysaid it was the S.S. America.

Screenwriter MosheZonder’s last name was mis-spelled as Zonda in one refer-ence in a Personal Journal ar-ticle Thursday about Israelitelevision dramas.

Notice to readersWall Street Journal staff

members are working re-motely during the pandemic.For the foreseeable future,please send reader commentsonly by email or phone, usingthe contacts below, not viaU.S. Mail.

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U.S. NEWS

Pelosi earlier Tuesday formore than an hour, also joinedthe meeting by phone.

“We’re continuing to work.I think there’s progress. We’llget back together,” Mr. McCar-thy said following the after-noon meeting.

The talks were held one day

after a bipartisan group oflawmakers largely wrapped uptheir work on a compromisecoronavirus-relief proposal.That agreement included anextension of unemploymentinsurance and funding forschools, vaccine distributionand small businesses, among

other provisions.But the bipartisan coalition

came up short in its efforts toreach a broad deal on thethorniest issue: liability pro-tections for businesses andother entities operating dur-ing the pandemic. Instead,lawmakers released a $748

billion bill bundling togethermany of the less controversialproposals but excluding liabil-ity protections backed by Re-publicans and $160 billion instate and local aid sought byDemocrats.

GOP leaders said last weekthat Congress should end the

standoff by leaving out the li-ability provisions and stateand local aid and proceedingwith the other relief mea-sures.

Ahead of the meeting withother top leaders, Mr. McCon-nell repeated his call to omitthe two issues from the bill,pointing toward another reliefbill under the coming Bidenadministration as another op-portunity to address them. Hesaid the Senate wouldn’t leaveWashington until the two par-ties reached a deal.

“We all know the new ad-ministration’s going to be ask-ing for yet another package.It’s not like we won’t have an-other opportunity to debatethe merits of liability reformand state and local govern-ment in the very near future,”Mr. McConnell said.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas,a member of Senate GOP lead-ership, said the decision tosplit off the more controver-sial issues indicated an aware-ness that only the bill withwide consensus had a path tobecoming law.

“It is just my impression onthe way that the negotiatinggroup has separated those twoissues—it seems to take Sen.McConnell’s advice and leavethose to the side and do whatwe can,” Mr. Cornyn told re-porters.

WASHINGTON—Top con-gressional leaders said theywere coming closer to reach-ing an agreement on anothercoronavirus relief package,broadcasting progress aftermonths of fitful efforts to ap-prove more aid.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi(D., Calif.), Senate MajorityLeader Mitch McConnell (R.,Ky.), Senate Minority LeaderChuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) andHouse Minority Leader KevinMcCarthy (R., Calif.) met re-peatedly on Tuesday, thegroup’s first meeting in weeks.Lawmakers are hurrying tocraft another aid package thisweek, before the holidays andthe expiration of several keyaid provisions.

“We’re making significantprogress and I’m optimisticthat we’re gonna be able tocomplete an understandingsometime soon,” Mr. McCon-nell said Tuesday night.

The group met in the after-noon and reconvened in theevening.

“We’re exchanging paperand ideas back and forth,making progress and hopefullywe can come to an agreementsoon,” Mr. Schumer said.

Treasury Secretary StevenMnuchin, who spoke to Mrs.

BY KRISTINA PETERSONAND ANDREW DUEHREN

LeadersMoveCloser toCovid-19Relief Pact

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed hope Tuesday night that an agreement can be reached soon.

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the EU’s digital-policy and anti-trust czar, said Tuesday.

The EU’s pair of proposalswill now begin months or yearsof haggling over their scopeand details. Each bill must beapproved by both the EuropeanCouncil, representing the bloc’s27 national governments, andthe directly elected EuropeanParliament to become law.

Tech companies reactedcautiously to the new propos-als, which still could be re-shaped or scrapped. Previously,some have warned against cre-ating a new set of competitionrules that could hobble innova-tion, or onerous content-mod-eration obligations that couldpush companies to remove le-gal content, stifling free ex-pression.

But Facebook, which hascomplained about Germany’scontent-moderation rules, saidon Tuesday that it welcomedharmonization of EU rules onthe issue. The proposals are“on the right track to help pre-serve what is good about theinternet,” Facebook said.

Karan Bhatia, Google’s vicepresident of government af-fairs and public policy, said heis concerned the proposals “ap-pear to specifically target ahandful of companies andmake it harder to develop newproducts to support small busi-nesses in Europe.”

An Amazon spokesman de-

clined to comment but pointedto a blog post in which thecompany said the bloc shouldensure “the same rules applyto all companies.”

One victory for tech compa-nies is that the EU proposalkeeps the basic liability shieldprotecting digital intermediar-ies from responsibility for thecontent on their services pro-vided they make good-faith ef-forts to address problems. Butthe proposals add increasinglayers of obligations for online

intermediaries, based on theirrole in the digital ecosystemand their number of clients.

The European legislativeproposals provide a counter-point to similar discussions inthe U.S., where the industry’ssimilar liability shield facedcriticism from lawmakers. Butprospects for a competition-lawoverhaul in Washington remainunclear. In October, a Demo-cratic-led House panel sug-gested several legislativechanges to rein in the power ofbig tech platforms.

One of the EU’s two pro-posed bills, the Digital ServicesAct, would require large techplatforms that reach more than10% of the EU’s population eachmonth to actively look for andmitigate risks from illegal con-tent and goods available viatheir services. It would requireyearly external audits and im-pose new transparency require-ments. Large platforms couldbe ordered to change their be-havior following such auditsand could face significant fines.

The Digital Services Actwould also empower regulatorsto apply local laws on illegalcontent. A city that requireshome rentals to be registeredcould, for instance, order ahome-sharing app to remove alisting for an unregisteredproperty or demand informa-tion about a host who isn’t pay-ing taxes, an EU official said.

The other EU bill, the Digi-tal Markets Act, would pre-emptively ban certain behav-ior by what it deems to begatekeepers—defined as com-panies with European revenueof at least €6.5 billion, equiva-lent to about $7.9 billion, or amarket capitalization of atleast €65 billion (some $79billion), and which serve morethan 10,000 active businesscustomers and 45 million ac-tive end users in the bloc.

—Stu Woocontributed to this article.

companies and search enginesto take measures to prevent arange of illegal or potentiallyharmful material from spread-ing on their platforms, or facefines of up to 10% of annualglobal revenue. The U.K. is alsopursuing new competitionrules for dominant online plat-forms, including powers to sus-pend, block or reverse tech gi-ants’ decisions and imposefines for noncompliance.

Together, the two strands oflegislation amount to the big-gest potential expansion ofglobal tech regulation in years.They aim to update decades-old laws that have largelyshielded tech companies fromliability for their users’ activi-ties. The measures would alsocreate a new set of competitionrules for a cadre of digital gi-ants that have been accused ofwielding their control of onlinemarketplaces to entrench theirown positions and snuff outcompetitors. “We need to makerules that can bring order intochaos,” Margrethe Vestager,

ContinuedfromPageOne

EU SeeksMore TechOversight

U.S.WATCH

CENSUS BUREAU

U.S. Population RisesAbove 332 Million

The U.S. population has grownabout 8% over the past decadeto more than 332 million people,according to a Census Bureauanalysis released before the re-sults of the decennial count.

The figures published Tues-day are separate from thosegathered by the 2020 censusthat wrapped up in October.They are a parallel estimate ofthe population’s demographiccontours using records of U.S.births, deaths, immigration andMedicare enrollment that is de-signed to act as a quality checkon the actual census results.That estimate showed therewere about 332.6 million peoplein the U.S. on census day, April 1,

according to the midpoint figurefrom the bureau’s demographicanalysis. The median age in thecountry was 38.5 years as ofthat day, up from 37.2 in 2010.

—Janet Adamy

ECONOMY

Auto Sector BoostsIndustrial Production

A seventh straight month ofmanufacturing gains helped drivea November rise in U.S. indus-trial production as the nation’sauto and parts plants increasedoutput.

Industrial production, a mea-sure of factory, mining and utilityactivity, increased a seasonallyadjusted 0.4% in November fromthe prior month, the Federal Re-serve said Tuesday, as both man-ufacturing and mining posted

gains. Manufacturing, the biggestcomponent of industrial produc-tion, increased 0.8% in November,the Fed said. Production of motorvehicles and parts rose 5.3%.

Industrial production decreasedsharply in March and April as thecoronavirus pandemic took hold inthe U.S., but has gradually recov-ered in subsequent months. Thepace of gains slowed in late sum-mer and into the fall, however,and output overall in Novemberremained 5% below February lev-els, according to the Fed.

—Amara Omeokwe

NEW JERSEY

Gun Maker SuesTo Block Subpoena

Smith & Wesson Brands Inc.filed suit Tuesday to block a sub-poena from the New Jersey attor-

ney general seeking informationabout its advertising practices.

New Jersey Attorney GeneralGurbir Grewal wants the companyto turn over internal documentsrelated to advertising guns in thestate. The subpoena includes re-quests for any marketing claimsthat its guns are safer than others,that carrying a concealed weaponenhances a person’s lifestyle, andthat novices can use its guns ef-fectively for self-defense.

The company’s lawyers said inits complaint, filed in federal courtin New Jersey, that the subpoena“seeks evidence of consumer fraudrelating to advertising—but in real-ity, it seeks to suppress and pun-ish lawful speech regarding gunownership in order to advance ananti-Second Amendment agendathat the Attorney General publiclycommitted to pursue.”

—Zusha Elinson

The proposals willbegin months oryears of hagglingover their details.

you get them out of conserva-torship? “ he said. “You needto raise third-party capital andyou need to retain capital.That’s, to me, the issue.”

The companies are allowedto retain just $45 billion ofearnings between them and areexpected to hit that limit inearly 2021—far from theroughly $280 billion they couldneed under a plan completed bytheir regulator, the FederalHousing Finance Agency.

Before leaving office, theTrump administration is likelyto let Fannie and Freddie retainmore of their own earnings, Mr.Mnuchin suggested, without de-tailing how much more.

Advisers close to Mr. Bidensaid he would be in no hurry toprivatize the companies. In-stead, he would focus on waysto use them to boost housing af-fordability and promote home-ownership.

Fannie and Freddie don’tmake home loans. Instead,they buy mortgages and pack-age them into securities, whichthey sell to investors. Theirpromise to make investorswhole in case of default keepsdown the price of home loansand underpins the popular 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

WASHINGTON—Joe Biden’svictory has likely ended theTrump administration’s effortsto return Fannie Mae andFreddie Mac to private hands.

Treasury Secretary StevenMnuchin suggested in an inter-view he is unlikely to supporta legal move—a consent or-der—to end the governmentconservatorships of the mort-gage-finance companies beforePresident Trump leaves office.

“We’re going to not do any-thing that jeopardizes taxpay-ers and puts them at addi-tional risk,” Mr. Mnuchin said.“We also want to be carefulthat we don’t do anything thatovernight would limit accessto mortgage finance.”

Mark Calabria, the Trump-appointed regulator of thecompanies, was pushing as re-cently as last month to speedup the mortgage giants’ exitfrom government control be-fore Mr. Biden’s inauguration.

Mr. Mnuchin said he is fo-cused on steps that would al-low the companies to buildcapital to absorb future lossesand eventually raise moneyfrom new, third-party inves-tors. “The real issue is how do

BY ANDREW ACKERMAN

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U.S. NEWS

A picture of Peter Nygard in one of his New York City stores in February. The Canadian retail mogul was arrested on Monday.

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Investigators ProbeSolarWinds Breach

Investigators are trying topiece together how suspectedRussian hackers gained accessto systems at SolarWindsCorp., a U.S. network manage-ment company, to introducemalicious code that compro-mised security at multiple fed-eral agencies.

As early as March, Solar-Winds customers unwittinglyinstalled malicious software aspart of a routine and seem-ingly benign update issued fora software product known asOrion, according to the com-pany. That update, whichwould have been difficult toidentify as a threat, containedwhat investigators called aback door that could have

granted easy access to nearly18,000 entities that down-loaded it. Investigators expectthe number of compromisedentities to be smaller, perhapstotaling dozens or hundreds.

SolarWinds has said it isworking with FireEye Inc., aU.S.-based cybersecurity firmthat was also breached in thehacking campaign, and with in-telligence and law-enforcementofficials to investigate.

Several agencies have con-firmed intrusions into their in-ternal systems, including thedepartments of State, Com-merce, Treasury, Homeland Se-curity and the National Insti-tutes of Health, according topeople familiar with the matter.

The Russian Embassy inWashington denied responsibil-ity, saying the allegations were“unfounded attempts of theU.S. media to blame Russia.”

the hackers gained access toSolarWinds systems to intro-duce malicious code.

On Tuesday, investigatorswere still in the early stages ofunderstanding the scope ofthe SolarWinds hack, but sev-eral agencies have confirmedintrusions into their internalsystems, including the depart-ments of State, Commerce,Treasury, Homeland Securityand the National Institutes ofHealth, according to people fa-miliar with the matter.

To streamline the federalresponse across agencies, theNational Security Council hasactivated what is known as aUnified Coordination Group“to ensure continued unity ofeffort across the United States

Government in response to asignificant cyber incident,” thecouncil said on Twitter.

The seriousness of the hackhas prompted bipartisan scru-tiny from Congress.

On Tuesday, three Republi-can and three Democratic sen-ators jointly asked the FederalBureau of Investigation andthe Cybersecurity and Infra-structure Security Agency toprovide information on thehack investigation. They areseeking a list of all federalagencies that are customersof SolarWinds and how theagencies intend to supportbusinesses that may have beenhacked.

The FBI and CISA didn’timmediately comment.

WASHINGTON—Texas’s at-torney general said Tuesdayhe is hiring two prominentlaw firms to handle a possibleantitrust case against Alpha-bet Inc.’s Google, a signal thatthe filing of a lawsuit is likelyimminent.

Texas has been leading acoalition of state attorneysgeneral that has been zeroingin on Google’s dominant pres-ence in the digital advertisingmarket, according to peoplefamiliar with the matter aswell as a civil subpoena sentlast year by Texas AttorneyGeneral Ken Paxton.

Mr. Paxton said he intendsto hire the Lanier Law Firm, aprominent trial firm withTexas roots, as well as KellerLenkner, a Chicago-based firmfocused on complex litigation.

“Texas law requires theTexas Attorney General’s Of-fice to notify the [LegislativeBudget Board] prior to retain-ing outside counsel for suchactions,” Mr. Paxton said in astatement. “That notificationhas occurred.”

A Google spokesperson de-clined to comment.

Google has denied any anti-competitive behavior, sayingit operates in highly competi-tive markets and that its ser-vices benefit consumers andbusinesses.

Google’s ad-tech businessconsists of software used tobuy and sell ads on sitesacross the web. The companyowns the dominant tool at ev-ery link in the complex chainbetween online publishers andadvertisers, giving it uniquepower over the monetizationof digital content.

Many publishers and ad-vertising rivals have chargedthat it has tied these tools to-gether and to its owned-and-operated properties, such assearch and YouTube, in anti-competitive ways.

The states have been coor-dinating with the Justice De-partment, which filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Googleon Oct. 20.

BY JOHN D. MCKINNON

Texas TapsFirms as ItPreparesLawsuitVs. Google

unnamed female plaintiffs.Dozens of additional womenhave since been added to thecomplaint.

Lawyers for Mr. Nygardhave said in court papers thatthe lawsuit’s allegations arefalse. The lawyers also ac-cused financier Louis Bacon offunding the lawsuit “to inflictdevastating harm on Mr. Ny-gard and the Nygard busi-nesses.”

According to the filing, Mr.Bacon and Mr. Nygard havehad a decadelong dispute in-volving neighboring vacationhomes in the Bahamas.

Representatives for Mr. Ba-

con declined to comment onthe arrest of Mr. Nygard.

Greg Gutzler, a plaintiff at-torney in the civil suit, said ina statement that Mr. Nygard’scriminal indictment validatesthe accusations of the plain-tiffs.

“On behalf of the dozens ofsurvivors of decades-longabuse, we are encouraged thata small measure of justice forPeter Nygard is finally devel-oping, and relieved that somedegree of accountability ishopefully forthcoming,” Mr.Gutzler said.

—Vipal Mongacontributed to this article.

thorities raided the company’sManhattan office as part of aninternational sex-traffickinginvestigation.

Representatives for thecompany didn’t respond to arequest to comment.

Nygard International filedfor bankruptcy in March. InApril a Canadian judge al-lowed an accounting firm tosell and liquidate part of thecompany.

Before filing for bankruptcy,the company had about 1,450employees and operated 170 ofits own stores in North Amer-ica and more than 6,000 shopsinside department stores.

Nygard International alsooperated a number of clothinglines, including SLIMS, TanJayand a label named for Mr. Ny-gard.

Prosecutors accused Mr.Nygard of using his company’sinfluence, as well as its em-ployees and funds, to recruitand maintain a stream of adultand minor-aged female victimsfor his sexual gratification,and that of his friends andbusiness associates.

Mr. Nygard is accused offrequently targeting womenand girls who came from dis-advantaged economic back-grounds and had a history ofabuse, prosecutors said. He al-legedly controlled his victimsthrough threats and falsepromises of career advance-ment, prosecutors added.

He is also being sued in aManhattan federal court bywomen accusing him of rape,sexual assault and human traf-ficking.

The class-action lawsuitwas filed in February by 10

Canadian fashion and retailmogul Peter Nygard wascharged with sex traffickingand racketeering, according toan indictment unsealed inManhattan federal court onTuesday.

He was arrested Monday inCanada, according to prosecu-tors in the U.S. attorney’s of-fice for the Southern Districtof New York.

Federal prosecutors accusedhim of years of criminal con-duct involving dozens of vic-tims in the U.S., Canada andthe Bahamas. He faces ninecriminal charges.

Mr. Nygard, 79 years old,previously has denied the alle-gations, and on Tuesday de-clined through a spokesman tocomment on his arrest. Hislawyer also declined to com-ment through the spokesman.

Mr. Nygard appeared in acourt in Winnipeg on Tuesdayafternoon, where his lawyerasked for a publication ban toprevent certain informationfrom being made public in theproceeding.

Justice Sheldon Lanchberydenied the request, and set aJanuary date for an adminis-trative hearing, according to acourt spokeswoman.

Mr. Nygard’s lawyer is ex-pected to make a bail applica-tion, but no formal requesthas yet been filed, the spokes-woman said.

Mr. Nygard founded pri-vately held Nygard Interna-tional in Canada in 1967. Hestepped down as chairman ofthe apparel company in Febru-ary after federal and local au-

BY BEN CHAPMAN

Retail FounderCharged WithSex Trafficking

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WASHINGTON—Whi teHouse national security ad-viser Robert O’Brien has cutshort a multicountry trip toEurope to return to the U.S. toaddress the suspected Russianhack of government agencies,signaling growing alarmwithin the Trump administra-tion about a cyber espionagecampaign considered poten-tially one of the most damag-ing in years.

The change of plans for Mr.O’Brien comes two days afterit was disclosed that multiplefederal agencies had beenhacked as part of a globalhacking campaign that is be-lieved to have also ensnaredprivate corporate networksacross the globe.

“Ambassador O’Brien is re-turning to address the hackingincident,” said John Ullyot, aspokesman for the NationalSecurity Council. Mr. O’Brienwas to hold meetings Tuesdayevening and Wednesday morn-ing and convene “a high-levelinteragency meeting” thisweek, Mr. Ullyot said.

Mr. O’Brien had been sched-uled to return Saturday afterplanned stops in Italy on Tues-day and visits later in theweek to Germany, Switzerlandand the U.K. He had alreadymet with Prime Minister Ben-jamin Netanyahu in Israel andPresident Emmanuel Macronin France.

The hacking continued formonths, largely undetectedby the Trump administrationand cybersecurity firms, untilthe past week, according topeople familiar with the mat-ter.

Current and former officialsand cybersecurity expertshave described the hack as anespionage operation ratherthan one aimed at damagingcomputer networks, and saidit represents a significantcounterintelligence failure.

The widespread hackingcampaign appeared to havebegun when hackers compro-mised systems belonging toSolarWinds Corp., a U.S. net-work management companythat boasts national securityagencies, local governments,large corporations and defensecontractors among its 300,000customers.Investigators aretrying to piece together how

BY DUSTIN VOLZ

White House Aide ReturnsTo Address Agency Hacks

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A4 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 P W L C 10 11 12 H T G K R F A M 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 O I X X * * * * THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

cently was under consider-ation for several roles in theBiden administration. Mr.Buttigieg, who represented acity of about 100,000 people,beat out several others withexperience dealing with muchlarger transportation systems,including Los Angeles MayorEric Garcetti and Sarah Fein-berg, the acting president of

one person familiar with theinternal deliberations said Mr.Biden was still deliberating onhis EPA administrator.

Ms. Granholm, who en-dorsed Mr. Biden for presidentin March, served as Michigan’sDemocratic governor from2003 to 2011 and as the state’sattorney general for the pre-ceding four years. One of hersignature policies as governorwas a mandate for the state toincrease the share of its en-ergy derived from renewablesources like solar and wind.

If confirmed as energy sec-retary, Ms. Granholm wouldoversee U.S. scientific researchand the country’s nuclear arse-nal, and could help incentivizethe development of low-carbonenergy sources through thedistribution of federal loans.She would likely work closely

with other senior officials, in-cluding the incoming head ofthe Environmental ProtectionAgency and the White Houseclimate coordinator, to pursueMr. Biden’s campaign pledge toachieve net-zero emissions inthe U.S. by 2050.

Ms. Granholm didn’t re-spond to requests to comment.A spokesman for Mr. Biden’stransition team declined tocomment.

As governor, Ms. Granholmpushed a renewable portfoliostandard requiring 10% of thestate’s energy to come fromrenewable sources by 2015, apercentage that was later in-creased. During her tenure,she also worked closely withthe Obama administration tohelp the auto industry, whichfaced collapse following theeconomic downturn. She has

New York City’s transit sys-tem, people familiar with thematter said.

Mr. Biden’s transition teamdeclined to comment.

Mr. Biden campaigned on a$2 trillion plan to rebuild thenation’s infrastructure, muchof it related to transportation.Among the campaign’s boldestproposals was a call for “high-

quality, zero-emissions” masstransit for every U.S. city with100,000 or more residents.But it isn’t clear how the Bi-den administration would per-suade Congress to fund suchan effort, especially given cur-rent resistance to financial re-lief packages for mass-transitsystems as they struggle witha collapse in ridership because

U.S. NEWS

President Trump.Mr. Biden said he called Mr.

McConnell to thank him onTuesday and pledged to seekareas of common ground.

Other Republican lawmak-ers still hope to contest theresults at a joint session ofCongress on Jan. 6, when fed-eral law requires Congress tocount and certify the results ofeach state’s electoral vote.Rep. Mo Brooks (R., Ala.) saidhe would press ahead with aplan to object to votes in mul-tiple states.

It takes one member of theHouse and one senator to for-

mally object and force votes inboth chambers.

Majorities in the House andSenate have to agree for thechallenge to be successful, anextremely unlikely prospectgiven that Democrats controlthe House, but the effort couldset the stage for a final publicfight over the tally.

“I can either fight for hon-est and accurate elections, or Ican join the surrender caucus,”Mr. Brooks said in an inter-view on Tuesday. “I prefer tofight for honest and fair andaccurate elections that are theunderpinning of any republic.”

Incoming Rep. Marjorie Tay-lor Greene (R., Ga.) is amongthe lawmakers also trying torecruit senators to challengethe electoral results, said a per-son familiar with the efforts.“She’s talking to every Republi-can senator to gain support forthis effort,” the person said.

House Minority LeaderKevin McCarthy (R., Calif.)didn’t comment Tuesday whenasked if he is willing to ac-knowledge that Mr. Biden wonthe election and is president-elect.

Attorney General WilliamBarr, who submitted his resig-nation Monday effective Dec.23, has said the Justice De-partment hasn’t found evi-dence of widespread voterfraud that could reverse Mr.Biden’s election victory.

Democrats said Mr. McCon-nell’s acknowledgment wasoverdue.

“The fact that it took sixweeks for my colleagues tostart recognizing reality andstop undermining our demo-cratic process is sad and dis-appointing,” said Sen. DickDurbin of Illinois.

In a Senate Republican con-ference call on Tuesday, leaderswarned their colleagues againstchallenging the results on Jan.6, according to a person famil-

iar with the discussion.Mr. McConnell, Sen. John

Thune (R., S.D.), and Sen. RoyBlunt (R., Mo.) each spoke, ar-guing that it would be a badvote for senators running in2022.

Both Mr. Thune and Mr.Blunt are up for re-election intwo years. “They don’t want tobe viewed as against Trump,”the person familiar with thecall said.

Senate GOP aides said theconcern is that the vote wouldbe seen by Mr. Trump’s baseas a test of loyalty, even if ithad no chance of success, andRepublican lawmakers whodon’t support the effort couldface anger from the presi-dent’s supporters and poten-tial primary challenges.

White House press secretaryKayleigh McEnany declined tosay Tuesday whether PresidentTrump accepted the ElectoralCollege vote. “Yesterday’s votewas one step in the constitu-tional process,” she said.

The White House was madeaware that Mr. McConnell, whoalso praised the president’s re-cord in his remarks, would beconveying the message he de-livered, said two people famil-iar with the process.

—Catherine Luceycontributed to this article.

WASHINGTON—Senate Re-publican leaders united Tues-day in calling Democrat JoeBiden the winner of the presi-dential race, while warningcolleagues not to join a long-shot bid to challenge the re-sults when Congress certifieselectoral votes in January.

“Our system of governmenthas processes to determine whowill be sworn in on Jan. 20. TheElectoral College has spoken,”said Senate Majority LeaderMitch McConnell (R., Ky.). “Sotoday, I want to congratulatePresident-elect Joe Biden.”

Mr. McConnell was the lat-est in a series of top Republi-cans to recognize Mr. Biden aspresident-elect this week. Hiscomments came a day afterthe Electoral College formallycounted the ballots andcapped more than a month ofunsuccessful GOP efforts toget courts and state officialsto overturn the election re-sults in favor of Republican

BY LINDSAY WISEAND SIOBHAN HUGHES

LeadersWarnGOP onVote ChallengeTop Republicans unitein accepting Bidenwin, tell colleagues notto join new move

Mr. McConnell recognized Democrat Joe Biden as president-elect.

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of the coronavirus pandemic.Mr. Buttigieg would take

over a department whosemost critical functions are set-ting transportation regulationsand distributing vast sums ofmoney, mostly to states tofund their respective highway,road and transit systems.—Tim Puko and Emily Glazer

contributed to this article.

WASHINGTON—President-elect Joe Biden selected for-mer South Bend, Ind., MayorPete Buttigieg, a onetimeDemocratic primary rival, tolead the Transportation De-partment, Mr. Biden said Tues-day.

Mr. Buttigieg dropped outof the race in March and en-dorsed Mr. Biden along withother moderate Democrats.Leading the TransportationDepartment, Mr. Buttigieg isexpected to play a prominentrole in the incoming Biden ad-ministration’s push to rebuildthe nation’s roads and bridges.

Mr. Buttigieg, a 38-year-oldopenly gay military veteranwho served in Afghanistan,emerged as a surprising next-generation contender for theDemocratic presidential nomi-nation against Mr. Biden andnotched a narrow victory inthe Iowa caucuses. But thatwin was overshadowed bytechnical glitches and report-ing delays in the caucuses andhe faded in the contests thatfollowed.

Mr. Buttigieg served as atwo-term mayor of South Bendfrom 2012 to 2020, making ur-ban development and eco-nomic revitalization corner-stones of his administration.

Mr. Buttigieg has spent thelast several months campaign-ing for Mr. Biden and more re-

BY KEN THOMASAND ELIZA COLLINS

Buttigieg Is Selected to Lead Transportation

Former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg is expected to play a big role in Mr. Biden’s push to rebuild the U.S.’s roads and bridges.

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Facebook Inc. said it wouldallow political ads for theGeorgia runoff elections start-ing Wednesday but wouldmaintain a broader temporaryblackout for U.S. ads about so-cial issues, elections or poli-tics as part of its efforts tocurb misinformation.

Facebook’s decision, whichfollows a similar move by Al-phabet Inc.’s Google, saidTuesday that it took into con-sideration feedback from ex-perts and advertisers aboutusing its tools to reach votersahead of the two U.S. Senaterunoff races in Georgia onJan. 5. Early voting began inthe state this week, and therunoffs will determine whichparty controls the chamberwhen President-elect Joe Bi-den begins his administration.

Facebook said it developeda process to allow advertisersto reach Georgia voters aboutthe runoffs and to reject adsthat target locations outsidethe state or that don’t relateto the elections there.

“We will continue to pro-hibit any ad that includes con-tent debunked by third-partyfact-checkers or delegitimizesthe Georgia runoff elections,”Facebook wrote in a blog postTuesday. A Facebook spokes-woman said the companywould announce publicly whenits broader blackout for politi-cal ads is lifted.

Facebook and Google arethe biggest digital ad plat-forms in political advertising.Campaigns for PresidentTrump and Mr. Biden collec-tively spent about $200 mil-lion on Facebook ads leadingup to the 2020 election, notincluding outside groups, ac-cording to Facebook’s ad li-brary. But both platforms de-cided to limit political adsbefore and after the generalelection in an effort to reducethe spread of misinformation.

Google, which started al-lowing political ads last week,said it no longer consideredthe postelection period to be a“sensitive event” but is stillenforcing its ads policies anddisallows false informationthat could undermine trust inelections.

Spokespeople for Demo-cratic Senate candidates JonOssoff and Raphael Warnock,along with the DemocraticSenatorial Campaign Commit-tee, have said the earlier deci-sions to ban political ads putthem at a disadvantage. Theycited the Republican incum-bents’ larger followings, say-ing they could share informa-tion more easily via theiraccounts.

BY EMILY GLAZERAND PATIENCE HAGGIN

FacebookEases BanOn PoliticsIn Runoffs

credited Mr. Biden with play-ing a key role in bolsteringGeneral Motors Co. and Chrys-ler during that period.

Ms. Granholm and Mr. Bi-den have a close relationshipdating back years. She helpedMr. Biden prepare for his vice-presidential debate during the2008 campaign.

Other candidates Mr. Bidenhas considered for the energysecretary job included ArunMajumdar, a Stanford Univer-sity professor and former vicepresident for energy at Alpha-bet Inc.’s Google, and formerDeputy Energy Secretary Eliz-abeth Sherwood-Randall.

Mr. Majumdar could benominated for another seniorrole at the Energy Depart-ment, possibly deputy secre-tary, some of the people famil-iar with the matter said.

During the Obama adminis-tration, he became the firstleader of the department’s Ad-vanced Research ProjectsAgency-Energy, or ARPA-E,working there from 2009 to2012. The agency funds early-stage innovation projects,modeled on the research armof the Defense Departmentthat is known as a catalyst forbreakthroughs.

Mr. Biden has promised toplace a new emphasis on thiskind of work in government,including creating a newagency called “ARPA-C,” to ad-dress climate change. Mr. Bi-den has called climate changean urgent crisis.

WASHINGTON—President-elect Joe Biden is planning totap former Obama administra-tion Environmental ProtectionAgency chief Gina McCarthy asnational climate adviser andformer Michigan Gov. JenniferGranholm as energy secretary,according to people familiarwith the matter.

In Ms. McCarthy’s role, shewill lead a newly formedWhite House Office of Domes-tic Climate Policy. Ali Zaidi,New York’s deputy secretaryfor energy and environment,will serve as Ms. McCarthy’sdeputy, people familiar withthe matter said.

Ms. McCarthy, who declinedto comment, will work closelywith former Secretary of StateJohn Kerry, Mr. Biden’s specialenvoy for climate change. Herposition doesn’t require Sen-ate confirmation.

Mr. Biden’s top advisers alsohave expressed increased in-terest in picking Rep. Deb Haa-land (D., N.M.) to lead the Inte-rior Department. But HouseDemocrats have pushed back,telling transition officials thatthey can’t afford to lose an-other lawmaker to the admin-istration because of the party’sslim majority, people familiarwith the discussions said.

The president-elect is ex-pected to formally announcekey energy and environmentpositions this weekend, but

BY ANDREW RESTUCCIAAND TIMOTHY PUKO

Energy, Climate Picks to Be Named

Jennifer Granholm is a former Democratic governor of Michigan.

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Terrence Wong, associate chief of pharmacy operations at Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora, Colo., opens a vaccine box.

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participants with medical co-morbidities [underlying condi-tions] associated with highrisk of severe Covid-19.”

Similarly encouraging, FDAscientists also found that theresearch “suggested benefit ofthe vaccine in preventing se-vere Covid-19.” The issue of ef-fectiveness against severe dis-ease has been raised about thestudies of Covid-19 vaccines.The study found 30 cases ofsevere disease in the placebogroup, versus zero in the vac-cine group.

Moderna found that somepeople who started the study

Board Company, a health-careconsulting and research firm.

“Our worries in this specificjob are that he is not only com-fortable with the financializa-tion of American health care,he has hastened it,” Mr. Hausersaid. “And we think that theperson who runs the Covid-19response is going to be shapingpublic policy in some very con-sequential ways as to how thegovernment interacts withhealth-care providers.”

Mr. Zients also lacks public-health experience, raising con-cerns among some in Congress,though his position won’t re-quire Senate confirmation.

“If you had that public-health background, then you’reable to prioritize competingpriorities—which is more im-portant or not—because youknow from a public-healthbackground which one’s alinchpin and which one canwait,” said Louisiana GOP Sen.

Bill Cassidy, a physician.Mr. Zients declined to com-

ment, according to a spokes-man with the Biden transitionteam. Supporters say criticsshould look at his success sta-bilizing HealthCare.gov as evi-dence he can make strides incorralling the pandemic.

Frustration ran high in Oc-tober 2013 when the onlineplatform to sign up for individ-ual health insurance under theACA tried to launch. By mostaccounts, it was a mess. Thewebsite crashed after just twohours, and it later could handleonly about 35,000 visitors atany one time.

Less than two weeks afterthe troubled start, Mr. Mc-Donough took Mr. Zients for awalk on the White House SouthLawn. He had known Mr. Zients,who had been acting director ofthe Office of Management andBudget in 2010 and 2013, andcoaxed him to lead a mission

aimed at fixing HealthCare.gov.Mr. Zients had no experience

in the technology industry, hav-ing worked primarily in man-agement consulting before join-ing government. But, as will bethe case when he takes his newjob in January, there was aneed to act quickly. Scores ofpeople were unable to create anapplication on HealthCare.gov,and there was a narrow windowfor them to sign up. The federalgovernment had spent morethan $80 million, and additionalcosts were adding up.

First, Mr. Zients marshaledprivate companies and technol-ogy firms to undertake a rapidreview of HealthCare.gov’s prob-lems, drafting a punch list offixes to prioritize. The quick ac-tion didn’t surprise people whohad worked with him before.

“He’s not a ditherer,” saidRichard Cordray, the first di-rector of the Consumer Finan-cial Protection Bureau from

to get initial doses of the vac-cine because of the hospital’sability to vaccinate large num-bers of people and store theshots at ultracold tempera-tures, according to spokesmanBrad Doboszenski.

“The vaccine is not waitingto go, the vaccines are beinggiven in Minnesota,” said Gov.Tim Walz, who spoke at themedical center.

Under the VA’s plan, thefirst in line will be those wholive in long-term-care facili-

ties, akin to nursing homes,and VA health-care workers,according to the department.

The VA has said it plans toprovide a Covid vaccine free ofcharge to veterans who re-ceive VA health care.

The Trump administrationand officials with President-elect Joe Biden have said thevaccine would be providedfree of charge to Americans.Administration fees would bebilled to private or govern-ment insurance plans or to a

special government relief fundfor the uninsured.

While California began vac-cinations at one hospital inLos Angeles on Monday andanother in San Francisco onTuesday, logistical problemswith a computer system meantto track people who get vacci-nated arose in the state’s mostpopulous metro area.

In L.A. County, a patientregistration and tracking sys-tem called PrepMod that pub-lic-health officials are requir-

ing facilities to use hasexperienced delays and isn’tyet fully online, said JeffSmith, chief operating officerof Cedars-Sinai Medical Centerin Los Angeles.

“Cedars-Sinai and someother large hospital systemshave decided to leverage ourexisting electronic health re-cords instead of the county sys-tem to perform those func-tions,” he said. The county is“establishing workarounds untiltheir system is up and running.”

U.S. NEWS

cagoans. We need to stay vigi-lant,” Ms. Lightfoot said.

Five people got the vaccineas a way to illustrate the com-plex logistics in the rollout, asPfizer’s shot comes five-per-vial, said Chicago Departmentof Public Health CommissionerAllison Arwady. Pfizer’s shotis transported frozen, can berefrigerated for up to five daysbut then must be administeredwithin a few hours.

“These folks are the luckyones to get us started,” saidDr. Arwady.

The first vaccine in NewJersey was given to MaritzaBeniquez, an emergency de-partment nurse, at UniversityHospital’s Vaccine Clinic atRutgers New Jersey MedicalSchool in Newark, accordingto New Jersey Gov. Phil Mur-phy’s office. Six acute-carehospitals are set to receive thestate’s initial federally deter-mined 76,050 doses of the vac-cine this week.

The Minneapolis VA Medi-cal Center gave out its firstdoses of the vaccine Tuesday,according to medical centerdirector Patrick Kelly.

The facility is one of thefirst 37 U.S. Department ofVeterans Affairs medical sites

More U.S. hospitals beganreceiving shipments of theCovid-19 vaccine developed byPfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE,with doctors and nurses beinginoculated for the first time.

Pfizer and logistics compa-nies continued distribution ofits two-dose vaccine, as theyworked to meet the govern-ment’s goal of distributingmillions of doses to 636 sitesacross the country by Wednes-day. About 2.9 million dosesare set to be delivered by theend of the weekend to morethan 1,000 locations.

At Loretto Hospital in Chi-cago, five health-care workersreceived the city’s first vac-cines on Tuesday with MayorLori Lightfoot and other offi-cials watching nearby. “Whatwe just witnessed is history inthe making,” Ms. Lightfootsaid afterward at a pressbriefing. “I got goosebumpswatching this happen.”

Loretto has fewer than 200beds in the city’s Austin neigh-borhood, a predominantly Af-rican-American communitythat has been especially hardhit by the virus. “Covid-19 isstill real. It is still killing Chi-

BY JARED S. HOPKINS

Pfizer ExpandsRollout of ItsCovid-19 Shots

2012 to 2017.Mr. Zients publicly commit-

ted to operations workingsmoothly by late November andmade the Centers for Medicareand Medicaid Services, whichoversaw the ACA implementa-tion, accountable by holdingregular press briefings, saidAndy Slavitt, who served as theagency’s acting administratorduring the Obama administra-tion. “He organized the brief-ings with slides and materialsevery week, with all the data,”said Mr. Slavitt.

A similar public-informationeffort will be needed when Mr.Biden takes office to reassurepeople about the vaccine’ssafety and provide updates oninitiatives to slow the virus’sspread, health leaders say.

Mr. Biden has called forbroad changes to the federal re-sponse to the coronavirus andpressed people to commit towearing a mask for 100 days.He has said he would back amask mandate on federallyowned property, widen freetesting and put public-healthscientists in the forefront. Hewants 10 mobile testing sitesand drive-through facilities ineach state and has said hewould deploy military resourcesto boost health-care capacity.

Mr. Zients, 54 years old, willhave to implement the initia-tives and get up to speed withwhat the Trump administrationhas put in place.

“These are hard issues,” saidTom Frieden, a former directorof the Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention. He saidthe challenges existed in partbecause the Trump administra-tion had left states shoulderingmuch of the response ratherthan taking a more muscularfederal approach.

WASHINGTON—A crisisawaits Jeffrey Zients.

By the time he starts asPresident-elect Joe Biden’s cor-onavirus czar, an estimated400,000 people in the U.S.could be dead from the pan-demic. Millions of vaccinedoses will need to be adminis-tered by states, and the nationwill remain split over the bestway to confront the virus.

Mr. Zients, an investor andformer Obama administrationeconomic adviser, has tackledhealth-related organizationalchallenges before. He is cred-ited with turning around thebungled rollout of the Afford-able Care Act’s HealthCare.govwebsite in 2013.

“Like now, it was a veryhigh-stakes situation with anuncertain outcome,” said DenisMcDonough, the White Housechief of staff during the Obamaadministration’s second termwho is now Mr. Biden’s pick forveterans affairs secretary.

The pandemic’s scale meansthe challenge now is bigger. Andwhile he draws praise from offi-cials who worked with him dur-ing the Obama years, his selec-tion has been criticized by someprogressive Democrats leery ofhis business background: He ison leave from his job as chiefexecutive of investment firmCranemere and served on theboard of Facebook Inc.

Jeff Hauser of the liberal Re-volving Door Project, whichscrutinizes executive-branch ap-pointments, derided Mr. Zientsas friendly to corporations andraised concerns about his previ-ous work in the health-care in-dustry. Mr. Zients served aschief executive of the Advisory

BY STEPHANIE ARMOURAND TARINI PARTI

For Biden’s Virus Czar, Challenges Await

Jeffrey Zients speaking during an event with the president-elect in Wilmington, Del., last week.

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and the Trump administra-tion’s Operation Warp Speedoverseeing distribution. Fed-eral officials have said theModerna vaccine will be moresuitable for smaller hospitalsin rural areas because it isshipped in smaller quantitiesthan Pfizer’s and can be storedat a higher temperature.

The FDA’s review of a30,000-person clinical studyconfirmed Moderna’s earlierdisclosure that the vaccinewas 94.1% effective at prevent-ing Covid-19 disease with cer-tain symptoms, including se-vere disease.

The Moderna vaccine, if au-thorized, would be the first ofseveral expected to augmentU.S. vaccine supplies followingthe rollout to Americans thisweek of the first shot, fromPfizer. Vaccines are consideredcritical to ending the pan-demic, which has killed over300,000 people in the U.S. andmore than 1.6 million globally.

FDA analysts found theModerna vaccine was effective“across age groups, genders,racial and ethnic groups, and

with no evidence of infectiondeveloped asymptomatic in-fections after the first doseand before the second dose. Ofthese, Moderna found therewere about two-thirds fewerasymptomatic coronavirus in-fections among vaccine recipi-ents than among those whohad gotten a placebo, accord-ing to a Moderna documentposted by FDA. The documentdidn’t include results follow-ing the second dose.

Moderna’s new data show-ing a reduction in asymptom-atic infections after the firstdose means it is possible to“slow down the spread of thevirus in the community by be-ing vaccinated, in addition toprotecting yourself from severedisease,” said Moderna ChiefExecutive Stéphane Bancel.

Moderna previously hassaid its experimental vaccinewas 94.1% effective in protect-ing people against Covid-19. Inthat first public, full analysisof the pivotal study, the Cam-bridge, Mass., company said196 people in the 30,000-per-son trial experienced symp-

toms and that 185 of thosewere given a placebo, com-pared with just 11 on the Mod-erna vaccine.

The FDA analysis found theModerna vaccine appearedsomewhat more effective inyounger people than in se-niors. Vaccine efficacy was95.6% among people 18 to 64,and 86.4% among those 65 andolder.

Moderna studied its vaccinein people 18 and older, and isseeking authorization for usein that population. The FDAcleared Pfizer’s vaccine in peo-ple 16 and older because thestudy included that age group.

The FDA found no specificsafety concerns that wouldpreclude its authorization ofthe vaccine. The most commonside effects included injection-site pain, fatigue, headacheand chills. Severe adverse re-actions were rare but occurredmore frequently after the sec-ond dose than after the first.

