Best printers for Home

Best Mixer Grinder

Best wired Earphones

Best 43 Inch TV in India

Best Wi Fi Routers

Best Home Theatre in India

Smart Watch under 5000

Best Laptops for Education

Best Laptop for Students

<ul class="summary-list"><li>President Joe Biden avoided a major disaster during his high-profile news conference.</li><li>But Biden is unlikely to have drastically changed the apprehension within the Democratic Party.</li></ul>President <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-refers-kamala-harris-vice-president-trump-nato-conference-2024-7">Joe Biden</a> on Thursday avoided a repeat of his disastrous debate night — despite notable flubs — in a foreign policy-laden news conference aimed at assuring Democrats that he can still beat former President Donald Trump."I think I'm the best-qualified person to do the job," Biden said at one point, touting his ability to lead the Western response to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-war-ukraine-began-crimea-could-end-there-2024-6">Russia's war against Ukraine</a>.His appearance, though, is unlikely to stem the flow of Democrats calling for him to bow out of the race. And it doesn't help that he flubbed some answers and, at one point, referred to "Vice President Trump" instead of Vice President Harris.Just before the news conference, Biden referred to Ukrainian President <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-introduces-zelenskyy-as-putin-in-latest-major-flub-nato-2024-7">Volodymyr Zelenskyy,</a> standing nearby, as Russian President Vladimir Putin before quickly correcting himself."Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin," Biden said before quickly realizing his mistake and adding, "He's gonna beat President Putin, President Zelenskyy.""I'm so focused on beating President Putin," he said.Biden opened the door slightly to stepping aside, telling reporters that if his team presented him data showing he had <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-beating-biden-debate-polling-election-2024-7">no chance of beating Trump</a>, he would listen. But, as of Thursday, it didn't appear that the campaign or the White House had discussed that possibility, though there were reports of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-white-house-aides-drop-out-election-2024-7">grumbles behind closed doors</a>.Earlier Thursday, Biden's top campaign advisors explained that they still have multiple paths to the 270 electoral votes needed to win."Our internal data and public polling show the same thing: this remains a margin-of-error race in key battleground states," Biden's campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote in a memo to staffers that was first published by The Associated Press and later obtained by Business Insider.They conceded that the debate had been a setback for the president but argued it was far too early to count him out.<h2 id="b22fad92-94ee-48b0-870d-beb67ec00cd9">Biden in his wheelhouse</h2>The good news for Biden is that the news conference set him up in his wheelhouse: foreign policy. As a US senator, Biden served on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee for decades and eventually rose to lead the panel. President Barack Obama praised Biden's knowledge of world affairs when he tapped him as his running mate.Following the press conference, pundits and journalists acknowledged his command of the issues. But there is still concern — even from <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://puck.news/post-biden-debate-view-from-nato-summit/?utm_source=twitter">Europeans at the NATO summit</a> — about his ability to campaign and beat Trump.Biden's press conference was likely never going to assuage Democrats' concerns. Multiple lawmakers have said they wanted to see the president get out on the campaign trail, hold more news conferences, and grant more in-depth interviews. Biden seemed to acknowledge this during his press conference.Unfortunately for Biden, this was his first live unscripted event following the debate two weeks ago. His current schedule sets up a reality where each new event becomes a proverbial cliffhanger — will this be a debate repeat? — rather than a chance to focus on his opponent and his weaknesses.This jarring cycle was thrown into sharp relief shortly after Biden left the stage. Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called on the president to step aside.There are now <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/which-elected-democrats-called-on-joe-biden-drop-out-2024-7">17 congressional Democrats</a> who have called on Biden to withdraw. After the news conference, one of those lawmakers said that Biden had done a fine job but that he just couldn't stomach the current trajectory of the race."We just can't have a situation where every day we are holding our breath whether it is a press conference, a debate, or a rally," Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois told CNN.

Biden's high-stakes NATO speech wasn't a disaster. But it's not going to change anyone's mind.