About 9.1% of vaccine recip-ients had injection-site reac-tions that were classified as“grade 3,” which the FDA de-

fines as severe or medicallysignificant but not immedi-ately life threatening. In com-parison, less than 1% of pla-cebo recipients had grade 3injection-site reactions.

Some 16.5% of vaccine re-cipients had systemic adversereactions, such as fever andfatigue, with a severity of atleast grade 3, versus 3.7%among placebo recipients.

The FDA said it would rec-ommend that vaccinated peo-ple be monitored for a condi-tion called Bell’s palsy, whichweakens facial muscles, be-cause three vaccine recipientsin the Moderna study experi-enced it. This condition alsowas reported in a small num-ber of recipients of the Pfizervaccine in the Pfizer study.Those rates are consistentwith what would be expectedin the general population out-side of a clinical trial.

The FDA is expected tomove quickly to approve theModerna vaccine if there is afavorable recommendationfrom an advisory committeemeeting on Thursday.

normal semblance of life,” saidWilliam Schaffner, professor ofhealth policy and preventivemedicine at Vanderbilt Univer-sity. He said more data are nec-essary to conclude whether theCovid-19 vaccines can do that.

A Pfizer researcher said lastweek that the company wasstudying whether its vaccineprotects against asymptomaticCovid-19 and hopes to com-plete that analysis early nextyear.

Doses of Moderna’s vaccinecould be shipped this week-end, with vaccinations startingearly next week. Which vac-cine people get will be decidedby factors including availabil-ity, with the Centers for Dis-ease Control and Prevention

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Moderna’sShot NearsApproval

All participants

94.1%

Ages 18–64 years

95.6%

65+

86.4%

Efficacy rates forModerna’sCovid-19 vaccine, by group

Source: FDANote: Starting 14 days after second dose.

The U.S. reported more than193,000 new coronavirus cases,as the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were admin-istered across the country.

The nation’s tally of newcases for Monday was slightlyhigher than the previous day’stotal but down from peaks ofmore than 200,000 reachedearlier this month, accordingto data compiled by JohnsHopkins University. California,which hit a record of more

than 36,000 new cases forSunday, reported just over26,000 infections for Monday.

The country reported morethan 1,400 fatalities fromCovid-19 for Monday, bringingthe total death toll to morethan 300,400. Nationally, theaverage number of dailydeaths over a seven-day pe-riod has risen sharply in re-cent weeks.

Hospitalizations hit a re-cord for the ninth day in a rowMonday, with 110,549 peoplein hospitals across the countrydue to Covid-19, according tothe Covid Tracking Project.

BY DAVID HALL

New CaseCount UpSlightly inThe U.S.

Monday’s tally ofmore than 193,000was down frompeaksearlier thismonth.

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age and innumerable peoplewho must fear for their jobs.”

On Tuesday, Italy’s HealthMinistry said it hoped the EMAcould authorize a vaccine aheadof schedule. Other nations badlyaffected by the virus, includingFrance and Spain, haven’t raisedcomplaints about the speed ofthe review.

“We should be very alert toany possibility of being tangledup in the red tape,” PolishPrime Minister MateuszMorawiecki told the Journal.“Some non-EU Western andAsian countries have alreadystarted vaccinations. Mean-while, millions of EU citizensare still waiting.”

Germany and several neigh-boring countries—including Po-land, Czech Republic and Aus-tria—are asking residents tostay at home through Christ-mas, restricting social gather-ings and church services, aftera surge in cases threatened tooverwhelm hospitals.

On Monday, German HealthMinister Jens Spahn defendedhis government’s decision notto grant the vaccine emergencyauthorization—as the U.K. had

doses had been ordered cen-trally in the EU, making it eas-ier to start distribution acrossthe bloc on the same day.

EMA officials have said theyare moving as fast as they canwithout eroding trust in vac-cines. Conversely, some public-health officials and medical in-stitutions have warned theagency that hasty authoriza-tion of a shot that uses noveltechnology would be a difficultsell on a continent where vacci-nation rates have declined.

On Friday, the agency’s lead-ers held a four-hour videocon-ference to assure the publicthat they are being meticulousin reviewing clinical-trial dataand the manufacturing particu-lars.

“We are working around theclock towards the licensing ofthe first Covid-19 vaccine,”EMA Executive Director EmerCooke said in an emailed state-ment. “European citizens havetold us they want a fast ap-proval, but more importantlythey want a thorough evalua-tion of the benefits and therisks of the vaccine, so thatthey can be confident it is safe,

effective and of high quality.”The EMA is poring over the

same data as its counterparts inthe U.K., Canada and the U.S.did. Regulators analyze patientdata from large-scale humantrials submitted in rollingbatches to see how many infec-tions occurred in those who re-ceived a placebo-like shot com-pared with those who weregiven the vaccine. Because thevirus is spreading so widely, ittook BioNTech only weeks torecord the number of casesnecessary to determine how ef-fective its shot is.

But regulators also askquestions to confirm the vac-cine is generally safe and effec-tive, and can be manufacturedat a consistent quality. On thisfront, the EMA has been slowerthan the U.K., whose chief reg-ulator started posing questionsearlier in the process and wasquicker to make follow-up que-ries, said people who workedwith both agencies recently.The different regulators alsowant data formatted differ-ently, creating a delay.

Ugur Sahin, BioNTech’s chiefexecutive, said in an interviewFriday that the EMA processwasn’t taking longer thanthose in the U.S. and the U.K.because of scientific reasons,but rather because the EUagency was following its ownprocedures.

The EU signed a contract tobuy 200 million doses from Bi-oNTech and Pfizer—enough tovaccinate 100 million people—with the option for an addi-tional 100 million doses. Lastmonth, it agreed to purchase160 million doses of a secondvaccine, developed by Mod-erna Inc., that uses the samemRNA technology.

The EMA isn’t set to make adecision on the Moderna shotuntil Jan. 12. After that, itcould be months before itmakes decisions on other can-didates, such as a Johnson &Johnson vaccine, which is inlarge-scale clinical trials, andanother developed by Astra-Zeneca PLC.

—Laurence Normancontributed to this article.

The European Union’s chiefdrug regulator will accelerateits review of a Covid-19 vaccineafter coming under pressurefrom some governments to au-thorize the shot, as the conti-nent struggles to contain awave of cases ahead of theChristmas period.

The European MedicinesAgency said on Tuesday itwould meet on Dec. 21, eightdays earlier than previouslyscheduled, to consider autho-rizing the shot developed byGermany’s BioNTech SE andPfizer Inc.

So far, the U.S., U.K. andCanada have begun vaccinatingtheir citizens with the shot.Once the vaccine is cleared inEurope, it would take severaldays to ferry the doses acrossthe continent, meaning vacci-nations—in some countries atleast—could start beforeChristmas.

The agency and several na-tional governments in the blochad said a careful review wasneeded to ensure public confi-dence in the shot at a time ofmounting skepticism aboutvaccines in Europe.

Some EU leaders, however,had been growing frustrated atthe pace of the review as thedeath toll from the virus tickshigher.

At an EU summit last week,at least three heads of govern-ment complained that it wasbecoming politically untenableto explain to their citizens whythe U.S. and Canada were ad-ministering a Europe-madevaccine ahead of the EU, offi-cials familiar with the discus-sions said.

“I hope that the EU, too, willget quick and unbureaucraticapproval of the first vaccineswhile observing all scientificstandards,” Austrian ChancellorSebastian Kurz told The WallStreet Journal. “The earlier wein the EU are able to start vacci-nating, the better. Because ev-ery day of the pandemic in Eu-rope means thousands ofdeaths, severe economic dam-

BY DREW HINSHAWAND BOJAN PANCEVSKI

Europe Speeds Its Review of Vaccine

Medical personnel performed rapid Covid-19 testing at an outdoor facility in Berlin this month.

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done and as any EU membercould do on its own—and waitinstead for full EU authoriza-tion. But he told national radiothat his government was push-ing for the timetable to be ac-celerated.

The EMA has no authorityto issue the type of emergency-use authorization that the U.K.and U.S. have given. In the EU,

that power falls to nationalgovernments. Yet not all gov-ernments have the capacity toswiftly review highly special-ized clinical-trial data andreach a judgment.

Mr. Spahn has said in thepast that EU governments hadagreed not to start a race foremergency authorization so asnot to create tensions withinthe bloc. He also said vaccine

EU leaders lamentthe U.S. and Canadaare getting aEuropean shot first.

The Food and Drug Admin-istration authorized a Covid-19test that can be administeredand processed at home, thefirst such test allowed to besold over-the-counter at drug-stores or other retail locationswithout a prescription.

The antigen test, made byEllume USA LLC, is a single-use,disposable test that searchesfor pieces of virus proteins andreturns results in about 15 min-utes. It is the second to be au-thorized for at-home use.

Ellume’s test is expected tocost around $30 and requiresa smartphone, the companysays. The test is authorized tobe used by people both withand without symptoms. It canalso be used on children asyoung as 2 years old.

Ellume, based in Australia,aims to ship 100,000 tests a dayin January, said Sean Parsons,the company’s founder andchief executive officer. In Octo-ber, the company received $30million from the U.S. federalgovernment through the RapidAcceleration of Diagnostics ini-tiative at the National Insti-tutes of Health, and the U.S. isthe company’s primary market.

Clinical studies of the testwere conducted with 198 par-ticipants across five U.S.states. The test’s accuracy wascompared with that of thegold standard, laboratory-based PCR test. Ellume’s testcorrectly identified 96% ofpositive samples and 100% ofnegative samples among peo-ple with symptoms. The testfared slightly worse amongpeople without symptoms. Itcorrectly flagged 91% of posi-tive samples and 96% of nega-tive samples.

For people without symp-toms, a positive on the testshould be treated as presump-tive and confirmed by anothertest, the FDA said.

BY BRIANNA ABBOTT

At-HomeCovid TestAuthorizedBy FDA

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Mr. Pompeo has said thatsanctions have cut Iran’s oilrevenue by $70 billion sinceMay 2018 and that reducingpressure on Tehran would be adangerous move. In November,Keith Krach, the undersecre-tary of state overseeing en-ergy policy, described U.S.sanctions on Iran as “remark-ably effective.”

Iran will be one of the big-gest foreign-policy challengesfacing President-elect Joe Bi-den when he enters the WhiteHouse in January, and his

WORLDWATCH

SAUDI ARABIA

Austerity PushedAfter Pandemic

Saudi Arabia plans to spendless next year to rein in a pan-demic-induced budget deficit,pursuing austerity even as arally in oil prices signals a higherdemand for crude and a globaleconomic recovery.

The government expects totrim its budget deficit from 12% ofeconomic output this year to 4.9%in 2021, as it lowers spending byabout 7% to 990 billion Saudi ri-yals, ($264 billion), the FinanceMinistry said Tuesday. State reve-nues are forecast to grow nearly10% to 849 billion riyals on highertaxes and oil revenues.

Saudi Arabia’s budget an-nouncement is a closely watchedmeasure of spending in the widerGulf region and an indicator ofRiyadh’s expectations on the di-rection of oil prices. Crown PrinceMohammed bin Salman is ex-pected to face a tricky economicbalancing act next year as thekingdom’s de facto ruler will haveto cut spending on some projectsrelated to his plan to diversifythe economy yet still try to cre-ate jobs for his young population.

The Saudi government fore-casts a return to growth ofroughly 2% next year. Unemploy-ment among Saudis stands atroughly 15%, according to thelatest government statistics.

—Rory Jones

JAPAN

Asteroid MissionRetrieves Black Dirt

Japan’s space agency said itrecovered far more black dirt thanit was targeting from the asteroidRyugu, confirming the success ofits Hayabusa2 mission nine daysafter it delivered its payload tothe Australian outback.

Scientists plan to study thematerial, which is thought to re-tain the chemical composition ofthe early solar system some 4.6billion years ago, for clues to theorigins of life on earth.

The Hayabusa2 mission waslaunched in 2014. It collectedsamples from the surface ofRyugu and from an artificial cra-ter on the asteroid created byfiring a projectile. After travelingmore than 3.2 billion miles,Hayabusa2 flew by earth earlythis month and dropped a cap-sule with the samples inside.

The Japan Aerospace Explo-ration Agency, or JAXA, had saidit hoped to collect at least 0.1gram of material, the equivalentof a few grains of rice.

“It was so far beyond ourpredictions that we were practi-cally at a loss for words. It wasreally emotional,” said JAXA sci-entist Hirotaka Sawada.

—Peter Landers

Tokyo ‘Twitter Killer’Sentenced to Death

A Japanese court on Tuesdaysentenced a man to death forkilling and dismembering ninepeople, most of whom hadposted suicidal thoughts on so-cial media, in a case thatshocked the country.

The Tachikawa branch of theTokyo District Court found Taka-hiro Shiraishi, known as the“Twitter killer,” guilty of killing,dismembering and storing thebodies of the victims in hisapartment in Zama, near Tokyo.

Mr. Shiraishi, 30 years old,pleaded guilty and said hewouldn’t appeal his death sen-tence.

Police arrested Mr. Shiraishi in2017 after finding the bodies ofeight females and one male incold-storage cases in his apart-ment. On Twitter, Mr. Shiraishiused the name “Hangman,” prom-ising to help his victims die andinviting them to his apartment.

—Associated Press

AFGHANISTAN

At Least 4 Killed inBombings, Shooting

A bombing and a shooting at-tack in Kabul killed at least threepeople, including a deputy pro-vincial governor, while a deputyprovincial council chief was killedin western Afghanistan on Tues-day, officials said.

The attacks are the latest inrelentless violence in Afghanistaneven as the Taliban and Afghangovernment negotiators holdtalks in Qatar, trying to hammerout a peace deal that could putan end to decades of war.

An Afghan interior ministryspokesman said a sticky bomb at-tached to the armored vehicle be-longing to Kabul’s deputy provincialgovernor killed him and his secre-tary and wounded two others.

No one immediately claimedresponsibility for the attacks.

—Associated Press

The capsule from Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission revealed a largeamount of asteroid material, far more than scientists expected.

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world’s deadliest jihadist cam-paigns.

“Only in Nigeria have weseen militants walk into a highschool and abduct the wholestudent body,” said Bulama Bu-karti, an analyst at the TonyBlair Institute for GlobalChange based in London. “Thesecurity situation across thenorth is rapidly deteriorating.An attack on Nigeria’s childrenis an attack on the country’sfuture.”

The Kankara attack is par-ticularly embarrassing forPresident Muhammadu Buhari,a native of Katsina, who hasrepeatedly claimed that BokoHaram and its affiliates havebeen technically defeated. Butsince last year, the militantshave been advancing, overrun-ning dozens of smaller militarybases and looting weapons.

Shekau has traditionally op-erated in northeast Nigeria buthas been quietly building alli-ances in the northwest for thepast year. In recent video mes-sages, he has claimed thatBoko Haram has cells in thenorthwest, and appeared to ad-dress potential new recruits inthe regional Fulani language.

Shekau directed the kidnap-ping of the schoolgirls fromChibok Government SecondarySchool in 2014. After threeyears, 103 were freed in dealsbrokered by a team of Swiss

mediators for a ransom and ex-change of Boko Haram prison-ers. A total of 112 have neverreturned home and many arefeared to have died in captivity.

The testimony of the survi-vors of Kankara suggests thekidnap operation was eerilysimilar to the abduction in Chi-bok. Mr. Male and other wit-nesses said dozens of gunmenon motorcycles surrounded theboarding school and openedfire on police, before roundingup students and telling themthey were soldiers—the sametechnique used in the Chibokabduction.

Mr. Male said he walked formore than 12 hours in bare feetas he had no time to collect hissandals during the abduction.Suffering from anemia, he feltweak and dizzy. In the dark-ness, he noticed dozens of stu-dents had slipped from thecrowds and disappeared intothe forest.

As the militants ordered thegroup to rest near a villagewhile they discussed how toavoid being seen, he slipped offand hid under a tree. Hesneaked into the forest andreached a nearby villagenamed Zango, where localshelped him home after a 36-hour ordeal.

“I thought I would never seemy parents again.…I hope I willsee my friends,” he said.

pus in recent days, pleadingwith the authorities to save theboys.

On Tuesday, the campus waseerily quiet. Students’ belong-ings were strewn across thedormitory floors; textbooksand stray soccer cleats sat nextto bags that would have soonbeen packed for the end-of-year holidays.

Boko Haram’s claim of re-sponsibility comes after abloody two weeks across thenorthern frontiers of Africa’smost populous nation. In lateNovember, the group abductedand then slaughtered some 70farmers in the village of Zam-

abari in Borno state. Lastweek, the group killed 28 peo-ple and burned 800 homes in avillage across the border insouthern Niger.

The rising violence acrossnorthern Nigeria comes amidthe government’s falteringstrategy to combat a decade-long insurgency that has me-tastasized into one of the

BokoHaram’s claimcomes after abloody two weeks innorthern Nigeria.

transition team has said therewill likely be changes to pol-icy, including a move to rejointhe 2015 nuclear agreementwith Iran. Jake Sullivan, desig-nated as Mr. Biden’s nationalsecurity adviser, said thismonth that the administrationwould be prepared to honorthe terms of the deal—a movelikely to require a rollback ofU.S. sanctions—and use it as abasis for follow-on talksaround broader concerns.

Most oil buyers and ship-pers stopped trading with Iranafter Washington slapped afull embargo on Iran’s crudeshipments after the Trump ad-ministration pulled out of theObama-era nuclear pact withTehran in 2018.

Iranian traders and someprospective buyers said theywere expecting U.S. pressureto ease once Mr. Trump leavesoffice.

The Iranians “need to selloil, and we need energy,” saidone official in Italy, formerly atop customer for Iraniancrude. Purchases will restartquickly once sanctions arelifted, this official said.

This summer, oil-rich Vene-zuela started buying Iraniangasoline after its refineries allbut shut down, in part becauseof separate American restric-tions on Caracas.

WORLD NEWS

with the matter.American officials acknowl-

edge that Iran is exporting oil,but say sanctions have stillcaused severe economic con-sequences for the country, in-cluding sending the rialsharply lower.

The Iranian currency hasdepreciated 85% since early2018, while inflation of over30% in Iran has turned meatinto a luxury product. Govern-ment budget cuts last yearsparked protests during whichhundreds were killed.

and an Iran oil official.Iranian shippers have gone

to increasing lengths to evadesanctions, switching off radiotransponders to avoid track-ing, while operators transport-ing Iranian crude havechanged their ships’ names ordoctored bills of lading.

More recently, they havebegun transshipments of oil inregions once thought to be toorisky, including waters off thecoast of U.S. allies Iraq andthe United Arab Emirates, ac-cording to people familiar

from 230,000 earlier in 2020.Petro-Logistics saw an increasein exports to about 447,000barrels a day, from 222,000.

The more conservative fig-ures suggest U.S. sanctionshave kept most Iranian crudebottled up. But the sharp in-crease seen across the threemarket trackers suggests Teh-ran has been more successfulrecently in selling its oil.

Secretary of State MikePompeo said last year the U.S.was aiming for zero oil ex-ports from Iran, having previ-ously sought to drive them be-low 1 million barrels a day,down from their 2018 pre-sanctions levels of 2.5 millionbarrels a day.

Among the biggest custom-ers for Iran is China, which,according to Beijing’s officialtrade statistics, imported62,000 barrels a day of Iranianoil in October, up from zero inJune. Industry watchers saidthe actual totals were likelymuch higher and included oiltransshipped through otherAsian countries.

Venezuela—under socialistleader Nicolás Maduro, long atodds with Washington and un-der American sanctions—hasalso started buying Iraniangasoline. And Syria resumedIranian oil imports this year,according to shipping trackers

LONDON—Iran has circum-vented U.S. sanctions and ex-ported more oil to China andother countries in recentmonths, providing a lifelinefor its struggling economy andundermining the Trump ad-ministration’s so-called maxi-mum pressure campaignagainst Tehran.

The scale of Iran’s petro-leum sales is difficult to gauge,given their often covert nature.Several firms that monitor theglobal oil trade say shipmentsfrom Iran have roughly dou-bled from the low levels seenearlier this year, although esti-mates vary widely.

On the high end, U.S.-basedTankerTrackers.com, whichuses satellite imagery to fol-low deliveries, estimated Ira-nian crude oil exports hit 1.2million barrels a day over thefall, up from 481,000 barrels aday in February.

Meanwhile, SVB Interna-tional in Washington said Iranexported 585,000 barrels ofcrude oil a day in November, up

BY BENOIT FAUCON

Iran Skirts Sanctions, Boosts Oil ExportsSeveral firms thatmonitor petroleumtrade say shipmentshave roughly doubled

An Iranian oil tanker docked at a refinery in Venezuela in May.

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Boko Haram’s claim of re-sponsibility has surprised someanalysts, marking a departurefrom the extremist group’susual area of operation in thecountry’s northeast.

“What happened in Katsinawas done to promote Islam,”said Abubakar Shekau, thegroup’s leader and Africa’smost-wanted terrorist, with a$7 million U.S. bounty on hishead. “Western education isnot the type of education per-mitted by Allah and his holyProphet.”

He didn’t give any figuresfor the number of boys kid-napped in Kankara, but themass abduction appears to beeven larger than Boko Haram’s2014 kidnapping of 276 school-girls from the town of Chibok,which gave rise to the global#BringBackOurGirls campaignand sparked a U.S. military in-tervention. A new hashtag,#BringBackOurBoys, began totrend in Nigeria as fresh de-tails trickled out. The UnitedNations has strongly con-demned the abductions andcalled for the children’s “im-mediate and unconditional re-lease.”

Boarding schools acrossseveral northern states havebeen closed and the governorof Katsina appeared on televi-sion in tears. The local govern-ment has said that the kidnap-pers have been in contact todiscuss a ransom to release theboys, although Shekau saidthere were no negotiations.

Nigerian Defense Minis-ter Salihi Magashi confirmedthat a search-and-rescue oper-ation was under way andpledged to do everything nec-essary to ensure the boys’ re-turn.

Distraught families haveconverged on the school’s cam-

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The school where gunmen abducted students in Nigeria was eerily quiet Tuesday, while concerned parents waited outside, below.

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whom they share information.”The new law is likely to

make U.S. agencies reluctantto share information withMexican institutions they con-sider to be corrupt, and Mexi-can officials won’t meet withtheir U.S. counterparts be-cause of the requirement theydisclose the meetings, saidMike Vigil, a former DEA di-rector of international opera-tions. “The policy will stifle bi-lateral cooperation,” he added.

A senior Mexican govern-ment official said Gen. Cien-fuegos’s arrest had a huge im-pact on the country’s securityestablishment. “There was aclamor to have clear rules, andrespect for Mexico,” he said.“The arrest was seen as an in-sult to Mexico. The govern-ment was blindsided.”

The U.S. has 50 DEA agentsposted in Mexico, according toMexican officials. Security ex-perts and former officials saythose agents have providedthe bulk of intelligence for astring of high-profile arrestsand captures of leading nar-cotics traffickers, includinglegendary trafficker Joaquín“El Chapo” Guzmán, who twiceescaped from a maximum-se-curity Mexican jail before be-ing arrested with the help ofthe DEA, extradited to the U.S.and sentenced.

BY JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBAAND SANTIAGO PÉREZ

Mexico Law to Rein In U.S. Agents

A new security law passed after the arrest in the U.S. of Mexico’s former defense minister on drugtrafficking charges. Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos is shown in an artist’s sketch in a New York court.

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not look the other way for thesake of inter-Korean diplo-macy,” said Eun-Kyoung Kwon,secretary-general at the Interna-tional Coalition to Stop CrimesAgainst Humanity in North Ko-rea, which signed the letter.

The new restrictions againstantiregime materials were nec-essary to protect the safety ofSouth Koreans living near theborder and to uphold inter-Ko-rean agreements, said Choi Ji-eun, a spokeswoman for Mr.Moon’s ruling DemocraticParty. South Korea’s unificationministry objected to assertionsthe law infringed on freespeech, adding it applies onlyto activities that pose a seriousthreat to South Korean citizens.

Some activists pledged tomaintain their work. One ofthem, Park Sang-hak, a NorthKorean defector who heads agroup that sent leaflets acrossthe border, plans to challengethe law in court if it takes effect,his lawyer said. The bill will be-come law after three months.

to outside information, say sur-veys from the Database Centerfor North Korean Human Rights,a Seoul-based group. Many saidthe outside information height-ened their desire to leave.

The Kim regime has pub-licly executed those it accusedof widely selling or distribut-

ing content smuggled fromacross the border, Pyongyangwatchers say.

Mr. Moon, who has soughtto warm ties with the North,has fielded a barrage of criti-cism from human-rightsgroups. Last month, South Ko-rea, for the second straightyear, didn’t co-sponsor a UnitedNations General Assembly reso-lution condemning North Ko-rea’s human-rights violations.

In a letter Tuesday, an in-ternational coalition of morethan 300 civil-society groupscalled on Mr. Moon to give pri-ority to North Korean humanrights, especially during a pan-demic when the Kim regimehas tightened surveillance andreportedly executed individu-als caught while trying to flee.

“President Moon Jae-inshould condemn North Korea’sabusive measures on Covid-19,

Violators of a newlawwould face up tothree years in prisonand a $27,000 fine.

agent within three days of itsoccurrence. Foreign agentsmust report to the govern-ment any information they digup and provide monthly re-ports of their activities.

“It puts too many condi-tions on the actions of foreignagents,” said Jorge Chabat, anexpert on international rela-tions at the University of Gua-dalajara.

Meetings by Mexican offi-cials with foreign agents musthave prior authorization froma group of senior Mexican offi-cials charged with regulating

contacts. A representativefrom Mexico’s Foreign Minis-try must be present at anysuch meeting. Failure to com-ply with the new rules couldlead to administrative or crim-inal sanctions, the law says.

“There cannot be foreignagents in Mexico arresting peo-ple or committing crimes,” saidDolores Padierna, a lawmakerfrom the ruling Morena party.“They shouldn’t meet withstate or municipal authoritiesbehind the back of the federalgovernment, deciding who is areliable authority or with

Congress DelaysBank-Bill Vote

MEXICO CITY—Mexico’slower house of congress onTuesday postponed debate ona bill that bankers said wouldjeopardize the central bank’sautonomy by requiring it to buyforeign currency in cash thatbanks are unable to put intothe financial system.

Proponents argued themeasure aims to benefit Mexi-cans who receive remittancesor tourist dollars in cash butcan’t exchange them or areforced to exchange them on

the black market at unfavorablerates.

The central bank said thebill, as passed last week by theSenate, would put $195 billionin reserves at risk because thebank could end up buying dol-lars from illicit sources.

Following sharp criticism ofthe proposal from the centralbank, private banks and majorcredit-rating firms, lawmakersin Mexico’s lower house aban-doned plans to debate and voteon the bill Tuesday. Bothhouses of congress plan to holdjoint hearings to agree on a billthat could be voted on in thesession starting in February.

—Juan Montes

MEXICO CITY—PresidentAndrés Manuel López Obra-dor’s ruling party pushedthrough a new law Tuesdaycurbing the role of foreign law-enforcement officers in Mexico,a move the U.S. believes willcripple bilateral efforts to bat-tle powerful drug cartels.

The legislation, whichpassed by a vote of 329 to 98in the lower house, follows theOctober arrest in the U.S. ofMexico’s former defense min-ister on drug trafficking andcorruption charges. The shock-ing detention of Gen. SalvadorCienfuegos prompted Mr. Ló-pez Obrador to question therole of the U.S. Drug Enforce-ment Administration, portray-ing it as a rogue agency run-ning roughshod over Mexicansovereignty.

The curbs to the operationsof foreign agents, aimed atDEA and other U.S. law-en-forcement agents, are a blowto the U.S. Department of Jus-tice, former agents and secu-rity analysts said.

Last month, Attorney Gen-eral William Barr droppedcharges against Gen. Cienfue-gos and handed him back toMexico, saying the general’sdetention would stifle bilateralsecurity cooperation. On Fri-day, before the bill became law,Mr. Barr said in unusually bluntlanguage that the U.S. was wor-ried the law would imperil fu-ture security cooperation be-tween the two countries.

“We are troubled by legisla-tion currently before the Mexi-can Congress, which wouldhave the effect of making thecitizens of Mexico and theUnited States less safe,” saidMr. Barr, who is leaving hispost before the end of themonth. The law “can only ben-efit the violent transnationalcriminal organizations andother criminals that we arejointly fighting,” he said.

The legislation orders Mex-ico’s local, state and federalofficials to report to the fed-eral government every tele-phone call, meeting or com-munication with a foreign

SEOUL—For years, activistgroups in South Korea havesent everything from Bibles toK-pop across the border to theNorth. Now, that could costthem up to three years inprison and a $27,000 fine.

Late Monday, South Koreabanned sending materialacross the border that wascritical of the North Koreanregime without permissionfrom the Seoul government.

The new law, backed by theruling party of President MoonJae-in, drew criticism fromNorth Korean defectors and hu-man-rights groups, who accusedthe government of limiting freespeech and undermining demo-cratic values in an effort to im-prove relations with Pyongyang.

Inter-Korean ties have skid-ded to a low point this year.Kim Yo Jong, the sister ofNorth Korean leader Kim JongUn, blasted Seoul in June forallowing a defector-led groupto tie antiregime leaflets toballoons and float them intothe cloistered regime. Her crit-icism came days before NorthKorea blew up a jointly run li-aison office. Ms. Kim said theleaflets had violated pledgesto tone down hostilities be-tween the two countries.

“Before making lame ex-cuses, they should at leastmake a law to stop the farce ofhuman scum,” Ms. Kim said inthe June statement.

The new law requires arange of antiregime materials—which can include USB thumbdrives, money, loudspeakerbroadcasts and printed materi-als—be approved by South Ko-rea’s government before cross-ing into the North. It alsoapplies to activity considered aserious danger to South Kore-ans, conducted through unspec-ified third countries. Seoul offi-cials haven’t offered detailedguidance on what the condi-tions for approvals would be.

The inflow of leaflets, news,dramas and movies have re-shaped the views of many NorthKoreans. Nearly two-thirds ofescapees who have relocated toSouth Korea have been exposed

BY TIMOTHY W. MARTIN

Seoul Bans Regime-TauntingAt Border With North Korea

South Korean soldiers near the Demilitarized Zone this year.

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Workers on a truck assembly line in Weifang, China, on Tuesday.

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cluding Tuesday’s data, havedefied those predictions.

“China’s economy continuedto gather steam in Novemberthanks to previous credit-eas-ing policy and robust exportdemand,” said Li Wei, an econ-omist with Standard CharteredPLC.

China’s fixed-asset invest-ment, which includes spendingon manufacturing, propertyand infrastructure projects,rose 2.6% in the January-No-vember period compared withlast year, according to datafrom the statistics bureau.That was faster than the 1.8%pace recorded in the first 10months of the year, and beateconomists’ expectations of2.5%.

Economic growth in thefourth quarter is expected toaccelerate further from thethird quarter because of re-bounds in production and de-mand, said Fu Linghui, a statis-tics-bureau spokesman.

Gross domestic product ex-panded 4.9% year over year inthe third quarter, a strong re-bound from the 6.8% contrac-tion it experienced in the firstquarter when economic activ-ity ground nearly to a halt tocontain the spread of Covid-19.

BEIJING—China’s economicactivity extended its momen-tum in November with anacross-the-board recovery, put-ting the world’s second-largesteconomy on stronger footingas it approaches the end of atumultuous year.

Major economic indicators,including industrial output, in-vestment and consumer spend-ing, all grew at faster paceslast month, supporting jobgrowth and driving down un-employment rates, according toofficial data released Tuesday.

Industrial output rose 7.0%in November from a year ear-lier—its highest level in morethan two years, China’s officialNational Bureau of Statisticssaid. The result was a tick upfrom 6.9% in October, whichbeat the 6.8% rise expected byeconomists polled by The WallStreet Journal.

The industrial sector wasthe first to rebound from theshock of the pandemic earlythis year, after Beijing rushedto restore production and busi-ness in the second quarter.Economists had anticipated in-dustrial production would slowin recent months, as a resur-gence of the coronavirusthreatened to hurt demandabroad. But official figures, in-

BY JOSH CHIN

China ExtendsIts Wide-RangingEconomic Recovery

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A12 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

FROM PAGE ONE

Kindergarten teacher Amber Fusco shifted to online teaching at Phoenix’s Shaw Butte Elementary.

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rest of the semester, citingstaffing shortages.

“She’s not getting an educa-tion,” Ms. Kidd said, of her 15-year-old. “There’s no way.”

Amber Payne, a 21-year-oldgraduate student in hospital-ity, is subbing this fall for $68a day in suburban Atlanta. Shesaid she hasn’t yet used a les-son plan and typically doesher own college assignmentswhile students sit at theirdesks and do virtual work as-signed them by their regularteacher.

“I don’t think I could be anactual teacher,” she said, cit-ing the challenges of manag-ing a classroom of 30 restlesshigh-school students.

Arizona has the highest av-erage class size in the U.S.,with 23.5 pupils per teacher,compared with 16 nationwide,according to the National Cen-ter for Education Statistics.

It has among the lowestmedian pay in the country,when adjusted for cost of liv-ing, at $46,404 for an elemen-tary schoolteacher, compared

with $60,461 in neighboringNew Mexico, according to Ex-pect More Arizona, a group ofcommunity and business lead-ers advocating for increasededucation spending. That’s af-ter a spate of pay increases onthe heels of the state’s trade-mark “Red for Ed” proteststwo years ago. In November,voters approved a ballot ini-tiative raising income taxes onhigh earners to support educa-tion spending, but it faces le-gal challenges.

Substitute searchOn a recent morning at

Acacia Elementary School innorthwest Phoenix, principalChristine Hollingsworthgreeted kindergartners at thefront door as they stood on Xmarks waiting to have theirtemperature taken and fid-dling with masks.

“Good morning!” she said.“I see your smiles underthere!”

Ms. Hollingsworth had beenup since 4 a.m., fruitlessly

seeking a substitute for the artteacher, who was out with al-lergies.

The office manager wasalso absent, so teachers andother aides took turns playingthat role. Ms. Hollingsworthsaid she tries to do her part,filling in as a substituteteacher and as facilities man-ager for three months this fall,coaching the custodians onmaintenance. “It’s all hands ondeck,” she said.

Over the summer, Ms. Hol-lingsworth went to the Wash-ington Elementary School Dis-trict’s candidate database tosee if she could fill a handfulof vacancies created by teach-ers who didn’t feel comfort-able returning to school. Therewere five applicants for doz-ens of teaching jobs at 32 ele-mentary schools.

She said she is lucky tohave seven paid student teach-ers through a program withArizona State University. Thestudents work full-time in aclassroom instead of a typicalpart-time assisting role.

Monthly retirements amongK-12 instructional staff, select states

Arizona*

NewYork* Ohio*

July Aug. Sept. Oct.

July Aug. Sept. Oct. July Aug. Sept. Oct.

Louisiana Massachusetts

Washington

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July Aug. Sept. Oct.

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State-by-state retirement data don't show a uniform nationwide trend, but in some states thatallowed in-person classes, teacher retirements increased or shifted toward the fall comparedwith prior years.

*By date of retirement application, not actual retirementNote: New York figures exclude New York City, which operates a separate retirement system.Source: state teacher retirement systems Lindsay Huth/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

LandscapeWork SuitsHired Goats

Arizona. At the start of theschool year in August, schooldistricts weren’t able to hiretraditionally certified teachersfor 78% of 6,145 open posi-tions, according to a survey bythe Arizona School PersonnelAdministrators Association, anorganization of human-re-source managers. The surveyincluded responses from 145of the state’s 236 school dis-tricts; there are roughly60,000 teacher positions inthe state.

Half the open positions, or3,080, were filled by emer-gency substitutes, recruitsfrom other countries and stu-dent teachers. A third, or1,728, were left vacant or cov-ered by consolidating class-rooms, paying teachers towork through their planningtime or having principals pickup classes.

At least 460 teachers re-signed, retired or took unpaidleave due to Covid-19 and anadditional 200 either didn’tshow up for the first day ofschool or quit within a fewweeks. Retirements spikedfrom August to October, up24% from the year before.

Andrea Murphy, an ad-vanced-placement psychologyteacher, took early retirement

six weeks into the semester ata high school in the Mesa Pub-lic Schools district southeastof Phoenix. The 54-year-oldwas three years shy of 30years’ tenure, a milestone thatwould have added $850 amonth to her retirementcheck.

Mrs. Murphy said she be-came physically ill from stressonce she was back in theschool building this fall, teach-ing a mix of in-person and re-mote students. She worescrubs, a mask, a face shieldand a beanie, gear she knewwas overkill but made her feelsafer.

“Many of us in educationhave felt disposable since thisCovid period,” she said. “I wasdone.” She is now studying tobe a paralegal.

Staffing is a daily struggle,said Kristi Wilson, superin-tendent of the Buckeye Ele-mentary School District south-west of Phoenix. Dr. Wilson,who leads a Covid-19 responsetask force as president of theprofessional group AASA, TheSchool Superintendents Asso-ciation, said her peers nation-wide are also struggling tofind enough teachers.

“It’s everyone,” she said.“Large districts, small dis-tricts, rural, urban. A common

ContinuedfromPageOne

“We were looking for posi-tive distractions,” Mr. Davissaid.

Not that you have to be achild. Sarah Baird rented somegoats to control the weeds atthe rural home near Buffalo,N.Y., where she and her hus-band were bunkered in Sep-tember, and soon found sheenjoyed their company. “We’veactually had family conversa-tions about whether weshould get our own goats,” shesaid.

Hiring goats and sheep aslandscapers goes back a ways.The White House had a flockof sheep to keep weeds incheck during World War I.Competition from gas-pow-ered lawn mowers and thenweed whackers eventually putmost animals out of work.

In recent decades, a genera-tion of ecoconscious, animal-loving Americans rediscoveredgoats. Goatscaping companiesare particularly common inCalifornia, where mild wintersallow for year-round grazing.

Renting five goats mightcost around $500 for a week.

ContinuedfromPageOne

Goatscaping companies pro-vide a fence and water bucketsplus, if needed, a herder.

Goats typically arrive bytrailer, scan the grounds, thenset to work. Before long, littlevegetation is left.

“It’s like mowing your lawnbut with four-legged weedwhackers,” said Larry Cihanek,who has 180 goats inRhinebeck that he rents outfor landscaping jobs in severalstates.

Goatscaping has its chal-lenges. The goats form rela-tionships with each other, andthey can become miserablewhen they are separated, ac-cording to Mr. Cihanek. He

said he keeps such goats to-gether on assignments.

The job isn’t particularlydangerous, but injuries canhappen. One of Mr. Cihanek’sgoats grazing in a cemeterybroke a leg when it got stuckbetween two tombstones. Hecreated a cast and put theworker back on the job afterrecovery.

While out weeding in thefields, some goats have triedto make a break for it. “A goatwill clear a 6-foot fence from astop,” said Genevieve Church,who runs a goatscaping non-profit called City Grazing inSan Francisco.

On assignment years ago,

some of her goats went on thelam. They broke into a neigh-boring garden, destroying acollection of roses. Ms. Churchhad to pay for the damage.

The neighbor wasn’t upsetfor long. “He thought it wasthe funniest thing,” she said.

City goats often need over-night supervision. Those atStuyvesant Cove Park in NewYork were kept inside the parkby a fence that the goat sup-plier built, but Ms. Thompsonfelt compelled to sleep in avan in the park to keep an eyeon them.

On the first morning, shewoke up to voices. “I look outmy van window and there’s a

dude standing there feedingthem chips,” she said. “I waslike, ‘Sir, can you not do that,please?’ ”

Landscaping is a second ca-reer for many goats, afterworking in the dairy trade.Some owners have followed ananalogous course, ditchingdeskbound jobs for the goatbusiness.

Mr. Cihanek spent decadesin the Manhattan advertisingindustry before moving up-state and buying a farm. Jen-nifer Zeitler, who runs Let’sGoat Buffalo, the company Ms.Baird booked, worked in cor-porate employee benefits be-fore deciding she wanted to be

closer to nature.With 15 goats, Let’s Goat

Buffalo is one of the newerand smaller goatscaping ven-tures. Among the biggest isLiving Systems Land Manage-ment in Coalinga, Calif., whichhas around 9,000 goats andsheep. It recently sent 1,200goats to clear weeds from a le-vee alongside the SacramentoRiver so engineers could moreeasily spot any holes, saidMike Canaday, one of theowners.

Each spring, hundreds ofhis goats arrive in AgouraHills, northwest of Los Ange-les. Guarded by herders anddogs, they spend six to eightweeks on 80 acres of openland around homes, clearing itof anything that could tempt awildfire.

At $50,000, the goats costabout half as much as hiringpeople to control the weedsover the course of a year, saidJan Gerstel, president of a lo-cal homeowners’ association.

And they leave no cut grassbehind. He credits their appe-tite with saving his neighbor-hood from a 2018 blaze calledthe Woolsey fire, which de-stroyed more than 1,500 build-ings on 97,000 acres and tookseveral lives. Mr. Gerstel saidthe flames reached the edge ofthe area the goats had grazedon, then stopped.

“They literally eat down tothe dirt,” he said, “and there’snothing left to burn.”

theme is people are resigning,people are retiring, takingleave to care for sick parentsand they’re not able to fillthose positions.”

Educational achievementhas suffered, although aca-demics say it is too soon toknow how much is due to gen-eral pandemic-related stressor shortcomings in online andhybrid learning. Districts na-tionwide are reporting that inthe first quarter, as many ashalf of middle- and high-school students are failing atleast one class. A Novemberreport on test results of morethan two million math stu-dents found they had fallenbehind, needing as much as 12weeks to catch up to wherethey were expected to be inthe fall.

Even without the pandemic,it was unlikely the pipeline ofcollege students studying tobecome teachers would keeppace with retirements and at-trition.

Nontraditional hiresTo compensate, states are

increasingly relying on alter-native or emergency creden-tials to allow people who haveno formal training to becometeachers. The percentage ofemergency or nontraditionalhires rose to 16% of teachersin the 2019-20 school yearfrom 10% in 2013-14, accordingto the American Associationfor Employment in Education,a trade group that tracksteacher hiring.

“It’s, ‘If you want to be ateacher tomorrow, I’ll hookyou up,’ ” said Justin Wing,human-resources director atthe Washington ElementarySchool District in Phoenix, ofthe hiring process in Arizona.“If you have a degree in ac-counting or whatever, you canbe a teacher tomorrow. I’mnot kidding.”

Mr. Wing has hired a for-mer police officer, a restaurantmanager and a plumbing ap-prentice, among others, to beteachers, and is offering after-hours training toward tradi-tional certification.

Vacancies are exacerbatedby teachers needing to quar-antine and a shortage of sub-stitute teachers, particularlylong-term substitutes who fillin for months or a year in aclassroom. Many experiencedsubstitutes are retired teach-ers who don’t want to risk in-fection or are tentative aboutonline learning platforms.

In August, Missouri loweredthe substitute-teaching re-quirement to a high-school di-ploma and an online trainingcourse; Iowa lowered the mini-mum age to 20 from 21 andeducation level to an associatedegree from a bachelor’s.

In November, ScottsdaleUnified School District in Ari-zona asked parents to considerapplying for emergency sub-stitute certification, which re-quires a high-school diplomaand background check.

“I thought it was a joke,”said Sandra Kidd, mother of aninth-grader at Scottsdale’sChaparral High School. “You’rebasically hiring a glorifiedbaby-sitter.”

Chaparral recently can-celled in-person classes for the

“Without these studentteachers, there’s no one,” shesaid. “Literally no one.”

Across town, Shaw Buttekindergarten teacher AmberFusco is one of two certifiedteachers responsible for in-person learning for theschool’s 100 kindergartners,most of whom are enrolled inhybrid learning and are rotat-ing in and out of school ingroups. Three student teach-ers help her out.

On a late October day, shemodeled for a dozen in-personkindergartners how to put thetop on their glue stick, puttheir crayons away, push theirchair under the table and stowtheir artwork in their cubby.She over-enunciated to helpstudents learn spoken Englishsince they cannot see hermouth through a mask.

The district recentlyswitched back to all-virtuallearning, citing a substantialincrease in local cases ofCovid-19. Ms. Fusco nowspends her day coordinatingremote learning and adaptinglesson plans, such as how towrite, recognize and speak theletter “O” through worksheetsand quick bursts of live onlineinstruction instead of gamesand in-person modeling.

By the end of a normal year,Ms. Fusco’s students wouldknow how to count to 100, rec-ognize sight words and speakin complete sentences.

This year she is trying to berealistic. “The hardest thingfor me is keeping all the chil-dren straight,” she said.

Shaw Butte principal TracyMaynard moved seven of her29 teachers to different gradelevels or to combined grade-level classes to compensate forvacancies and ensure properclass size.

Staffing challengeTwo of her vacancies came

from people trying out teach-ing as a second career. “Onedidn’t work out,” she said.“One made it two weeks andquit.”

An additional staffing chal-lenge in Arizona is thatschools must provide space forstudents whose home situa-tion doesn’t allow for distancelearning, even if the schoolisn’t open for in-person in-struction.

Shaw Butte has two dozenstudents in its daily program,based in a classroom on thefar side of campus. There is noteacher to oversee them, soMs. Maynard cycles throughstaff as they’re available.

Students do their virtualwork, which takes 60 to 90minutes then watch videos,fidget in their seats or go outto the playground when it isn’tin use.

“It’s hard for the children,”she said. “They are doing a lit-tle bit of work and thenthey’re just sitting in a room.”

Ms. Maynard, head of thedistrict principals association,said worries that the constantchange and increased work-load will force teachers out,exacerbating the shortage.

“Everyone says it is likegetting on a plane while you’rebuilding it,” she said. “Butwho’s dumb enough to get ona plane that is not built?”

TeacherShortageHits Hard

‘You’re basicallyhiring a glorifiedbaby-sitter,’ oneparent complains.

Pandemic restrictions are no deterrent to ‘goatscaping’; above, a rented herd clearing weeds on some land in Agoura Hills, Calif.

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THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. * * Wednesday, December 16, 2020 | A12A

BY JOSEPH DE AVILA

Gov. Phil Murphy applauds as resident nurse Maritza Beniquez got the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Tuesday at a Newark hospital.

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til June and many office em-ployees working from home.

Hilda Salcedo, a server whohas worked for Marriott hotelssince 2000 and at the TimesSquare location since 2013,said employees haven’t beengiven details about possibleseverance packages. She saidshe had been preparing for thepossibility she would lose herjob, but the layoffs came as ashock to many co-workers.

The Marriott spokeswomansaid laid-off workers will re-ceive information about sever-ance in early 2021.

tel rooms—open and closed—in the city that first week inDecember was 24.7%.

“For about a third of the in-ventory, the owners said, ‘weare better off not being open,’which is just an astoundingnumber,” Mr. Freitag said.

The New York MarriottMarquis is located in the heartof New York City’s theater dis-trict and has several ballroomsfor large events. But the usu-ally jam-packed neighborhoodnow offers little to draw hotelguests, with Broadway the-aters set to remain closed un-

dustry has suffered dispropor-tionately due to the pandemiccompared with the rest of thecountry as demand from cor-porate and leisure travelershas plummeted, said Jan Fre-itag, national director for hos-pitality-market analytics atCoStar Group Inc., a commer-cial real-estate data firm.

New York City hotel roomsreported 33.8% occupancy inthe week ended Dec. 5, com-pared with 90.8% occupancyduring the same week lastyear, according to STR, a ho-tel-data firm owned by CoStar.

businesses and tourist spots.Those who remain on staff areeither working or are expectedto return to work soon, a Mar-riott spokeswoman said.

“These are actions we neverthought would become neces-sary at our location,” the ho-tel’s general manager wrote ina Dec. 9 letter to laid-offworkers reviewed by The WallStreet Journal. “The unprece-dented severity of theCovid-19 crisis, however, hasforced the location to makethese difficult decisions.”

New York City’s hotel in-

Marriott International Inc.is permanently laying off 850employees from its hotel inTimes Square, another signthat the hotel industry in NewYork City remains significantlyhobbled by the pandemic.

Marriott recently told theworkers that they will be letgo March 12, nearly a year af-ter more than 1,200 employeesat the New York Marriott Mar-quis were furloughed as risingCovid-19 infections promptedthe closure of nonessential

BY KATE KING

Transit officials in New Yorkare teaming up with the De-partment of Homeland Securityand Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology to study how to re-duce the spread of the Covid-19on buses and trains.

If—and how much—the vi-rus spreads on mass transit isa stubborn question. Ridershipis down in cities world-widelargely due to people workingfrom home and businessesclosing, but also because offear of contracting the virus.

Studies and reports this yearhave drawn conflicting conclu-sions about the extent to whichthe virus spreads on mass tran-sit. Some of the studies havebeen conducted by economistsand transit specialists who don’thave expertise in the spread ofviruses and other pathogens.

Researchers plan to releasedifferent types of water-basedaerosols, including those thatmimic respiratory dropletswhich can be inhaled by peoplewithin 6 feet of each other, aswell as tiny particles that cantravel farther and linger in theair for hours. The studies willbe conducted on transit vehiclesthat are not in service. They willbe carried out on vehicles intheir normal state,as well as onthose with doors and windowsopen and with enhancements toventilation and air-filtrationsystems. The study will be ledby MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.

Don Bansleben, a programmanager at the DHS Scienceand Technology Directorate,said it is clear that mass-tran-sit passengers in the U.S. mighthave been exposed to the virusby fellow riders. However, hesaid, “I don’t believe there’sany definitive evidence thathas shown that public trans-portation is really a source ofspreading the virus, especially

Covid-19 vaccinations forfront-line health-care workershave begun at New Jersey hos-pitals nine months after thestate recorded its first infec-tion of the pandemic.

New Jersey is set to receive76,000 doses of the vaccinemanufactured by Pfizer Inc.and BioNTech SE this week.About 20,000 of those doseshave been set aside for long-term-care facilities, and therest are for hospital workersmost at risk of exposure toCovid-19.

Six New Jersey hospitalsbegan vaccinations Tuesday.An additional 47 New Jerseyhospitals are expected to be-gin administering vaccinations

by the end of the week.Maritza Beniquez, resident

nurse in the emergency depart-ment at Newark’s UniversityHospital, was the first NewJersey resident to receive thevaccine. She said she would nolonger have to fear getting sick.

“I won’t have to be afraid togo into a room anymore. Iwon’t have to be afraid to per-form chest compressions or tobe present when they are intu-bating a patient and giving abreathing treatment that is nec-essary,” the 56-year-old said.

The state’s first phase callsfor vaccinating 650,000 peoplein the health-care field and inlong-term-care facilities overthe next several weeks. Gov.Phil Murphy said the shots willbecome available to the gen-eral public by April and May.

The beginning of vaccina-tions comes as New Jersey isdealing with a new surge of in-fections. The state recorded aseven-day average of 4,740 newCovid-19 cases Tuesday. And

3,660 people were hospitalizedwith the disease or were await-ing test results in the hospitalas of Tuesday. There have beenmore than 15,900 confirmedCovid-19 deaths in the state.

New Jersey hospitals arepreparing for an influx of pa-tients in the next few months.One model produced by thestate’s Department of Healthestimates more than 8,700people could be hospitalized ifthe public ignores warnings ofthe dangers of attending pri-vate gatherings over the holi-days and becomes lax withmasking and social distancing.Covid-19 hospitalizationspeaked at 8,270 in the spring.

Mr. Murphy said the arrivalof the vaccinations marks aturning point. “It was an in-credible thrill to witness thesefirst vaccinations,” he said. “Weknow this is not the end, butwe know we are witnessing atleast the beginning of the end.”

In New York City, hospitalsbegan administering the vac-

cine Monday. Nearly 41,000doses were available at 42hospitals citywide Tuesday,Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “Ourhospitals are ready. They havebeen waiting for this momentpreparing,” he said.

The mayor also warned res-idents that the city likely willgo into a lockdown, with onlyessential businesses open afterChristmas as infection andhospitalization rates continueto rise. Any lockdown and re-strictions would be mandatedby Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“We are just on the verge ofa huge breakthrough with thevaccine, but we’re also dealingwith a second wave,” Mr. deBlasio said.

The average percentage ofpeople testing positive for thevirus over the past week was5.51%, city data showed. Hos-pitalizations have been upover the past few weeks, with160 people admitted Sunday.

—Katie Honancontributed to this article.

Vaccinations Launched in N.J.About 76,000 doseswill be available thisweek for front-linehealth-care workers

in large clusters of people.”New York’s Metropolitan

Transportation Authority car-ried about 8 million riders dailyon the subway, buses and twocommuter-rail systems beforethe pandemic. Its operationsare focused on New York City,which bore the brunt of thepandemic in the spring. Week-day subway ridership is downabout 70% compared with pre-pandemic levels. Weekday com-muter-rail ridership is down be-tween 75% and 80%.

Meghan Ramsey, a researcherat the Lincoln Laboratory who isleading the study, said the ideais to measure contamination inthe air and on surfaces to un-derstand the relative risk ofcontracting the virus and the ef-ficacy of mitigation methods.

Mark Dowd, the MTA’s chiefinnovation officer, said theagency asked DHS to conductthe study to determine scien-tifically whether the virus canbe transmitted on transit andhow to mitigate any risks.

The emphasis in combatingCovid-19 has shifted during thisyear from surfaces to air qual-ity. The shift came as the Cen-ters for Disease Control andPrevention said in the earlysummer that person-to-personinteractions for extended peri-ods, not surfaces, are the lead-ing cause of infections.

The project team says thetests are safe. The mock viraldroplets being released con-tain ingredients common inhousehold products. Neverthe-less, the study is subject to anenvironmental assessment andpublic comment period whichbegan Tuesday. Researchershope to start the study in lateJanuary or early February andto have results by early spring.

A DHS spokeswoman, AnneCutler, said the agency hopeslessons learned from the studycan be applied nationwide.

GREATER NEW YORK

BY PAUL BERGER

N.Y. Seeks AnswersAbout Virus SpreadOn Mass Transit

with flimsier setups or thatany snow accumulated onroofs could cause a collapse.

Another worry is the possi-bility of the city’s army ofsnowplows hitting and damag-ing the structures, particularlybecause many roadways areconsiderably narrower nowthat restaurants have been al-lowed to build out onto streets.

The city hasn’t called for res-taurants to dismantle the out-door structures outright, but itsuggests that establishmentsbring inside portable heatersand furniture or at least secureitems in place. It is also puttinga halt to outdoor roadway din-ing beginning Wednesday at 2p.m., with the closure runningthrough at least Thursday night.

“It’s a new reality,” MayorBill de Blasio said Tuesday ofthe complications restaurants

with outdoor setups would faceduring a snowstorm. Sidewalkdining would still be allowedduring the storm, he added.

Restaurant owners say thechallenge feels all the greater

given how much they have en-dured this year.

“It seems like one thing af-ter another,” said JeffZalaznick, managing partner ofMajor Food Group, a prominent

New York restaurant operatorwhose establishments includeParm, Carbone and Sadelle’s.

Like some other restaura-teurs, Mr. Zalaznick said hehas faith in the stability of thestructures he has erected.“There’s no need to panic,” hesaid, though he noted his set-ups could be removed if neces-sary and then reaffixed be-cause of their modular design.

City officials said thereshouldn’t be issues with plowsrunning into outdoor struc-tures. The Department of Sani-tation, which is responsible forsnow removal, has three dif-ferent size plows precisely be-cause some streets and situa-tions might not be able toaccommodate the larger vehi-cles, said department spokes-man Joshua Goodman.

Mr. Goodman also noted

that the department did testruns earlier this year with theplows to ensure vehicles couldnavigate streets even with theoutdoor structures. “We’vebeen practicing,” he added.

Still, not all restaurants areresting easy. Giselle Deiaco,manager of the uptown loca-tion of Avena, an Italian diningspot on Manhattan’s UpperEast Side, said she plans tohave two employees keepingan eye on the situation duringthe storm to make sure plowsdon’t come too close to theoutdoor structure. “We justhope whoever is driving it isintelligent enough,” she said.

Jin Ahn, co-owner of Nor-eetuh, a Hawaiian restaurantin Manhattan, noted a silverlining: Demand for takeoutand delivery can increasewhen the weather turns nasty.

Having already weatheredmyriad challenges this yearbecause of the pandemic, NewYork City’s restaurants arenow facing a nor’easter set toarrive Wednesday.

The metropolitan area couldsee 8-12 inches of snow andwind gusts up to 50 miles anhour, according to the NationalWeather Service. That will testNew Yorkers in general, but itcould prove especially worri-some for the many dining es-tablishments that have set upoutdoor structures during thepandemic through the city’sOpen Restaurants program.

At issue are concerns as towhether the structures wouldbe able to withstand the storm.Some in the industry fear thatthe winds could wreak havoc

BY CHARLES PASSY

Restaurateurs Hope Outdoor Set-UpsWithstand Storm

A snowplow did a test run in Manhattan earlier this year.

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But that occupancy rate isbased on actively availablerooms and doesn’t take intoaccount hotels that haveclosed temporarily during thepandemic, Mr. Freitag said.The occupancy rate for all ho-

Theoccupancy ratefor all rooms inNYCthe firstweek inDecemberwas24.7%.

Marriott Lays Off Hundreds of Workers at Times Square Hotel

NY

A12B | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 * * THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

GREATERNEW YORKWATCH

QUEENS

Traffic Agent PinnedUnder 18-Wheeler

A New York City traffic agentwas rescued from underneath atractor-trailer after being struckby the 18-wheeler Tuesdaymorning in Queens, police said.

Firefighters and police offi-cers freed the agent, who washit at about 10:30 a.m. onBroadway in the borough’s Asto-ria neighborhood.

The agent was conscious andalert and was taken to ElmhurstHospital for neck and back pain.The agent was listed in stablecondition, police said.

The driver of the tractor-trailer remained at the scene.Sgt. Edward Riley, a policespokesperson, said no criminalityis suspected.

Bystander video showed res-cue workers surrounding the ve-hicle with wooden planks to freethe agent from under the trac-tor-trailer.

—Associated Press

CONNECTICUT

Drought Eases, butCaution Still Urged

Drought conditions have im-proved, but Connecticut officialsare still urging residents to becareful about their water usage.

The Office of Policy and Man-agement announced Tuesdaythe state’s drought work groupvoted last week to improve thedrought stages in six of Con-necticut’s eight counties. Withthese latest changes, all countiesexcept New London are consid-ered to be in the first stage, orbelow normal conditions. Thatmeans despite recent rainfall,there is still some cause for con-cern over issues such as ground-water and reservoir levels.

New London County is now inthe more serious second stage,which means groundwater andstreamflow continue to remainbelow normal region-wide.

Interagency Drought Work-group Chair Martin Heft said ifconsistent rainfall continues,there is a “high probability” con-cerns might be assuaged.

—Associated Press

warehouses are full, and thelogistics companies that runthem are renting nearbyparking lots to store thestockpiled inventory.

A ll told, more than430,000 containers ar-rived at the port in

September and October, 18%more than in 2019, and a re-cord for the period. That’s alot of stuff! To put it in fruitterms—which is alwaysbest—430,000 40-foot con-tainers would hold morethan 20 billion bunches ofbananas.

Indeed, our port, whichspreads across five locationsin New Jersey, Staten Islandand Brooklyn, is the largeston the East Coast and third-largest in the U.S.

It also is where containershipping was invented, in1956, when a New Jerseytrucking company ownerloaded 58 containers directlyfrom his vehicles onto a con-verted oil tanker bound forHouston.

“We’re the first and thegreatest!” Ms. Rooney said.

I can’t say if it is the

booth-like structure where aseries of sensors and cam-eras scans and inspectsthem. The driver speaks to aclerk located in a remote of-fice before getting marchingorders dictated by algorithm.

M any of the 15,000truckers licensed todo business with the

port make three to four tripsa day between the terminaland surrounding warehouses.But with containers piling upbecause of the warehouseshortage, it is hard to movethem efficiently, and waittimes have lengthened. Now,some truckers are down tojust one to two trips a day.

The ships themselves,which typically arrivemonthly or weekly fromAsia, Europe and SouthAmerica, are so big itdoesn’t even make sense.

The typical carrier holdsabout 5,000 standard con-tainers and is roughly 20stories tall and 3.5 footballfields long.

“And it floats!” Ms.Rooney said.

Not every ship is the size

METRO MONEY | By Anne Kadet

New York-Area Ports Are BoomingWhere is

all the actionthis holidayseason? Atthe area’sshipping

ports. They are bustling.They are bananas. They arebursting with imports andrecord truck traffic rumblingthrough to haul it away.

“It’s busy today!” ex-claimed Deputy Port DirectorBethann Rooney, surveyingthe system’s Port NewarkContainer Terminal one re-cent morning. “You can tellby the number of trucksmoving around, the numberof ships in at one time.”

This season has produceda record flow of incomingcargo at the Port of NewYork and New Jersey—drivenin part by the insatiable de-mand for merchandise frompeople stuck at home duringthe pandemic.

In early fall, in prepara-tion for the holidays, 55,000shipping containers of furni-ture and bedding were un-loaded at the port—a 32% in-crease from 2019. Coffee-maker shipments jumped163% to 1,050 containers—that is about three million12-cup machines.

“And washing machines,year-over-year, are up2,600%,” said Ms. Rooney,who learned to drive hugeships while attending SUNYMaritime College in theBronx and joined the PortAuthority in 1993.

The season’s record vol-umes also reflect warehouseoperators and retailersstockpiling goods to preparefor the possibility of anotherglobal-manufacturing shut-down, Ms. Rooney said.

There are more than a bil-lion square feet of privatewarehousing and distribu-tion space in New Jerseythat accept containers ofmerchandise from the portfor redistribution to retailerssuch as Walmart and Ama-zon.com. But now these

of an iceberg. We stopped togawk at the Oleander, whichtravels weekly between NewJersey and Bermuda carryingabout 450 half-size contain-ers. It is the only containervessel running between theU.S. and the tiny country.

“The island of Bermuda is100% dependent on thatship,” Ms. Rooney said.

And not everything ar-rives in a container.

We drove past mountainsof rock salt imported fromSouth America, piles of Bel-gian brick on its way tolandscaping firms, and silosof nut and vegetable oilheaded for area cookie andcracker factories.

The 460-foot VikingOdessa, berthed at the northend of the complex, turnedout to be a floating parkinggarage that can transportthousands of vehicles—inthis case, it was exportingused vehicles to Haiti.

When cars are imported,workers with the Interna-tional Longshoremen’s Asso-ciation move the vehicles offthe ship. They ride up in avan together and drive thenew cars down the ramps,one by one. A worker mightmake 20 to 30 trips a day.

The vehicles are parked ina mile-long lot where theyare accessorized by autoprocessors with featuressuch as spoilers before dis-tribution to dealerships.

Toward the end of thetour, I expressed amazementthat this operation not onlysupplies much of the mer-chandise purchased by con-sumers in the Northeast andbeyond, but is replicated inports around the globe,keeping us neck-deep in mat-tresses and microwave ov-ens.

“And it started here inNew York and New Jersey,”Ms. Rooney added. “Did youhear me? It started here inNew York and New Jersey!”

anne.kadet@wsj.com

A container ship is docked at the Port Newark Container Terminal in New Jersey.

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greatest, but the port is re-ally quite spectacular.

Touring the Port Newarkterminal is like navigating agiant game of Tetris, onlymore predictable. Each ofthe 40,000 brightly coloredcontainers typically on-handis scanned, scheduled andtracked by central computersystems as it moves off the

ship and through the termi-nal on a series of 18-story-tall cranes, top loaders andlong-legged, sideways-mov-ing straddle carriers.

While about 17% of im-ports leave on trains stretch-ing more than 2 miles long,most head out on trucks.The first week in Decembersaw 75,100 trips in and outof the port.

Trucks stop at a toll-

Setting a record, over430,000 containersarrived inSeptemberandOctober.

It is illegal for landlords and real estate agents to deny you housing opportunities because ofyour ethnicity. The Fair Housing Act prohibits housing discrimination based on national origin.If you believe you have experienced a violation of your rights, file a complaint.

FAIR HOUSING: THE LAW IS ON YOUR SIDE.A public service message from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in

cooperation with the National Fair Housing Alliance. The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits

discrimination because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status or disability.

Go to hud.gov/fairhousing or call 1-800-669-9777Federal Relay Service 1-800-877-8339

DIFFERENT NATIONAL ORIGINS.

SAME FAIR HOUSING RIGHTS.

GREATER NEW YORKNY

© 2020 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved. THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, December 16, 2020 | A13

PERSONAL JOURNAL.FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS

filled with gatherings and festiveconcerts and pageants.

Here are some of the messagesthat spiritual leaders are deliver-ing during a time of distress.

Make a DifferenceThe pandemic has made many peo-ple feel helpless, says Rev. MarkFeldmeir. “How do we create an op-portunity for people to feel empow-ered and make a difference?”

He and his staff at St. AndrewUnited Methodist Church in High-lands Ranch, Colo., talked aboutthe importance of nostalgic familyrituals, especially in a year whenthe pandemic has interrupted somany traditions. They came upwith a twist on the Advent wreath,a practice that involves lightingcandles to mark the passage offour Sundays before Christmas.

The church distributed smallcardboard boxes in the church park-ing lot to members of the congrega-tion before the Nov. 29 start of Ad-vent. When the lid is removed, thesides fold down and become a flatcardboard wreath with tea-lightcandles attached—one for each Sun-day before Christmas and anotherin the center for Christmas Day.Members are invited to join a vir-tual candle-lighting service at 5p.m. each Sunday on Zoom.

“We also had a little outreachcomponent,” says Rev. Feldmeir.Each week, members have beenasked to drop off a particular item,such as socks, hats or mittens, at astation in front of the church. Justbefore Christmas, they will bringsleeping bags and winter jackets.All the items will be distributed onChristmas Day to four agenciesserving the homeless.

Look OutwardFor Hanukkah, the eight-day Jew-ish Festival of Lights that beganon Thursday, Rabbi Batsheva Meiriof Congregation Beth HaTephila, aReform congregation in Asheville,N.C., tells the story of how theJewish people lost their templeand reclaimed it: They had onlyone day’s worth of oil to light themenorah to rededicate their tem-ple, but the candles continuedburning for eight nights.

“I talk about this every year, butthis year it takes on new signifi-cance,” she says. Nine months intothe pandemic, people feel spent.“We have just a tiny bit of gas leftto get us through this. But we sur-prise ourselves,” she says. “We seeand hear all those stories of people,health-care workers and others onthe front line, who are able to tapinto a reserve and do what they

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The Rev. Carmen D’Amicostood before his congre-gation in Muse, a formercoal town in westernPennsylvania, and talkedabout not giving into de-

spair and darkness.“Being in a pandemic doesn’t

mean you stop doing what is good,”he told the members of Holy RosaryCatholic Church on a recent rainySunday morning, all wearing masksand sitting in every third pew tokeep safe distance. “If you knowsomeone is alone, call them up.Reach out to them. Do you have el-derly neighbors who need theirleaves raked? Do it. Don’t wait foranyone to ask you.”

Simple actions matter, he says.“We need to support each other toget through this. We need to be thelight for each other.”

Religious and community lead-ers, who like everyone else havebeen grappling with the pandemicfor months, need a special messagefor the 2020 holiday season. Peopleare exhausted by the crisis thatthey thought would be over by now.Many have lost loved ones and jobs.They miss family and friends theycan’t safely visit, an absence deeplyfelt during a season traditionally

BY CLARE ANSBERRY

weekend evening. “The Supper Se-ries really has brought back thatbustling Saturday night feel,” shesays.

Jason Ward is a residentialpainting company owner in Ben-brook, Texas, about 20 minutesoutside Fort Worth. Mr. Ward re-cently worked with Reata, one ofhis favorite Fort Worth restau-rants, to establish a drive-throughpickup spot for orders at a churchparking lot in Benbrook. Since thefirst event this spring, otherdowntown restaurants have fol-lowed suit, he says, and regularpickups from the lot now feel likea social scene. “There are 60 or 70cars and people waving out theircar to each other,” he says.

Randi Gurian, 68, lives in Wil-mette, Ill., about 20 miles outsideChicago. The retired nonprofit ex-ecutive uses Tock to order weeklydelivery from Chicago restaurantsowned by Lettuce Entertain YouEnterprises, which delivers to cer-

Md.; Potomac, Md.; McLean, Va.,and sometimes even farther for adelivery fee of roughly $30. Mealsare costlier to prepare for delivery,he says, because diners expectlarger portions for multiday con-sumption and many dishes requireadditional sauce to keep themfrom drying out.

Sean Feeney, co-owner of Ital-ian restaurants Lilia and Misi inBrooklyn, invested in two refriger-ated trucks to deliver food to cus-tomers who have relocated to thesuburbs. The delivery business hasexpanded so quickly that it al-lowed the company to bring backfurloughed employees sooner thanexpected, he says.

The demand for these types ofservices may have staying powerbeyond the pandemic, says AllenShulman, co-founder of DwellSo-cial, a startup that works with Chi-cago restaurants to coordinatesuburban food pickups. Mr. Shul-man says many of his suburbancustomers are eager for optionsbeyond pizza delivery. Restaurants“are starting to realize the mate-rial impact that offering servicesto the suburbs can have,” says Mr.Shulman, who plans to expand theservice to additional cities in 2021.

But some restaurants view de-livery as a temporary solution.

Ellen Yin, co-founder of Phila-delphia’s Fork and High Street res-taurants, is offering Fork’s food forpickup at various suburban loca-tions. But she says once pandemicrestrictions are lifted, the prioritywill be inviting guests back to thedining room. “We are trying to getto the other side of the pandemic,”she says, “and we just want peopleto remember us.”FR

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tain suburbs in the area. This fall,Ms. Gurian and her husband held asocially distanced outdoor dinnerparty in the couple’s leafy back-yard, inviting friends who live out-side the restaurants’ delivery area.“I love that I live in the right sub-urb for this,” she says.

Still, she says the quality ofrestaurant entrees aren’t alwaysup to snuff when consumed athome. With restaurants outsidethe Lettuce Entertain You group,she says, “I have sometimes foundwhen we bring things home, it’suneven how well those [options]have worked.”

Suburban deliveries can be lo-gistically challenging for restau-rants. Washington, D.C.-based res-taurateur Fabio Trabocchi isworking through the logistics ofdelivering food from his four up-scale restaurants, including Fiola,to nearby suburbs. In the past fewmonths, his restaurants haveramped up deliveries to Bethesda,

Above, takeout orders ready for pickup by suburban diners in Oak Park,Ill. Left, a dinner for two, ordered from Fork restaurant in Philadelphia.

For months, Kate and Ben Ma-sino had failed to find a timefor the 40-minute drive from

their home in Devon, Pa., to Phila-delphia’s Fork restaurant for adate night. But in the midst of thepandemic, the couple found thenext best thing: They orderedFork’s $90 champagne-braisedchicken for two, and picked it upat a local businessjust five minutesfrom their home.

It was a win,says Ms. Masino, a36-year-old health-care executive withtwo children. Thecouple had neverbeen to Fork be-fore, and foundthat the qualitywas predictablybetter than localofferings. “Wewere sick of theusual suspects in our area,” shesays.

High-end urban restaurantshave long thrived with the help ofsuburbanites traveling into thecity for a night out. Now thosesame eateries are making the re-verse commute.

The pandemic has brought limi-tations on in-person dining, andmany suburban diners have foundthemselves too far from city restau-

rants to stop in for pickup or getregular delivery. So urban restaura-teurs are coming up with creativeways to get their food to peoplewho live outside the city, even if itmeans setting up camp in a subur-ban parking lot.

Exclusive restaurants such asNew York’s Eleven Madison Parkand Chicago’s Alinea now offermultiple suburban pickup locationsvia the reservations platform Tock,

with diners pay-ing around $50 to$120 per person.Suburban pickupshave sold outquickly and “gen-erated tens ofmillions of dollarsin revenue,” saysTock’s chief mar-keting officerBryan Fersch-inger.

In November,Chicago restaurantgroup One Off

Hospitality started offering subur-ban fans a three-week-long SupperSeries with pickup locations 20 to30 miles away from its restaurants.Recipients pay $140 for four-coursemeals for two from the group’s res-taurants, including Publican andAvec. Since November, the grouphas sold more than 1,400 subscrip-tions, according to chief executiveKaren Browne, and the revenuestream is comparable with a busy

Now Delivering to a SuburbNear You: City RestaurantsBY ALINA DIZIK

need to do in the darkest of times.”How can people keep going?

Look outward. Notice if a neighborneeds something. “When we areengaged in serving others, thereisn’t the same place and space fordarkness,” she says.

Being separated from lovedones during the holidays is diffi-cult, she says, but such longing isalso a sign of the many deep con-nections in our lives. “If we didn’tfeel sadness and longing, thatwould be really sad.”

Write a LetterThis year, Christmas cards mattermore than ever, says Rev. MichaelCurry, presiding bishop of the Epis-copal Church in New York. He re-cently received a handwritten letterand immediately sat down to readit, feeling touched that someonehad taken the time to write.

“It is worth the extra effort tosend a handwritten Christ-mas card. I may not beable to touch you, butI can see your hand-written words,” hesays. “Let me tellyou, that makes adifference, espe-cially this holidayseason, when somany people willbe alone.”

He encouragessending cards to familyand friends—but also to oneor two others: “People inyour community, yourchurch or club, some-one you normallywouldn’t send acard to.”

Every day, hesays, he asks him-self how he will in-tentionally and de-liberately love God,himself and his neigh-bors. Sending a Christ-mas card is one of thoseways. “Anything we can doto brighten the life of an-other,” he says. “Evenif it’s just a little bit.That’s OK. It doesn’ttake a ton of lightto cast away thedarkness.”

Seek UnityAdrian Williamsconsidered cancelingher annual Kwanzaacelebration this year be-cause of Covid-19.

“Then I looked at what was hap-pening in our country and our com-munity and thought we need it nowmore than ever,” says Ms. Williams,who is director of the Village Proj-ect in San Francisco, a nonprofityouth-enrichment program. Everyyear for the past 14 years, she orga-nized a community celebration ofKwanzaa, which runs from Dec. 26to Jan. 1 and celebrates seven val-ues, one each day, with the lightingof a candle. The holiday, which isn’ttied to any specific religion, cele-brates African heritage.

The first day honors unity,which this year takes on specialmeaning. “This country is so di-vided and in order for us to heal,

we have to do it collectively,” shesays. “We need to take care of eachother. My brother’s problem is myproblem.” With so many people un-employed and small and minoritybusinesses hurting in the pandemic,Day 4, dedicated to Ujamaa, or co-operative economics, is even moreimportant. “We encourage peopleto shop at small businesses andkeep money in the community.”

This year, the Villages Projectwill stream nightly services fromdifferent venues, lighting the can-dles and honoring those who havedied. As food is a big part ofKwanzaa, a no-contact meal pickupwill be provided. Each evening’sprogram will end with a 45-minuteperformance of a local blues band.“I love the blues,” she says.

If Ms. Williams had to offer onemessage for Kwanzaa 2020, shesays, it would be simple: “Be kind.Try to do something good and pro-

ductive every day. Be a doerof the Word, not just a

hearer of the Word.”

Spread HopeOn the first Sundayof Advent, Rev.Paul RobesonFord, senior pastorof the First BaptistChurch in Winston-

Salem, N.C., talkedabout hope during a

service live-streamed onYouTube and Facebook.

“We light the first can-dle on the Adventwreath, representinghope even in themidst of a pan-demic and every-thing we have en-dured,” he said,noting that a vac-cine would be mak-ing its way to the

public. “There is rea-son to believe that be-

fore Advent is over, the endof this pandemic will begin.”

It’s a message espe-cially important forthe large number ofpeople in his con-gregation who arein their 80s and90s and livealone.

“The churchwas the center of

their social life,” hesays. They partici-

pated in full productionsof Handel’s Messiah, live na-

tivity displays and organized elab-orate Christmas-card exchanges.Some are gold-star members,meaning they have belonged tothe 141-year-old church for 50years.

Many didn’t know much aboutsocial media, but now have Face-book accounts so they can watchthe services online. The church ismaking sure they receive Christ-mas cards and phone calls.

Harriet Smith recently turned100, and church members sent hercards and gifts. She sent a thank-you card, read at the Advent ser-vice. “You all make me feel so spe-cial,” she wrote. “Nice things seemto bloom from you.”

Ways to Help OthersIn This Holiday SeasonSome of themessages of hope from spiritual leaders amid the pandemic

A14 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

he said. So far, nearly 9,500 fami-lies have enrolled in the pro-gram—most choosing the wiredoption, Mr. Wheeler said.

In Florida, Donna Goldstein, GIS/IT solutions manager at the PalmBeach County school district, usedGIS software to map out neighbor-hoods with the highest concentra-tion of families likely to lack stableinternet. She said the district hasrun into roadblocks from home-owner associations that don’t wantsolar-powered Wi-Fi antennas in-stalled in their subdivisions. Thedistrict had to get creative aboutfinding places to install the anten-nas, placing them on school build-ings, churches and an animal-con-trol center. The local powercompany donated 1,000 woodenutility poles for the project.

The next step is to get Wi-Fi ac-cess points to families in the mostrural parts of the county. Dr. Gold-stein expects to have more than halfof the 80,000 students who don’thave internet connected by the endof March. “One of the only goodthings that’s come out of the pan-demic has been the opportunity toclose the digital divide becausewhat we’re doing today will be per-manent,” Dr. Goldstein said.

Common Sense Media estimatesthat closing the gap would require acollaboration of government andprivate entities and that it wouldcost up to $5.5 billion in one-timeinstallation and device costs, plusup to $5.6 billion in annual charges.

Laura Gomez’s two childrenwere using her smartphone’shot spot to log in to remoteschool early this fall, but thevideo calls often dropped.The connection was so weak

the children couldn’t always see orhear their teachers.

Ms. Gomez, who lives in a smallagricultural community in Califor-nia’s Central Valley, often had todrive 20 minutes east to her sis-ter-in-law’s home in Modesto soher children could connect to theirfirst- and fifth-grade classes usingtheir aunt’s home broadband.

Then, in late September Ms.Gomez received a Motorola routerand modem from the PattersonJoint Unified School District, andnow her family has high-speed in-ternet at home. “I’m so happy wehave this for the children. Thechildren are happy, too, becausethey can see everything moreclearly now,” she said.

School districts and citiesacross the country are racing tobridge a digital divide that has ex-isted for decades. According todata collected before the pan-demic, approximately 30% of U.S.K-12 public-school students livedin households without either aninternet connection or a device ad-equate for distance learning, ac-cording to Common Sense Media.That is 16 million children.

At least 39 states have saidthey would use funds from thefederal Coronavirus Aid, Relief andEconomic Security (Cares) Act tohelp school districts close the techgap, according to the NationalConference of State Legislatures.

The fixes can be fairly simple.School-district and municipal ITdepartments are using technologythat has been around for years,such as solar-powered antennas totransmit Wi-Fi, or wireless broad-band, closer to more peoples’homes. With fresh funding comesmore elaborate fixes, such as ex-tending a school’s network infra-structure right to students’ doors.

The hardest part is determiningexactly who needs access. Schooldistricts survey parents about their

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The Gomez children—Yaneth, 6, and Gabriel Ignacio, 11—get high-speedinternet at home because of a router and modem their public schooldistrict in California’s Central Valley provided; left, their mother, Laura.

pers, and out of nowhere, this hotrodder named Richard Thomasshowed up at my doorstep, and hehas been helping ever since. Thefirst thing we had to do at thatpoint was get that Allison enginerunning again.It took a long time to find some-

one to rebuild the engine. When Idid, Richard helped me take the en-gine to California. The job took ayear and a half, and Richard helpedme bring the engine back. He hasbecome a best friend to me. Nowthe engine is back in the car and itruns. Let me tell you: It is scary!This job has turned into a life-

long project. My plan now is to tryto find a museum that can takegood care of the car and help cele-brate my father’s legacy.

Butch Graham, 64, a house painterfrom Salt Lake City on his “City ofSalt Lake” land-speed racer and thelegacy of his father, Athol Graham,as told to A.J. Baime.

For many years, people have comefrom all over the world to try tobreak land-speed records on the

Bonneville Salt Flats, outside of SaltLake City. In 1958, my father, AtholGraham, decided that somebodyfrom Salt Lake City should have theland-speed record, since we had thesalt right here. He had an auto-repairbusiness in town, and he startedbuilding cars in this garage.At the time, land-speed racing

was a big deal, and my father hadbig dreams. The more I have lived,the more I have learned how bigthose dreams were, and how manypeople my father inspired.He built the “City of Salt Lake”

racing car out of the frame of a die-sel truck, with an Allison V-12 air-FR

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Land-SpeedRacer BondsFather, SonAnd History

she gave it to him.Forty years ago, I went to Las

Vegas to get the car back. It hadbeen sitting on this guy’s front lawnfor years, out in the elements.When I started restoring it, peoplewho knew my father came out ofthe woodwork to help me. I havehad old guys hunt me down, cometo see the car, and just start to cry.Every December, I would take a

month off to work on the car be-cause nobody wanted their housepainted around the holidays. I hadto rebuild the body. It was a lot offabrication, and painting, too. Onthe 50th anniversary of my father’sdeath in 2010, we took the car backout onto the Salt Flats to show itto people. The engine was not in it,at the time. That made the newspa-

Butch Graham, below, restored the ‘City of Salt Lake,’ a car his father dreamed would go 400 mph.

plane engine from a World War IIP-38 Lightning. It’s a 1,710-cubic-inch engine, and if you know theslightest thing about cars, you knowthat this thing is a beast. [The U.S.military rated this engine at 1,325-horsepower in the 1930s, accordingto the National Museum of theUnited States Air Force.]In December 1959, my father was

able to go over 344 mph in the“City of Salt Lake.” The record atthe time was 394 mph, and hewanted to break 400 mph. On Aug.1, 1960, he crashed at Bonneville atover 300 mph and was killed. [Hisdeath was reported in newspapersaround the country and evenabroad.] I was just 4 years old. Ihave seen many pictures of the twoof us together, but I have no mem-ory of him.After he died, a teenage me-

chanic named Otto Anzjon, who had

helped my father build the car, de-cided he wanted to rebuild it andfulfill my father’s dreams. Otto hadcancer, and his parents thought ifhe had something to focus himselfon, that would help with the dis-

ease. He rebuilt the carand ran it at Bonnevillein 1962, over 200 mph,before he blew out a tire.He survived the crash,but he died of leukemiasoon after.When my mother went

to sell the building wheremy father had his autoshop, she had no place toput what was left of thiscar. A guy from Las Vegassaid he could redesign itand make it go fast. So

trol over who accesses the net-work, and which websites userscan access. The district providesfamilies with a router and a mo-dem that communicates with pri-vate wireless broadband run on theCitizens Broadband Radio Service.

The Patterson school districthas installed antennas—each witha radius of up to a mile—at six of

its eight schools andplans to install twomore. That shouldprovide enoughrange to bring high-speed internet to all6,000 of its students.Cares Act fundingcovered about 70%of the roughly $2million project.

Philadelphia, withfunding from Com-cast Corp., privatedonors and the CaresAct, began offeringfree hotspots or

wired internet service in August tofamilies in the city’s public, pri-vate and charter schools. As ofJuly, about 18,000 householdslacked stable internet service, thecity estimates.

It has been hard to persuadesome families to sign up, saidMark Wheeler, Philadelphia’s chiefinformation officer. “There is adistrust of government and of freeprograms, because there alwaysseems to be a gotcha. And there isa distrust of telecom companies,”

isn’t available.Sharing hot spots between fam-

ilies wasn’t ideal because of spottyreception, data caps and frequentconnection drops, especially whenmore than one student at a timewas connected. “It wasn’t accept-able,” Mr. Menge said.

The district decided on a more-permanent fix—a private networkdeveloped by Motorola Solutions.Families can connect directly toschools’ internet as if they were inthe building. The district has con-

PERSONAL JOURNAL. | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS

internet needs but don’t always geta high response rate. Administra-tors can narrow down which stu-dents are likely to be in need basedon whether they qualify for freeand reduced-price lunches.

Some districts also are relyingon geographic information systemsoftware—used for decades todraw school boundaries and createbus routes—to map out neighbor-hoods with the highest concentra-tion of families with bandwidthneeds, so they can place radio orbroadband antennas strategicallyto have the broadest reach.

Districts also can look at internetservice providers’ coverage maps todetermine who mighthave connectivity, butthey aren’t always ac-curate. “We’d enter afamily’s physical ad-dress on a website,and it would say ser-vice is available, butwhen we went outthere, that wasn’t thecase,” said Jeff Menge,assistant superintend-ent of business ser-vices at the Pattersonschool district.

Mr. Menge re-

called how over a year ago he be-gan getting alerts from the dis-trict’s security company. Hechecked school cameras and sawchildren were entering schoolgrounds at night and on weekendswith their laptops to access theWi-Fi. “It hit me how much fami-lies are struggling when I realizedthat children have to jump thefence at school to do their home-work,” he said.

The district had enough laptopsto loan one to every student, butofficials knew many of them prob-ably didn’t have internet access.Mr. Menge said more than 70% ofthe district’s families are low in-come and up to 40% live in ruralareas where high-speed internet

FAMILY& TECHJULIEJARGON

Schools SpeedUpInternet forRural Students

Investments in closingthe digital divide are arare positive outcome ofthe pandemic.

NY

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, December 16, 2020 | A15

MUSIC REVIEW

‘McCartney III’: SongsFrom aHomebound BeatlePaulMcCartney returns with the third installment in a series of solo work

When one doorcloses, anotheropens, as folk wis-dom has it. Buthaving the thumbs-up optimism, work-

aholic instincts and passion forcomposing and performing thathave long been among Paul McCart-ney’s character traits helps—asdoes having a state-of-the-art re-cording studio on your property.Mr. McCartney had planned tospend this year touring, butCovid-19 shut down the concertworld, leaving him largely confinedto his estate in Sussex, England. Sohe did what anyone who has fol-lowed his work over the past 50years would have expected: Hecompleted a few old songs, wrote abatch of new ones, and recordedthe lot. The result, “McCartney III,”is due on Friday from Capitol/UMG.

“McCartney III” is the third in-stallment in a series within Mr. Mc-Cartney’s solo output. Like “McCart-ney” (1970), recorded as the Beatleswere imploding, and “McCartney II”(1980), recorded as he was losinginterest in working with Wings, hispost-Beatles band, “McCartney III”is a DIY effort: Mr. McCartneywrote the songs (there are no col-laborations), played all the instru-ments and was the producer. Butwhere the first two albums eachfound him at a career crossroads,that doesn’t seem to be the casenow—unless he sees, in the pan-demic, an end to touring.

Musically, the three recordingscould not be more different. “Mc-Cartney,” partly recorded in hisLondon house, has a homespunquality and, with a few durable ex-ceptions (“Maybe I’m Amazed,”most notably), sounds like a glori-fied demo. “McCartney II” is moreexperimental, with electronic explo-rations and idiosyncratic instru-mentals, yet it also taps into thecommercial zeitgeist on songs like“Coming Up.”