Can Silicon Valley stop the next COVID?Mariana Matus was working on a Ph.D. in sewage. A grad student at MIT, she was sifting through wastewater — from a building, a neighborhood, a city — for bits of viruses. The data could then be used to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biobot-mit-covid19-sewers-testing-2020-3">analyze the health</a> of everyone who'd flushed. Pretty relevant information in 2020, right?Matus thought so, too. Even before she had her degree, she went hunting for investors to turn the idea into a company. The pitch was that her team could help fight the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/risk-of-icu-dramatically-higher-without-covid-booster-2022-7">COVID-19 pandemic</a> by using wastewater surveillance, giving public health officials, or even you and me, a bottoms-down heads-up on whether people were sick.The venture capitalists she approached were perplexed. Why was a student in public health — an academic, service-oriented discipline that strives to help people as a social good — asking Silicon Valley for money? "One of the key questions from investors was if we meant to create a nonprofit," Matus says. "They'd say: 'Are you sure? Did you mean to create a C-corp and a high-growth startup?' They didn't understand that there's this space of public health, that there are people whose job is to look at data and use it to create a program or intervention."But that's exactly what Matus was pitching: a venture-backed startup explicitly aimed at responding to the next pandemic — and, in the process, delivering an impressive return on investment. "We are population health monitoring as a service," she says. "It's ongoing. There's a recurring, sustainable aspect to the revenue." In October 2021, Matus and her partner got $20 million in Series A funding to launch Biobot; today the company has 130 employees, a $125 million valuation, and a contract with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Broadly speaking, the US response to COVID-19 <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-report-agency-too-slow-not-diverse-public-health-advice-2022-8">sucked</a> — not the thankless, unceasing labor of first responders and healthcare workers, but the chaotic and often contradictory efforts of the nation's public-health machine. Even after decades of warning and preparation, over a million Americans died, businesses failed, and schools shut down. Everybody felt the hit in one way or another. If the past three years represent the best the government can do, then pandemic response is precisely the kind of activity that venture capitalists like to describe as "ripe for disruption."Private capital has been eyeing public health for years. But after COVID hit, the money rushed in for real. In 2019, venture deals with a pandemic preparedness component totaled $4.8 billion, according to the research group PitchBook. In 2021, they soared to $13.8 billion. This time, Silicon Valley is confident that the profit motive will supercharge public health. All they need is the right business model — and some government handouts. But the bigger question is: Can tech startups do a better job than the government of safeguarding us against the next global outbreak? And even if they can, what price will we pay for their invention?<h2>The panic-neglect cycle</h2>Back in 2006, after a global outbreak of avian flu, the famed venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins decided to get into the pandemic business. It devoted $200 million to a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/2006/02/16/kleiner-perkins-biodefense-cz_kd_0216kleinerperkins.html?sh=5e1f52c76edb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pandemic and Bio Defense Fund</a>, designed to invest in small, innovative tech companies that could save the world from deadly disease outbreaks. The firm brought on Thomas Monath, a former head of virology at the CDC, and invested in companies working on swine flu, influenza, Ebola, and home testing kits. The operating theory, Monath tells me, was that "there were plenty of dual-use applications that could contribute to pandemic preparedness but also commercial success, and you could leverage funding from public sources to help build the platforms that lead to products."Translation: You could make money off of tools designed to fight pandemics, and the government would help you do it.It was a good idea on paper, but <a href="https://fortune.com/2014/11/17/silicon-valleys-earlier-effort-to-stop-pandemics-like-ebola/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">it didn't work</a>. The fund tried to find companies whose products could turn a profit in the "off years" between big outbreaks, but it mostly ended up with single-use drugs whose only real customers were likely to be governments facing a full-blown public-health crisis. "Some of the investments made in the heat of battle weren't really likely to be big commercial successes," Monath tells me. "It just imploded by its own weight and lack of return." The bets Kleiner made, as he elegantly phrases it, "didn't result in lucrative liquidity events."Several founders and investors told me that the failure of Kleiner's fund made Silicon Valley wary of investing in pandemic preparedness. "I don't see a lot of interest on the part of investors in pure pandemic plays," Monath says. "There are a few kind of more socially-impactful-minded folks out there, but even the richest of them all still wants to make more money." Venture capital fell into the same trap that plagues the government's approach to pandemics: a robust response when a respiratory disease sweeps the planet, followed by years of indifference once the crisis has passed. It even has a name: the panic-neglect cycle.But the Kleiner fund did have one major outcome. The partners who led it, Brook Byers and Beth Seidenberg, lobbied the feds to create an agency to hand out grants to early-stage biotech innovations. Coming up with drugs and other therapies to fight pandemics is really expensive, so Kleiner helped persuade the government to use taxpayer money to underwrite the costs of the kind of work that the firm wanted to invest in. The result was BARDA, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, modeled on the famed mad-science agency DARPA.Venture investors love that kind of thing. Government money — a carrot-type reward for entering a market they otherwise wouldn't — is known as "de-risking." And unlike private capital, government money doesn't buy equity in the company. It is, in the language of the game, nondilutive. Investors "like the idea that companies they might invest in can access nondilutive revenue as ancillary support for their program," Monath says. "The growth in the ability to get those kind of funds, I think, has incentivized some venture-capital folks." This is a pretty standard way for the feds to get the technologies they need to support their policies. In-Q-Tel, a government-backed venture firm, does it all the time for stuff deployed by intelligence agencies. But funders like BARDA aren't long-term customers — they're designed to support companies in the early stages of development. Nevertheless, with the government assuming a big share of the risk in return for none of the profits, VCs were more likely to place bets on pandemic preparedness.