“McCartney III” is far more pol-ished and densely textured than“McCartney,” thanks to advances intechnology since 1970, and notablyless experimental than “McCartneyII,” largely because Mr. McCartneyhas more recently opted to channelhis most exploratory ideas into hisoccasional pseudonymous record-ings as the Fireman. But there areboundary-pushing touches. His pen-chant for false endings and unex-pected codas has expanded; in “FindMy Way,” the coda accounts for aquarter of the song.

In “Deep Down,” a riffy, throw-away lyric with a “party every night”refrain is set against a dark, ominousorgan backing and punctuating R&B-tinged synthesized brass figures; itcould be Mr. McCartney’s musicalrendering of the tension betweenwanting to get out there and thepandemic preventing it.

The lockdown is not overtlymentioned in the album’s 11 songs,

BY ALLAN KOZINN

ARTS IN REVIEWbut its influence is felt, along withthat of climate change and otherbaleful issues. The jaunty playful-ness of “Seize the Day,” one of thealbum’s more memorable tracks, isbelied by a dystopian bridge:“When the cold days come / Andthe old ways fade away / There’ll beno more sun / And we’ll wish thatwe had / Held on to the day.” Asimilar wistfulness for the purity ofnature is etched into “The Kiss ofVenus,” a melodically opulent songdistinguished by the use of a harp-sichord in its second half.

But this is not a thematic album.Its darker, more topical currentsare veiled in a combination ofwordplay, striking melodies anddeft arrangements, and surroundedby songs on other topics. “PrettyBoys” touches on the interplay be-tween photographers and malemodels. “Lavatory Lil” is an unchar-acteristically unsparing brickbat

aimed at awoman hehas said hewill neveridentify.Many listen-ers, though,are likely tointerpret itslyrics—“Youthink she’sbeingfriendly /But she’slooking for aBentley”

and “She’s acting like a starlet / Butshe’s looking like a harlot / As she’sslowly heading over the hill”—asreferences to Mr. McCartney’s sec-ond wife, Heather Mills.

Dense rockers and light-texturedacoustic ballads sit side by side yetflow smoothly toward the album’scloser, “Winter Bird/When WinterComes,” a graceful paean to countrylife. The song is actually a comple-tion of a recording Mr. McCartneyleft unfinished in 1992, and you cantell: His voice is fresh and supple,not yet touched by the pitch waverand slight hoarseness that havecrept up on him over the past de-cade. Elsewhere on “McCartney III”those deficits are inventively miti-gated, sometimes by double-track-ing or the use of reverb and othereffects, sometimes through the useof falsetto, but often because Mr.McCartney (mostly) writes to thecontours of his current range.

The state of Mr. McCartney’svoice is a hot topic among his fans,not least because in its prime itwas one of the most attractive inrock. But many a singer has built acareer with less of a voice than hehas now, so perhaps it’s time to ac-knowledge that at age 78 he can’tbe expected to sound as he did at25 or 50, and to focus on his stillestimable strengths as a songwriter,arranger and instrumentalist, allamply evident on “McCartney III.”

Mr. Kozinn writes about music forthe Journal.

The new album isout Friday; on it, Mr.McCartney plays allthe instruments

UNIVER

SALMUSICGRO

UP

between “The Stand” and our cur-rent situation, there is somethingthat differentiates them—the su-pernatural aspect being one, ofcourse; the biblical-level pestilencebeing another.

Developed by Mr. Boone withBenjamin Cavell, “The Stand” is anoften-gripping piece of television,new episodes of which will appeareach Thursday. The spirit anddread of Mr. King’s epic have beensuccessfully, if more succinctly, in-corporated into the series. Thedrawback of its timing? It mightdistract us from how timeless apiece of fiction can really be.

The StandBegins Thursday, CBS All Access

CBS(2)

THE CLASSICS of dystopian fictionhave often been born of an unhappyvision, but they’ve always been theproduct of uncluttered logic: Take anexisting problem to its possible end,imagine the worst and, voilà, youhave the perpetual war of “NineteenEighty-Four,” the ultra-violence of “AClockwork Orange,” the reproductivetyranny of “A Handmaid’s Tale”—and the pandemic of “The Stand,”whose arrival right now as a nine-part miniseries seems more than abit uncanny, morbidly fascinatingand in somewhat questionable taste.

The taste question has to do withgore and rats and the bio mess inwhich director Josh Boone gleefullyspins Stephen King’s story—and theoften-graphic violence that keeps ithumming—at a timewhen a very similarscenario seems tobe playing out off-screen. Mr. King’s1978 novel, like thenew CBS All Accessadaptation, envi-sions a military-made virus escapinga bioweapons lab inCalifornia, and thenbeing spread glob-ally by the govern-ment in an attemptto sidestep blame.What Mr. King did,in what was originally an 1,150-plus-page book—“my American fantasyepic,” and his answer to “The Lordof the Rings”—was conjure up aworld with no plan in place for anysuch disaster. Where seven billionpeople would immediately succumb.And where the survivors—many ofthem, anyway—would go primal.

Not a huge leap of imagination,but one that Mr. King, in his custom-ary fashion, adorned with memora-ble characters, heartbreaking plotpoints and the occasional blackly

comic twist. One occurs in episode 1of this “Stand” (there was a minise-ries in 1994 and a comic book seriesfrom 2008-12) when a voice we as-sume to be that of the president as-sures the public that there is no lab-made virus, coughing his waythrough the whole address.

Shooting finished in March 2020,just under the figurative wire,though certain aspects of the seriesare surprisingly current and pointed.The opening scene, for instance, in-volves first responders entering achurch full of rotting bodies in Boul-der, Colo., where the worshiperswere exercising their right of reli-gious assembly. In a later scene,singer-songwriter Larry Underwood(Jovan Adepo) hits the stage without

his bandmates—who are all sick—and applauds the “real New Yorkers”in the sparse crowd who “wouldn’tlet a couple of sniffles keep themhome.” No one there lives to regretit, except Larry, who proves to be an“immune.” Likewise, a pair of teen-agers in coastal Ogunquit, Maine—Frannie Goldsmith (Odessa Young),whom we watch drag her father outof their home so she can bury him inthe yard, and Harold Lauder (OwenTeague), who’s in love with Frannieand thinks the pandemic is his

chance to score. Harold is repulsive,and will get worse.

He’s a penny-ante psychopath,however, compared to Flagg (Alex-ander Skarsgård), the mysteriousstranger who appears in the dreamsof the immunes, sets up shop in LasVegas and crucifies his insubordi-nate followers. Is he Satan? IsMother Abagail Freemantle (WhoopiGoldberg), who also appears in sur-vivor dreams, really the voicebox ofGod? In Mr. King’s Manichaean,post-infection world, Flagg fomentsevil while Mother Abagail alerts achosen few that they are to lead thesurvivor’s commune in Boulder.

One of the select is the story’sputative hero, Stu Redman (a solidJames Marsden), who early in the

series is abducted by the militaryfor study at a secure research facil-ity where his keeper, Dr. Ellis(Hamish Linklater), quips, “Just amonth ago we were worried aboutEbola.” This establishes the seriesas having been updated from the’80s of Mr. King’s original book andthe ’90s of the unabridged editionof 1990. But it also points up thefallacy of predictive fiction, andprophecy itself: If you believe inone, and wait long enough, confir-mation will arrive. Mr. King couldhave been writing about Ebola. Hemight originally have been predict-ing AIDS. He might have been writ-ing about Covid-19. (He did, in fact,write the show’s ninth episode.)But for every parallel that exists

TELEVISION REVIEW | JOHN ANDERSON

ADystopia for Today and Tomorrow

Whoopi Goldberg, above, and Jovan Adepo and James Marsden, left, in ‘The Stand’

A16 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

WeatherShown are today’s noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day.

City Hi Lo W Hi Lo W City Hi Lo W Hi Lo WToday Tomorrow Today Tomorrow

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Amsterdam 48 46 c 50 43 pcAthens 60 47 s 59 47 pcBaghdad 70 50 pc 68 52 pcBangkok 89 74 t 88 74 pcBeijing 35 13 pc 41 17 pcBerlin 46 36 c 45 38 cBrussels 52 46 c 51 43 pcBuenos Aires 77 68 s 82 71 sDubai 81 65 s 81 64 pcDublin 49 41 sh 52 47 cEdinburgh 50 43 r 49 46 pc

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Today Tomorrow

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OFFENDERS | By Gary LarsonAcross1 Vogue

5 Black jack, e.g.

10 Links numbers

14 River throughRussia

15 Stand forsomething?

16 MathematicianTuring

17 Make a big dealout of a politicaltiebreaker?

19 Himalayanlegend

20 Deadly nerve gas

21 Printing flourish

22 JFK lander inthe previouscentury

25 Come to gripswith idleness?

28 Aussie burrower

30 Friend in France

31 Method: Abbr.

32 Sweet sandwich

33 Some people getthem for scoring

36 Disparage acounterfeitproduct?

41 Sailing hazards

42 Invalid

44 Surgery ctrs.

47 Alley ___

48 “Ditto”

50 Finance a pilotderived from apopular TVseries?

54 Slump

55 Shopaholic’souting

56 Excessively

58 Perfect place

59 Broadcastclips of agrandstandingexhibitionist?

64 Treat forchickadees

65 Befuddled

66 Toledo’s lake

67 Somedeliveries

68 Make ___ in(decreaseslightly)

69 Button in anemail app

TheWSJ Daily Crossword | Edited by Mike Shenk

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54

55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66

67 68 69

Previous Puzzle’s Solution

s

Solve this puzzle online and discuss it atWSJ.com/Puzzles.

I D E A C A P E A S A H IS E A L P I L L P E R O NN A S C A R D A D P E E R ST R Y O N Z E N A N N E

T H A T W A S A B L A S TC H O P R A T W O S

J O E L O L D C O L O RF I R A T L A N T A I V EK N E E L B O O S V E N

N O O N A M B I E NG L A D T R A S H B A G SR I T Z E M U U N I O NA B B O T A S Y M M E T R YC R A N E T H O U R U S EE A T E N H I N D S P O T

Down1 Mojito base

2 MSNBC’s Melber

3 Gadot of“WonderWoman”

4 Fraternal ordersince 1868

5 Parisian pointillist

6 Wall Streetworry

7 United

8 Outstanding, indated slang

9 Capriciouscreature

10 Check recipient

11 Old Olds models

12 Formallyapprove

13 Demonstratesdisdain

18 Winner of 13French Opentitles, familiarly

21 Smug expression

22 Helium’s atomicnumber

23 Get down tobusiness

24 “Right on!”

26 Snacks in shells

27 Apple on a desk

29 Angry chorus

33 Giraffe’s cousin

34 NBC weekendfixture

35 Carol, e.g.

37 Settled on

38 Surgeon generalunder Reagan

39 Astor’s wares

40 Boxer botherer

43 Race part

44 Preoccupy

45 OutKast, e.g.

46 Vet

48 At most

49 Retro hairdo

51 Smallville family

52 Sip slowly

53 Elizabeth of“Avengers:Infinity War”

57 Leavesdumbfounded

59 Bond rating

60 “___ be myhonor!”

61 Source of iron

62 Pike part

63 Took a course

The St. Paul Saints havethrived in a staid, tradi-tion-bound industry formore than a quartercentury because of

their fierce commitment to the un-conventional and their embrace ofthe absurd.

Guided by the mantra that “Funis Good,” the Saints have used out-landish promotions, affordableprices and a family atmosphere toemerge as the jewel of the inde-pendent professional baseball cir-cuit. The team’s ownership groupincludes Mike Veeck—whose fa-ther, Bill, was an MLB owner fa-mous for zany promotions—andthe actor Bill Murray, who onceshowed up to work as a tickettaker at a Saints game.

“St. Paul was known for being‘Rebel Baseball,’ ” said JoshuaSchaub, the commissioner of theAmerican Association, the Saints’league since 2006. “That’s howthey marketed, that they were an-tiestablishment.”

That iconoclastic attitude madelast week’s news so surprising:The Saints are going mainstream.Starting in 2021, the Saints willleave the independent minorleagues and become the Triple-Aaffiliate of the Minnesota Twins,their major-league neighbor.

The move makes the Saints asurprise winner in Major LeagueBaseball’s dramatic overhaul of theminor leagues and serves as a tes-tament to their remarkable successwithout the formal backing of aparent club.

The team averaged 8,000 fans agame in 2019 to CHS Field in St.Paul, about double that of any oftheir American Association com-petitors and more than all butseven affiliated minor-leagueteams. The Saints’ outsized popu-larity, coupled with their proximityto the Twins’ Target Field, turnedthem into an attractive partner forMLB.

Not everyone is so happy aboutthat. The unexpected alliance alsoprovides a stark glimpse of MLB’stightening grip on professionalbaseball across all levels.

A portion of Saints fans feel be-trayed over what they see as theirfavorite team abandoning its inde-pendent roots—and what they con-sider to be the beginning of theend of the outsider status thatonce defined independent baseball.

“Their history in indie ball is sorich that having them—I don’twant to say ‘sell out’—but sell outto a major-league team and beingseen as an affiliate hurts the peo-ple who respect the history of in-die ball, that you want to haveyour own path,” said KaylaThompson, who runs a websiteabout independent baseball.

Marv Goldklang, the Saints’principal owner, has a message forthose who might be concerned:“We’re not going corporate,” hesaid.

After more than a year of spec-ulation and debate, MLB is rollingout a restructuring of the minorsthat would reduce the number ofaffiliated teams from 160 to 120.Some of the teams cut loose byMLB have already latched on with

BY JARED DIAMOND

BY BEN COHEN

GiannisStays inMilwaukee

moving to affiliated ball first sur-faced, the question among fanshas been whether that willingnessto push boundaries would change.In Triple-A, the Saints will notonly have to answer to theTwins—but they also must shifttheir focus on the field to prepar-ing the Twins’ top prospects forMinnesota.

Beyond that, both sides say thatthe Saints won’t change. Goldklangsays that besides the players, theexperience will be the same as itwas before.

“I love independent ball, and Ididn’t approach this and go, ‘Hey,this is the greatest thing in thehistory of the world,’ ” Veeck said.“I just think the stars aligned per-fectly in support of this.”

Saints officials say that to thispoint, their internal data tellsthem that a large majority of theirfans approve of the team linkingup with the Twins. They hope the2021 season will win over the re-maining skeptics who still worryabout the Twins neutering theSaints.

Still, even the Saints acknowl-edge that they are leaving some-thing behind as they say goodbyeto independent baseball. Ulti-mately, they hope they will changeMLB more than MLB changesthem. A Saints spokesman saidthat the team’s primary owners,including Murray, were all onboard with the move.

“We need one another rightnow more than ever,” Veeck said.

1993 as part of an ownershipgroup that includes Veeck andMurray. At the time, Goldklangsaid, “We all thought that we’d in-vest a little money, we’ll have ahell of a lot of fun and we’d lose itall within two or three years.” TheTwins, initially not thrilled withanother baseball team enteringtheir market, wouldn’t haveminded that outcome.

That’s not what happened. TheSaints forged an identity of theirown as counter-programming,largely by emphasizing the funny(the pig mascot who brings base-balls to the umpire); the weird(the nun who gives massages tofans at the ballpark) and the silly(staging a one-block parade afterwinning the championship in2019). Sometimes, the antics havebeen more controversial—like the“bobble-foot doll” promotionmocking former Idaho Sen. LarryCraig, who in 2007 was arrested atthe Minneapolis-St. Paul Interna-tional Airport for lewd conduct ina men’s restroom.

“We were great at apologizing,”Veeck said.

It’s clear why the Twins wantedthe Saints: They now will havetheir top farm system a few milesaway from their home stadium, aluxury that will enable them toquickly summon new players asneeded. Twins president of base-ball operations Derek Falvey de-scribed this as a “competitive ad-vantage.”

Ever since rumors of the Saints

independent leagues or collegiatesummer leagues, while others con-tinue to search for a home.

MLB believes the changes willstreamline operations, improve fa-cilities and travel for players andincrease the efficiency of whatteams increasingly saw as abloated, unnecessarily expensiveand outdated apparatus for devel-oping talent. Perhaps most nota-bly, however, the revamp givesMLB overarching control of almost

every nook and crevice of probaseball, fundamentally alteringthe relationship between the ma-jors and the leagues under it.

“I just hope that the operatorsof professional baseball teams be-low the major-league level,whether it be affiliated or inde-pendent, continue to be able toconduct themselves with the samedegree and quality of operationalfreedom that they’ve had over theyears, because I think it’s whathelps grow the game,” Goldklangsaid.

Goldklang started the Saints in

‘We’re not goingcorporate.’

—St. Paul Saintsprincipal ownerMarv Goldklang

The Greek star signed for five years.

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THE BIGGEST QUESTION hangingover this NBA season now has anunexpected answer: Giannis isstaying.

Giannis Antetokounmpo endedspeculation about his future onTuesday by agreeing to sign a five-year contract extension with theMilwaukee Bucks worth $228 mil-lion. The deal will keep the two-time reigning NBA most valuableplayer with the franchise thathelped develop an unknown Greekkid into a global superstar.

“This is my home, this is mycity,” Antetokounmpo wrote in atweet with emojis of a heart andprayer-hands.

His decision to stay with Mil-waukee—coming less than a weekbefore the deadline, when the sea-son begins—represents a financialwindfall for Antetokounmpo and amajor triumph for the Bucks, achampionship favorite that cannow operate from a position ofstrength. It’s a disappointment forthe teams that were planning topursue him in free agency nextsummer, but it’s also a sigh of re-lief for the NBA, a league that hadbecome accustomed to big talentsleaving smaller markets behind.

Antetokounmpo didn’t have tosign the lucrative extension now—or ever. He could have dragged outthe negotiations and left all thatmoney dangling. He could have leftthe Bucks in unrestricted freeagency next summer. He couldhave signed another deal thatpromised more flexibility in uncer-tain financial times, allowing himto exploit his leverage over thefront office as he positioned him-self for a bigger payday later.

The presence of Antetokounmpoalone makes the Bucks title con-tenders for the third consecutiveseason, and his commitment sig-nals a vote of confidence in a teamthat has flopped as a favorite inthe last two playoffs. After theirlatest disappointing flameout, theBucks remade their roster by trad-ing for Jrue Holiday, a guard whomakes the NBA’s best defense evenbetter. But they bungled anothertrade that was meant to assureAntetokounmpo they would remainaggressive.

SPORTS

The Rebels of theMinorsGoMainstream

The St. Paul Saints, an offbeat alternative to the majors, will jointhe Twins organization as baseball revamps the minor leagues

A pig delivers baseballs to the umpire at a St. Paul Saints game in the independent minor leagues.

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, December 16, 2020 | A17

Coercion in Xinjiang’s Cotton Fields

‘I n the past, my lazythoughts . . . were seri-ous. Now, I finally un-

derstand that the happiestthing is to use the money Iearn with my hard-workinghands and my sweat.”

These are the words of a Ui-ghur villager in China’s Xinji-ang region who, in 2018, wasforced into picking cotton bycommunist authorities. It’shard to think these words areanything but propaganda. In aUighur village in PayzawatCounty, officials entered everyhome twice and conducted“thought education” untilenough pickers had been mobi-lized. In 2018 more than half amillion ethnic minorities—from Kazakhs to Uighurs—were coerced into China’s cot-ton fields through Beijing’s“labor transfer” program.

These are the findings of mynew report on forced labor in

China’s cotton production pub-lished by the Center for GlobalPolicy. The U.S. government re-cently banned all cotton and re-lated products from a state-owned paramilitary entity inXinjiang on forced-laborgrounds, but the true extent ofthis injustice runs much deeper.Xinjiang’s entire cotton produc-tion is tainted with coercion.

Xinjiang is the largest cot-ton-growing region in theworld, producing 85% of Chi-nese cotton and 20% of theglobal supply. Lavished withgovernment subsidies, Xin-jiang cotton has become cen-tral to global supply chains.

Xinjiang’s forced-labor sys-tem grew exponentially duringthe time when regional author-ities also built “vocationaltraining camps” in which asmany as 1.8 million peoplehave been imprisoned. Eachyear, Xinjiang municipalitiesinquire with cotton producersabout their labor needs. Chi-nese officials then descend onlocal villages to conscript theworkers. Government reportsabound with “success stories”of officials who visit homes un-til family members “agree” towork, a process that involves“transformed thinking.”

Once the workers are se-cured, officials transfer them tothe fields in tightly managedgroups of 30 to 50 and overseetheir work. One governmentdocument states that officialsmust “eat, live, study, and worktogether” with the laborerswhile continuously carrying out“ideological education.” A gov-ernment report mandates that

officials function like “securityguards.” Another notes that mi-nority cotton pickers are fre-quently checked on by authori-ties to see whether their “stateof mind” is “stable.”

Since Beijing will never per-mit independent audits ofworking conditions, it is im-possible to know how much ofXinjiang’s cotton productioninvolves coercion. Based on myfindings, it must be assumedthat all Xinjiang cotton is con-taminated by forced labor. Inaddition to the limited U.S.ban, governments around theworld should consider a totalban on all products made withthe region’s cotton.

That’s the most effectiveway to constrain the flow ofcotton picked by hands thathad no choice.

Mr. Zenz is a senior fellowin China studies at the Victimsof Communism MemorialFoundation.

By Adrian Zenz

TheWest needs widercontrols on Chineseimports producedwith forced labor.

OPINION

For a year wehave beenbombardedwith analy-ses—some so-ber, othersless so—abouthow institu-tions could beabused tosubvert thewill of the

people and award PresidentTrump a second term that hehadn’t won. Now that the Elec-toral College has rendered itsverdict, let’s assess thesewarnings.

One prediction turned outto be correct: If Mr. Trump lostthe election, he would not ad-mit it. What came was a tor-rent of presidential tweets:The election was rigged, Bidenballots manufactured, Trumpballots discarded, elections ad-ministrators and judges tooweak to do their duty. He hasnever bothered to explain whythese knaves stopped short ofgiving Democrats broad victo-ries in Congress and for stateoffices.

What I should have antici-pated but didn’t was howmany of Mr. Trump’s support-ers would believe him. He haspersuaded more than three-quarters of his party’s rankand file that President-electJoe Biden will assume office il-legitimately. This will have badconsequences for the politicalsystem; how bad is an openquestion.

Nor did I anticipate thatmore than 60% of the HouseRepublican caucus would sup-

Institutions Saved the 2020 Electionport the last-ditch effort to getthe Supreme Court to overturnthe election results in fourswing states, an effort so pa-tently without merit that thejustices summarily dismissedthe case. Perhaps a quarter ofthe suit’s congressional back-ers believed the allegations.The rest, I suspect, were moti-vated by a combination of cyni-cism and expediency: The caseisn’t going anywhere, so whyshould I antagonize the outgo-ing president’s voters, many ofwhom also support me? Thatthese lawmakers lent credenceto a dangerous falsehood didn’tseem to concern them.

The good news in the elec-tion is what did not happen:mail-in ballots didn’t overloadthe electoral machinery; stateand local officials didn’t putpartisanship ahead of duty;and the courts didn’t yield topolitical pressure. Federalismand the judiciary successfullydefended the integrity of the2020 election.

Despite a tidal wave ofnearly 159 million votes, upmore than 20 million since2016, vote-casting and vote-counting went remarkablysmoothly. Many states re-ported their results as quicklyas they did four years ago.Most of the slower states werehamstrung by obsolete prohi-bitions against processing andcounting mail-in ballots untilthe polls had closed. Postelec-tion canvasses, including ahand recount in much of Geor-gia, found evidence of neithererror nor malfeasance andproduced only marginal

changes in the results. As At-torney General William Barrhas stated, to PresidentTrump’s displeasure, “to date,we have not seen fraud on ascale that could have effecteda different outcome in theelection.”

Once the results becameclear, state and local officials inswing states came under in-tense pressure from the presi-dent and his supporters not tocertify them. But with almostno exceptions, these officials

didn’t bend. Georgia’s secretaryof state refused to violate hisoath of office. The governors ofGeorgia and Arizona declinedto go along. And the president’sefforts to get Republican legis-latures to overturn their states’popular vote failed ignomini-ously. Summoned to the WhiteHouse for some arm-twisting,the Republican leaders of Mich-igan’s House and Senate re-sponded by asking the presi-dent for additional federalfinancial aid.

Mr. Trump has boasted,rightly, of his success in nomi-nating and confirming conser-vative federal judges. But whenit came to legal challenges tothe election, he cannot bepleased with the return on hispolitical investment. In this

case, the behavior of his ap-pointees was hard to distin-guish from that of judges cho-sen by previous presidents. Itturns out that in the Americansystem, the people who end upas judges believe in the rule oflaw. Judicial philosophy makesa difference when broad issuesare at stake. But when thequestion is whether plaintiffshave presented the evidenceneeded to sustain allegationsof electoral malfeasance, justabout every judge saw thingsthe same way, regardless ofparty, ideology or jurispruden-tial predilection.

With the Electoral Collegemeetings finished, only onemore checkpoint is left on thepath to Joe Biden’s inaugura-tion. On Jan. 6, Congress willmeet to count the ElectoralCollege votes submitted bythe states. Although this pro-cess is usually ceremonial,Congress has the right to de-cide when a state’s results arechallenged by at least onemember of both the Houseand the Senate. Some of Mr.Trump’s supporters in theHouse seem willing to do so.It will take only one Republi-can senator to trigger a for-mal vote in both chambers.

None of this will influencethe presidential outcome;there is no chance that theDemocrat-controlled Housewould vote to overturn astate’s Electoral College slate.But it would be a defining mo-ment for Republican legisla-tors, who would be forced tochoose between the presi-dent’s supporters and reality.

Trump may refuseto concede, but thejudiciary and thestates did their duty.

POLITICS& IDEASBy WilliamA. Galston

Charlie Bakerhas becomemy model ofa pandemicg o v e r n o r.Twice I’vecommendedhim for ad-mitting, asearly asApril, thathis state’s

contact-tracing effort wasmainly a show so voters wouldsee that Massachusetts wasn’tsitting on its hands. In Novem-ber, his outdoor mask-wearingmandate was panned as unsci-entific and unenforceable. Heacknowledged as much, sayingit was a signal, a new way toget the public’s attention.

Pandemic theater is too pe-jorative a term. Mr. Baker getscredit in this column for exhib-iting realistically the relation-ship between science and poli-tics. Science can tell us manythings. It can’t tell us what todo.

In the West Africa Ebolaoutbreak of 2014, amid muchscientific tut-tutting, the gov-ernors of New York, New Jer-sey, California and Illinois de-manded medically unnecessaryquarantines for returning aidworkers as cheap insuranceagainst panic infecting the na-tion’s three biggest mass-tran-sit systems.

Masks were downplayedearly in the current crisis to

Vaccines vs. Lockdownspreserve supplies formedical personnel, thenwere touted as a univer-sal solution even thoughthe fine print noted thatmasks might not stopanyone from getting theinfection, only fromspreading it. Political cal-culation was present inboth messages.

Politics is the properbusiness of our leaderseven when entangledwith the incentives ofpersonal career survival.We’ve seen the effect in thepartisan scrum, mostly irrele-vant, over testing as well as inill-advised lockdown measuresadopted by local politicianspanicking over a virus thathadn’t yet reached them.

Then there’s the vaccine.Here’s where the rubber mayreally meet the road. Fa-mously, the design for Mod-erna’s vaccine was completedon Jan. 13, two days after theChinese released the geneticmakeup of the new virus, be-fore even the Wuhan lock-down.

Pfizer and its partner BioN-Tech whittled 20 slightly dif-ferent designs down to two be-tween January and July. Theymight have done so sooner ifnot anticipating the drawn-out, three-phase clinical trialsthat still lay ahead.

Public talk from the startfocused on the risk to publicconfidence of any shortcuts,any deviation from standarddevelopment protocols. Themedia took up the chant. Fed-eral agencies and politicianshad a natural incentive to min-imize any blowback on them-selves from departing from ac-cepted models of drugdevelopment. But it’s not obvi-

ous this was optimal underconditions of the pandemic.

To repeat, a finished vac-cine design was on hand bylate January. China’s and Rus-sia’s governments are hardlymodels of transparency andaccountability but their lead-ers are not without cost-bene-fit incentives. They launchedlarge voluntary distributionsof relatively less-tested vac-cines. Some in the U.S. calledfor challenge trials, deliber-ately infecting volunteers withCovid-19, to speed develop-ment. Classic double-blind tri-als with a placebo arm are thegold standard. In the trade-offbetween speed and safety, sil-ver and bronze approacheswere always possible to get avaccine into the market fasteralbeit with somewhat higherrisk.

Our near-standard approachended up being successful be-yond early hopes, no question.But a clinical lookback won’tautomatically conclude it wasthe best approach under thecircumstances. Consider theoverarching political problem.At the current moment, theU.S. public is facing the biggestsurge yet even as many thingsare converging that should be

making the virus easierto live with: faster test-ing, better treatments,vaccines, the spread ofnatural immunitythrough infection. Moreintegrated politicalthinking might have seena value in sacrificingsome of our testing pro-tocols so Americanscould see vaccinationstaking place on TVsooner, giving them asense that voluntary so-cial-distancing was being

rewarded with a fast-ap-proaching permanent fix.

What April suggested, De-cember has confirmed. Politi-cal calculation in the U.S. couldendure a significant number ofdeaths from Covid-19. It can-not abide a situation whereCovid patients and others—cancer patients, coronary pa-tients, kids—are not receivingadequate care in overloadedhospitals. Hence a new roundof restrictions at this late dateon restaurants, schools, gymsthat in themselves may not beeffective or scientifically sup-ported but meet a political im-perative on our leaders to beseen doing something.

Nearly a year later, the mostwidely applicable lesson fromthe original China outbreak re-mains: When the virus mani-fests itself with unmeetable de-mand on local health care, theconstraints on political action,often ill-advised, tend to disap-pear. This observation seems tohold regardless of political sys-tem. In retrospect, acceptingmore vaccine risk might wellhave been the right way overallto minimize the costs and painsinflicted on the public in thepolitical crisis brought on by anew coronavirus.

Science triumphedbut shouldn’t wehave cut cornersand moved faster?

BUSINESSWORLDBy Holman W.Jenkins, Jr.

A nurse gets a Covid vaccine Dec. 15.

NICHOLA

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Fast BreakForeverThe Speed GameBy Paul Westhead(Nebraska, 187 pages, $29.95)

BOOKSHELF | By Fred Barnes

T he speed game is basketball in its most simple form.It requires players, first and foremost, to run as fastas they can from tipoff to final whistle. Passing,

shooting and rebounding are important but secondary.So is defense. Speed rules.

Paul Westhead, a coach who values speed, tells us in“The Speed Game: My Fast Times in Basketball” that helikes to quote what Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden:“ ‘Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairsbe as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.’Henry David would have made for a hell of a shootingguard in my system.”

A speed offense begins the moment it gets the ball.Racing into the front court, the point guard passes to oneof his four teammates, who have sprinted to their assignedpositions. Whoever gets the pass shoots instantly. Only five

seconds should haveexpired. If the shot ismissed, the other playersare ready to rebound andshoot again. This routine isrepeated over and over.

The key is to never letup, never pause. Slowingdown only gives the otherteam a moment to rest.Under conditions of relent-less speed, the opponentwill tire in the second half.It won’t be able to get backon defense a hundred times agame, as it would otherwise,but will instead be left trail-ing behind in its own offense

zone. As the game enters itsfinal stretch, the fast team must be primed to step on theaccelerator. Then victory is all but certain.

Mr. Westhead, now 81 and retired, saw his first high-speed game in the early 1970s, when he was coaching inPuerto Rico. “They were playing the speed game that I hadnever seen before,” he writes. It pushed him towardbecoming a “committed fast break believer.” He got anothershove in that direction from Sonny Allen, who had coachedOld Dominion, in Norfolk, Va., to a Division II championship.Allen told him that “you’ve have to be a little crazy” to adopta speed offense. “I told him, ‘Sonny, I’m a little crazy.’”

But don’t get the idea that “The Speed Game” isinfatuated repetitiously with a scheme for winningbasketball games. Mr. Westhead gives us a lot more. It maybe a surprise to readers to learn how graceful andinteresting a writer he is. In four years at St. Joseph’s inhis hometown of Philadelphia, his 3.4 grade average toppedhis basketball scoring average of 2.4 points per game.And he spent two years at Villanova studying Shakespeareand teaching college English.

In his memoir, he writes especially well about coachingthe Los Angeles Lakers to an NBA championship in 1980and the Phoenix Mercury, led by the great Diana Taurasi,to the 2007 women’s title. He also describes how, in thelate 1980s, he transformed Loyola Marymount into apowerhouse, and he does so without diminishing the roleof Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble in the team’s success.

Mr. Westhead is tough on Lakers owner Jerry Buss, whobought the team in the late 1970s, for blaming others forhis own egregious mistakes and taking credit for others’smart moves. He remains angry that Buss would fire himonly 18 months after he stepped into the Lakers’ topcoaching spot in 1979—when coach Jack McKinney wasbadly injured in a bicycle accident—though Mr. Westheadhad kept the team on a winning path. It is clear that Busswas lucky to have Mr. Westhead around to block unwisetrades and keep him from succumbing to power forwardSpencer Haywood’s pleas for more playing time.

Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, in Mr. Westhead’s view, was theonly adult among the Lakers players and was the key toHaywood’s departure in 1980, in the middle of the NBAfinals. During a practice, Haywood “fell into a deep sleepand was snoring loudly,” Mr. Westhead writes. Awakened,he dozed off again. At the next home game, Haywood gotthe crowd to scream for him to come off the bench andplay. Following the game, Mr. Westhead says, “Kareemwalked over to me and simply said, ‘Get him out of here.’ ”Mr. Westhead passed Jabbar’s comment to Buss, andHaywood “was removed from the team, never to return.”

Magic Johnson was the most popular Lakers player, butMr. Westhead found him to be more trouble than not. Abreach between the two came in a deciding playoff gamein 1981 against the Houston Rockets. With 14 seconds togo, the Lakers needed a basket to win. “It was money time,and I went with the man, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,” Mr. West-head writes. “The play was one we had run hundreds oftimes before at end-of-quarter and end-of-game situations.”

Magic had the ball, but “he did not look for his primarytarget, Kareem, who was open in the low post.” InsteadMagic “decided to go one-on-one himself. . . . He shot arunning jumper above the free-throw line and missed.” Itwas an air ball, and the game was lost. Magic “felt he hadearned the star position, and with that role went the rightto take the final shot. In this instance, Magic unfortunatelychose the wrong star.”

Mr. Westhead’s third Laker season didn’t last very long,but he had two brief NBA coaching jobs ahead of him, aswell as college coaching. The Loyola Marymount position,in 1985-90, allowed him to restore the speed game to activeduty. (It had never really caught on in the NBA and was tooradical for most college coaches.) A game with Holy Crosswas too strenuous for the referees. Exhausted, they stayedstill for the final eight minutes.

Mr. Westhead’s core argument in “The Speed Game,”though persuasively advanced, may feel like a lost cause.As exciting as the speed game is, and as successful as it canbe, most coaches and fans are fine with the slower gameand think it’s exciting enough. At least the“four corners”stall, favored by legendary coach Dean Smith, is dead.“There were coaches who didn’t like me purely based onmy style of play,” Mr. Westhead writes. “Others justthought it made them look bad.” Yes, it often did.

Mr. Barnes is a senior columnist for the WashingtonExaminer.

A veteran coach reflects on Kareem,Magic anda style of play. The key is never to let up. Slowingdown only gives the other team amoment to rest.

A18 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

States, Cities and the Gigantic Covid BailoutWilliam A. Galston tugs on heart-

strings to make the case that “Statesand Cities Deserve Taxpayer Support”(Politics & Ideas, Dec. 9). But a Covidrelief bill without state and local aidstill would provide most of the emer-gency funding that he says is neededfor extra unemployment benefits,costs related to vaccines and help forsmall businesses. Mr. Galston doesn’tmention that tax revenues in manystates have fallen less than was ini-tially expected in fiscal year 2020.

The Democrats plan to pushthrough a much bigger stimulus in2021. This bailout by any other namewill still be as sweet in a couple ofmonths when Congress will be itchingto give and governors and mayors dy-ing to receive.

MARK ADAMSAtlanta

I’m sure Mr. Galston is correct thatsome places will need support afterthe pandemic is over, but shouldn’tsome care be exercised in how we givemoney to the politicians? Here innorthern Nevada, the city of Renoproposed to spend $200,000 of Covidrelief funds to buy a sculpture called“The Space Whale.” Left over from theBurning Man festival, it had beenleased and was on City Hall plaza.This was canceled only when newsmade it into the local paper.

ROBERT PARKERReno, Nev.

Mr. Galston writes that red andblue states all deserve federal relief.There is broad agreement about that.But he conflates relief needed due tothe pandemic with relief needed dueto profligate public spending that pre-

dates the events of 2020.Relief should be calculated to miti-

gate pandemic-induced needs likethose of restaurants and other pri-vate business affected this year. Thecalculation shouldn’t include funds tobail out states already near bank-ruptcy thanks to irresponsible poli-cies that had nothing to do with thepandemic. I appreciate the desire notto let a crisis go to waste, but peoplefrom states that weren’t in prepan-demic financial trouble shouldn’thave their hard-earned money forci-bly redistributed to those in statesthat were in financial trouble of theirown making.

JACK WISSNERAtlanta

Mr. Galston is right: This isn’t ablue-state problem. I live in a redstate in a very conservative city withhigh property taxes. The politiciansalways talk about cutting serviceswhen there are financial problems.But if they cut the huge pensions andhealth-care-for-life for public employ-ees, the problem would be solvedwithout ever cutting services for ev-eryone else. In fact, there would bemoney left over for infrastructure im-provements that have been ignoredfor decades. In my small city, 25% ofthe tax we pay goes to the public-em-ployees’ pension plan. Even with thatonerous amount, the unfunded pen-sion deficit is $260 million and grow-ing. The health-care-for-life liability,which is also unfunded, was another$27 million as of last year. Many civilservants can retire with a lifetimepension at age 50.

KATHERINE NEWMANCoral Gables, Fla.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

“After a while, sticking my head outof a car window wasn’t enough.”

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL

Letters intended for publication shouldbe emailed to wsj.ltrs@wsj.com. Pleaseinclude your city, state and telephonenumber. All letters are subject toediting, and unpublished letters cannotbe acknowledged.

Oregon Lawmakers Ignore Oregon, U.S. LawRegarding James Huffman’s “Ore-

gon’s Segregated Covid Relief Fund IsBlatantly Unconstitutional” (CrossCountry, Dec. 5): The Oregon CaresAct provision allotting public moneyexclusively to black-owned businessesnot only violates the U.S. Constitu-tion, it also violates Oregon’s Consti-tution. In the latter, Article 1, Section20 states: “No law shall be passedgranting to any citizen or class ofcitizens privileges, or immunities,which, upon the same terms, shallnot equally belong to all citizens.”

This is another example of statelegislators ignoring their state con-stitution, which they have sworn anoath to defend and uphold.

DAVID KVERAGASNewton, Pa.

Prof. Huffman need only havecited the U.S. Supreme Court deci-sion in City of Richmond v. J.A.Croson Co. (1989), which invalidatedset-aside programs like the OregonCares Fund. In the 6-3 opinion Jus-tice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote, “Toaccept Richmond’s claim that pastsocietal discrimination alone canserve as the basis for rigid racialpreferences would be to open thedoor to competing claims for ‘reme-

dial relief’ for every disadvantagedgroup. The dream of a Nation ofequal citizens in a society where raceis irrelevant to personal opportunityand achievement would be lost in amosaic of shifting preferences basedon inherently unmeasurable claims ofpast wrongs.”

The unconstitutionality of the Ore-gon program is clear. But by the timethe case is decided, the money willhave been distributed. Then taxpay-ers will likely have to fork out moremoney to remedy the discriminationinflicted on people like Maria Garciaand her Revolución Coffee House.

MICHAEL H. LEBPasadena, Calif.

The “Oregon Cares Fund” was setup to combat “this country’s 400years of racial violence and strategicdivestment,” according to the stateLegislature’s Emergency Board. Butfor the first 200 years, the area nowknown as Oregon hadn’t been settledby whites or blacks. It was inhabitedby Indigenous peoples. Don’t they de-serve a Cares Fund? Or have the pol-iticians simply jumped on yet an-other trendy bandwagon?

RAYMOND J. KELLY, IIIFlushing, Mich.

Congress Punts on China Stocks

T he decline of Congress is a growingproblem in U.S. governance, not leastthe degree to which it writes vague

legislation that lets admin-istrative agencies determinethe actual law. An egregiousexample is a bill PresidentTrump is expected to signsoon that would banish Chi-nese companies from U.S.stock exchanges if they don’t open their ex-ternal audits to federal regulators.

The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires au-ditors of U.S. publicly listed companies to beregistered and regularly reviewed by the Pub-lic Company Accounting Oversight Board(PCAOB). This requirement is intended to en-sure auditors perform due diligence, thoughthere’s little evidence it has improved auditquality or prevented fraud.

Beijing, however, has cited national secu-rity and state-secret laws to block thePCAOB from reviewing auditors, includingsubsidiaries of the big four U.S. firms, lo-cated in mainland China and Hong Kong. ThePCAOB has identified 262 non-U.S. compa-nies whose audit work it can’t inspect. Mostare based in China, though some are in Bel-gium and France.

Enter Congress, which unanimously passedlegislation that would kick companies off U.S.exchanges in three years if their auditors don’tlet the PCAOB review their books. SponsorsSen. John Kennedy (R., La.) and Rep. BradSherman (D., Calif.) say Chinese companiesshould have to play by U.S. rules to benefitfrom our rich and liquid capital markets.

Fair enough, though the bill also advancesBeijing’s objective of drawing foreign inves-

tors to its exchanges in Hong Kong and Shang-hai. U.S. investors will hold and trade sharesin Chinese companies like Alibaba regardless

of where they are listed.Americans receive more pro-tections when the companiesare listed on U.S. exchangeswhere they are subject to U.S.securities laws.

The blunt legislation couldalso sweep in 200 some U.S. multinationalcompanies including Mattel and Wynn Resortsthat rely on work performed by mainland Chi-nese and Hong Kong-based firms for a portionof their audits. After the bill passed the Senatein May, Mr. Sherman said he expected theHouse to amend the legislation to exempt U.S.companies.

Nope. The House couldn’t even find thetime this summer to hold a hearing beforewhisking the bill through this month. Thatleaves hundreds of U.S. multinationals inlimbo. But never fear, Messrs. Sherman andKennedy entered a statement into the legisla-tive record to guide the act’s interpretationby regulators.

The Securities and Exchange Commissionshould not delist companies as long as nomore “than one-third of the company’s totalaudit is performed by a firm beyond the reachof the PCAOB inspection,” they explained.One-third of revenues? Assets? Some othermetric? They also left that up to the SEC.

So now regulators will divine Congress’sunwritten intent amid frantic corporate lobby-ing for dispensations. This dereliction of legis-lative authority is why the administrativestate has grown so vast, and Republicans de-serve as much blame as Democrats.

A vague bill leavesaccounting details to

regulators and lobbyists.

Secrets of the Oracle Prosecution

W e’ve often criticized the Labor De-partment’s lawsuit launched in thewaning days of the Obama Adminis-

tration against Oracle for dis-criminating against womenand minorities. But it turnsout the prosecution was evenworse than we thought—andthere’s a lesson here aboutfederal misuse of race andgender as enforcement cudgels.

The truth emerged this month in a letterfrom Labor Deputy Assistant Secretary JoeWheeler to Congress responding to a whistle-blower complaint by regional solicitor JanetHerold. Ms. Herold spearheaded the Oraclecase, which Labor dropped recently after it waseviscerated in September by an administrativelaw judge.

Ms. Herold claims that Labor Secretary Eu-gene Scalia retaliated against her because shehad resisted Labor’s attempts to settle thecase. But the letter to Congress reveals Ms.Herold’s desire to punish Oracle and the restof Silicon Valley.

In a memo to the Department’s Solicitor,she wrote that Oracle’s “real vulnerability”was that the trial would be public and detailhow “Oracle and pretty much all tech compa-nies are discriminating against women andAsians.” This would “damage [Oracle’s] repu-tation in the industry and hinder their abilityto retain top talent” and “the most critical partof this enforcement action is the public airingand discussion of common industry pay prac-tices which depress the wages of women andpeople of color.”

Wow. That soundsmore like a vendetta thanproper enforcement. Nearly all such cases byDOL’s Office of Federal Contract CompliancePrograms have been settled for small sums. Thelargest in agency history was $14 million. Yet

Ms. Herold claimed the case was so strong thatit should be settled for no less than $150millionto $300 million.

Oracle grew so frustratedwith settlement talks that itsued the agency in return. Butthis month it agreed to dis-miss its suit after Labordropped its complaint.

Mr. Scalia was naturallytroubled by Ms. Herold’s excesses, and he in-formed her this summer that shewould be reas-signed to another job. Ms. Herold then filed herretaliation complaint, though she offers no evi-dence for her claim that Mr. Scalia intervenedin settlement discussions on behalf of WhiteHouse officials close to Oracle executives.

Ms. Herold “has never met with or spokento, and has no knowledge of whom [Mr. Scalia]has spokenwith or spent his time,”Mr.Wheelerexplains in his letter. Nor didMr. Scalia discussthe case with Oracle representatives or theWhite House.

The silver lining of Oracle’s four-year sagais that the administrative law judge’s 278-pagedecision evisceratingMs. Herold’s case will sig-nificantly limit Labor’s ability to bring similarpaint-by-numbers complaints against busi-nesses during a Biden Administration.

By the way, Ms. Herold was also behind La-bor’s targeting of Google in 2017. After Googlefought the agency’s sweeping compensationdata demand, Ms. Herold retaliated against thesearch giant by declaring publicly that its dis-crimination against women “is quite extreme,even in this industry.”

This is nasty stuff, and it shows how federalenforcers use race and gender as a reputationalthreat to bully companies into settling lawsuitseven when they’re innocent. The real discrimi-nation in this case was by the government, andkudos to Mr. Scalia for finally dropping it.

A letter reveals theanimus behind a

dubious labor lawsuit.

Europe’s Digital Power Play

A sk not why Europe doesn’t regulate dig-ital companies more. Ask why Europedoesn’t have more of its own digital

companies to regulate. That isthe question Brussels shouldhave considered as it preparedthe new tech regulations theEuropean Commission un-veiled Tuesday.

The European Union’s bu-reaucratic arm is nothing if not ambitious. Theproposals would create new mechanisms forregulating content such as violence or hatespeech. Theywould formalize rules for relation-ships between platform companies and third-party software developers that the commissionpreviously tried to impose via antitrust cases.They’d require new transparency about proprie-tary business practices such as ad targeting.And the commissionwants to impose draconianpenalties for violations, including fines of 10%of annual global revenue or the ability to breakup tech giants.

The rules don’t explicitly say they’re aimedat U.S. companies. But the proposals are craftednarrowly enough that, wouldn’t you know,mostly very large American companies wouldfall under their purview. Notmany social-mediaplatforms reach at least 10% of the EU’s 450mil-lion consumers, which is the threshold for someof the strictest new rules.

We have no special brief for American techcompanies, and our parent company’s execu-tives have tangled with firms such as Googleover their sometimes casual approach to intel-lectual property. The U.S. companies can lobbyas they wish in Brussels, and they will. Expect

the EU’s new proposals to become law, if theyever do, only after years of wrangling.

Someone should ask, however, why Euro-pean competitors haven’temerged to the American be-hemoths. The commission andits boosters claim this is whatthe new regulationswill do, bycreating a “level playing field”for local tech entrepreneurs.

But rules such as the commission’s proposalusually do the opposite.

As threatening as the potential fines appearto Facebook or Google, the bigger threat by farwill always be to European startups that strug-gle to absorb regulatory-compliance costs asthey grow. Love ’em or hate ’em, today’s techgiants have the resources to comply with newrules and hire lawyers to tussle with Brusselsin years to come. Can European entrepreneurssay the same?

American companies have done far less tostunt a single digital market in the EU thanhave, say, disparate consumption-tax regimesthat entangle small businesses trying to shipacross national boundaries. Europemight havemore of its own tech champions if taxation ofventure capital were less punitive, or if laborlaws on startups were less onerous, or antitrustenforcement of mobile services less capriciousor, well, it’s a long list.

The EU’s tech proposals will make the list ofanti-entrepreneurship policies even longer.Whatever regulatory regime tech giants mightrequire or deserve, no one should imaginethey’ll be bigger losers from all this than Euro-pean upstarts will be.

Tying down U.S.behemoths won’t boostEuropean competitors.

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

OPINION

Pepper ...And Salt

Between God and Proper Insurance CoverageIn “Some Acts Of God Are Better

Than Others” (op-ed, Dec. 3), BertStratton writes of an “unfortunatelyhigh” deductible of $5,000 for hiscommercial property insurance, andcomplains about the many expenseshe had to pay after a tree fell ontoone of his apartment buildings: brick-work, roof repairs, gutter work, newwindows, tree removal, emergencyboard-up and temporary living ex-penses for tenants.

Mr. Stratton wasn’t “screwed”;that coverage is standard in insur-ance policies. The policy owner is re-sponsible for damage to his coveredproperty, and determining the sourceof a tree limb in a windstorm—fromhis neighbor’s property in this case—is never the issue. A tenant couldalso have temporary living expensescovered when his residence is unin-habitable with basic coverage hecould purchase.

I am sorry that Mr. Stratton wasn’tpleased with the claim-settlementservice, and perhaps his coverage, af-ter this covered loss. This has littleto do with an act of God. It is moreabout each of us understanding andobtaining the proper insurance cover-age for the risks we face. Many timesthe real issue is accepting the cost ofthe decisions we’ve made when anunfortunate loss occurs.

JERRY BROWNGoshen, Ky.

Mr. Stratton inadvertently raisesan important issue for homeowners.Most insurance companies have sig-nificant deductibles for wind storms.In New Jersey it is often 1% or moreof the home’s insured value. That is a

huge chunk of cash that is requiredbefore the insurance even kicks in.Insured beware.

JOE WELFELDTeaneck, N.J.

Tree removal in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

JIM

SLOSIARE

K/TH

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TTEVIA

AP

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, December 16, 2020 | A19

I n 2021 the U.S. and its allieshave a once-in-a-generationopportunity to reverse globaldemocratic retreat and put au-tocracies like Russia and China

on the back foot. That will happen ifmajor democracies unite in the pur-suit of freedom.

President-elect Joe Biden aims to“build back better.” He cannot turnback the clock four years to a creakymultilateral world where allies arepicked off by autocracies that ex-change strategic investment or cheapenergy for unwavering loyalty. Allow-ing allies to sell out their economicsecurity while expecting Uncle Samto act as their security guarantorwould open the door for anotherTrump-like isolationist to reclaim theWhite House in four years.

Instead the U.S. should focus ongiving the democratic world a newsense of confidence, which free soci-eties—with their inbuilt self-doubt,opposition and division—too oftenlack. As secretary general of theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization,I sought to build these links acrossthe free world, creating andstrengthening partnerships withIndo-Pacific democracies like Japan,

The authoritarian tidehas risen, but a globalalliance of democracieswould help turn it back.

A New Way to Lead the Free WorldAustralia and South Korea.

Yet in the years after I left publicoffice the world has seen a resur-gence of authoritarianism, and tech-nology has reached an inflectionpoint where it can both liberate andoppress. Five years ago an alliance ofdemocracies was a noble goal inprogress, but today it is essential tosolving urgent problems.

Determined American leadershipmust be at the heart of this effort.The U.S. alone has the power andreach. It also enjoys a resilient de-mocracy of its own. The 2020 elec-tions were a stress test for Americandemocracy. It passed, securing atransfer of power even when thehead of state himself sought to dele-gitimize the process.

President-elect Joe Biden has aqueue of America’s weary allies out-side his door. We are yearning for adetermined leader and, from experi-ence, I believe Joe Biden will seizethis opportunity.

In 2018 I launched the first Copen-hagen Democracy Summit, under theauspices of my Alliance of Democra-cies Foundation. The summit con-venes national leaders, democracyactivists, and representatives fromtech and civil society to strengthenthe forces of democracy. The formervice president opened the first sum-mit and co-founded a new trans-At-lantic initiative, with former Republi-can Secretary of Homeland SecurityMichael Chertoff and me, to fightforeign election meddling.

Mr. Biden’s speech made a strongargument for renewing alliances andstanding up for democracy. “Democ-racy’s all about one simple thing,” he

said: “freedom, freedom, freedom.”During his campaign this year, hepledged to host a similar summit ofdemocratic leaders as president.

America will lead the endeavor,but it won’t be alone. Democracies inthe Indo-Pacific, from Taiwan to Aus-tralia, India and Japan, are also look-ing for like-minded friends to coun-ter China’s aggressive posture.

In Europe, a post-Brexit U.K. willhost the Group of Seven summit in2021, bringing together the world’stop democratic and economic fire-power. London intends to use thisopportunity to make what one seniorpolitician described to me as an“overture to the free world.” It hasalready floated a potential “Demo-cratic 10,” or D-10, opening the topglobal table to other major democra-cies such as India, Australia andSouth Korea. And Britain will try tobuild new consensus on economic re-

silience in areas such as foreign sub-sidies, global trade reform and tech-nological advancement.

It’s that last topic, tech, that posesan existential challenge for democra-cies. The world is in a figurativetechnological arms race. Whoeverwins that race will lead in settingrules, standards and norms foremerging technological systems,from facial recognition to weapons ofwar. If China wins the race, freedomwill wane.

The free world should learn fromits internal tussles over Huawei andTikTok and build a digital alliance toprepare for the next set of chal-lenges. This includes setting commonprivacy standards for transferringthe metadata needed to develop cut-ting-edge artificial intelligence, coop-erating on how to regulate internetplatforms, and combining firepowerto develop telecom networks, quan-

tum computing and artificial intelli-gence—all faster, better and freerthan China.

Not every U.S. ally is fully con-vinced of the need for a global demo-cratic caucus. France and Germanymay be concerned that an alliance ofdemocracies would supplant theglobal multilateral system repre-sented by the United Nations. And aresurgence of the trans-Atlantic alli-ance could reduce the imperative forEurope to develop strategic indepen-dence from the U.S.

On both of these concerns, I dis-agree. Strengthening the global dem-ocratic alliance would enable membernations to rebuild multilateralism,not bypass it. We need to talk toChina, about climate change andother struggles, but let’s do so froma position of relative strength. AndEurope should simultaneously con-tinue to be more self-sufficient andinvest more in its own security, be-cause a stronger Europe means afreer world.

Thirty years ago advanced democ-racies were told that they’d reachedthe “end of history,” and that thecontinued advance of freedom wasinevitable. The opposite has been thecase: Freedom has retreated asAmerica retreated from its place asthe global leader. We may not see abetter opportunity again to recoverfrom the West’s crippling disease ofdemocratic self-doubt. It’s time tobuild an alliance of democracies.

Mr. Rasmussen was NATO secre-tary general, 2009-14. He foundedthe Alliance of Democracies Founda-tion in 2017.

By Anders Fogh Rasmussen

CHRIST

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Vice President Biden at the 2015 Munich Security Conference.

OPINION

An Intelligent Discussion About Race and IQ Is PossibleThis cruelest ofyears has claimedthe life of anotherc o n s e q u e n t i a lscholar whose pass-ing warrants somereflection.

James Flynn, whodied last week at 86,was an American so-cial scientist born inWashington and ed-

ucated at the University of Chicago.He spent most of his academic ca-reer on the other side of the planet,at the University of Otago in south-ern New Zealand. Flynn specializedin the study of mental tests and hu-man intelligence, and he distin-guished himself by bringing far morelight than heat to this fraught de-bate.

Many earlier researchers of groupdifferences in mental performancewere convinced that intelligence wasmostly inherited. In 1969 the psy-chologist Arthur Jensen publishedan academic article in the HarvardEducational Review that said blackshad lower IQs than whites due

mainly to genetics and that compen-satory education programs intendedto close the learning gap among chil-dren—Head Start, for example—would have little success.

The article caused an uproar thatnever entirely died down. Jensen,who died in 2012, was roundly de-nounced as a racist by those whosaid that environmental factorsrather than genes explained racialdisparities in test scores. For a time,he received death threats andneeded bodyguards when he ap-peared in public forums. Calls forending the use of IQ tests becamecommonplace. More than 50 yearslater, racial differences in SAT re-sults are still cited as a reason tostop using the exam in college ad-missions. In May the University ofCalifornia system announced it wasscrapping its SAT requirement.

Flynn was skeptical of Jensen’sfindings, and rightly so. If racial dif-ferences in average IQs were innate,why were there white groups in theU.S. and elsewhere with test scoressimilar to those of blacks? Why werethere black schools with test scores

that exceeded the national average?Why were black women significantlyoverrepresented among people withhigh IQs? Why did studies show thatblack orphans raised by white fami-lies had average IQs of 106 at a timewhen the average score of blacks na-tionally was 85 and the averagescore of whites was 100?

Theories of genetic determinismcouldn’t explain these findings. Norcould they explain Flynn’s volumi-nous documentation that IQ scoresamong racial and ethnic groupsworld-wide have risen considerablyfrom one generation to the next. Inthe 20th century, he discovered, thescores of entire countries rose bymore than the black-white disparityin the U.S. In a study released in

2006, Flynn and a co-author, WilliamDickens, concluded that blacks hadgained as many as seven IQ pointson whites since the early 1970s,which is hard to explain if intelli-gence is genetically fixed.

Many of Jensen’s detractorswanted to shame or silence him.Charles Murray received similartreatment following the publicationin 1994 of “The Bell Curve,” whichcites Jensen’s theories favorably.Flynn thought it more important topush back with logic and empiricism,and he was careful not to overstatehis case. That genetics weren’t thesole determining factor in a person’sintelligence didn’t mean they playedno role at all. And that tests of men-tal ability were imperfect didn’tmean they were useless and shouldbe discarded. Flynn felt such issueswere worth debating—openly andhonestly.

“I am happy to discuss the raceand IQ debate with colleagues whohold contrary views,” he wrote in a2017 paper. “Telling someone thatwhat they believe is morally remissor telling them that if they persist in

disagreeing, I will expose them is notmy style.” These days, unfortunately,it’s precisely the style of many lib-eral elites when it comes to discuss-ing racial inequality. Question racialpreferences, Black Lives Matter ac-tivism or critical race theory, andyou are considered not merely in er-ror but in sin. For Flynn, dodgingdifficult topics was intellectual cow-ardice. “To advise scholars that theyshould not systemically investigaterace and IQ seems to me to raise thequestion of what we are afraid of.”

Earlier this year we lost AbigailThernstrom and Walter Williams,two of the country’s leading racescholars. Flynn didn’t share theirconservative politics. He was a com-mitted leftist who named his son af-ter the socialist Eugene Debs and leftfor New Zealand in the early 1960sbecause he was disgusted by McCar-thyism and Jim Crow. What Flynndid share with his fellow controver-sialists was courage and a commit-ment to prioritizing facts and evi-dence over faddish thinking. Hetaught us how to discuss intelligenceintelligently.

James Flynn approachedone of social science’smost controversial topicswith logic and empiricism.

UPWARDMOBILITYBy Jason L.Riley

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A Dec. 13 Twitter thread by SarahParcak, a professor of archaeologyat the University of Alabama at Bir-mingham and a fellow at the JohnSimon Guggenheim Foundation:

I know everyone is angry aboutwhat Joseph epstein wrote about DrBiden yesterday in the @WSJ How-ever the real aim for our ire shouldbe @jamestaranto the editor of theirop-ed page. He has, so far, com-pletely escaped accountability. Thatends now.

James, explain yourself. When3k+ Americans die daily from covid,millions suffer w food insecurity+eviction, major sedition happen-ing, racism, climate change...yougive space to an angry old whitemisogynist to yell at our future 1st

lady re her Ed.D?“Well it started a national conver-

sation” you might argue. Yes, theconversation goes “F— the WSJ, F—Joseph Epstein, and F— their trashop-ed pages.”

I hope you consider pulling thepiece, apologizing, and committingto making the WSJ op ed page some-thing people want to read. Oh, also:go f— yourself.

A Dec. 14 tweet by Prof. Parcak:

Living Human Garbage Monster™Paul Gigot, WSJ head opinion editor*doubled down* on the Dr Jill Bidenopinion piece, saying “She is open tocriticism”. Hey @WSJ writers, areyou cool with blatant sexism and mi-sogyny and slander against women?

Notable & Quotable: A Scholar

The Trouble With Facial Recognition Doesn’t Justify a Ban

M assachusetts Gov. CharlieBaker was right not to signlegislation banning the use

of facial-recognition technology bylaw-enforcement and public agenciesstatewide. The technology has comeunder fire over its potential for mis-use and embedded racial biases. SanFrancisco and Oakland, Calif., havealready banned its use by govern-ment agencies. But on Thursday Mr.Baker sent back to the Legislature apolice-reform bill that included ablanket moratorium on facial-recog-nition systems, citing the technol-ogy’s usefulness in catching perpe-trators of egregious crimes.

Whatever Massachusetts lawmak-ers do, they won’t be the last toconsider complete bans on the useof facial-recognition systems. Vari-ous cities and New York state areconsidering some form of facial-rec-ognition technology bans, and pri-vacy-minded members of Congresswill no doubt reintroduce federalbans in 2021.

Calls for such bans aren’t surpris-

ing, especially those aimed at sys-tems that put a name to pictures ofotherwise unknown suspects. Knownas “one to many” systems, thatmatching process is powered bysoftware algorithms that rapidlycompare an unknown person’spicture to databases of millions ofmug shots and other identificationphotos.

In the past few years, one-to-many algorithm developers haveroutinely claimed that they couldcorrectly identify unknown personsmore than 99% of the time. Testingconducted by the federal govern-ment’s pre-eminent facial-recogni-tion experts at the National Instituteof Standards and Technology hasverified many of those claims, butwith an enormous caveat: Thoserates generally only applied tomatching queries involving whitesuspects.

Misidentification or “false posi-tive” rates were often far higherwhen pictures of minority subjectswere analyzed. NIST deemed that“particularly important” because aconsequence of that higher false

positive rate in minority groups ledto mistaken arrests.

In an era when law enforcementagencies are already being accusedof “systemic racism,” it should be nosurprise that criminal justice reformadvocates cite NIST’s test results asall the evidence needed to ban fa-cial-recognition systems. It doesn’thelp that nationwide facial-recogni-tion systems have enabled China tosurveil its own citizens, to the pointwhere police may be alerted anytime a member of the politically re-pressed Uighur minority is spotted.

Yet when those flaws are put intheir broader context, the case foroutright facial-recognition bans be-comes much weaker. False-positiverates have generally gone down asfacial-recognition tech has im-proved. When tested by NIST, thebest-designed algorithms excelled atcorrectly identifying individuals re-gardless of their race, ethnicity, sexor any other characteristic.

Further, ban proponents often failto acknowledge that training, policyrequirements and human reviewmitigate shortcomings in the algo-

rithms. Consider the federal govern-ment’s primary facial-recognitionsystem—the Federal Bureau of In-vestigation’s Next Generation Identi-fication-Interstate Photo System.The FBI carefully limits its use.

The NGI-IPS checks unknown in-dividuals only against previouslyverified criminal mug shots or selectcivilian photos of criminals to mini-mize the universe of people onwhom it keeps a record. If you’venever been arrested, you won’t be inthe FBI’s criminal facial-recognitiondatabase. Further, before any stateor local law-enforcement agency isallowed to submit a request to theNGI-IPS, it must agree that its userwill complete FBI-mandated facial-recognition training.

Law-enforcement officials usingthe FBI system must also agree thatany photos returned by the FBI (ofwhich there will be no more than50) will be used for investigativelead purposes only, not as definitivepositive identification of the perpe-trator of a crime. Such limits haveproved highly effective and resultedin virtually no known cases of mis-identification, regardless of the ra-cial or ethnic status of the suspectedindividuals.

Those lessons have been incorpo-rated into an exemplary statute inWashington state that limits, butdoesn’t eliminate, its law-enforce-ment agencies’ use of facial-recogni-tion systems.

Enacted last March, the Washing-ton law incorporates the FBI’s train-ing requirements as well as its re-quirement that algorithm-generatedresults be used when a search war-rant has been obtained—though inemergencies, it can be procured upto 48 hours after the surveillance.

States looking to minimize poten-tial bad results from the use of fa-cial-recognition systems would dowell to adopt some combination ofthe FBI and Washington state re-strictions. If those were combinedwith a requirement that systems bevetted thoroughly by NIST for accu-racy across race, ethnicity and sex,the likelihood of wrongful arrestscaused by algorithm errors woulddrop precipitously.

Sloppy use of facial-recognitionsystems can result in serious harmto innocent people. But those badoutcomes can be mitigated throughrigorous testing, training andboundaries on its use. Consideringthat facial-recognition systems havealready helped to identify thousandsof child sex traffickers, murder sus-pects and other criminals, legisla-tors should think carefully beforeimposing blanket bans on such auseful technology.

Mr. Finch is an attorney in Wash-ington and a visiting legal fellow atthe Heritage Foundation.

By Brian E. Finch

It’s helped find thousandsof dangerous criminals.Reasonable limits canprevent abuse and error.

wsj_20201216_a019_p2jw351000_0_a01900_1________xa2020.crop.pdf 1 16-Dec-20 07:25:04

A20 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

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higher. B6

TECHNOLOGY: TWITTER IS FINED IN EUROPE OVER DATA BREACH B4

S&P 3694.62 À 1.29% S&PFIN À 1.68% S&P IT À 1.61% DJTRANS À 0.83% WSJ$ IDX g 0.36% LIBOR3M 0.229 NIKKEI (Midday) 26760.95À 0.27% Seemore atWSJ.com/Markets

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By saying no to some retailers’ package pickups, parcel-shipping companies have been able to protect their on-time delivery scores.

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High-frequency traders areusing an experimental type ofcable to speed up their systemsby billionths of a second, thelatest move in a technologicalarms race to execute stocktrades as quickly as possible.

The cable, called hollow-corefiber, is a next-generation ver-sion of the fiber-optic cableused to deliver broadband in-ternet to homes and busi-nesses. Made of glass, such ca-bles carry data encoded asbeams of light. But instead ofbeing solid, hollow-core fiber isempty inside, with dozens ofparallel, air-filled channels nar-rower than a human hair.

Because light travels nearly50% faster through air thanglass, it takes about one-thirdless time to send data throughhollow-core fiber than throughthe same length of standard fi-ber.

The difference is often justa minuscule fraction of a sec-ond. But in high-frequencytrading, that can make the dif-ference between profits andlosses. HFT firms use sophisti-cated algorithms and ultrafastdata networks to executerapid-fire trades in stocks, op-tions and futures. Many aresecretive about their tradingstrategies and technology.

Hollow-core fiber is the lat-est in a series of advances thatfast traders have used to tryto outrace their competition. Adecade ago, a company calledSpread Networks spent about

BY ALEXANDER OSIPOVICH

$300 million to lay fiber-opticcable in a straight line fromChicago to New York, so trad-ers could send data back andforth along the route in just 13milliseconds, or thousandthsof a second. Within a fewyears the link was supersededby microwave networks thatreduced transmission timesalong the route to less than 9milliseconds.

HFT firms have also used la-sers to zip data between thedata centers of the New YorkStock Exchange and NasdaqInc., and they have embeddedtheir algorithms in superfastcomputer chips. Now, facedwith the limits of physics andtechnology, traders are leftfighting over nanoseconds.

“The time increments ofthese improvements have got-ten markedly smaller,” saidMichael Persico, chief execu-tive of Anova Financial Net-works, a technology providerthat runs communications net-works used by HFT firms.

High-frequency trading iscontroversial, with critics say-ing that some ultrafast strate-gies amount to an invisible taxon investors. Industry repre-sentatives say such criticism isunfounded.

Chicago-based DRW Hold-ings LLC and Jump TradingLLC are among the tradingfirms that have used hollow-core fiber, people familiar withthe matter said. Jump’s ven-ture-capital arm has investedin Lumenisity Ltd., a U.K.startup that makes such fiber,one of the people said.

High-frequency traders usehollow-core fiber for short dis-tances of several hundred yardsat most, according to industryengineers and executives. One

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High-SpeedTraders RaceFor an EdgeAn experimental typeof hollow cable is thelatest technology usedto send data faster

solid year as markets were sup-ported by central bank andgovernment relief measures.

Credit Suisse has struggledin the past to convince inves-tors that its formula of balanc-ing the steady business ofwealth management with morevolatile investment banking willsucceed over the long term.

Bank executives said Tues-day that steps for the divisionsto piggyback off each other arepaying off—for example, byconnecting entrepreneurs look-

PleaseturntopageB12

one-third to investment bank-ing. The split between its twomain businesses continues thestrategy set out by his prede-cessor, Tidjane Thiam, whowas forced to resign in Febru-ary over the spying scandal.

The outlook was part of Mr.Gottstein’s first strategy pre-sentation to investors, whichtook place Tuesday. CreditSuisse said fourth-quarter per-formance has been strong inboth wealth management andinvestment banking.

Both segments have had a

Credit Suisse Group AG’snew chief executive said man-aging rich people’s money willbe a priority for the bank, set-ting a target to boost wealth-management profit by at leasta quarter in the coming years.

Chief Executive ThomasGottstein, who took over thebank this year after a spyingscandal rocked its executiveranks, said the bank would al-locate two-thirds of its capitalto wealth management and

BY MARGOT PATRICK

Credit Suisse Puts Renewed FocusOn Wealth-Management Business

remotely.That trend could make the

office market more volatile,heightening booms and busts,with powerful implicationsfor investors. Banks are typi-cally less eager to financeproperties with fluctuating in-come, investors say, leadingto higher mortgage costs.

“They don’t want to take

any market risk,” said JimCostello, senior vice presidentat research firm Real CapitalAnalytics Inc.

Higher mortgage rates andlower loan amounts, in turn,tend to lead to lower propertyvaluations.

Co-working executives es-timate that as much as 50%of all flexible office space in

major U.S. cities is currentlyavailable for lease. Thatavailability would help pushthe overall office-availabilityrate in San Francisco to21.8%, the highest figure onrecord, according to CBREGroup Inc. An availability ratereflects vacant or occupiedspace that is available forlease.

In Manhattan, the esti-mated availability rate afterfactoring in similarly high co-working vacancies is 15.9%,the highest since 1995. Somereal-estate analysts expectthese figures to continue ris-ing, as more companies lookto cut costs and embrace re-mote work.

Because co-working stillaccounts for a small share ofthe office sector, the impacton availability rates in bigcities is limited to a few per-centage points at most, ac-cording to CBRE’s estimates.

But most analysts expectflexible office space to be-come a much bigger part ofthe market. In a Septembersurvey, 86% of office userstold CBRE that flexible officespace will play a role in theirlong-term real-estate strat-egy, up from 73% in June.

Meanwhile more landlords,facing competition from We-Work and its peers, are start-ing to offer short-term dealsto fill vacant space.

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Empty co-working spacesare helping push office vacan-cies in big cities to levels notseen in decades, threateningthe commercial-property sec-tor’s reputation as a haven forinvestors.

Office buildings are oftenconsidered relatively pro-tected from economic shocksbecause most tenants arelocked into long-term leasesof five years and often more.Landlords could count onsteady income even at timeswhen corporate profits aredown.

The rise of co-working andother forms of flexible, short-term office space is startingto change that dynamic.These spaces make up a grow-ing share of the office marketin big cities such as NewYork, San Francisco and LosAngeles.

Because co-working leasestypically last only a fewmonths to a year, vacanciesare starting to soar whenmany companies are working

BY KONRAD PUTZIER

Co-Working Spaces Add to Office-Market Woes

INSIDE

BERLIN—Volkswagen AGshares rose nearly 8% onTuesday after the car maker’stop shareholders and unionleaders publicly backed ChiefExecutive Herbert Diess’sstrategy to refocus the com-pany on electric vehicles.

The action by the com-pany’s directors late Monday,including confirming severaltop appointments by Mr.Diess, put an end to weeks ofinternal wrangling over thepace of change at the world’sbiggest auto maker by sales.The CEO’s push to acceleratethe shift to electric cars andquickly fill empty executivepositions had met oppositionfrom labor leaders, who underGerman law hold half the seatson Volkswagen’s board of di-rectors.

“Everyone is grateful forthe clear strategy that Diess ispursuing,” said Hiltrud Wer-ner, a management boardmember who restructured thecompany’s compliance and le-gal departments in the wakeof the diesel-emissions testingscandal. “He has the supportof all the people on theboard.”

Volkswagen’s travails havehighlighted the pressure con-fronting global car makers,from General Motors to Toy-ota, as they seek to meet thechallenge of reducing carbonemissions. The transformationrequired is having far-reachingeffects on production pro-cesses, jobs and even theeconomy of entire regions.

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BY WILLIAM BOSTON

VW BoardEndorsesTurn toElectric

FedEx Corp. and UnitedParcel Service Inc. havelargely kept up with the re-cord onslaught of packagessince Thanksgiving, thoughthat is in part because of ef-forts to lighten their loads.

Rather than risk having sys-tems clogged with packages,both FedEx and UPS are hold-ing a harder line by enforcing apreset limit on the daily num-ber of packages they will pickup. The policy is creating back-logs in some of the shippers’warehouses, affecting retailersas large as Costco WholesaleCorp. down to small- and me-dium-size companies.

For consumers, that meansdeliveries could arrive late,and anyone determined to geta gift delivered by Christmasneeded to have ordered it byTuesday to avoid paying extrashipping fees.

Richard Galanti, Costco’s fi-

nance chief, said that somedays UPS and FedEx aren’tpicking up all the packages theretailer wants to ship, which iscausing delays. “We, like oth-ers, are figuring out other

things to do, not on a bigscale,” he said. Costco recentlystarted using Instacart to shipitems like Apple Inc. AirPodsand Instant Pots for same-daydelivery, instead of just offer-

ing grocery items through thatservice.

One order placed withCostco on Black Friday, for in-stance, showed it being pre-

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Vacancy for flexible office space is rising as more people work remotely. A WeWork area in New York.

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BY PAUL ZIOBROAND SARAH NASSAUER

FedEx, UPS Stick to Their CapsOn Pickups, Slowing Shipments

FedEx UPS U.S. PostalService

2019 2020

Source: ShipMatrix*Two weeks between Nov. 22 and Dec. 5

On-time delivery scores*

95% 96%93%90% 93% 92%

B2 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 * * * * THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

INDEX TO BUSINESSESThese indexes cite notable references to most parent companies and businesspeoplein today’s edition. Articles on regional page inserts aren’t cited in these indexes.

AAbbVie.......................B14Alexion Pharmaceuticals...................................B14Alibaba......................B14Alphabet..A1,B2, B4,B14Amazon.com...A1,B4,B14Anova..........................B1Apple.......A1,B4,B12,B14AstraZeneca........A7,B14

BBarclays.......................B7BioNTech ...............A6,A7Blade Urban AirMobility.....................B2

Boston Properties.......B6BSO Network Solutions.....................................B4

CCaterpillar .................B14Cboe Global Markets..B7CEC Entertainment.....B7CGI Merchant Group...B6City Grazing..............A12Condé Nast..................B3Credit Suisse...............B1

DDRW............................B1

EEli Lilly.................B2,B14Experience Investment.....................................B2

FFacebook...A1,A4,B4,B14

Fannie Mae.................A3

FedEx...........................B1

Freddie Mac................A3

Furukawa Electric.......B4

GGaming & LeisureProperties.................B2

HHilton...........................B6

IInditex.......................B14

IntercontinentalExchange...................B7

JJohnson & Johnson....A7

JPMorgan Chase.........B7

KKomatsu....................B14

LLet's Goat Buffalo....A12

Living Systems LandManagement ..........A12

Lumenisity..................B1

MMaverick CapitalPartners....................B6

McKay Brothers..........B4

Moderna ...A1,A6,A7,B12

Monument CapitalManagement.............B6

PPark Hotels & Resorts

.....................................B6

Penn National Gaming

.....................................B2

Pfizer.....................A6,A7

Prevail Therapeutics

............................. B2,B14

Public Holdings...........B3

SSimon Property Group

.....................................B6

SL Green Realty..........B6

SolarWinds.................A3

Spread Networks........B1

TTwitter.................B4,B14

UUnited Parcel Service.B1

VVolkswagen.................B1

Vornado Realty Trust.B6

WWestlake VillageBiopartners...............B6

XXenia Hotels & Resorts

.....................................B6

INDEX TO PEOPLE

separately over the weekend,people familiar with the situa-tion said, brokering a compro-mise in which the board wouldmake a clear statement of sup-port for Mr. Diess and hisstrategy and back his candi-dates to fill open positions onthe executive board.

As a concession to the laborside, Mr. Diess agreed to makethe company’s main plant inWolfsburg, Germany, a modelfactory for building the mostadvanced electric vehicles—amove that would secure thou-sands of jobs for the next de-cade.

“For us it is of decisive im-portance that Herbert Diesswith his new managementteam will continue to shapethis important era at Volks-wagen,” Wolfgang Porsche andHans Michael Piech, heads ofthe Porsche-Piech clan, saidafter the meeting.

In the summer, Bernd Os-terloh, head of Volkswagen’spowerful works council and amember of the supervisoryboard, persuaded other direc-tors to strip the CEO of re-sponsibility for the day-to-dayoperations of the VW brand,the company’s biggest busi-ness. That conflict left Mr.Diess uncertain about howmuch support he had from theboard, according to people fa-miliar with the situation.

After Monday’s decisions,Mr. Osterloh said there wastotal agreement between thesupervisory board, executiveboard, and labor representa-tives. Mr. Diess was relievedthat the conflict had been putto rest and that the new boardmembers would be able totake up their jobs soon, oneperson close to him said.

The board appointed ArnoAntlitz to succeed Frank Wit-ter as chief finance officer inJune. Mr. Antlitz is currentlyfinance chief at Audi, Volks-wagen’s luxury car unit. The

board also approved Mr.Diess’s plan to split board re-sponsibilities for purchasingand components manufactur-ing and create a new position,appointing Thomas Schmall,current head of the compo-

nents business, as chief tech-nology officer. Murat Aksel,currently purchasing chief atthe VW brand, will take on ad-ditional responsibilities aspurchasing chief for the entireVolkswagen company.

As a concession to labor, the auto maker agreed to make its base in Wolfsburg, Germany, a model factory for electric vehicles.

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pared for shipment the nextday, according to tracking datareviewed by The Wall StreetJournal. However, it didn’treach a UPS facility for 13 daysas it sat in limbo in California.The order was scheduled toreach its destination in NewYork three days later, withinthe shipping time frame pro-vided by UPS but 18 days fromwhen it was ordered.

Mr. Galanti said that whilethere are some delays, Costcodelivers within the time framepromised on its websitearound 95% of the time.

A UPS spokesman said thatthe carrier “is picking up anddelivering planned volume”and that its on-time perfor-mance has led the industrysince the beginning of October.“We are adhering closely tocollaborative plans we havemutually agreed upon with ourcustomers, and we alwaysstrive to provide reliable ser-vice,” he said.

Examples like the Black Fri-day order show that eventhough packages take longerto arrive, FedEx and UPS cantout delivery scores that arebetter than a year ago despiterecord high package volumesand other challenges relatedto the pandemic, such asworker illness.

“While this may help thecarriers maintain service stan-dards, it leaves retailers frus-trated as they’ve scrambled toseek out delivery alternatives,”said Trevor Outman, co-chiefexecutive of shipping consult-ing firm Shipware LLC.

For the two weeks betweenNov. 22 and Dec. 5, on-timescores were 94.9% for FedEx,96.3% for UPS and 92.8% forthe U.S. Postal Service, accord-ing to ShipMatrix, a softwareprovider that analyzes ship-ping data. All were better thanlast year during a comparableperiod including Black Fridayand Cyber Monday.

ShipMatrix President SatishJindel said that 2.5 millionpackages will take an extraday or two to be delivered,and advised shoppers to orderitems by Dec. 15 to receivethem by Christmas withouthaving to pay higher shippingcharges.

FedEx and UPS, in additionto network upgrades and hir-ing tens of thousands of work-ers, have spent months plan-ning with their largecustomers on shipping fore-casts and the carriers have al-lotted companies certainamounts of packages by the

ContinuedfrompageB1

A - CAksel, Murat...............B2Antlitz, Arno...............B2Costello, Jim...............B1

DDiess, Herbert.............B1Diller, Barry.................B2

EEnria, Andrea............B12

GGeffen, David..............B2Gottstein, Thomas......B1Gustafson, Dave.........B4

H - IHodari, Jamie..............B6Inniss, Daryl................B4

JJindel, Satish..............B2

KKieran, Damien...........B4

LLaRusso, Nicole ..........B6

MMalka, David...............B2Moya, Edward...........B12

NNygard, Peter .............A3

OOutman, Trevor...........B2

PParker, David...............B4Persico, Michael..........B1

Pittman, Robert..........B2Pötsch, Hans Dieter...B2

RRedfearn, Brett...........B7Rodriguez, Alex...........B6

SSchmall, Thomas........B2

TThiam, Tidjane............B1Thibault, James..........B2Thomas, Raoul............B6

WWiesenthal, Rob.........B2Wintour, Anna............B3

ZZaslav, David ..............B2

day or week. If shippers ex-ceed that amount, the carrierspause pickups until the net-work has the ability to take onmore.

“In years past, the carrierswould take every single pack-age available to them andhope like heck that they couldput them through their sys-tem,” said James Thibault,who spent 30 years at UPS be-fore joining Intelligent Audit, afreight audit and analyticscompany. “This year is amarked change.”

Target Corp. is shippingthe “vast majority” of pack-ages within the delivery win-dows shoppers see when theyorder and promised shippingtimes are in line with priorholiday seasons, said a spokes-woman. In a small number ofcases, the retailer is lighteningthe load on carriers by makingsome items available only forsame-day delivery or pickup,which use other deliverymethods, she said. Targethasn’t set a blanket cutoff datefor packages to arrive byChristmas, instead showingship-by dates for each itemonline, she said.

Several large retailers, in-cluding Gap Inc. and Macy’sInc., faced temporary restric-tions on shipping volumesshortly after Thanksgiving.Other shippers say they werecut off with little notice.

Deliveries poured intogoTRG by the thousands in thedays after Thanksgiving. Thecompany, owned by the ReconGroup LLP, processes returnsfor major retailers and thenresells electronics, sportinggoods and other items throughvarious websites, includingWalmart.com, eBay and Ama-zon.com.

Orders averaged 2,500 aday at four of its warehousesuntil FedEx hit the brakes. Thecarrier on Dec. 2 told the com-pany that it would pick uponly 200 orders a day untilfurther notice.

“We were never told in ad-vance” of shipping limits, saidDavid Malka, goTRG’s chiefsales officer. “We were told af-ter the fact.”

The boxes piled up on thecompany’s loading dock. Atone Kentucky warehouse,goTRG has stopped shippingwith FedEx and is consideringrelabeling some of thousandsof packages waiting to beshipped with other carriers.

A FedEx spokesman saidthe company had been work-ing with customers to under-stand the expected shippingvolume but that, in somecases, volume is significantlyhigher than projections.

The Postal Service on Mon-day said record-high shippingvolumes, employee shortagesdue to the coronavirus and notenough room on airplanes andtrucks have led to some tem-porary delays.

ShipmentsSlow forHolidays

The change among incumbentauto makers is being drivenboth by tighter emissions reg-ulation and increased competi-tion from a new breed of all-electric startups.

The deal reached by Volks-wagen’s directors “puts anend, at least for the moment,to the excessive frictions be-tween management and otherkey stakeholders,” said ArndtEllinghorst, senior auto ana-lyst at Bernstein Research.“Yesterday’s resolutions clar-ify management’s mandateand offer an opportunity to fo-cus on VW’s fundamental mat-ters.”

In recent weeks, Germanmedia had reported that Mr.Diess was seeking an early ex-tension of his contract as avote of confidence from theboard. The company’s boardincludes the Porsche family,who are the controlling share-holders, and the state premierof Lower Saxony, which holdsa 20% blocking minority, aswell as the Qatar InvestmentAuthority. Neither Mr. Diessnor Volkswagen would confirmthe reports.

Chairman Hans DieterPötsch met all of the players

ContinuedfrompageB1

VW BoardBacks TurnTo Electric

CEO HerbertDiess madepeace with theboard and wonapproval formanagement-team picks.

CORPORATE WATCH

Blade Urban Air Mobility arranges for the booking of air taxis and charter flights.

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ALPHABET

Gmail ServiceSuffers Disruption

A number of Gmail users ex-perienced issues with the emailservice Tuesday, a day aftermore than a dozen Google ser-vices such as YouTube endureda nearly hourlong disruption.

Alphabet Inc.-owned Googlesaid that while some users couldaccess their accounts, theymight see error messages, expe-rience delays or encounter otherunexpected behavior. Some us-ers were getting bounce-backnotifications after sending mes-sages to certain email ad-dresses. The company said alarge swath of Gmail users wereaffected.

The issues began around 4:30p.m. Eastern time and servicehad been restored to all of itsusers around 7 p.m., the com-pany said.

Temporary interruptions forpopular online services are rela-tively common, though their im-pact has increased as more peo-ple rely on them as a result ofthe coronavirus pandemic andmore businesses outsource theirdigital infrastructure and tools tooutside businesses, often largeinternet companies.

Google’s Gmail is one of themost popular email clientsworld-wide, and the company’sWorkspace office tools, formerlyknown as G Suite and a rival toMicrosoft Corp.’s Office, are pop-ular among businesses and insti-tutions. Google said last yearthat the email service, launchedin 2004, had 1.5 billion users.

On Monday, the company hadproblems with its authenticationsystem. —Kimberly Chin

BLADE URBAN AIR

Charter Broker SetTo List With SPAC

Air-charter broker Blade Ur-ban Air Mobility Inc. will gopublic through a combinationwith special-purpose acquisitioncompany Experience Invest-ment Corp., in a deal that valuesBlade at about $825 million.

Blade stockholders are ex-pected to hold about 43% of is-sued and shares outstanding af-ter the transaction closes.Investors include commitmentsfrom Hedosophia, HG Vora Capi-tal Management, KSL CapitalPartners and David Geffen, aswell as original investors BarryDiller, David Zaslav and RobertPittman. —Dave Sebastian

ELI LILLY

Guidance Increases,Acquisition Unveiled

Eli Lilly & Co. raised its guid-ance for 2020 and set its out-look for 2021, anticipating a ben-efit from Covid-19 treatmentsales and portfolio expansion.

The drugmaker also said itagreed to buy Prevail Therapeu-tics Inc. for up to $1.04 billion, or$26.50 a share, giving Lilly ac-cess to Prevail’s set of genetherapies for Parkinson’s andother neurodegenerative dis-eases. The deal value includesabout $880 million in cash. Theother $160 million is contingentupon certain regulatory approv-als of a product from Prevail’spipeline. —Dave Sebastian

PENN NATIONAL GAMING

Casino OperationsIn Maryland Bought

Penn National Gaming Inc.agreed to pay $31.1 million forcasino operations at a propertyin Maryland, a deal it said wouldallow it to return to the gam-bling market in that state.

Penn National said its acquisi-tion of the Hollywood CasinoPerryville from Gaming & Lei-sure Properties Inc. is expectedto be completed next year, pend-ing approval by Maryland regula-tors. Gaming & Leisure said itwould retain ownership of thereal estate that the HollywoodCasino Perryville uses and leasethe space to Penn National.

—Micah Maidenberg

JOURNALISTS DON’T‘JUST WRITE STORIES.’

THEY RECORD HISTORY.

Learn more about the impact yourjournalism career can have on the world.Wall Street Journal reporter Erin Ailworthand others share career advice atdowjonesnewsfund.org/careers.

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, December 16, 2020 | B3

BUSINESS NEWS

day’s brightest talent in theindustry, has made her one ofmedia’s most distinguished ex-ecutives,” said Mr. Lynch, towhom Ms. Wintour will con-tinue to report.

Ms. Wintour was namedVogue’s U.S. editor in 1988 and

company as it tries to returnto profitability.

“Anna’s appointment repre-sents a pivotal moment forCondé Nast as her ability tostay ahead in connecting withnew audiences, while cultivat-ing and mentoring some of to-

to elevate Black staffers andvowed to do better.

The decision by Condé NastChief Executive Roger Lynchto give the 71-year-old Ms.Wintour broader responsibili-ties is a vote of confidence inher ability to help lead the

accelerated some of thechanges.

In 2017, Condé Nast had aloss of $120 million after ayearslong, industrywide shiftof readership and ad spendingfrom magazines to the web.The company had set 2020 asits target to return to profit-ability, but was set back by theimpact of the pandemic.

In May, the company laidoff about 100 people in theU.S. and temporarily fur-loughed a similar number ofpeople.

Mr. Lynch wouldn’t discussCondé Nast’s financial perfor-mance in 2020 but said thecompany was projecting dou-ble-digit percentage revenuegrowth next year and wascommitted to increasing edito-rial spending by 25% over thenext four years.

“We are now focused onhow we can take advantage ofthe global reach of our brandsat a scale we have never beenable to before,” Ms. Wintoursaid.

As part of its effort tostreamline operations world-wide, the company is also an-nouncing newly createdglobal editorial directors forArchitectural Digest, Condéand GQ.

quickly became one of themost influential tastemakersin the fashion industry, forg-ing deep relationships withthe top fashion houses andmaking stars of up-and-com-ing designers. She turned themagazine into the company’sbiggest moneymaker, and in2014 she was named CondéNast’s U.S. artistic director.Last year she joined a globalleadership team to advise onglobal content opportunities.

Mr. Lynch took charge ofCondé Nast, whose many titlesinclude Vanity Fair, the NewYorker, Bon Appétit and GQ, inApril 2019, after stints runningPandora Media Inc. and SlingTV. Since then, he has workedto merge the company’s U.S.and sprawling internationalbusinesses. He has alsoworked to expand in digitalvideo and move all the com-pany’s titles behind digitalpaywalls to supplement de-clining ad revenue.

Mr. Lynch said in an inter-view that the company nowmakes less than half its reve-nue from advertising in thepages of its print magazines.

“We are deeply immersedin a very broad transformationproject,” he said, adding thatthe coronavirus pandemic has

Anna Wintour, long one ofthe most influential editors inthe magazine world, is aboutto get even more powerful.

Condé Nast named Ms.Wintour its first-ever globalchief content officer as part ofthe media company’s broaderpush to unify its internationaland U.S. operations.

The promotion gives Ms.Wintour oversight of all CondéNast’s brands world-wide andputs her in charge of all ofVogue’s 25 global editions, ontop of her longtime role as ed-itor in chief of Vogue U.S.

The move comes after atough year for Condé Nast,punctuated by layoffs and staffunrest over diversity issues.Ms. Wintour’s critics said shehas contributed to an atmo-sphere where Black employeesfelt sidelined and belittledduring her 32 years at thecompany. In a memo to staff inJune, Ms. Wintour said shetook responsibility for failures

BY LUKAS I. ALPERT

Wintour to Oversee Condé Nast ContentPowerful Vogue editorgiven additional dutiesas magazine publisherrethinks its strategy

Anna Wintour, who was named Vogue’s U.S. editor in 1988, recently took heat over diversity issues.

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made a concerted push into in-vesting this year—startingMantis VC, a venture-capitalfirm, and backing multiplebusinesses along the way.

Their investment in Publichighlights two values impor-tant to the group: communityand financial literacy. They arebetting that their Gen Z andmillennial fans share those in-terests and will use the plat-form.

“We have a deep under-standing of things that are im-portant to them,” Alex Pall, oneof the Chainsmokers, said oftheir fans. “I think it’s impor-tant to build financial literacy.I’m still building that.”

Mr. Pall and fellow band

member Drew Taggart havejoined investment managementfirms in backing Public, whichannounced Tuesday that it hasraised $65 million in its secondinvestment round this year,bringing its total funding to$90 million. The Chainsmokers,through Mantis, and Mr. Hawkparticipated in the latest roundled by Accel and which in-cluded Lakestar AdvisorsGmbH, Greycroft LP, AdvancitCapital and business executiveDick Parsons, a former chair-man of Citigroup.

The latest funding isn’t Pub-lic’s first investment by celeb-rities. Previously, actor WillSmith through his DreamersVC and pro football star J.J.

Watt have backed the company,as has business professor andentrepreneur Scott Galloway.

Public.com is a smartphoneapp that aims to open up eq-uity markets to those withsmall amounts of money to in-vest, while also helping its us-ers learn about investing, in-cluding the ups and downs.Investors using Public.com canpurchase stocks, fractions ofshares and exchange-tradedfunds without paying a com-mission.

On Public.com, users canalso share their thoughts on asocial network that includespictures and statuses. Thosestatuses can include why an in-dividual is investing in a com-

pany, concerns about lossesand how investments havepanned out.

The musicians are throwingtheir weight behind the invest-ing platform as more Ameri-cans are becoming involved inthe stock market through busi-nesses like Public and Robin-hood Markets Inc. But Pub-lic.com doesn’t allow day-trading or investing on margin,or using borrowed funds,which can lead to magnifiedlosses.

Investing in Public was a“chicken before the egg situa-tion,” Mr. Pall said. He said theChainsmokers were interestedin backing the company beforethe close of their first Mantis

venture fund.Mantis raised its first ven-

ture-investment fund earlierthis year and has already made15 investments in various busi-nesses, Mr. Pall said.

Public itself has continuedto grow this year by fostering a“collaborative culture,” saidLeif Abraham, a co-chief execu-tive of the business. A goal, hesaid, is to “actively get peopleinto the stock market who havebeen left out of it.” For in-stance, some 40% of Pub-lic.com’s users are women, hesaid.

The platform has seen itsuser base grow 10-fold sincelaunching Public.com in Sep-tember 2019.

The Chainsmokers havetaken an interest in finance,and hope that their latest in-vestment will entice fans tofollow.

The electronic DJ duo arejoining celebrities like profes-sional skateboarder Tony Hawkin backing Public HoldingsInc., which runs Public.com, aninvesting and social-network-ing site where users are en-couraged to learn from eachother about investing andstocks.

Although better known fortheir music, including theGrammy-winning song “Don’tLet Me Down,” the DJs have

BY LAURA COOPER

Pop Music’s Chainsmokers Back Investor Site Public.com

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B4 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

ers of high-speed trading net-works during the past year,said Daryl Inniss, director ofnew business development atOFS. Hollow-core fiber madeby OFS—a U.S.-based unit ofJapan’s Furukawa Electric Co.Ltd.—is already being used byseveral firms active in HFT ortrading technology, he added.

Lumenisity, the startupbacked by Jump, is bettingthat hollow-core fiber will finduses beyond trading, for in-stance in telecommunicationsand 5G networks. “We see HFTas an early adopter for the useof hollow-core,” LumenisityExecutive Chairman DavidParker said in an interview. Hedeclined to comment on hisfirm’s relationship with Jump.

The jury is out on whetherhollow-core fiber will makedeeper inroads into HFT. Indus-try skeptics say that even ifmanufacturers create fiber thatcan send data for tens or hun-dreds of miles, it is unlikely toreplace wireless networks thattransmit over straight linesthrough the air since under-ground cables inevitably havebends that slow transmission.

Supporters say hollow-corefiber could be used for high-bandwidth links in places likenorthern New Jersey wherethe NYSE and Nasdaq havetheir data centers.

“When you’re sending lightinto a solid fiber, it’s likeyou’re sending it through awindow 50 miles thick,” saidDave Gustafson, a former headof wireless engineering atJump. “With hollow-core,you’re sending it through 50miles of air.”

In recent years, though, thecost has come down and somemanufacturers have succeededin creating hollow-core fiberthat can transmit data overlonger distances. That hasspurred interest from traders.

One manufacturer, OFS, hasreceived more than a dozeninquiries about hollow-core fi-ber from HFT firms or provid-

their networks. Hollow-core fi-ber was pioneered in the1990s but never gained wide-spread use because of a keyproblem: Signals sent throughsuch fiber fade faster thanover standard fiber, making itimpractical to use hollow-corefiber for long distances. It isalso costly to manufacture be-cause of its intricate structure.

TECHNOLOGY WSJ.com/Tech

Small glass tubes known as core tubes in the OFS Hollow-Core lab at the beginning stage of hollow-core fiber fabrication.

Helen Dixon, the head ofthe Irish Data Protection Com-mission, said that GDPR en-forcement and power sharingis a work in progress, and thather office has been handlingits cases methodically to makesure that its decisions standup to expected court chal-lenges.

“Am I satisfied? No. Theprocess didn’t work particu-larly well. I think it’s toolong,” Ms. Dixon said of theTwitter case in an interviewbroadcast at a tech conferencethis month. “On the otherhand, it is the first time EUdata-protection authoritieshave stepped through the pro-cess, so maybe it can only getbetter from here.”

The case stems from a se-curity hole that Twitter said itfixed in January 2019 that,over a period of more thanfour years, exposed the privatetweets of some users.

Ireland’s investigation laterfound that the company’sdata-protection officer wasn’tcopied on an incident ticketinitially, leading to a delay innotifying the regulator.

In May 2020, after 15months of investigation and atleast four rounds of back-and-forth with Twitter, Ireland’s

data commission sent a draftdecision finding Twitter in vi-olation of breach-notificationrules to its counterparts aspart of a comments processstipulated in the GDPR, ac-cording to a timeline providedby European Data ProtectionBoard, which is composed ofthe privacy regulators from all27 EU member states. Severalraised objections on an arrayof points—some of them con-tradictory. In August, Irelandtriggered a dispute-resolutionprocess at the Europeanboard.

One major source of con-tention was the fine. TheGDPR allows privacy regula-tors to fine a company up to2% of its global annual reve-nue—or $60 million, based onTwitter’s 2018 revenue—forfailure to properly notify theregulator of data breaches. Butthe Irish data commission rec-ommended a fine of only0.25% to 0.5% of that maxi-mum because it found the vio-lation was negligent, not in-tentional or systematic.Hamburg’s privacy regulator,representing Germany, wanteda more dissuasive fine, citing arange between €7 million and€22 million, according to theEuropean board.

In early November, theboard issued its final decisionon the disputes, siding withIreland on all the issues apartfrom the fine, which it orderedthe data commission to in-crease, but without specifyingan amount.

The €450,000 fine Irelandassessed was about two-thirdshigher than the top of therange it had originally pro-posed. The regulator describedit as “an effective, proportion-ate and dissuasive measure.”

Two-and-a-half-years aftergoing into effect, the EuropeanUnion’s new privacy law pro-duced its first fine for a U.S.tech company in a cross-bor-der case—an overdue develop-ment, critics say.

Ireland’s Data ProtectionCommission said Tuesday thatit is fining Twitter Inc.€450,000, equivalent to about$546,000, for failing to docu-ment or properly notify theregulator within 72 hours oflearning of a data breach dis-closed in January 2019 thatexposed some users’ privatetweets.

“We take responsibility forthis mistake and remain fullycommitted to protecting theprivacy and data of our cus-tomers,” said Damien Kieran,Twitter’s chief privacy officer,adding that the delay in notifi-cation was an “unanticipatedconsequence of staffing be-tween Christmas Day 2018 andNew Year’s Day.”

The case is a bellwether be-cause it is the first in a longpipeline of privacy cases in-volving big U.S. tech compa-nies in Ireland, includingFacebook Inc., Apple Inc. andAlphabet Inc.’s Google. Ire-land’s data commission leadsenforcement of the EU’s Gen-eral Data Protection Regula-tion, or GDPR, for those andother U.S. companies that havetheir regional headquarters inthe country.

It has taken nearly twoyears for Ireland’s data com-mission to arrive at a decisionin the Twitter case, includingnearly five months for thecommission and its counter-parts in other EU countries tosquabble over jurisdiction, in-vestigatory scope and theamount of the fine.

That is fueling frustrationamong some privacy activistsand EU privacy regulators thatthe bloc’s enforcement is tooslow.

“We are coming to a turn-ing point where the GDPR re-ally needs to start delivering,”said David Martin, senior legalofficer at BEUC, an umbrellaorganization for Europeanconsumer-rights groups that isa strong supporter of the law.“The credibility of the wholesystem is at stake if enforce-ment doesn’t improve.”

In one sign of that frustra-tion, some other regulatorsare starting to push their ownprivacy cases using laws otherthan the GDPR, said Paul Nem-itz, principal adviser on justicepolicy for the European Com-mission, the EU’s executivearm. Last week, France’s pri-vacy regulator, the CNIL, finedGoogle and Amazon.com Inc.a combined $163 million forviolations of a separate rulecalled the ePrivacy directive.That allowed the CNIL effec-tively to side-step the powersharing with other EU privacyregulators built into the GDPR,known as the one-stop shop.

“It is important that thelead authority for Google andother tech companies enforceGDPR properly to preserve thefunctioning of the one-stopshop,” Mr. Nemitz said.

BY SAM SCHECHNER

Twitter FinedIn Europe OverData BreachPenalty is the first fora U.S. tech firm under2018 privacy law, afterbureaucratic infighting

72The hours firms have to notifyregulators of a data breach

The size of the fine against the tech firm was an EU sticking point.

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common use, they say, is toconnect the data center hous-ing an exchange’s systems to anearby communications tower.From there, HFT firms trans-mit data onward throughcross-country networks of mi-crowave antennas.

Replacing standard fiberwith hollow-core fiber overthat brief stretch might speedup a firm’s network by a fewhundred nanoseconds. A nano-second is a billionth of a sec-ond.

Anova started using hollow-core fiber about two years agoafter a few trading firms de-ployed it, Mr. Persico said.Two other firms that providecommunications services forhigh-speed traders, McKayBrothers LLC and BSO Net-work Solutions Ltd., also saidthey use hollow-core fiber in

ContinuedfrompageB1

SpeedTradersSeek Edge

Testing area for the hollow-core fiber checking data transmission at the OFS lab.

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THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, December 16, 2020 | B5

wsj_20201216_b005_p2jw351000_0_b00500_1________xa2020.crop.pdf 1 16-Dec-20 07:29:54

B6 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

Alex Rodriguez, who is joining CGI Merchant Group, has been a real-estate investor since 2003.

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office space demand.”Revenue-sharing agree-

ments between landlords andco-working companies are in-creasingly common, exposingproperty owners more directlyto the ups and downs of themarket. And co-working va-cancies add to a glut of avail-able office space, pushingdown rents across cities.

“Even if it’s not all directcompetition for what you’remarketing, you kind of feelthe heat,” Ms. LaRusso said.

But while the rise of short-term leases creates challengesfor investors, co-working ex-

ecutives argue it will lead tobetter office space and hap-pier tenants.

Office landlords often haveless of an incentive to im-prove their services becausetheir customers, signed tolong-term leases, have nochoice but to keep paying therent, said Jamie Hodari, CEOof co-working company Indus-trious.

“Hopefully shifting awayfrom that means suppliershave to do a better job of ac-tually meeting demand ratherthan sitting in the Hamptonsclipping coupons,” he said.

The downturn reverses a trend in which WeWork helped buoy rents.

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more slowly than those pri-marily attracting tourists, hesaid.

The fund has already madeone purchase, the 129-roomGabriel Hotel in Miami, thispast June, Mr. Thomas added.

While many other investorshave been raising money in an-ticipation of buying up dis-tressed hotels at rock-bottomprices in the near future, fewerU.S. hotels have changed handsthis year than in almost anyother year. The volume of hotelsales in 2020 is coming in 84%below 2019 levels as of Octo-ber, according to a report from

Real Capital Analytics, a real-estate data firm.

Hotel performance contin-ues to suffer and businesstravel shows no signs yet ofbouncing back. Hotel-room oc-cupancy, as of the first week ofDecember, is down 38% fromthe same week in 2019, accord-ing to hospitality industry dataprovider STR. Hotel executiveshave said they don’t expect in-dustry revenue to return to lastyear’s levels until at least 2023.

Despite this grim prognosis,prices of hotels sold this yearhave fallen just 3.3%. Few sell-ers have been willing to meet

the lower price expectations ofbuyers. “The owner of a hotelasset will not sell at a loss un-less forced to do so because ofdistress situations,” RCA’s re-port notes.

But ongoing debt problemsfor hotel owners could spelldeeper distress for the sectorand more opportunities for in-vestors like CGI Merchant andA-Rod. The partners said theyview the hotel fund as a long-term strategy.

“Wealth is rarely createdovernight,” Mr. Rodriguez said.

—Konrad Putziercontributed to this article.

buildings.“That never really hap-

pened because flex operatorscame in and leased up all thatspace,” said Nicole LaRusso,CBRE’s director of researchand analysis for the New YorkCity area.

Most co-working compa-nies leased office space underlong-term deals, and landlordshoped this would mean con-tinued payments even duringa recession.

But they are now findingthat co-working companiesare in some cases unwilling orunable to pay rent, pressuringlandlords to renegotiateleases or seeking refuge inbankruptcy courts.

Knotel has said it plans toshrink its footprint and faceslawsuits over unpaid rent.Some entities tied to IWGPLC’s Regus locations havefiled for bankruptcy to get outof lease obligations.

Fitch Ratings in Octoberdowngraded WeWork’s bonds,citing “concern over the via-bility of WeWork’s businessmodel in light of a potentiallasting shift by companies toa hybrid office model thatleads to permanently lower

demand for office space arealready weighing on publiclytraded real-estate owners,which are trailing the overallstock market by a consider-able margin. Shares of BostonProperties Inc. are down 29%year to date, while SL GreenRealty Corp. shares are 36%lower, according to FactSet.Vornado Realty Trust sharesare down 43%.

The co-working industry’sdamping effect on the prop-erty market is a reversal fromprior years, when the growthof companies including We-Work and Knotel Inc. proppedup office rents and real-estateprices.

In New York, a surge innew construction over thepast decade led to fears of aglut of office space, as ten-ants moved out of older

ContinuedfrompageB1

Market forFlexibleSpace Falls

Share of office space availablefor lease*

*Manhattan and San Francisco numbers are asof November, L.A. numbers are as of Q3.†Estimates based on a 50% availability ratewithin co-working spacesSources: CBRE; WeWork

WeWork office visits, indexed

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until at least 2023, even if thepandemic comes under con-trol. Some business executives,including Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, have sug-gested business travel won’tbounce back to what it was,maybe ever. Meanwhile, thehighly successful initial publicoffering from Airbnb Inc.,whose shares more than dou-bled in price on the first dayof trading, is testimony to a

powerful competitor for tour-ist dollars.

But after lodging stockprices had tumbled 36% be-tween the end of February andthe end of October, investorsseemed to conclude there ismore upside than downsidegoing forward.

Park Hotels & Resorts Inc.and Xenia Hotels & ResortsInc. have risen by 62%, as in-vestors anticipate them to

benefit from a pent-up de-mand for travel after vaccinesbecome widely available.

“I think REITs in generalhave bottomed out, and I don’tthink we’ll retest the lows,”said Marc Halle, managingpartner at Park Lane Inves-tors, which invests in real-es-tate and property companies.Mr. Halle views this as an op-portunity for long-term inves-tors since the earnings recov-

ery may take years, he said.Even shares of shopping-

mall owners have lured buyersthis past month. While thesecular consumer shift towardonline shopping shows no signof ebbing, investors said somecompanies with stronger bal-ance sheets looked oversold,especially ones with valuablereal estate that could be con-verted to other uses such asoffices or residences.

THE PROPERTY REPORT

“We want to own retaillandlords that have the capitaland management skills to re-purpose their properties,” saidEvan Serton, Cohen & Steerssenior vice president and se-nior portfolio specialist.

The investment manager isone of the largest shareholdersin Simon Property Group, thecountry’s biggest mall owner.Its shares have risen by morethan 41% to $87.32 overroughly the past month. The In-dianapolis-based company alsotapped the equity market lastmonth and raised $1.56 billionat $72.50 a share from inves-tors, including Cohen & Steers.

Still, some analysts warn oftrouble ahead for many retail-ers if they don’t have a strongholiday season, which may benecessary to prevent a numberof them from filing for bank-ruptcy protection. With the re-surgence of the coronavirusacross the U.S., foot traffic inmany shopping locations hasalso dropped off.

Investors said senior livingand nursing homes also showpromise as vaccines are ex-pected to be made available tohealth-care workers and vul-nerable groups like the elderlyearlier than other segments ofthe population.

Around one-third of the 87seniors housing and skillednursing operators surveyed bythe National Investment Cen-ter for Seniors Housing & Carelast month said that they havea backlog of residents waitingto move in.

The occupancy rate of se-niors housing was 82.1% in thethird quarter down from 84.7%in the second quarter.

Some of the worst-perform-ing real-estate stocks this yearare finally having their mo-ment.

Even though Covid-19 infec-tion rates in the U.S. are atnew highs and a number ofcities and states are reimpos-ing restrictions, investors arelooking ahead to new vaccinesand a time when shops andrestaurants reopen and travelresumes. Stock buyers havebeen scooping up shares ofcompanies that are beatendown but stand to benefitfrom the economy’s eventualreopening.

Share prices for hotels, re-tail and office landlordsjumped more than a third andhave held those gains sinceNov. 9, the day when PfizerInc. and BioNTech SE an-nounced their promising vac-cine results.

The FTSE Nareit EquityLodging/Resorts index hassoared 49% while the regionalmalls and shopping centersREIT indexes are each up morethan 40% since the vaccine an-nouncement. Those returnsmade these real-estate invest-ment trusts two of the bestperforming sectors. Over thatsame period, the S&P 500 wasup 4.6%.

Hotel executives havewarned that their businessmay not see a full recovery

BY ESTHER FUNG

Vaccines Boost Hard-Hit Realty StocksShares, REITs reboundalong with retailconfidence after beingbattered by pandemic

Investors are scooping up shares of companies that stand to benefit from the economy’s eventual reopening. A mall in Miami.

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Life-sciences venture firmWestlake Village BioPartnershas raised $500 million acrosstwo new funds after quicklydeploying its $327 million de-but investment pool thatlaunched in 2018.

Westlake Village, based out-side Los Angeles, used its firstfund to incubate or invest in 11biotechnology startups. Now ithas raised $70 million to investfurther in the best performersfrom that first vehicle. West-lake said it plans to invest this“opportunity fund” in the sec-ond or later rounds of financ-ing of these companies.

Westlake also has secured$430 million to invest in newbiotechs, raising a largeramount this time so it wouldhave more capital to deploy inthese companies as they raiselater financing rounds, co-founding managing directorBeth Seidenberg, said.

Westlake incubates most ofits portfolio companies, a strat-egy designed to capitalize onthe experience of Dr. Seiden-berg, who previously investedin biotech startups withKleiner Perkins, and co-found-ing managing director SeanHarper, who formerly headedresearch and development fordrugmaker Amgen Inc.

Starting companies is time-consuming and involves riskbecause early-stage drugs oftenfail in clinical trials. But start-ing companies also enablesventure firms to generate out-size returns on those that suc-ceed, with surges in value oc-curring after a biotechstartup’s first drug showspromise in clinical trials.

Other venture investorsraising funds recently with afocus on company creation in-clude Atlas Venture, whichdisclosed a $400 million fundin June.

Building companies aroundnew biotech research is alsothe most scientifically inter-esting work for the team, Dr.Harper said. In addition, be-cause of the success the bio-tech industry has had in re-cent years, more corporateemployees are willing to leavethe security of a large com-pany to join a startup, increas-ing the pool of talent investorshave to draw upon whenbuilding companies, accordingto Dr. Seidenberg.

BY BRIAN GORMLEY

VentureFirm PullsIn $500Million forBiotechdays. He founded his own real-

estate investment company in2003, the year before he playedhis first game for the BronxBombers. His Monument Capi-tal Management has mademore than $800 million worthof property acquisitions inmore than a dozen states, ac-cording to its website. Mr. Rod-riguez will invest some of hispersonal money in the hotelfund and help source deals.

He said investing in hotelsright now is a way to capitalizeon a travel rebound once thepandemic is under control. “Webelieve we can acquire assetsthat are strategically posi-tioned to be in the top-per-forming percentile once re-strictions are eased,” the 14-time All-Star said.

The CGI Merchant fund willlook to invest in hotels and re-sorts across North Americaand the Caribbean, CGI said,with Miami, Seattle and NewYork City of particular interest.Raoul Thomas, CGI Merchant’schief executive, said the fundwill avoid large hotels withopen floor plans and largebanquet spaces. Lodging prop-erties dependent on largegroup events, like seminarsand conferences, may recover

Baseball legend Alex Rodri-guez is teaming with a Miamiprivate-equity firm to investmore than a half-billion dollarsin buying or developing hotelsat a time when the industryhas been ravaged by the pan-demic.

The former New York Yan-kee known as A-Rod said he isjoining CGI Merchant Groupin its new hotel investmentfund, which the firm launchedthis month. The venture aimsto raise $650 million to acquire

and develop properties in part-nership with Hilton World-wide Holdings Inc. brands.Maverick Capital Partners, aNew York brokerage, will alsobe part of the venture.

Mr. Rodriguez has been areal-estate investor for manyyears, going back to his playing

BY WILL PARKER

Retired SluggerRodriguez TeamsWith Hotel Fund

The venture aims toraise $650million tobuy properties, withHilton as a partner.

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. * * Wednesday, December 16, 2020 | B7

BANKRATE.COM®MMA,Savings andCDsAverageYields ofMajor Banks Tuesday, December 15, 2020

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One-monthCD One-year CDLoneStar Bank (5) $1,000 0.20 ConnexusCredit Union (5) $5,000 0.71(713) 358-9400 (800) 845-5025StateBank of India California (5) $1,000 0.15 CFGCommunityBank (5) $500 0.67(877) 707-1995 (888) 205-8388WashingtonSavingsBank (4) $500 0.10 BrioDirect (3) $500 0.65(978) 458-7999 (877) 369-2746

Two-monthCD Two-year CDLoneStar Bank (5) $1,000 0.20 ConnexusCredit Union (5) $5,000 0.81(713) 358-9400 (800) 845-5025StateBank of India California (5) $1,000 0.15 LiveOakBank (5) $2,500 0.80(877) 707-1995 (866) 518-0286VirtualBank (4) $10,000 0.15 Goldwater Bank (3) $5,000 0.80(877) 998-2265 (480) 281-8200

Three-monthCD Five-year CDBrioDirect (3) $500 0.50 ConnexusCredit Union (5) $5,000 1.01(877) 369-2746 (800) 845-5025Goldwater Bank (3) $5,000 0.35 First InternetBank of Indiana (4) $1,000 0.96(480) 281-8200 (888) 873-3424LoneStar Bank (5) $1,000 0.25 Goldwater Bank (3) $5,000 0.95(713) 358-9400 (480) 281-8200

Highyield jumbos -Minimum is $100,000

Moneymarket and savings account Six-monthCDCFGCommunityBank (5) 0.72 LiveOakBank (5) 0.50(888) 205-8388 (866) 518-0286LuanaSavingsBank (5) 0.60 MerrickBank (5) 0.50(800) 666-2012 (866) 638-6851BankDirect (4) 0.60 TABBank (5) 0.50(877) 839-2737 (800) 355-3063

One-monthCD One-year CDLoneStar Bank (5) 0.20 ConnexusCredit Union (5) 0.71(713) 358-9400 (800) 845-5025StateBank of India California (5) 0.15 CFGCommunityBank (5) 0.67(877) 707-1995 (888) 205-8388VirtualBank (4) 0.10 Goldwater Bank (3) 0.65(877) 998-2265 (480) 281-8200

Two-monthCD Two-year CDLoneStar Bank (5) 0.20 ConnexusCredit Union (5) 0.81(713) 358-9400 (800) 845-5025StateBank of India California (5) 0.15 LiveOakBank (5) 0.80(877) 707-1995 (866) 518-0286VirtualBank (4) 0.15 Goldwater Bank (3) 0.80(877) 998-2265 (480) 281-8200

Three-monthCD Five-year CDBrioDirect (3) 0.50 ConnexusCredit Union (5) 1.01(877) 369-2746 (800) 845-5025Goldwater Bank (3) 0.35 First InternetBank of Indiana (4) 0.96(480) 281-8200 (888) 873-3424LoneStar Bank (5) 0.25 Goldwater Bank (3) 0.95(713) 358-9400 (480) 281-8200

Notes: Accounts are federally insured up to $250,000per person. Yields are based onmethod ofcompounding and rate stated for the lowest required opening deposit to earn interest. CDfigures are for fixed rates only.MMA:Allows six (6) third-party transfers permonth, three (3) ofwhichmay be checks. Rates are subject to change.

Source: Bankrate.com, a publication of Bankrate, Inc., PalmBeachGardens, FL 33410Internet:www.bankrate.com

ARKInnovationETF ARKK 124.30 0.04 148.4CommSvsSPDR XLC 67.28 0.82 25.5CnsmrDiscSelSector XLY 158.64 1.35 26.5CnsStapleSelSector XLP 67.22 0.24 6.7EnSelectSectorSPDR XLE 40.46 1.97 –32.6FinSelSectorSPDR XLF 28.61 1.71 –7.1HealthCareSelSect XLV 112.04 1.08 10.0IndSelSectorSPDR XLI 88.84 1.39 9.0InvscQQQI QQQ 307.29 1.07 44.5InvscS&P500EW RSP 126.89 1.66 9.7iSh3-7YTreasuryBd IEI 132.96 –0.04 5.7iShCoreDivGrowth DGRO 44.28 1.30 5.3iShCoreMSCIEAFE IEFA 68.37 1.17 4.8iShCoreMSCIEM IEMG 60.65 1.10 12.8iShCoreMSCITotInt IXUS 66.28 1.19 7.1iShCoreS&P500 IVV 369.31 1.36 14.3iShCoreS&PMC IJH 227.83 2.34 10.7iShCoreS&PSC IJR 91.28 2.63 8.9iShS&PTotlUSStkMkt ITOT 84.93 1.41 16.8iShCoreUSAggBd AGG 118.03 0.06 5.0iShSelectDividend DVY 95.98 1.57 –9.2iShESGAwareUSA ESGU 84.65 1.29 18.7iShEdgeMSCIMinUSA USMV 67.02 1.04 2.2iShEdgeMSCIUSAMom MTUM 158.70 0.95 26.4iShEdgeMSCIUSAQual QUAL 114.32 1.26 13.2iShGoldTr IAU 17.69 1.43 22.0iShiBoxx$InvGrCpBd LQD 137.45 0.20 7.4iShiBoxx$HYCpBd HYG 86.97 0.31 –1.1iShJPMUSDEmgBd EMB 115.31 0.34 0.7iShMBSETF MBB 110.00 0.05 1.8iShMSCIACWI ACWI 89.33 1.27 12.7iShMSCI EAFE EFA 72.26 1.02 4.1iShMSCIEmgMarkets EEM 50.48 1.08 12.5iShMSCIJapan EWJ 66.38 0.71 12.1iShNatlMuniBd MUB 117.09 ... 2.8iSh1-5YIGCorpBd IGSB 55.10 0.06 2.7iShPfd&Incm PFF 38.13 0.50 1.4iShRussell1000Gwth IWF 235.53 1.16 33.9iShRussell1000 IWB 208.36 1.35 16.8iShRussell1000Val IWD 135.42 1.51 –0.8iShRussell2000 IWM 194.68 2.50 17.5iShRussellMid-Cap IWR 67.86 1.69 13.8iShRussellMCValue IWS 96.01 1.95 1.3iShS&P500Growth IVW 62.51 1.33 29.1iShS&P500Value IVE 126.80 1.42 –2.5iShShortTreaBd SHV 110.51 –0.01 0.0iShSilver SLV 22.80 2.89 36.7iShTIPSBondETF TIP 127.06 0.18 9.0iSh1-3YTreasuryBd SHY 86.41 ... 2.1iSh7-10YTreasuryBd IEF 119.96 –0.10 8.8iSh20+YTreasuryBd TLT 157.80 –0.33 16.5iShRussellMCGrowth IWP 101.32 1.17 32.8iShUSTreasuryBdETF GOVT 27.39 –0.07 5.6JPMUltShtIncm JPST 50.80 0.01 0.7PIMCOEnhShMaturity MINT 102.03 0.01 0.4SPDRBlmBarcHYBd JNK 108.41 0.35 –1.0SPDRBloomBar1-3MTB BIL 91.51 ... 0.1SPDRGold GLD 173.94 1.40 21.7SchwabIntEquity SCHF 35.67 1.11 6.1SchwabUSBrdMkt SCHB 89.63 1.43 16.6SchwabUSDiv SCHD 63.92 1.33 10.4SchwabUSLC SCHX 89.56 1.34 16.6SchwabUSLCGrw SCHG 125.29 1.19 34.9SchwabUSSC SCHA 88.19 2.18 16.6SchwabUSTIPs SCHP 61.88 0.18 9.3SPDRDJIATr DIA 302.62 1.18 6.1SPDRS&PMdCpTr MDY 417.69 2.36 11.3SPDRS&P500 SPY 369.59 1.35 14.8SPDRS&PDiv SDY 107.33 1.70 –0.2TechSelectSector XLK 126.83 1.67 38.4UtilitiesSelSector XLU 63.14 1.97 –2.3VanEckGoldMiner GDX 35.37 3.15 20.8VangdInfoTech VGT 345.02 1.66 40.9VangdSCVal VBR 142.46 2.39 3.9VangdSCGrwth VBK 262.14 1.75 31.9VangdExtMkt VXF 163.39 1.72 29.7VangdDivApp VIG 139.71 1.27 12.1VangdFTSEDevMk VEA 47.03 1.10 6.7VangdFTSEEM VWO 49.51 0.94 11.3VangdFTSEEurope VGK 60.09 1.37 2.5VangdFTSEAWxUS VEU 58.08 1.08 8.1VangdGrowth VUG 248.26 1.22 36.3VangdHlthCr VHT 221.76 1.00 15.7VangdHiDiv VYM 91.78 1.36 –2.1VangdIntermBd BIV 93.37 –0.01 7.1VangdIntrCorpBd VCIT 96.92 0.11 6.1VangdLC VV 173.60 1.29 17.4VangdMC VO 205.74 1.51 15.5VangdMBS VMBS 54.08 0.06 1.7VangdRealEst VNQ 85.74 2.05 –7.6VangdS&P500ETF VOO 339.64 1.38 14.8VangdSTBond BSV 82.89 0.02 2.8VangdSTCpBd VCSH 83.11 0.07 2.6VangdSC VB 193.07 1.97 16.6VangdTotalBd BND 88.20 0.05 5.2VangdTotIntlBd BNDX 58.66 0.02 3.7VangdTotIntlStk VXUS 59.95 1.08 7.6VangdTotalStk VTI 192.24 1.37 17.5VangdTotlWrld VT 91.74 1.29 13.3VangdValue VTV 118.61 1.40 –1.0

Closing Chg YTDETF Symbol Price (%) (%)

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Exchange-TradedPortfolios

Largest 100 exchange-traded funds,latest session

tion, issuing a nearly 900-pageregulation that Mr. Redfearnplayed a role in crafting.

“This is something thathasn’t been updated and mod-ernized since the 1970s,” hesaid in an interview. “It is ex-tremely important for levelingthe playing field and ensuringfairness in the market.”

Mr. Redfearn said he didn’thave any immediate plans tostart a new job after leavingthe SEC.

He is the latest of a wave oftop SEC staffers who have re-cently left or announced plansto depart at the end of theyear, including the agency’stop enforcement official,Stephanie Avakian. Such turn-over is common at the SECduring changes of presidentialadministrations.

Unlike many previous direc-tors of his division, Mr. Red-fearn isn’t a lawyer and in-stead had spent much of hiscareer on Wall Street tradingdesks.

Before his appointment tothe SEC, he was a top elec-tronic-trading executive at JP-Morgan Chase & Co. whose jobincluded publicly advocatingfor the bank’s views on thestructure of the U.S. equitiesmarkets.

That background proveduseful during the coronavirus-fueled volatility of March andApril when Mr. Redfearn wasfrequently on the phone withexchange executives and offi-cials at other governmentagencies to ensure that mar-kets were running smoothly.

Mr. Redfearn was also in-volved in the SEC’s effort todevelop a regulatory frame-work for digital currencies.

The Securities and Ex-change Commission’s top offi-cial for the oversight of ex-changes, brokers and high-speed trading firms isstepping down at the end ofDecember, concluding a three-year tenure marked by clasheswith the stock exchanges heregulated.

Brett Redfearn will leavehis job as director of the SEC’strading and markets division,the commission said Tuesday.He is leaving along with hisboss, Chairman Jay Clayton,who appointed Mr. Redfearnto the role in October 2017.

Together, Messrs. Claytonand Redfearn sought to re-shape the plumbing of the U.S.stock market, particularly inthe area of stock-market data.

Many brokers and traderscomplain that fees for essen-tial data on stock prices,quotes and trading activity areexcessive and that big ex-change operators like the NewYork Stock Exchange and Nas-daq Inc. have too much powerto set them.

NYSE, owned by Intercon-tinental Exchange Inc., andNasdaq reject such criticismand say their fees are fair andreasonable. They pushed backagainst many of Mr. Redfearn’smarket-data changes, whichthreatened a key business forthem, and they repeatedlysued the SEC to block initia-tives that he supported, win-ning some court victories.

Last week, the SEC’s com-missioners voted unanimouslyto overhaul the public-datafeeds that supply many inves-tors with stock-price informa-

BY ALEXANDER OSIPOVICH

Top SEC OfficialOn ExchangesTo Step Down

A shuttered restaurant in New York. The company had asked a judge to delay or cut rent obligations.

BRUCE

BENNET

T/GET

TYIM

AGES

BUSINESS NEWS

2018, Barclays and some affili-ates failed to help some custom-ers understand the reason be-hind missed payments andprovided solutions that were un-affordable or unsustainable.

The FCA requires consumer-credit firms to take measuresto understand customers’ fi-nancial difficulties and to showforbearance to customers whohave missed payments or arestruggling financially.

The regulator cited BarclaysBank UK PLC, Barclays BankPLC and Clydesdale FinancialServices Ltd., a wholly ownedsubsidiary of Barclays Bank, forthe violations.

“Consumers should feel re-assured that their lender willwork with them to help resolveany financial difficulties,whereas Barclays’s poor treat-ment of its customers riskedmaking these difficulties

worse,” Mark Steward, theFCA’s director of enforcementand market oversight, said.Barclays didn’t dispute theFCA’s findings, according to theregulator.

Barclays said that it hassince implemented changes toits systems, processes andtraining. The bank also has re-paid more than £273 million toat least 1.53 million customeraccounts since 2017.

A top U.K. regulator has lev-ied a fine of £26 million, theequivalent of $34.7 million, onBarclays PLC-related units overthe treatment of customersthat fell into arrears or wentthrough a difficult financial sit-uation.

The Financial Conduct Au-thority said Tuesday that be-tween April 2014 and December

BY SABELA OJEA

U.K. Watchdog Sets Fines for Barclays Units

Children’s arcade and pizzachain Chuck E. Cheese failedto persuade a bankruptcyjudge to delay or cut rent obli-gations due to Covid-19-re-lated restrictions on the busi-ness.

The ruling this week fromJudge Marvin Isgur of the U.S.Bankruptcy Court in Houstonsounds a warning note for re-tailers and restaurants tryingto survive a pandemic-drivendrop in revenue, while com-forting commercial landlordstrying to do the same.

The question of rent cutsand delays for businesses hurtby Covid-19 has come up inother bankruptcy cases, in-cluding that of Ruby TuesdayInc. which, like Chuck E.Cheese, resorted to chapter 11protection as government reg-ulations and fear of infectionkept customers away.

Judge Isgur said U.S. bank-ruptcy laws limit how muchhelp he can extend to Chuck E.Cheese when it comes to therent obligations owed on sixrestaurants in North Carolina,Washington and California.

According to the ruling,varying degrees of health re-strictions constricted the busi-ness, which is built around

giving children a place to playas part of family dining. How-ever, the bankruptcy code al-lows the company to delayrent payments for only 60days, and nothing in state lawor the terms of the leaseschanges that, according to theruling. Leases are governed bytheir own provisions and bythe laws of the states wherethe restaurant is located.

Chuck E. Cheese originallyasked the judge for delays orrent cuts at 141 outlets across12 states, citing lease provi-

sions covering events outsideof a business’s control that canprevent them from meetingtheir contractual obligations.The company came to agree-ments with many of its land-lords. But those for six loca-tions in three states challengedChuck E. Cheese and its parent,CEC Entertainment Corp.,which has proposed a restruc-turing that would put seniorlenders in control.

Throughout the coronaviruslockdowns, many tenants un-able to pay rent have said that

the Covid-19 pandemic is anevent beyond their controlthat should excuse the missedpayments. Most property own-ers have taken the positionthat tenants still have to payrent even if the premisesaren’t supporting normal busi-ness activity.

In response to the disputes,landlords are including pan-demic-related language inleases as they are renewed oramended, allowing tenants todefer part of their rent if moreshutdowns are ordered.

BY PEG BRICKLEY

Ruling Hits Chuck E. Cheese

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THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, December 16, 2020 | B9

vale.com/carbonneutral

Amazon Rainforest – National Forestof Carajás protected by Vale

Vale, partners, and clients.Working togetherto reduce carbon emissions.

As one of the largest companies in the global mining market, Vale acknowledges itsresponsibility to promote a more sustainable economy for society and the planet.We also understand that this process is only possible through the engagement of ourpartners, clients, and suppliers.

We are committed to complying with the Paris Agreement to limit global warmingto below two degrees Celsius. In 2019 we set the goal to become carbon neutralby 2050 – cutting by 33% our direct and indirect absolute emissions by 2030 (scope 1 and 2).

Now we are investing more than US$ 2 billion in technological and innovative initiativesfor our operations, such as the PowerShift program, which aims to convert Vale’senergy matrix into one based on renewable sources.Vale is also committed to useonly electricity generated by renewable sources by 2030.

Today, we help protect over one million hectares of woodlands worldwide,800 thousand of which are in the Amazon (the equivalent to ten times the size ofNewYork City). In addition, we have set the goal to restore and protect an additional500 thousand hectares of forest by 2030.

Moreover, we have just announced an expansion of our carbon neutral strategy:we will offer our clients and suppliers incentives and solutions to help cut theircarbon emissions, since our target is to reduce absolute scope 3 emissionsby 15% until 2035.

Vale, clients, and suppliers: working together for a greener future.

Paid for by Vale

NY

B10 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

Get real-time U.S. stock quotes and track most-active stocks, newhighs/lows and mutual funds. Available free at WSJMarkets.com

ConsumerRates andReturns to InvestorU.S. consumer ratesA consumer rate against itsbenchmark over the past year

0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00%

J2020

F M A M J J A S O N D

t

5-yearadjustable-ratemortgage (ARM)

t5-year Treasury

note yield

Selected ratesFive-yearARM,Rate

Bankrate.comavg†: 3.19%HanscomFederal CreditUnion 2.50%HanscomAFB,MA 800-656-4328

Citadel Federal CreditUnion 2.63%Exton, PA 800-666-0191

StarOneCreditUnion 2.63%Sunnyvale, CA 408-742-2801

AssociatedBank,NA 2.75%Rockford, IL 800-682-4989

STARFinancial Bank 2.88%FortWayne, IN 765-622-4185

Yield/Rate (%) 52-WeekRange (%) 3-yr chgInterest rate Last (l)Week ago Low 0 2 4 6 8 High (pct pts)

Federal-funds rate target 0.00-0.25 0.00-0.25 0.00 l 1.50 -1.25Prime rate* 3.25 3.25 3.25 l 4.75 -1.25Libor, 3-month 0.23 0.23 0.20 l 1.96 -1.38Moneymarket, annual yield 0.20 0.20 0.19 l 0.58 -0.14Five-year CD, annual yield 0.58 0.59 0.58 l 1.41 -0.9130-yearmortgage, fixed† 2.86 2.95 2.86 l 4.22 -1.0215-yearmortgage, fixed† 2.41 2.37 2.37 l 3.57 -0.89Jumbomortgages, $510,400-plus† 2.87 2.94 2.87 l 4.36 -1.39Five-year adjmortgage (ARM)† 3.19 3.22 2.85 l 4.61 -0.51New-car loan, 48-month 4.02 4.04 4.02 l 4.50 0.70Bankrate.com rates based on survey of over 4,800 online banks. *Base rate posted by 70% of the nation's largestbanks.† Excludes closing costs.

Sources: FactSet; Dow JonesMarket Data; Bankrate.com

BenchmarkYieldsandRatesTreasury yield curveYield to maturity of current bills,notes and bonds

0.00

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50%

1month(s)

3 6 1years

2 3 5 7 10 20 30

maturity

t

Tradeweb ICETuesday Close

tOne year ago

Forex RaceYen, euro vs. dollar; dollar vs.major U.S. trading partners

–10

–5

0

5

10%

2020 2

Euro s

Yens

WSJ Dollar indexs

Sources: Tradeweb ICEU.S. Treasury Close; Tullett Prebon; DowJonesMarketData

International Stock IndexesLatest YTD

Region/Country Index Close Net chg % chg % chg

World MSCIACWI 633.89 5.05 0.80 12.1MSCIACWI ex-USA 319.13 0.55 0.17 5.8MSCIWorld 2643.74 24.31 0.93 12.1MSCIEmergingMarkets 1250.21 –0.24 –0.02 12.2

Americas MSCIACAmericas 1444.72 17.95 1.26 15.7Canada S&P/TSXComp 17506.48 119.08 0.68 2.6LatinAmer. MSCIEMLatinAmerica 2416.24 29.99 1.26 –17.2Brazil SaoPauloBovespa 116148.63 1537.51 1.34 0.4Chile Santiago IPSA 2780.33 6.04 0.22 –16.7Mexico S&P/BMV IPC 43543.35 –26.49 –0.06 0.01

EMEA StoxxEurope600 392.84 0.99 0.25 –5.5Eurozone EuroStoxx 392.77 1.93 0.49 –2.8Belgium Bel-20 3701.71 28.41 0.77 –6.4Denmark OMXCopenhagen20 1405.04 –5.54 –0.39 23.7France CAC40 5530.31 2.47 0.04 –7.5Germany DAX 13362.87 139.71 1.06 0.9Israel TelAviv 1479.35 –13.07 –0.88 –12.1Italy FTSEMIB 21935.05 175.32 0.81 –6.7Netherlands AEX 617.34 4.46 0.73 2.1Russia RTS Index 1390.46 –7.66 –0.55 –10.2SouthAfrica FTSE/JSEAll-Share 59478.26 –30.54 –0.05 4.2Spain IBEX35 8152.40 11.60 0.14 –14.6Sweden OMXStockholm 759.76 0.03 0.004 11.6Switzerland SwissMarket 10341.18 –31.85 –0.31 –2.6Turkey BIST 100 1395.40 6.85 0.49 21.9U.K. FTSE 100 6513.32 –18.51 –0.28 –13.6U.K. FTSE250 19852.39 88.37 0.45 –9.3

Asia-Pacific MSCIACAsiaPacific 194.10 –0.43 –0.22 13.7Australia S&P/ASX200 6631.30 –28.95 –0.43 –0.8China Shanghai Composite 3367.23 –1.89 –0.06 10.4HongKong HangSeng 26207.29 –182.23 –0.69 –7.0India S&PBSESensex 46263.17 9.71 0.02 12.1Japan Nikkei StockAvg 26687.84 –44.60 –0.17 12.8Singapore Straits Times 2856.72 –1.42 –0.05 –11.4SouthKorea Kospi 2756.82 –5.38 –0.19 25.4Taiwan TAIEX 14068.52 –142.53 –1.00 17.3Thailand SET 1477.21 1.08 0.07 –6.5Sources: FactSet; DowJonesMarketData

MajorU.S. Stock-Market IndexesLatest 52-Week % chg

High Low Close Net chg % chg High Low %chg YTD 3-yr. ann.

DowJones

Industrial Average 30243.26 29894.95 30199.31 337.76 1.13 30218.26 18591.93 6.8 5.8 7.0TransportationAvg 12531.21 12330.96 12486.18 103.21 0.83 12803.02 6703.63 14.8 14.5 6.3UtilityAverage 873.43 854.11 871.54 18.73 2.20 960.89 610.89 0.4 -0.9 5.0Total StockMarket 38603.56 38226.18 38602.35 516.57 1.36 38602.35 22462.76 18.2 16.9 11.8Barron's 400 840.11 829.41 840.11 15.45 1.87 840.11 455.11 15.4 14.7 5.9

NasdaqStockMarketNasdaqComposite 12596.13 12465.42 12595.06 155.02 1.25 12595.06 6860.67 42.7 40.4 22.0Nasdaq 100 12596.84 12467.57 12595.92 133.71 1.07 12635.72 6994.29 46.9 44.2 24.9

S&P500 Index 3695.29 3659.62 3694.62 47.13 1.29 3702.25 2237.40 15.7 14.4 11.4MidCap400 2287.10 2246.86 2287.04 53.03 2.37 2287.04 1218.55 11.8 10.9 6.6SmallCap600 1112.00 1089.28 1111.67 28.62 2.64 1111.67 595.67 9.4 8.9 6.0

Other IndexesRussell 2000 1960.81 1915.90 1959.76 45.91 2.40 1959.76 991.16 18.2 17.5 8.6NYSEComposite 14410.15 14271.36 14402.32 187.39 1.32 14417.33 8777.38 4.4 3.5 4.3Value Line 566.01 555.52 565.95 10.43 1.88 565.95 305.71 3.5 2.5 0.5NYSEArcaBiotech 5793.45 5716.32 5793.20 61.35 1.07 6142.96 3855.67 12.6 14.3 11.6NYSEArcaPharma 679.04 673.25 678.78 5.28 0.78 691.70 494.36 5.0 3.8 7.4KBWBank 94.65 92.72 94.43 1.71 1.84 114.12 56.19 -17.1 -16.7 -3.9PHLX§Gold/Silver 140.61 138.07 140.20 4.85 3.58 161.14 70.12 42.3 31.1 20.4PHLX§Oil Service 46.66 44.96 46.46 1.58 3.52 80.99 21.47 -38.3 -40.7 -29.6PHLX§Semiconductor 2779.81 2753.21 2774.79 38.54 1.41 2816.27 1286.84 52.3 50.0 30.4CboeVolatility 24.07 22.73 22.89 -1.83 -7.40 82.69 12.10 86.2 66.1 34.4

NasdaqPHLX Sources: FactSet; DowJonesMarketData

LateTradingMost-activeandbiggestmoversamongNYSE,NYSEArca,NYSEAmer.andNasdaq issues from4p.m. to6p.m.ETas reportedbyelectronictradingservices, securitiesdealers and regional exchanges.Minimumsharepriceof$2andminimumafter-hoursvolumeof50,000shares.

Most-active issues in late tradingVolume AfterHours

Company Symbol (000) Last Net chg % chg High Low

SPDRS&P500 SPY 10,657.7 369.66 0.07 0.02 369.79 368.44FirstHorizon FHN 9,828.5 12.90 unch. unch. 12.90 12.87Tilray TLRY 7,653.6 9.36 1.49 18.93 9.60 7.60Apple AAPL 6,726.8 127.63 -0.25 -0.20 128.00 122.78

iShares CoreS&P500ETF IVV 4,443.7 369.26 -0.05 -0.01 369.45 368.96BostonScientific BSX 4,419.7 34.73 0.06 0.17 34.73 34.48Mosaic MOS 4,067.0 22.95 -0.16 -0.69 23.13 22.95SioGeneTherapies SIOX 3,953.2 4.02 1.18 41.55 4.40 2.84

Percentage gainers…SioGeneTherapies SIOX 3,953.2 4.02 1.18 41.55 4.40 2.84Tilray TLRY 7,653.6 9.36 1.49 18.93 9.60 7.60Aphria APHA 2,721.9 9.24 1.12 13.79 9.98 8.08Triterras Cl A TRIT 61.3 14.00 1.45 11.55 14.00 12.51AmericanOutdoorBrands AOUT 264.0 17.55 1.71 10.80 17.83 15.70

...And losersConcordMedical SvsADR CCM 1,182.9 4.49 -0.82 -15.44 6.23 4.33iQIYI ADR IQ 144.6 20.30 -2.01 -9.01 22.32 19.56Penumbra PEN 374.3 175.00 -13.82 -7.32 188.82 149.99DISHNetworkClA DISH 232.1 33.84 -1.84 -5.16 36.22 33.71Moderna MRNA 574.5 143.56 -3.66 -2.49 147.61 143.54

TradingDiaryVolume,Advancers, Decliners

NYSE NYSEAmer.

Total volume* 921,625,838 18,453,992Adv. volume* 764,698,749 12,443,786Decl. volume* 151,191,145 5,938,932Issues traded 3,238 280Advances 2,365 180Declines 783 89Unchanged 90 11Newhighs 156 9New lows 5 2ClosingArms† 0.76 0.86Block trades* 4,980 159

Nasdaq NYSEArca

Total volume*4,375,123,220 193,704,903Adv. volume*2,964,842,711 159,853,987Decl. volume*1,367,787,173 33,035,286Issues traded 3,821 1,433Advances 2,612 1,234Declines 1,116 170Unchanged 93 29Newhighs 292 225New lows 19 19ClosingArms† 1.08 1.78Block trades* 22,668 1,053

* PrimarymarketNYSE, NYSEAmerican NYSEArca only.†(TRIN)A comparison of the number of advancing and decliningissueswith the volumeof shares rising and falling. AnArmsof less than 1 indicates buying demand; above 1indicates selling pressure.

PercentageGainers... Percentage Losers

Volume %chg from Latest Session 52-WeekCompany Symbol (000) 65-day avg Close % chg High Low

Apple AAPL 156,697 25.8 127.88 5.01 137.98 53.15Sundial Growers SNDL 156,280 -20.3 0.50 -2.44 3.88 0.14NIOADR NIO 131,519 -20.2 43.50 6.15 57.20 2.11BioCardia BCDA 102,364 6773.9 6.70 49.55 8.60 1.91Apartment Inv Mgmnt AIV 97,460 5996.6 5.04 16.13 68.94 4.88

AnchianoTherapeuticsADR ANCN 92,385 19922.8 2.88 87.01 5.49 0.51AmericanAirlinesGroup AAL 88,403 18.9 17.01 1.86 30.78 8.25General Electric GE 86,530 -23.6 11.11 2.59 13.26 5.48GeniusBrands Intl GNUS 71,578 143.2 1.67 -8.74 11.73 0.05FordMotor F 69,520 6.4 9.15 2.69 9.58 3.96* Volumes of 100,000 shares ormore are rounded to the nearest thousand

Volume %chg from Latest Session 52-WeekCompany Symbol (000) 65-day avg Close % chg High Low

Experience Invt Cl A EXPC 11,701 21981 10.39 1.56 11.65 9.28Thunder Bridge II Cl A THBR 10,544 8947 10.69 2.59 11.50 9.15Prevail Therapeutics PRVL 10,772 6639 22.75 82.00 23.08 9.02NextGenAcquisition Cl A NGAC 405 5808 9.88 0.30 16.00 9.70CooTek (Cayman)ADR CTK 929 5303 4.34 -31.44 7.45 4.12

China Liberal EducHldgs CLEU 1,504 4094 4.23 -28.91 10.46 3.40GraniteShBloomComm COMB 1,094 3904 22.69 0.70 24.68 17.14MirumPharmaceuticals MIRM 2,317 3454 18.54 -22.75 28.31 9.14Invsc S&PSC Info Tech PSCT 255 2848 118.50 1.77 118.60 50.00JPMBetaBldUSMC BBMC 826 2565 78.12 1.72 78.12 48.58* Common stocks priced at $2 a share ormorewith an average volumeover 65 trading days of at least5,000 shares =Has traded fewer than 65 days

Nasdaq Composite Index12595.06 s 155.02, or 1.25%

High, low, open and close for eachtrading day of the past three months.

Year agoLast

Trailing P/E ratio *†P/E estimate *†Dividend yield *†All-time high:

38.21 26.4231.92 23.390.74 0.99

12595.06, 12/15/20

10000

10400

10800

11200

11600

12000

12400

Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.

65-day moving average

EQUITIES

CREDIT MARKETS

CommoditiesPricing trends on some rawmaterials, or commodities

Tuesday 52-Week YTDClose Net chg %Chg High Low %Chg % chg

DJCommodity 709.20 5.22 0.74 709.20 433.70 11.00 10.41TR/CCCRB Index 163.02 0.78 0.48 187.39 106.29 -12.01 -12.25Crude oil,$per barrel 47.62 0.63 1.34 63.27 -37.63 -21.86 -22.01Natural gas,$/MMBtu 2.682 ... unch. 3.354 1.482 15.65 22.52Gold,$per troy oz. 1852.30 23.60 1.29 2051.50 1472.60 25.61 21.90

CorporateBorrowingRates andYieldsYield (%) 52-Week Total Return (%)

Bond total return index Close Last Week ago High Low 52-wk 3-yr

U.S. Treasury, Barclays 2455.660 0.590 0.590 1.860 0.400 7.419 5.071

U.S. Treasury Long, Barclays4704.480 1.530 1.520 2.340 0.980 14.772 9.437

Aggregate, Barclays 2283.680 1.170 1.180 2.370 1.020 6.979 5.184

Fixed-RateMBS, Barclays 2227.070 1.300 1.330 2.690 0.930 3.825 3.647

HighYield 100, ICEBofA 3304.290 3.840 3.728 10.740 3.589 3.826 4.975

MuniMaster, ICEBofA 594.957 0.880 0.916 3.441 0.838 5.138 4.453

EMBIGlobal, J.P.Morgan 926.478 4.398 4.452 7.480 4.398 5.411 4.697

Sources: J.P.Morgan; S&PDowJones Indices; BloombergBarclays; ICEDataServices

Latest Session 52-WeekCompany Symbol Close Net chg % chg High Low %chg

WunongNet Technology WNW 12.05 7.05 141.00 13.14 5.00 ...Prevail Therapeutics PRVL 22.75 10.25 82.00 23.08 9.02 43.4Oriental CultureHolding OCG 6.00 2.00 50.00 8.37 4.00 ...BioCardia BCDA 6.70 2.22 49.55 8.60 1.91 78.7MicroVision MVIS 4.21 1.08 34.50 4.21 0.15 564.4

ElysGameTechnology ELYS 4.00 0.88 28.21 4.47 1.09 -4.8MarathonPatentGroup MARA 7.07 1.53 27.62 7.16 0.35 617.8Arvinas ARVN 74.25 15.87 27.18 75.36 19.68 77.9SensusHealthcare SRTS 4.50 0.92 25.70 4.99 1.76 18.4Solid Biosciences SLDB 5.91 1.12 23.38 6.85 1.93 23.1

BridgetownHoldings Cl A BTWN 13.58 2.50 22.56 25.84 10.50 ...Polar Power POLA 4.68 0.79 20.31 6.64 0.95 98.3OncoCyte OCX 2.53 0.41 19.34 3.51 1.15 29.1VivoPower International VVPR 7.65 1.23 19.16 24.33 0.59 553.8Vuzix VUZI 5.74 0.91 18.84 5.86 0.86 174.6

MostActiveStocks

Latest Session 52-WeekCompany Symbol Close Net chg % chg High Low %chg

CooTek (Cayman)ADR CTK 4.34 -1.99 -31.44 7.45 4.12 -13.2China Liberal EducHldgs CLEU 4.23 -1.72 -28.91 10.46 3.40 ...MINDTechnology MIND 1.77 -0.70 -28.34 3.33 0.70 -32.7MirumPharmaceuticals MIRM 18.54 -5.46 -22.75 28.31 9.14 12.4Precigen PGEN 7.17 -2.06 -22.32 9.50 1.26 16.8

Loop Industries LOOP 7.24 -2.08 -22.32 13.96 5.70 -34.9MesoblastADR MESO 13.57 -3.32 -19.66 21.28 3.12 82.9Luminar Technologies LAZR 22.87 -4.89 -17.62 47.80 9.45 124.2Cellectis ADR CLLS 25.86 -5.35 -17.14 32.30 7.32 43.4MetenEdtechXEducGroup METX 1.87 -0.32 -14.61 23.75 1.85 ...

YallaGroupADR YALA 16.15 -2.52 -13.50 23.18 6.26 ...TarsusPharmaceuticals TARS 36.00 -5.53 -13.32 43.75 15.32 ...Harvest Capital Credit HCAP 5.59 -0.85 -13.20 9.19 2.66 -38.6DadaNexusADR DADA 37.02 -5.58 -13.10 61.27 14.60 ...MonakerGroup MKGI 2.66 -0.37 -12.21 4.35 0.61 23.7

VolumeMovers Ranked by change from65-day average*

Track the MarketsCompare the performance of selectedglobal stock indexes, bond ETFs,currencies and commodities atwsj.com/graphics/track-the-markets

CURRENCIES & COMMODITIES

CurrenciesU.S.-dollar foreign-exchange rates in lateNewYork trading

US$vs,Tues YTDchg

Country/currency inUS$ perUS$ (%)

AmericasArgentina peso .0121 82.4702 37.7Brazil real .1967 5.0846 26.5Canada dollar .7874 1.2700 –2.2Chile peso .001358 736.20 –0.4Colombiapeso .000292 3419.70 4.2EcuadorUSdollar 1 1 unchMexico peso .0502 19.9105 5.2Uruguay peso .02359 42.3900 14.1Asia-PacificAustralian dollar .7559 1.3229 –7.2China yuan .1529 6.5394 –6.1HongKong dollar .1290 7.7516 –0.5India rupee .01360 73.520 3.0Indonesia rupiah .0000708 14120 1.7Japan yen .009647 103.66 –4.6Kazakhstan tenge .002382 419.86 10.0Macau pataca .1252 7.9880 –0.4Malaysia ringgit .2466 4.0545 –0.9NewZealand dollar .7089 1.4106 –5.0Pakistan rupee .00623 160.467 3.5Philippines peso .0208 48.076 –5.2Singapore dollar .7506 1.3322 –1.0SouthKoreawon .0009178 1089.56 –5.7Sri Lanka rupee .0053476 187.00 3.1Taiwan dollar .03555 28.129 –6.0Thailand baht .03330 30.030 0.9

US$vs,Tues YTDchg

Country/currency inUS$ perUS$ (%)

Vietnam dong .00004324 23127 –0.2EuropeCzechRep. koruna .04620 21.646 –4.5Denmark krone .1633 6.1233 –8.1Euro area euro 1.2155 .8227 –7.7Hungary forint .003414 292.93 –0.8Iceland krona .007851 127.37 5.2Norway krone .1147 8.7150 –0.7Poland zloty .2736 3.6554 –3.6Russia ruble .01366 73.212 18.0Sweden krona .1193 8.3816 –10.5Switzerland franc 1.1289 .8858 –8.4Turkey lira .1276 7.8350 31.7Ukraine hryvnia .0360 27.7500 17.2UK pound 1.3466 .7426 –1.5Middle East/AfricaBahrain dinar 2.6533 .3769 –0.04Egypt pound .0636 15.7154 –2.1Israel shekel .3072 3.2547 –5.8Kuwait dinar 3.2761 .3052 0.7Oman sul rial 2.5976 .3850 –0.01Qatar rial .2746 3.641 –0.1SaudiArabia riyal .2665 3.7517 0.01SouthAfrica rand .0672 14.8834 6.3

Close Net Chg %Chg YTD%Chg

WSJDollar Index 85.49 –0.31–0.36 –4.54

Sources: Tullett Prebon, DowJonesMarketData

Dow Jones Industrial Average30199.31 s337.76, or 1.13%

High, low, open and close for eachtrading day of the past three months.

Year agoLast

Trailing P/E ratioP/E estimate *Dividend yieldAll-time high

29.73 21.0424.71 18.792.00 2.25

30218.26, 12/04/20

25000

26200

27400

28600

29800

31000

32200

Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.

Current divisor 0.15198707565833

Bars measure the point change from session's open

tt

Session high

Session low

Session open

Close Open

CloseDOWN UP

65-day moving average

S&P 500 Index3694.62 s47.13, or 1.29%

High, low, open and close for eachtrading day of the past three months.

Year agoLast

Trailing P/E ratio *P/E estimate *Dividend yield *All-time high

41.52 24.8525.85 19.271.65 1.84

3702.25, 12/08/20

3000

3125

3250

3375

3500

3625

3750

Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.

65-day moving average

*Weekly P/E data based on as-reported earnings from Birinyi Associates Inc.; †Based on Nasdaq-100 Index

MARKETS DIGEST

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, December 16, 2020 | B10A

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THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, December 16, 2020 | B11

Metal &PetroleumFuturesContract Open

Open High hi lo Low Settle Chg interestCopper-High (CMX)-25,000 lbs.; $ per lb.Dec 3.5010 3.5425 3.5010 3.5380 0.0160 2,441March'21 3.5220 3.5560 3.5000 3.5445 0.0180 161,006Gold (CMX)-100 troy oz.; $ per troy oz.Dec 1833.50 1846.90 1833.20 1852.30 23.60 6,291Jan'21 1827.90 1856.10 1827.70 1853.20 23.40 2,095Feb 1830.50 1859.30 1828.50 1855.30 23.20 399,626April 1835.50 1863.00 1833.50 1859.40 23.30 76,920June 1838.60 1865.20 1836.20 1862.20 23.20 32,951Aug 1850.20 1867.20 1840.20 1864.90 23.00 12,236Palladium(NYM) - 50 troy oz.; $ per troy oz.Dec ... ... ... 2314.20 6.30 7March'21 2308.00 2369.00 2303.50 2324.00 5.10 9,119Platinum(NYM)-50 troy oz.; $ per troy oz.Dec ... ... ... 1038.10 23.70 22Jan'21 1016.60 1045.60 1009.50 1039.30 23.70 40,688Silver (CMX)-5,000 troy oz.; $ per troy oz.Dec 24.075 24.515 24.075 24.581 0.596 972March'21 23.965 24.700 23.940 24.644 0.597 131,038CrudeOil, Light Sweet (NYM)-1,000bbls.; $ per bbl.Jan 46.99 47.73 46.54 47.62 0.63 167,652Feb 47.18 47.89 46.72 47.78 0.63 332,355March 47.29 47.97 46.84 47.88 0.61 236,714April 47.29 48.01 46.95 47.95 0.59 109,765June 47.38 47.95 46.98 47.90 0.52 214,107Dec 46.60 47.07 46.25 47.04 0.43 271,947NYHarborULSD (NYM)-42,000gal.; $ per gal.Jan 1.4581 1.4708 1.4434 1.4644 .0100 78,022Feb 1.4599 1.4726 1.4468 1.4680 .0104 69,387Gasoline-NYRBOB(NYM)-42,000gal.; $ per gal.Jan 1.3231 1.3346 1.3089 1.3268 .0077 81,884Feb 1.3237 1.3362 1.3115 1.3305 .0085 75,534Natural Gas (NYM)-10,000MMBtu.; $ perMMBtu.Jan 2.669 2.700 2.596 2.682 … 112,845Feb 2.667 2.691 2.596 2.680 .002 162,959March 2.653 2.673 2.585 2.662 .002 240,322April 2.655 2.676 2.604 2.670 .008 98,834May 2.675 2.688 2.625 2.684 .011 61,641Oct 2.846 2.846 2.769 2.815 .013 95,553

Agriculture FuturesCorn (CBT)-5,000bu.; cents per bu.March 424.00 425.25 420.50 424.75 .75 862,016May 427.00 428.25 423.75 427.75 .50 241,309Oats (CBT)-5,000bu.; cents per bu.March ... ... ... 334.00 –3.50 3,981May ... ... ... 331.00 –4.75 418Soybeans (CBT)-5,000bu.; cents per bu.Jan 1170.75 1185.75 1162.00 1184.25 14.75 171,289March 1175.75 1190.25 1166.75 1188.75 14.25 326,249SoybeanMeal (CBT)-100 tons; $ per ton.Jan 381.30 388.70 378.40 388.20 7.50 68,829March 382.40 389.40 379.80 388.90 6.90 164,135SoybeanOil (CBT)-60,000 lbs.; cents per lb.Jan 38.81 39.27 s 38.27 39.19 .46 79,631March 38.60 38.97 s 38.07 38.91 .39 182,403RoughRice (CBT)-2,000 cwt.; $ per cwt.Jan 12.37 12.37 12.27 12.33 –.08 5,345March 12.54 12.59 12.45 12.50 –.10 3,688Wheat (CBT)-5,000bu.; cents per bu.March 597.25 605.75 594.25 599.75 3.25 182,916July 595.00 602.25 591.50 596.50 2.00 76,436Wheat (KC)-5,000bu.; cents per bu.March 563.75 571.00 560.25 566.00 3.75 122,041July 569.00 576.25 566.00 571.50 3.00 35,739Cattle-Feeder (CME)-50,000 lbs.; cents per lb.Jan 139.475 140.525 139.425 140.100 .075 13,123March 140.500 141.250 140.350 140.900 .300 17,321

FuturesContracts Contract OpenOpen High hi lo Low Settle Chg interest

Contract OpenOpen High hi lo Low Settle Chg interest

Contract OpenOpen High hi lo Low Settle Chg interest

Cattle-Live (CME)-40,000 lbs.; cents per lb.Dec 108.800 109.325 108.400 108.600 –.500 7,529Feb'21 112.925 113.350 112.600 112.875 –.225 113,775Hogs-Lean (CME)-40,000 lbs.; cents per lb.Feb 65.300 66.900 65.225 66.450 .775 82,333April 68.550 69.800 68.400 69.575 .750 39,644Lumber (CME)-110,000bd. ft., $ per 1,000bd. ft.Jan 826.90 845.00 s 801.20 826.00 13.00 1,345March 734.60 736.60 708.00 712.30 –17.00 1,068Milk (CME)-200,000 lbs., cents per lb.Dec 15.78 15.86 15.78 15.79 –.05 4,225Jan'21 16.18 16.56 16.14 16.32 .22 3,654Cocoa (ICE-US)-10metric tons; $ per ton.Dec 2,665 2,665 2,665 2,665 –48 5March'21 2,604 2,633 2,534 2,541 –48 100,862Coffee (ICE-US)-37,500 lbs.; cents per lb.Dec 124.55 124.55 124.55 123.10 –.45 62March'21 125.40 127.40 124.30 124.65 –1.50 115,641Sugar-World (ICE-US)-112,000 lbs.; cents per lb.March 14.15 14.32 14.09 14.21 .09 393,297May 13.58 13.72 13.54 13.63 .08 219,852Sugar-Domestic (ICE-US)-112,000 lbs.; cents per lb.March 28.31 28.31 28.31 28.31 –.04 3,004Cotton (ICE-US)-50,000 lbs.; cents per lb.March 74.67 75.68 s 74.55 75.59 .92 129,164May 75.50 76.42 s 75.39 76.34 .83 41,046Orange Juice (ICE-US)-15,000 lbs.; cents per lb.Jan 114.15 115.50 113.30 114.50 .25 4,185March 117.40 118.25 116.30 117.25 –.30 6,028

InterestRate FuturesUltraTreasuryBonds (CBT) - $100,000; pts 32nds of 100%Dec ... ... ... 214-070 –1-18.0 14,821March'21 213-310 214-170 212-090 212-150 –1-18.0 1,013,903TreasuryBonds (CBT)-$100,000; pts 32nds of 100%Dec ... ... ... 171-290 –24.0 28,546March'21 173-200 173-310 172-270 172-290 –25.0 1,133,223TreasuryNotes (CBT)-$100,000; pts 32nds of 100%Dec 138-155 138-185 138-085 138-095 –6.5 50,253March'21 138-025 138-040 137-260 137-275 –7.0 3,174,2755Yr. TreasuryNotes (CBT)-$100,000; pts 32nds of 100%Dec ... ... ... 125-227 –2.2 63,132March'21 126-030 126-035 126-000 126-005 –2.5 3,125,8212Yr. TreasuryNotes (CBT)-$200,000; pts 32nds of 100%Dec 110-151 110-153 110-151 110-151 –.2 25,865March'21 110-152 110-152 110-147 110-148 –.2 1,865,02630DayFederal Funds (CBT)-$5,000,000; 100 - daily avg.Dec 99.9125 99.9125 99.9100 99.9100 115,734Jan'21 99.9150 99.9200 99.9150 99.9150 152,00610Yr. Del. Int. RateSwaps (CBT)-$100,000; pts 32nds of 100%March ... ... ... 97-285 –8.5 100,222Eurodollar (CME)-$1,000,000; pts of 100%Jan 99.8125 99.8150 s 99.8050 99.8075 –.0050 203,570March 99.8250 99.8300 99.8200 99.8250 –.0050 1,162,352June 99.8350 99.8350 99.8250 99.8300 –.0050 903,436Sept 99.8300 99.8300 99.8200 99.8250 –.0050 817,361

CurrencyFuturesJapaneseYen (CME)-¥12,500,000; $ per 100¥Jan .9618 .9659 .9610 .9652 .0034 1,134March .9628 .9666 .9614 .9658 .0034 191,684CanadianDollar (CME)-CAD 100,000; $ per CADDec .7836 .7855 .7830 .7852 .0015 41,979March'21 .7843 .7885 s .7834 .7881 .0039 150,880BritishPound (CME)-£62,500; $ per £Jan 1.3332 1.3476 1.3289 1.3440 .0110 513March 1.3341 1.3481 1.3290 1.3444 .0110 137,579Swiss Franc (CME)-CHF 125,000; $ per CHFMarch 1.1311 1.1334 s 1.1293 1.1330 .0023 49,351June 1.1355 1.1361 s 1.1327 1.1361 .0024 78AustralianDollar (CME)-AUD 100,000; $ perAUDJan .7539 .7575 .7512 .7560 .0012 737March .7539 .7579 .7514 .7563 .0012 124,574MexicanPeso (CME)-MXN500,000; $ perMXNJan .04947 .05005 .04924 .05010 .00080 91

March .04892 .04979 .04888 .04977 .00079 136,793Euro (CME)-€125,000; $ per €Jan 1.2170 1.2183 1.2135 1.2172 .0011 1,805March 1.2174 1.2198 1.2149 1.2187 .0011 647,171

IndexFuturesMini DJ Industrial Average (CBT)-$5 x indexDec 29938 30241 29840 30203 338 51,912March'21 29841 30157 29751 30114 333 55,973S&P500 Index (CME)-$250 x indexDec ... ... ... 3694.50 48.00 36,023March'21 3672.40 3687.70 3637.30 3687.00 47.10 53Mini S&P500 (CME)-$50 x indexDec 3653.00 3695.75 3642.75 3694.50 48.00 1,169,461March'21 3647.00 3688.50 3636.25 3687.00 47.00 1,765,245

Mini S&PMidcap400 (CME)-$100 x indexDec 2236.00 2288.40 s 2232.80 2286.70 51.50 13,771March'21 2236.00 2286.20 s 2230.20 2283.80 51.30 43,709MiniNasdaq 100 (CME)-$20 x indexDec 12460.50 12604.75 12417.00 12591.75 135.25 142,558March'21 12472.50 12608.75 12423.00 12596.00 133.50 120,791Mini Russell 2000 (CME)-$50 x indexDec 1919.70 1964.40 s 1911.90 1960.90 45.70 256,091Mini Russell 1000 (CME)-$50 x indexDec 2073.50 2085.80 2063.10 2086.00 26.30 3,737March'21 2067.20 2082.60 s 2059.70 2082.60 26.30 5,756U.S. Dollar Index (ICE-US)-$1,000 x indexMarch 90.60 90.78 t 90.35 90.41 –.25 34,769June 90.55 90.69 t 90.33 90.37 –.25 376

Source: FactSet

CashPrices Tuesday, December 15, 2020These prices reflect buying and selling of a variety of actual or “physical” commodities in themarketplace—separate from the futures price on an exchange,which reflectswhat the commoditymight beworth in futuremonths.

Tuesday

Energy

Coal,C.Aplc.,12500Btu,1.2SO2-r,w 54.350Coal,PwdrRvrBsn,8800Btu,0.8SO2-r,w 11.550

Metals

Gold, per troy ozEngelhard industrial 1850.00Handy&Harmanbase 1850.65Handy&Harman fabricated 2054.22LBMAGold PriceAM *1820.25LBMAGold Price PM *1831.15Krugerrand,wholesale-e 1926.08Maple Leaf-e 1944.60AmericanEagle-e 1944.60Mexican peso-e 2240.96Austria crown-e 1818.33Austria phil-e 1944.60Silver, troy oz.Engelhard industrial 24.4500Handy&Harmanbase 24.4990Handy&Harman fabricated 30.6240LBMAspot price *£17.7700(U.S.$ equivalent) *23.8550Coins,wholesale $1,000 face-a 18383OthermetalsLBMAPlatinumPrice PM *1027.0Platinum,Engelhard industrial 1030.0Palladium,Engelhard industrial 2365.0

Tuesday

Aluminum, LME, $ permetric ton *2042.5Copper,Comex spot 3.5380IronOre, 62%FeCFRChina-s 155.8ShreddedScrap, USMidwest-s,m 371Steel, HRCUSA, FOBMidwestMill-s 941

Fibers andTextiles

Burlap,10-oz,40-inchNYyd-n,w 0.6400Cotton,1 1/16 std lw-mdMphs-u 0.7284Cotlook 'A' Index-t *80.70Hides,hvy native steers piece fob-u 39.500Wool,64s,staple,Terr del-u,w n.a.

Grains andFeeds

Barley,top-qualityMnpls-u n.a.Bran,wheatmiddlings, KC-u 149Corn,No. 2 yellow,Cent IL-bp,u 4.1750Corn gluten feed,Midwest-u,w 152.0Corn glutenmeal,Midwest-u,w 554.3Cottonseedmeal-u,w 428Hominy feed,Cent IL-u,w 122Meat-bonemeal,50%proMnpls-u,w 295Oats,No.2milling,Mnpls-u 3.5750Rice, LongGrainMilled, No. 2AR-u,w 28.38Sorghum,(Milo)No.2Gulf-u 6.3475SoybeanMeal,Cent IL,rail,ton48%-u 385.70Soybeans,No.1 yllw IL-bp,u 11.7250Wheat,Spring14%-proMnpls-u 6.6450Wheat,No.2 soft red,St.Louis-u 6.2725Wheat -Hard - KC (USDA) $ per bu-u 5.9100

Tuesday

Wheat,No.1softwhite,Portld,OR-u 6.4000

Food

Beef,carcass equiv. indexchoice 1-3,600-900 lbs.-u 178.48select 1-3,600-900 lbs.-u 160.71Broilers, National compwtd. avg.-u,w 0.8333Butter,AAChicago 1.4750Cheddar cheese,bbl,Chicago 145.75Cheddar cheese,blk,Chicago 165.25Milk,Nonfat dry,Chicago lb. 114.25Coffee,Brazilian,Comp 1.1768Coffee,Colombian, NY 1.7364Eggs,largewhite,Chicago-u 0.7150Flour,hardwinter KC 15.55Hams,17-20 lbs,Mid-US fob-u 0.76Hogs,Iowa-So.Minnesota-u 63.93Pork bellies,12-14 lbMidUS-u n.a.Pork loins,13-19 lbMidUS-u 0.8058Steers,Tex.-Okla. Choice-u n.a.Steers,feeder,Okla. City-u,w 152.06

Fats andOils

Corn oil,crudewet/drymill wtd. avg.-u,w 41.0000Grease,choicewhite,Chicago-h 0.3200Lard,Chicago-u n.a.Soybean oil,crude;Centl IL-u 0.4019Tallow,bleach;Chicago-h 0.3675Tallow,edible,Chicago-u 0.3750

KEY TO CODES: A=ask; B=bid; BP=country elevator bids to producers; C=corrected; E=Manfra,Tordella & Brookes; H=American Commodities Brokerage Co;M=monthly; N=nominal; n.a.=not quoted or not available; R=SNL Energy; S=Platts-TSI; T=Cotlook Limited; U=USDA;W=weekly; Z=not quoted. *Data as of 12/14

Source: Dow JonesMarket Data

| wsj.com/market-data/commodities

Global GovernmentBonds:MappingYieldsYields and spreads over or underU.S. Treasurys on benchmark two-year and 10-year government bonds inselected other countries; arrows indicatewhether the yield rose(s) or fell (t) in the latest session

Country/ Yield (%) Spread Under/Over U.S. Treasurys, in basis pointsCoupon (%) Maturity, in years Latest(l)-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 Previous Month ago Year ago Latest Prev Year ago

0.125 U.S. 2 0.121 l 0.121 0.181 1.610

0.875 10 0.918 s l 0.896 0.895 1.827

2.250 Australia 2 0.105 t l 0.108 0.111 0.827 -1.6 -1.3 -78.3

1.000 10 0.972 t l 0.975 0.898 1.266 5.4 8.0 -56.2

0.000 France 2 -0.718 s l -0.724 -0.670 -0.613 -83.9 -84.5 -222.3

0.000 10 -0.373 t l -0.370 -0.304 0.003 -129.1 -126.6 -182.5

0.000 Germany 2 -0.762 s l -0.765 -0.723 -0.617 -88.3 -88.6 -222.6

0.000 10 -0.609 s l -0.618 -0.547 -0.288 -152.7 -151.3 -211.6

0.050 Italy 2 -0.448 t l -0.438 -0.409 -0.213 -56.9 -55.9 -182.3

0.900 10 0.523 t l 0.548 0.671 1.160 -39.5 -34.7 -66.7

0.100 Japan 2 -0.142 s l -0.143 -0.143 -0.138 -26.3 -26.4 -174.8

0.100 10 0.003 t l 0.014 0.027 -0.028 -91.5 -88.2 -185.5

0.400 Spain 2 -0.626 s l -0.629 -0.561 -0.395 -74.7 -75.0 -200.5

1.250 10 -0.017 t l 0.003 0.116 0.424 -93.5 -89.2 -140.4

0.125 U.K. 2 -0.059 s l -0.083 -0.022 0.552 -18.0 -20.4 -105.8

4.750 10 0.262 s l 0.225 0.341 0.794 -65.6 -67.1 -103.4

Source: Tullett Prebon

CorporateDebtPrices of firms' bonds reflect factors including investors' economic, sectoral and company-specificexpectationsInvestment-grade spreads that tightened themost…

Spread*, in basis pointsIssuer Symbol Coupon (%) Yield (%) Maturity Current One-day change Lastweek

StateStreet STT 3.300 0.46 Dec. 16, ’24 9 –15 n.a.

BNPParibas BNP 3.800 0.82 Jan. 10, ’24 45 –14 49

MarathonOil MRO 6.600 4.73 Oct. 1, ’37 307 –14 315

LloydsBanking LLOYDS 4.050 0.64 Aug. 16, ’23 46 –10 47

UnitedHealth UNH 3.500 0.48 Feb. 15, ’24 11 –10 n.a.

Enterprise ProductsOperating … 5.950 3.42 Feb. 1, ’41 177 –8 n.a.

JPMorganChase JPM 3.875 0.82 Sept. 10, ’24 45 –8 38

MainStreet Capital MAIN 5.200 2.60 May1, ’24 223 –8 231

…Andspreads thatwidened themost

NissanMotor NSANY 3.043 1.48 Sept. 15, ’23 130 12 129

WestpacBanking WSTP 2.650 1.29 Jan. 16, ’30 37 12 n.a.

USAACapital USAACA 1.500 0.39 May1, ’23 22 10 n.a.

Hyundai Capital America HYNMTR 5.750 0.98 April 6, ’23 80 7 n.a.

SumitomoMitsui Financial SUMIBK 2.130 1.73 July 8, ’30 83 6 76

BHPBilliton Finance … 5.000 2.41 Sept. 30, ’43 76 5 64

CooperatieveRabobank RABOBK 3.875 0.60 Sept. 26, ’23 42 5 n.a.

AmericanTower AMT 5.000 0.74 Feb. 15, ’24 37 4 n.a.

High-yield issueswith thebiggest price increases…BondPrice as%of face value

Issuer Symbol Coupon (%) Yield (%) Maturity Current One-day change Lastweek

Royal Caribbean RCL 7.500 4.57 Oct. 15, ’27 117.000 7.00 109.534

CF Industries CF 4.950 3.44 June 1, ’43 123.578 1.08 125.750

HughesSatellite Systems … 6.625 4.49 Aug. 1, ’26 110.490 0.77 111.000

SeagateHDDCayman … 4.750 1.87 June 1, ’23 106.883 0.70 106.500

FirstEnergy FE 7.375 2.86 Nov. 15, ’31 142.055 0.56 141.522

R.R. Donnelley&Sons RRD 8.500 5.54 April 15, ’29 119.500 0.50 117.750

…Andwith thebiggest price decreases

Transocean RIG 6.800 21.67 March 15, ’38 33.319 –1.93 28.430

Macy's M 7.000 8.17 Feb. 15, ’28 93.750 –1.50 93.500

LBrands LB 9.375 3.84 July 1, ’25 122.841 –1.13 124.250

TevaPharmaceutical FinanceNetherlands … 4.100 4.80 Oct. 1, ’46 89.750 –0.72 89.750

Navient NAVI 7.250 4.26 Jan. 25, ’22 103.188 –0.70 104.500

CF Industries CF 3.450 1.52 June 1, ’23 104.625 –0.44 104.800

Netflix NFLX 4.375 2.39 Nov. 15, ’26 110.898 –0.35 111.000

CIT CIT 5.000 1.44 Aug. 1, ’23 109.125 –0.30 109.100

*Estimated spread over 2-year, 3-year, 5-year, 10-year or 30-year hot-runTreasury; 100basis points=one percentage pt.; change in spread shown is for Z-spread.Note: Data are for themost active issue of bondswithmaturities of two years ormore

Source:MarketAxess

BroadMarketBloombergBarclays

2283.68 7.1 U.S. Aggregate 1.170 1.020 2.370

U.S. Corporate IndexesBloombergBarclays

3432.93 9.0 U.S. Corporate 1.830 1.800 4.580

3097.69 6.9 Intermediate 1.180 1.170 4.400

5129.93 12.6 Long term 2.850 2.730 4.930

698.06 8.3 Double-A-rated 1.460 1.300 3.360

914.00 8.9 Triple-B-rated 2.100 2.080 5.350

HighYieldBonds ICEBofA

491.54 5.2 HighYield Constrained 4.475 4.439 11.400

451.14 3.0 Triple-C-rated 8.704 8.704 19.071

3304.29 3.5 HighYield 100 3.840 3.589 10.740

444.40 5.4 Global HighYield Constrained 4.428 4.425 11.310

337.11 2.6 EuropeHighYield Constrained 2.861 2.464 8.183

U.SAgencyBloombergBarclays

1865.38 5.4 U.SAgency 0.490 0.460 1.950

1626.15 4.0 10-20 years 0.370 0.340 1.850

4258.63 11.6 20-plus years 1.660 1.170 2.450

2918.93 6.7 Yankee 1.420 1.420 3.500

Bonds | wsj.com/market-data/bonds/benchmarks

TrackingBondBenchmarksReturn on investment and spreads over Treasurys and/or yields paid to investors comparedwith 52-weekhighs and lows for different types of bondsTotalreturn YTD total Yield (%)close return (%) Index Latest Low High

*Constrained indexes limit individual issuer concentrations to 2%; theHighYield 100 are the 100 largest bonds † In local currency §Euro-zone bonds

** EMBIGlobal Index Sources: ICEDataServices; BloombergBarclays; J.P.Morgan

Totalreturn YTD total Yield (%)close return (%) Index Latest Low High

Mortgage-BackedBloombergBarclays

2227.07 3.7 Mortgage-Backed 1.300 0.930 2.690

2173.29 3.4 GinnieMae (GNMA) 0.800 0.290 2.660

1315.43 3.8 Fanniemae (FNMA) 1.480 1.110 2.690

2018.95 3.7 FreddieMac (FHLMC) 1.460 1.080 2.710

594.96 5.1 MuniMaster 0.880 0.838 3.441

421.02 5.5 7-12 year 0.867 0.771 3.447

481.30 6.3 12-22 year 1.289 1.224 3.690

467.36 6.0 22-plus year 1.921 1.765 4.123

Global Government J.P.Morgan†

614.98 5.5 Global Government 0.550 0.390 1.060

858.96 6.9 Canada 0.890 0.590 1.740

421.83 5.4 EMU§ 0.019 0.010 0.794

795.14 4.8 France -0.130 -0.160 0.430

553.83 3.4 Germany -0.500 -0.740 -0.050

295.81 -0.8 Japan 0.280 0.040 0.320

619.77 4.0 Netherlands -0.420 -0.540 0.080

1084.31 7.9 U.K. 0.620 0.390 1.180

926.48 5.1 EmergingMarkets ** 4.398 4.398 7.480

DividendChangesDividend announcements fromDecember 15.

Amount Payable /Company Symbol Yld% New/Old Frq Record

Amount Payable /Company Symbol Yld% New/Old Frq Record

ForeignMedtronic MDT 2.0 .58 Q Jan15 /Dec22TimADR TIMB 2.3 .23996 Jan29 /Dec22

Amount Payable /Company Symbol Yld% New/Old Frq Record

Amount Payable /Company Symbol Yld% New/Old Frq Record

SpecialHMG/CourtlandProperties HMG ... .50 Jan12 /Dec29UrbanEdgeProperties UE ... .46 Jan19 /Dec31

KEY:A: annual;M:monthly; Q: quarterly; r: revised; SA: semiannual; S2:1: stock split and ratio; SO: spin-off.

Borrowing Benchmarks | wsj.com/market-data/bonds/benchmarks

MoneyRates December 15, 2020

Key annual interest rates paid to borrowor lendmoney inU.S. and internationalmarkets. Rates beloware aguide to general levels but don’t always represent actual transactions.

InflationNov. index ChgFrom (%)

level Oct. '20 Nov. '19

U.S. consumer price indexAll items 260.229 –0.06 1.2Core 269.473 0.05 1.6

International rates

Week 52-WeekLatest ago High Low

Prime ratesU.S. 3.25 3.25 4.75 3.25Canada 2.45 2.45 3.95 2.45Japan 1.475 1.475 1.475 1.475

PolicyRatesEuro zone 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00Switzerland 0.00 0.00 0.50 0.00Britain 0.10 0.10 0.75 0.10Australia 0.10 0.10 0.75 0.10

Overnight repurchaseU.S. 0.09 0.09 1.65 -0.07

U.S. government rates

Discount0.25 0.25 2.25 0.25

Federal fundsEffective rate 0.0900 0.0900 1.6200 0.0600High 0.1000 0.1000 1.6500 0.1000Low 0.0500 0.0500 1.5800 0.0100

Notes ondata:U.S. prime rate is the base rate on corporate loans posted by at least 70%of the 10 largestU.S. banks,and is effectiveMarch 16, 2020. Other prime rates aren’t directly comparable; lending practices varywidely by location; Discount rate is effectiveMarch 16, 2020.SecuredOvernight FinancingRate isas ofDecember 14, 2020. DTCCGCFRepo Index is Depository Trust&Clearing Corp.'sweightedaverage for overnight trades in applicable CUSIPs. Value traded is in billions ofU.S. dollars.Federal-funds rates are Tullett Prebon rates as of 5:30 p.m. ET.

Sources: Federal Reserve; Bureau of Labor Statistics; DTCC; FactSet;Tullett Prebon Information, Ltd.

Bid 0.0800 0.0800 1.6000 0.0100Offer 0.1100 0.1100 1.6300 0.0500

Treasury bill auction4weeks 0.065 0.075 1.575 0.00013weeks 0.075 0.080 1.555 0.00026weeks 0.085 0.090 1.570 0.080

Secondarymarket

FannieMae30-yearmortgage yields

30days 1.891 1.913 3.362 1.75160days 1.919 1.939 3.370 1.804

Other short-term rates

Week 52-WeekLatest ago high low

Callmoney2.00 2.00 3.50 2.00

Commercial paper (AA financial)90days 0.22 0.14 2.53 0.04

Week —52-WEEK—Latest ago High Low

LiborOnemonth 0.15250 0.14875 1.80475 0.12663Threemonth 0.22875 0.23000 1.96050 0.20488Sixmonth 0.25175 0.25338 1.92438 0.23375One year 0.33125 0.33725 2.01200 0.32763

Euro LiborOnemonth -0.586 -0.591 -0.360 -0.621Threemonth -0.568 -0.568 -0.142 -0.572Sixmonth -0.533 -0.531 -0.052 -0.536One year -0.497 -0.495 0.008 -0.501

SecuredOvernight FinancingRate0.08 0.08 1.64 0.01

Value 52-WeekLatest Traded High Low

DTCCGCFRepo IndexTreasury 0.111 60.230 1.720 0.002MBS 0.120 54.400 1.763 0.011

Week —52-WEEK—Latest ago High Low

COMMODITIES wsj.com/market-data/commodities

B12 | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 * * * * THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

under observation previously.Beyond the spying scandal,

several investment productssold by the bank ran into trou-ble this year, and the bank’s

Net YTDFund NAV Chg %Ret

American Century InvUltra 73.74 +0.88 45.4American Funds Cl AAmcpA p 39.25 +0.38 18.9AMutlA p 44.43 +0.47 3.7BalA p 29.88 -0.69 9.7BondA p 14.19 ... 10.4CapIBA p 63.05 +0.31 2.3CapWGrA 58.18 +0.36 13.0EupacA p 67.27 +0.69 20.9FdInvA p 68.62 +0.67 13.2GwthA p 68.60 +0.39 34.2HI TrA p 10.11 ... 5.9ICAA p 43.89 +0.38 12.7IncoA p 23.35 -0.12 4.1N PerA p 61.27 +0.47 29.6NEcoA p 59.36 +0.45 29.8NwWrldA 85.55 +0.82 21.3SmCpA p 77.94 +0.80 32.5TxExA p 13.63 +0.01 4.5WshA p 50.35 +0.56 6.2

Net YTDFund NAV Chg %Ret

Baird FundsAggBdInst 11.88 -0.01 8.2CorBdInst 12.23 -0.02 8.3BlackRock FundsHiYBlk 7.75 +0.01 4.8HiYldBd Inst 7.74 +0.01 4.8BlackRock Funds AGlblAlloc p 22.09 +0.17 17.6BlackRock Funds IIIiShS&P500IdxK436.78 +5.57 16.4BlackRock Funds InstStratIncOpptyIns 10.35 +0.01 6.5Bridge Builder TrustCoreBond 10.77 ... 8.3CorePlusBond 10.57 ... 8.9Intl Eq 13.40 +0.15 11.8LargeCapGrowth 20.23 +0.21 31.9LargeCapValue 14.61 +0.21 8.2ClearBridgeLargeCapGrowthI NA ... NAColumbia Class I

Net YTDFund NAV Chg %Ret

DivIncom I 25.46 +0.32 6.3Dimensional Fds5GlbFxdInc 10.89 ... 1.5EmgMktVa 28.16 +0.19 0.2EmMktCorEq 23.55 +0.18 10.5IntlCoreEq 14.34 +0.18 6.0IntSmCo 20.08 +0.29 6.8IntSmVa 18.82 +0.33 -0.8LgCo 27.66 +0.35 16.3TAUSCoreEq2 22.72 +0.37 14.1US CoreEq1 29.24 +0.45 14.7US CoreEq2 26.57 +0.43 14.0US Small 38.09 +0.90 10.2US SmCpVal 34.62 +0.87 1.4US TgdVal 23.60 +0.58 3.2USLgVa 37.43 +0.49 -1.3Dodge & CoxBalanced 105.64 +0.94 7.3Income 14.96 ... 9.0Intl Stk 44.34 +0.62 1.7Stock 199.90 +2.77 6.4

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Mutual Funds Net YTDFund NAV Chg %Ret

Net YTDFund NAV Chg %Ret

Net YTDFund NAV Chg %Ret

Net YTDFund NAV Chg %Ret

Net YTDFund NAV Chg %Ret

Net YTDFund NAV Chg %Ret

Net YTDFund NAV Chg %Ret

Top 250 mutual-funds listings for Nasdaq-published share classes by net assets.

e-Ex-distribution. f-Previous day’s quotation. g-Footnotes x and s apply. j-Footnotes eand s apply. k-Recalculated by Lipper, using updated data. p-Distribution costs apply,12b-1. r-Redemption charge may apply. s-Stock split or dividend. t-Footnotes p and rapply. v-Footnotes x and e apply. x-Ex-dividend. z-Footnote x, e and s apply. NA-Notavailable due to incomplete price, performance or cost data. NE-Not released by Lipper;data under review. NN-Fund not tracked. NS-Fund didn’t exist at start of period.

DoubleLine FundsCoreFxdIncmI NA ... NATotRetBdI 10.72 ... 4.0Edgewood Growth InstitutiEdgewoodGrInst 53.38 +0.29 38.6Fidelity500IdxInstPrem127.97 +1.63 16.4Contrafund K6 18.50 +0.14 28.1ExtMktIdxInstPre 82.42 +1.33 30.5FidSerToMarket 12.70 +0.17 18.8IntlIdxInstPrem 44.85 +0.28 6.4MidCpInxInstPrem 27.21 +0.44 15.8SAIUSLgCpIndxFd 19.30 +0.25 16.3SeriesBondFd 10.76 -0.01 7.4SeriesOverseas 12.05 +0.07 13.1SmCpIdxInstPrem 24.77 +0.58 19.0TMktIdxInstPrem105.97 +1.42 18.8USBdIdxInstPrem 12.42 -0.01 7.4Fidelity Advisor INwInsghtI 37.02 +0.31 21.8Fidelity FreedomFF2020 17.66 +0.10 12.3FF2025 15.79 +0.10 13.1FF2030 19.72 +0.14 13.8Freedom2020 K 17.65 +0.10 12.3Freedom2025 K 15.77 +0.10 13.1Freedom2030 K 19.71 +0.14 14.0Freedom2035 K 16.86 +0.16 15.3Freedom2040 K 11.92 +0.12 16.2Fidelity InvestBalanc 27.77 +0.29 20.2BluCh 163.59 +2.22 58.3Contra 16.42 +0.13 29.8ContraK 16.46 +0.13 29.9

CpInc r 10.63 +0.05 8.9DivIntl 46.22 +0.27 15.3GroCo 35.28 +0.36 65.2GrowCoK 35.37 +0.36 65.4InvGrBd 11.88 ... 9.4LowP r 47.88 +0.63 7.6Magin 12.73 +0.13 25.2NASDAQ r 159.12 +1.96 41.2OTC 17.19 +0.18 43.3Puritn 25.66 +0.22 18.9SrsEmrgMkt 24.23 +0.17 21.1SrsGlobal 14.08 +0.09 8.8SrsGroCoRetail 29.68 +0.31 67.2SrsIntlGrw 17.24 +0.13 15.0SrsIntlVal 9.94 +0.11 3.3TotalBond 11.30 +0.01 8.9Fidelity SAITotalBd 10.73 +0.01 8.6Fidelity SelectsSoftwr r 26.78 +0.06 39.3Tech r 30.09 +0.50 57.4First Eagle FundsGlbA 60.60 +0.66 7.1Franklin A1CA TF A1 p 7.82 ... 5.1IncomeA1 p 2.29 +0.02 3.1FrankTemp/Frank AdvIncomeAdv 2.27 +0.02 3.3FrankTemp/Franklin AGrowth A p 132.08 +1.54 27.4RisDv A p 78.45 +0.85 13.8Guggenheim Funds TruTotRtnBdFdClInst 30.25 -0.04 14.4Harbor Funds

CapApInst 114.24 +0.89 50.8Harding LoevnerIntlEq NA ... NAInvesco Funds YDevMktY 52.02 +0.54 14.3JPMorgan I ClassCoreBond NA ... NAEqInc NA ... NAJPMorgan R ClassCoreBond NA ... NALord Abbett AShtDurIncmA p 4.21 ... 2.8Lord Abbett FShtDurIncm 4.20 ... 2.7Metropolitan WestTotRetBdI NA ... NATRBdPlan NA ... NAMFS Funds Class IGrowth I 157.97 -4.40 24.2ValueI 45.06 +0.58 2.4MFS Funds InstlIntlEq 29.99 +0.14 8.7Northern FundsStkIdx 42.48 +0.54 16.3Old Westbury FdsLrgCpStr NA ... NAParnassus FdsParnEqFd 52.80 +0.55 19.1PGIM Funds Cl ZTotalReturnBond NA ... NAPIMCO Fds InstlAllAsset NA ... NAInvGrdCrBd NA ... NATotRt 10.59 ... 8.7

PIMCO Funds AIncomeFd NA ... NAPIMCO Funds I2Income NA ... NAPIMCO Funds InstlIncomeFd NA ... NAPrice FundsBlChip 162.36 +1.23 32.2DivGro 58.96 +0.79 11.9EqInc 31.10 +0.46 0.9Growth 95.03 +0.79 34.2HelSci 98.46 -6.29 20.9LgCapGow I 59.71 +0.20 35.6MidCap 111.28 +1.77 22.2NHoriz NA ... NAR2020 24.75 +0.17 12.0R2025 20.16 +0.16 13.4R2030 29.65 +0.27 14.5R2035 21.98 +0.23 15.5R2040 31.51 +0.34 16.4PRIMECAP Odyssey FdsAggGrowth r 53.13 -3.25 27.7Schwab Funds1000 Inv r 84.45 +1.09 NAS&P Sel 57.48 +0.73 NATSM Sel r 66.46 +0.89 NATIAA/CREF FundsEqIdxInst 27.34 +0.37 18.9VANGUARD ADMIRAL500Adml 342.09 +4.37 16.4BalAdml 44.41 +0.35 15.1CAITAdml 12.38 +0.01 4.7CapOpAdml r192.42 +3.31 22.0DivAppIdxAdm 37.90 +0.46 13.6

EMAdmr 40.93 +0.26 12.5EqIncAdml 79.30 +1.05 2.2ExplrAdml 125.05 +2.24 28.6ExtndAdml 123.78 +2.00 30.6GNMAAdml 10.71 ... 3.5GrwthAdml 127.76 +1.41 37.0HlthCareAdml r 95.12 +0.94 11.5HYCorAdml r 5.96 ... 4.8InfProAd 28.49 +0.04 10.4IntlGrAdml 159.57 +1.71 55.2ITBondAdml 12.64 -0.01 9.4ITIGradeAdml 10.70 ... 9.8LTGradeAdml 12.09 -0.03 14.6MidCpAdml 254.80 +3.73 17.0MuHYAdml 11.97 +0.01 5.2MuIntAdml 14.85 ... 5.0MuLTAdml 12.27 ... 6.0MuLtdAdml 11.26 ... 3.3MuShtAdml 15.95 ... 1.9PrmcpAdml r167.04 +2.62 15.9RealEstatAdml121.58 +2.53 -5.2SmCapAdml 92.49 +1.82 17.6SmGthAdml 92.16 +1.55 32.4STBondAdml 10.87 ... 4.6STIGradeAdml 11.02 +0.01 5.1TotBdAdml 11.62 ... 7.4TotIntBdIdxAdm 23.44 -0.01 4.5TotIntlAdmIdx r 32.15 +0.28 9.1TotStAdml 93.57 +1.24 19.0TxMCapAdml194.86 +2.50 19.0TxMIn r 15.09 +0.14 8.3USGroAdml 173.27 +1.61 55.5ValAdml 46.26 +0.62 1.3WdsrllAdml 72.20 +1.01 12.7WellsIAdml 69.85 +0.32 7.9

WelltnAdml 80.39 +0.63 9.4WndsrAdml 76.23 +1.23 6.6VANGUARD FDSDivdGro 33.46 +0.34 10.5INSTTRF2020 26.76 +0.14 11.0INSTTRF2025 27.72 +0.19 12.1INSTTRF2030 28.31 +0.21 12.7INSTTRF2035 28.88 +0.24 13.3INSTTRF2040 29.44 +0.27 13.8INSTTRF2045 29.94 +0.31 14.4INSTTRF2050 30.02 +0.31 14.5INSTTRF2055 30.14 +0.31 14.5IntlVal 40.28 +0.60 7.3LifeCon 22.94 +0.09 10.5LifeGro 40.81 +0.37 13.8LifeMod 32.14 +0.21 12.3PrmcpCor 30.94 +0.52 10.8STAR NA ... NATgtRe2015 16.62 +0.06 9.5TgtRe2020 36.09 +0.20 10.9TgtRe2025 22.23 +0.15 12.0TgtRe2030 41.07 +0.30 12.7TgtRe2035 25.50 +0.21 13.2TgtRe2040 44.52 +0.41 13.8TgtRe2045 28.27 +0.28 14.5TgtRe2050 45.56 +0.47 14.6TgtRet2055 49.45 +0.51 14.5TgtRetInc 15.18 +0.04 9.2TotIntBdIxInv 11.72 -0.01 4.5USGro 66.84 +0.63 55.4WellsI 28.83 +0.13 7.8Welltn 46.55 +0.37 9.3WndsrII 40.68 +0.56 12.6VANGUARD INDEX FDS

ExtndIstPl 305.45 +4.93 30.6IdxIntl 19.22 +0.17 9.1MdCpGrAdml 90.02 +1.07 32.5SmValAdml 61.16 +1.35 5.4TotBd2 11.53 -0.01 7.0TotIntlInstIdx r128.57 +1.14 9.2TotItlInstPlId r128.60 +1.14 9.2TotSt 93.52 +1.24 18.9VANGUARD INSTL FDSBalInst 44.42 +0.35 15.1DevMktsIndInst 15.11 +0.14 8.3DevMktsInxInst 23.62 +0.22 8.3ExtndInst 123.77 +2.00 30.6GrwthInst 127.77 +1.41 37.0InPrSeIn 11.61 +0.02 10.5InstIdx 330.64 +4.22 16.4InstPlus 330.66 +4.22 16.4InstTStPlus 80.06 +1.06 19.0MidCpInst 56.29 +0.83 17.0MidCpIstPl 277.60 +4.06 17.0SmCapInst 92.49 +1.82 17.6STIGradeInst 11.02 +0.01 5.1STIPSIxins 25.71 +0.03 4.7TotBdInst 11.62 ... 7.5TotBdInst2 11.53 -0.01 7.0TotBdInstPl 11.62 ... 7.5TotIntBdIdxInst 35.17 -0.02 4.6TotStInst 93.58 +1.24 19.0ValueInst 46.26 +0.62 1.3WCM Focus FundsWCMFocIntlGrwIns 24.01 +0.23 28.8Western AssetCoreBondI NA ... NACorePlusBdI 12.49 -0.18 7.1CorePlusBdIS 12.49 -0.18 7.2

Data provided by

Share-price and index performance, Tuesday

Source: FactSet

Apple

S&P 500

Pfizer

Moderna

6

–8

–6

–4

–2

0

2

4

%

10 a.m. 11 noon 1 p.m. 2 3 4

The European Central Banksaid that lenders can restartlimited dividend paymentsnext year following a nine-month ban and told banks tobe prudent about bonusesgiven the economic crisiscaused by the pandemic.

Tuesday’s ECB move followsa lifting of a ban by the Bank ofEngland last week. Along withthe Federal Reserve, most ma-jor bank regulators restrictedbank dividends and buybackswhen the pandemic hit theeconomy this year. Stoppingpayouts helped preserve capital,giving banks bigger buffers toabsorb losses. But the lack ofpayouts hammered bank shares.

The issue of dividend pay-ments is a contentious one forbanks on the Continent. Evenbefore the pandemic, theystruggled to generate profitsamid sluggish economic growthand negative interest rates. Div-idends were one of the few rea-sons investors held their shares.

The Euro Stoxx Banks indexis down more than 20% thisyear, compared with a 6% fallin the Euro Stoxx 50 blue-chipindex.

The ECB said Tuesday thatdividends and share buybacksneed to be below 15% of thecombined profits for the pasttwo years or no higher than0.2 percentage point of thecommon equity Tier 1 ratio,whichever is lower. Banksneed to be profitable and“have robust capital trajecto-ries,” it added. While the ECBcalls these instructions recom-mendations, the banks treatthem as rules since goingagainst them would likely leadto serious regulatory reprisals.

The ECB’s conditions areharsher than those imposedlast week by the Bank of Eng-land, which limited dividenddistribution to 25% of 2019 and2020 profits combined or 0.2%of the bank’s risk-weighted as-sets, whichever is higher.

The ECB also said it sent aletter to banks asking for mod-eration in their bonus policies.

“The reputational impact ofthe payment of variable remu-neration during a global crisissituation should not be under-estimated—particularly in thecase of large individualamounts—and should be dulyconsidered,” Andrea Enria, theECB’s bank-supervision head,said in the letter.

Mr. Enria previously de-fended the dividend ban andbonus moderation saying gov-ernments have provided tril-lions of euros in financial sup-port to the eurozone, includingguaranteed loans that easedthe burden on lenders.

Internally at the ECB, the is-sue of dividends has been divi-sive. While some supervisoryboard members thought that anextension of the ban was war-ranted given the pandemic’s im-pact on banks is still unknown,others worried the restrictionwould do more harm than good.

Banks have lobbied intenselyto lift the ban. Some arguedthat bigger payouts would lifttheir share prices, making iteasier to raise capital if needed.

“Restricting dividends canincrease banks’ funding costs,have an impact on their accessto capital markets and makethem less competitive thantheir international peers,” saidYves Mersch, vice chairman ofthe ECB’s bank supervisoryboard, at a September confer-ence.

BY PATRICIA KOWSMANN

EuropeanBanks’DividendBan Lifted

MARKETS

Shares of Apple rose after Nikkei Asia reported that the company plans to increase iPhone production by about 30%.

DAVID

PAULMORR

IS/B

LOOMBE

RGNEW

S

$7.85, or 5.1%, to $147.22.The Food and Drug Admin-

istration said Tuesday thatModerna’s Covid-19 shot is“highly effective,” suggestingit could soon be added to thearsenal against the pandemic.Shares of the company haveexperienced a significant run-up this year. Even with Tues-day’s losses, Moderna remainsup more than 650% year todate.

On Monday, the Covid-19death toll in the U.S. surpassed300,000, underscoring that de-spite advances in coronavirusmedical treatments and vac-cines, the pandemic stillthreatens to continue to be adrag on the U.S. economy.

“The market is having todeal with a lot of headwinds,”said Hani Redha, a portfoliomanager at PineBridge Invest-ments. “Both on the virus it-self, the risk of tighter andtighter lockdowns, and uncer-tainty around any kind of ad-ditional stimulus in the U.S.”

Still, many money managershope that vaccines, coupledwith continuing support fromcentral banks, will allow therally in stocks and corporatebonds to extend into 2021. Ad-

ditional support from the U.S.government could offer morebuoyancy to markets.

“The jury’s still a little bitout on exactly what’s going tobe passed here,“ said Lyn Gra-

ham-Taylor, senior rates strat-egist at Rabobank. “The U.S.does need some more fiscalstimulus to see it throughthese winter months.”

Treasury yields are likely tojump if U.S. lawmakers do passa significant stimulus package,lifting growth, inflation pros-pects and the supply of bonds,Mr. Graham-Taylor added. Theyield on the 10-year U.S. Trea-sury note rose to 0.921% from0.891% on Monday.

The dollar fell against theeuro, British pound and Japa-nese yen. The WSJ Dollar In-dex, which measures the cur-rency against 16 rivals, fell0.4%.

In overseas markets, the re-gionwide Stoxx Europe 600 in-dex ticked up about 0.3%.

Asian markets movedhigher early Wednesday.Japan’s Nikkei was up 0.3%,Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Indexwas up 0.9% and South Korea’sKospi was up 0.5%. U.S. stockfutures were flat.

Stocks climbed as investorswelcomed signs of progress innegotiations over an economicrelief package in Washington.

The S&P 500 rose 47.13points, or 1.3%, to 3694.62,snapping a four-session losingstreak, the index’s longeststretch of losses since late

September.The DowJones Indus-trial Average

gained 337.76 points, or 1.1%,to 30199.31.

And the tech-heavy NasdaqComposite jumped 155.02points, or 1.2%, to 12595.06—marking the index’s 51st re-cord close of the year.

Enthusiasm that U.S. law-makers may be closer to astimulus deal helped liftstocks, which have largelyswung between small gainsand losses since finishing No-vember with blockbustergains.

Democratic and Republicanlawmakers have been at an im-passe over a stimulus deal, buton Monday, a bipartisan groupof lawmakers urged congres-sional leaders to forge aheadwith a $748 billion aid packagethat would avoid the thorniestissues holding up a deal.

In corporate news, shares ofApple climbed after NikkeiAsia reported that the com-pany plans to produce as manyas 96 million iPhones in thefirst half, a nearly 30% year-over-year jump. Shares of theiPhone maker rallied $6.10, or5%, to $127.88.

Energy stocks, banks andmaterials companies also ral-lied, while the Russell 2000 in-dex of small-company stocksjumped 2.4%. The index’s 17%gain for the year is outpacingthe S&P 500’s 14% rise.

In contrast, shares of sev-eral vaccine makers tumbled.Pfizer fell 50 cents, or 1.3%, to$38.71, while Moderna slid

BY JOE WALLACEAND CAITLIN MCCABE

Stocks Rally on Stimulus Talks

TUESDAY’SMARKETS

and stay competitive.Mr. Gottstein on Tuesday

said many European countriesincluding Switzerland areoverbanked. But he said it ishard for large banks to com-bine, and that Credit Suisse in-stead might buy smaller pri-vate-banking and asset-management businesses forgrowth.

To woo wealthy clients, Mr.Gottstein will have to over-come the reputational chal-lenges he inherited. His pre-sentation didn’t directlyaddress the spying scandal andother mishaps that plaguedthe bank this year. It came un-der fire after its chief operat-ing officer and security chiefhired private investigators tofollow two executives last year.The bank ousted Mr. Thiam forfailing to contain the fallout.Last month, The Wall StreetJournal reported a law firmhired by the bank found twomore employees had been put

decadeold investment in ahedge fund soured.

In November, Credit Suissesaid it expects to take a $450million impairment on an eq-uity stake it holds in hedge-fund manager York CapitalManagement, after York nar-rowed the scope of its opera-tions. The bank said thismonth it may take a separateprovision, for an undisclosedamount, as part of a U.S. civilcourt case over residentialmortgage-backed securities itmarketed to investors beforethe 2008 financial crisis.

A set of supply-chain financefunds were reviewed for poten-tial conflicts of interest amongfund investors and companiesreceiving financing. Collapsingvalues on some of its exchange-traded notes caused heavylosses for investors.

Its role in marketing securi-ties tied to shares in WirecardAG before the fintech com-pany’s collapse in June also

came under scrutiny.Mr. Gottstein said the

Credit Suisse brand is still“very strong” with clients, andthat he and his team will tryto set the bar higher to avoidfuture scandals and litigation.“It’s very clear that this man-agement team has no appetitefor creating new problems ei-ther for ourselves or futuremanagement teams,” Mr.Gottstein said.

The wealth-managementbusiness, with clients rangingfrom tech entrepreneurs tolarge family offices, madearound 4 billion Swiss francsin pretax profit in the 12months to Sept. 30., equivalentto $4.5 billion.

Mr. Gottstein said the aimnow is to raise its annual pre-tax profit in wealth manage-ment to between 5 billionfrancs and 5.5 billion francs in2023. Most new capital will beearmarked for the business,the bank said.

ing for cash with wealthy cli-ents who want to invest in pri-vately held companies.

Even so, Credit Suisse’sshare price has lagged behindthat of rival UBS Group AG inperformance and valuation.

In terms of size, it isdwarfed by U.S. banking giantssuch as JPMorgan Chase & Coand Morgan Stanley.

The possibility of a mergerbetween Credit Suisse andUBS, a subject of perennialspeculation, was rekindledthis year when UBS said it hadstudied the matter as a wayfor both the banks to cut costs

ContinuedfrompageB1

Swiss BankFocusesOn Wealth

Year-to-date shareperformance

Source: FactSet

10

–50

–40

–30

–20

–10

0

%

Jan. 2020

Credit Suisse

UBS

LONDON—It will be severalmonths before coronavirusvaccinations start to boostglobal oil demand, with the re-covery in some of the world’s

wealthy coun-tries “goingbackwards”

this quarter, the InternationalEnergy Agency said Tuesday.

In its monthly oil-marketreport, the IEA cut its forecastrecovery in demand for 2021

by 170,000 barrels a day to 5.7million barrels a day.

That included a reductionof 400,000 barrels a day to itsforecast demand for the sec-ond quarter when analysts hadexpected the expansion of vac-cination programs around theworld to begin lifting eco-nomic activity.

The agency also lowered itsdemand forecast for the finalquarter of 2020.

Demand has somewhat re-covered in the second half

from its 16% drop in the sec-ond quarter, but that resur-gence “is almost entirely dueto China’s fast rebound fromlockdown,” the IEA said. Butthe demand outlook in thewealthy countries that makeup the Organization for Eco-nomic Cooperation and Devel-opment is bleak, according tothe IEA.

With another wave of infec-tions prompting a return tolockdown measures in Europe,demand there in the final

three months of the year is ex-pected to be even weaker thanit was in the third quarter, theagency said.

Expected pressure on theairline industry in 2021 was amajor driver behind the IEA’sdowngrades.

Weaker demand for jet fueland kerosene is projected tonext year account for 80% ofthe shortfall of 3.1 million bar-rels a day in overall demandcompared with 2019, meaningthe world in 2021 would re-

cover only two-thirds of thedemand lost this year.

Oil prices climbed on Tues-day, hitting nine-month highsand rising with broader riskassets on hopes for a U.S. pan-demic-relief package, accord-ing to Edward Moya, an ana-lyst at broker Oanda.

Global benchmark Brentcrude added 0.9% to $50.76 abarrel. West Texas Intermedi-ate futures, the U.S. bench-mark, rose 1.3% to $47.62 abarrel.

BY DAVID HODARI

Energy Agency Cuts Global Oil-Demand Forecast

COMMODITIES

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FINANCIAL ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

Zara’s Owner Feels the ChillChain’s online business can only partly offset a fresh wave of store closures

Europe’s New TechRegulations WillBite, Eventually

U.S. tech giants face a host of new rules that implymeaningful changes to the way theymakemoney

Investors have gotten used toshrugging off Europe’s efforts toregulate U.S. tech giants. The pointat which they will be forced to paycloser attention may not be quitehere, but it is drawing inexorablynearer.

Tuesday brought news on multi-ple fronts. Twitter was hit with thefirst fine under the EuropeanUnion’s landmark privacy regula-tions, albeit a modest one; Britainproposed new online safety legisla-tion; and, most significantly, EU of-ficials published their long-awaitedtwo proposals covering the regula-tion of big tech companies.

Many more national regulationsalso are in the pipeline around Eu-rope. Tech giants’ warnings thatclampdowns will hamper innova-tion are increasingly falling on deafears in the region, just as they arein Washington. In a sign of theirconcern, U.S. tech giants havestaffed up in Brussels.

Most of the new European ruleshave two main ambitions: enforc-ing a higher duty of care in polic-ing online content on the onehand; and restraining big plat-forms’ market power to create andmaintain space for competitors onthe other. Both imply meaningfulchanges to the way companiessuch as Amazon, Facebook, Appleand Alphabet make money. Previ-ous action against the tech compa-nies in Europe was mainly based

Inditex’s monthly sales, change from the same period a year earlier

Source: the company

120

0

20

40

60

80

100

%

Feb. March April May June July Aug. Sept. Oct.

Beijing’s stimulus policies thisyear have been restrained by paststandards, and certainly comparedwith those in the U.S. and Europe.Now, with consumers spendingagain and private investment re-covering, even that modest extragas for the economy will start toburn away.

That could limit further upsidenext year for heavy industrialstocks such as Komatsu and Cat-erpillar, which roared back inmid-2020 as Chinese constructionand investment spending returned.On the other hand, the improvingfortunes of Chinese households,underpinned by strong export andlabor-market momentum, couldhelp shore up consumer stocks likeAlibaba, which have come underthe pressure of increasing regula-tory scrutiny.

China’s main November economicdata, released Tuesday, showed pri-vate-sector investment is finally upagain in 2020 year to date, com-pared with the same period lastyear. Retail sales continued improv-ing and unemployment edged down.Real-estate investment softened to10.9% growth year over year: stillstrong, but the slowest since June.Investment growth in power, railand road infrastructure also eased.

It is notable that the slowdownin infrastructure and constructioninvestment comes after an increasein bond yields and signs of a peakin overall credit expansion. Growthin overall outstanding debt and eq-uity finance eased marginally in No-vember for the first time in close toa year, thanks to slowing corporate-bond issuance and a quicker fall inshadow finance.

A spate of bond defaults bystate-owned firms has pushed upbond yields in recent weeks. The

central bank has acted to containthe increases, but hasn’t injectedenough cash to push yields firmlyback down again. Investors can takethis as a hint that policy makers arecomfortable enough with the shapeof the recovery to let state-backedinvestment begin to ebb again.

Given the usual lags betweenborrowing and actual building,strong demand for heavy indus-trial products probably still has afew months to run. But by themiddle of next year—just as therest of the world is ramping backup—China’s heavy industrial com-plex seems likely to cool.

Komatsu stock is trading for 21times expected earnings for thenext 12 months, according to Fact-Set, just below its late 2016 valua-tion peak. The beginning of a globalcyclical uptick might seem like agreat time to own heavy industrialshares, but that part of China’s re-covery is already long in the tooth.The best time for getting in mayhave passed. —Nathaniel Taplin

Chinese economic data,change from a year earlier

Source: CEIC

*Average of output growth in metals,cement, glass and electricity

30

–30

–20

–10

0

10

20

%

2014 ’16 ’18 ’20

Freight trafficHeavy industrial output*Property investment

Pharmaceutical giants are expect-ing a healthy 2021. Importantly forinvestors, that bright future doesn’tnecessarily depend on the course ofthe coronavirus pandemic.

Eli Lilly said Tuesday it expectsrevenue of $26.5 billion to $28 bil-lion next year, which is about 11%higher from this year’s forecast.That growth is primarily from drugsalready on the market, such as dia-betes treatment Trulicity and anti-inflammatory drug Taltz. Lillyboosted its dividend payout by 15%and shares rose. Lilly also an-nounced a deal to acquire gene-ther-apy startup Prevail Therapeuticsfor $880 million in upfront cash.

Similarly on Monday, AbbVie in-creased its long-term guidance forthe two immunology drugs Rinvoqand Skyrizi. The company now ex-pects the two drugs to combine for$15 billion in revenue by 2025, upfrom a previous forecast of $10 bil-lion. That seems like a tall order,since those drugs have combined forjust $1.3 billion in sales in the firstnine months of 2020. But fresh clin-ical data make that possibility seemmore realistic: Rinvoq, which istaken orally, was shown to be moreeffective for atopic dermatitis pa-tients than the current standard ofcare in a late-stage clinical trial.While the pandemic has slowed newdrug launches across the industry,dermatology is a lucrative andgrowing market.

Hitting that guidance is essentialto keep investors happy, becauseAbbVie faces cheaper competitionfor its anti-inflammatory drug Hu-mira in the U.S. in the coming years.With global sales of nearly $15 bil-lion so far this year, Humira is theworld’s bestselling drug and ac-counts for about half of total com-pany sales.

The outlook for these companieslooks even better when one consid-ers that they aren’t counting onCovid-19 treatments to make it hap-

deals could be in store, even withmany biotech stocks trading at bub-ble valuations that are unpalatableto buyers. There is still value fordisciplined buyers: AstraZeneca an-nounced a deal to acquire AlexionPharmaceuticals for $39 billion incash and stock last week. That val-ued Alexion at less than 15 times2020 earnings, even with a largedeal premium.

While the shares are no scream-ing bargain, valuations are reason-able in a market where many stockprices have become divorced fromunderlying business reality. Lillytrades at about 21 times this year’sadjusted profit forecast, while Abb-Vie trades at 10 times. The fact thatthese businesses are largely undis-turbed by the course of the pan-demic should make them more at-tractive to investors, as thetimetable for full recovery remainsuncertain and market values inmany industries could swing wildlyif expectations for a return to nor-mal change.

In that investing environment,exposure to big drugmakers shouldhelp Wall Street keep a steadypulse. —Charley Grant

pen. After all, the duration of thepandemic, and the resulting salesopportunities for drugmakers, ishighly uncertain. With vaccines nowbeing distributed, Wall Street islikely to place a low value on profitsfrom drugs like Lilly’s antibodytreatment for Covid-19. Lilly expectsbetween $1 billion to $2 billion inCovid-19-related sales next year, afraction of the overall top line. It

also plans to spend $300 million to$400 million on pandemic-relatedresearch. The impact of the pan-demic on AbbVie’s financial perfor-mance is minimal.

And with the election in therearview mirror, the industry hasbecome more comfortable with riskslike tougher regulations on prescrip-tion-drug prices. That means more

More deals could be instore even with manybiotech stocks trading atbubble valuations.

During the worst of the lockdowns in April and May, three-quarters of Inditex’s shops around the world had to close.

SACH

ELLE

BABB

AR/

ZUMAPR

ESS

Zara’s owner is having to shutstores again in the crucial run-upto Christmas. The fashion retailer’sfast-growing online business maynot patch the hole as well as mightbe hoped.

Spain-based Inditex, theworld’s largest clothing retailer,said Tuesday that sales over thethree months through October fell10% at constant exchange ratescompared with the same period of2019.

The company had almost recov-ered to precrisis sales levels whenthe second wave struck. Marketslike Spain and Ireland imposedtighter rules on nonessential re-tailers from mid-October.

With new restrictions cominginto force this week in parts of theU.K., Germany and the Nether-lands, the question is whether In-ditex’s digital business—which ismuch larger today than it was be-fore the pandemic—can claw backlost store sales any faster than itdid during the first wave of re-strictions.

The answer seems to be a quali-fied no based on the data so far.

During the worst of the lock-downs in April and May, three-quarters of Inditex’s world-wideshops were forced to close, lead-ing to a 62% drop in sales. In No-vember, 21% of the company’s lo-cations were shut, and groupsales fell 19%. That performanceshould have been stronger if the

digital business was picking upthe slack faster than during thefirst shutdowns, according to esti-mates of Inditex’s store-basedsales by Bernstein analyst Anee-sha Sherman.

There are a few explanations.Inditex’s digital sales have alreadygrown by 75% in 2020. All thoseshoppers that were prepared toswitch to buying online may havealready done so.

It is also likely that social-dis-tancing rules are lowering pur-chases in stores that remain open.The company’s digital arm isn’tbig enough yet to offset weakerbusiness in open locations as wellas those that are closed com-

pletely.In other respects, Inditex looks

as impressive as usual. Inventorylevels at the end of October were11% lower than they were the sametime last year. Tightly controllingstock means fewer clothes have tobe sold at a discount, protectingprofit margins. And net cash of€8.3 billion, equivalent to $10 bil-lion, was a record high.

The retailer has done a greatjob of growing its online businessthis year, and will be muchsharper digitally after the pan-demic has passed. In the shortterm, though, it won’t be enoughto protect the business from win-ter closures. —Carol Ryan

on antitrust law and often strug-gled to hit its mark.

If regulators still don’t get whatthey want, they are giving them-selves the right to impose signifi-cant potential fines, up to a maxi-mum of 10% of global revenues.Admittedly, previous penalties forantitrust breaches have been lower.

In the past, stringent new na-tional regulations could just beavoided. In 2014 Google shut itsSpanish news service in responseto local rules requiring paymentfor clips. The breadth of the cur-rent regulatory push in Europemakes this approach nearly impos-sible now, even if national ap-proaches vary. As a whole, the re-gion accounts for just under aquarter of 2019 revenues at Appleand Facebook.

Another problem for big tech isthat Europe is a regulatory trend-setter for other nations aroundthe world. This was seen withboth its GDPR for privacy andREACH rules for chemicals. Anti-trust action in Washington andmany U.S. states has echoes ofcases done in Brussels.

Technology shares have been ona tear this year as the usefulness ofthe companies’ products in a pan-demic has trumped regulatory con-cerns. Tuesday’s regulations won’timmediately end the party. The newEU rules will likely take one to twoyears to be completed and enacted,though national regimes are mov-ing more quickly. German rules arein the final stages and could applyfrom early next year.

Investors can also relax aboutforced demergers. While the EUproposal includes the power tobreak up repeat offenders, it seemsinconceivable that European offi-cials would split a U.S. company.

At some point, however, the de-termination of European regulatorsto exert greater control over U.S.tech giants in their jurisdictionsseems bound to have some effecton their financial results. Regula-tory proposals of the kind pub-lished Tuesday aren’t a clear sellsignal, but nor can investors affordto tune them out. Europe isn’t giv-ing up. —Rochelle Toplensky

China’s Stimulus Won’tDo Heavy Lifting in 2021

Big Drugmakers Pass Their Annual Checkup

Revenue by region in 2019, in billions

Source: S&P Capital IQ*Germany and U.K. †Europe, Middle East and Africa

Amazon*

Apple

Alphabet (Google)†

Facebook

$193.6 $39.8 $47.1

116.9 60.3 83.0

74.8 50.6 36.4

30.2

16.8

23.6

U.S. EU Rest of world

Share-price performance, year to date

Source: FactSet

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0

10

20

%

J F M A M J J A S O N D

AbbVie

Eli Lilly