<h2>Public health and private industry</h2>When COVID hit, Charity Dean was the assistant director of the California Department of Public Health. Amid all the failures and craziness that surrounded COVID testing before vaccines became available, Dean — a lead character in Michael Lewis' pandemic book, "The Premonition" — helped set up and run California's testing task force, which became a national model.The problem, as she saw it back then, wasn't limited to getting tests approved and pushed out to people. It was how the results of those tests would get analyzed and turned into action. "We need the PCR tests to have real-time data on the rate of spread in communities," she told me when I spoke with her in April 2020. "Quite frankly, we are building plans assuming there will be widespread serological testing, even though it isn't here yet."<div type="image" title="A line of cars near a light-up traffic warning-type sign reading &quot;COVID testing,&quot; surrounded by orange construction cones" height="2796" width="4500" msid="98582729" hostid="261" sizebytes="850394"></div>Two months later, Dean decided to do it herself. She quit her government job and debuted a venture-backed startup, The Public Health Company, to "protect enterprise assets through biorisk software." PHC sells a dashboard designed to integrate more than 580 datasets, including social media, search trends, wastewater surveillance, pathogen genomics, and "human behavior indicators." After a career in public health, Dean was now in business selling pandemic-oriented software. It's still health — but it's not exactly public."I was surprised when I engaged with the venture-capital community. I was surprised to learn the alignment," Dean tells me when I talk to her again, in February 2023. "I had thought I would be a public servant all my life."It turned out, she says, that the things VCs wanted were what she was hoping to build, too — they just used different language to describe them. "In 2019 I would have described it as public health, protecting the community, being accountable to taxpayers," Dean says. "Today I would describe it as asset protection for business continuity, where economic security is tightly linked with health security."Startups like the ones launched by Dean and Matus are seeking to apply what Silicon Valley does best to the threat of pandemics: compiling and analyzing massive datasets to make better predictions about an outbreak. It's the promise and potential of Big Tech versus the perils of Big Germ. But from a VC standpoint, the question is: What's the business model? Pandemics may not be rare, but they are unpredictable — which means so are returns. City and state health departments have checkbooks too small and budgets too squishy to be reliable customers. Medicines and protective equipment can molder in a warehouse for years without being needed. And the work itself is time-consuming and costly, with no guarantee of a payoff. So how do you make money between pandemics?Robert Nelsen, a managing director at ARCH Venture Partners pursuing pandemic investments, is bullish on the potential for big revenue over the long term. The key, he says, is "to make things better, faster, and cheaper" than the government or academic labs can. Stuff like vaccines that last longer, or that are delivered via transdermal patches rather than injections, or that work on lots of diseases instead of just the pandemic of the moment. "A universal pill that kills viruses would be a big deal," Nelsen says. "If you cure a lot of people, you're going to make money. If you have a different way of making something, different science, different delivery, then you can think about different business models. Maybe it can be more equitable, maybe it can be more easily distributed, maybe it can be lower cost. So we're interested in those kinds of things."Some pandemic-related startups, like Biobot, are content to target government as their primary customer. When I suggest to Matus that big universities might want to use her wastewater data to identify which dorms were starting to pop with meningitis or norovirus, she smiles and nods in a way that suggests people smarter and richer than me have already run that notion by her. "There's definitely applications for our data and platform outside government, and we want to go there, but in its time," she says. "And we will only partner with investors that believe that the government business is a massive one."But many startups are looking beyond government to generate an even larger and steadier stream of revenue. At The Public Health Company, Dean wants to use data to enable businesses to protect their assets from all kinds of health and climate risks. That could certainly create a reliable and potentially lucrative customer base. But would giving that forecasting capability to transnational corporations actually save lives? Or would it only protect profits?Back in 2019, Charity Dean was a hotshot public-health official trying desperately to get anyone to care about pandemic planning. So I ask her what that person would think of the VC-driven Charity Dean of 2023.Past-Charity, she assures me, would be fine with present-Charity. "I've been dreaming about this for a decade," she says. "I just assumed someone else was building it. But here's where I was naive. If Charity Dean-2019 walked into my office today, she would not understand that the chief security officers at enterprise are the local health officer. They own all the risk and no one's coming to save them. I didn't know that — and they didn't know that, either."That's what it takes to believe that commerce can fix the panic-neglect cycle: faith that governments will pay top dollar for your product during the panic peaks and businesses will be customers during the neglect valleys. "If it doesn't, in the end, become a massive network delivering high value for all players, then it has failed," Dean says. "That's very much aligned with the incentive of our investors. The Charity Dean of 2019 would not have understood that in the way I do today."<h2>The market failure</h2>Public health officials and researchers acknowledge that venture capital, if well regulated, is capable of producing innovations that could help prevent or respond to a pandemic. "I'm quite positive about this, at least in concept," says Sandro Galea, the dean of Boston University's School of Public Health. "What's made the public-private partnership for vaccines effective, frankly, is that it capitalized on the mechanisms of the private sector, but they were funded by the public purse."Sometimes it works. Moderna, maker of one of the mRNA-based vaccines against COVID, got <a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-merkley-and-jayapal-lead-colleagues-in-urging-the-biden-administration-to-review-moderna-hhs-contract-and-expand-global-covid-19-vaccine-access" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$10 billion of taxpayer money</a>. Palantir, a pedigreed Silicon Valley company that has contracted with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon, provided analytics services to the CDC throughout the pandemic. Last year, the firm got a <a href="https://fedscoop.com/cdc-palantir-common-operating-picture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$443 million contract</a> for five more years.<div type="image" title="A curving glass building, maybe 10 stories, in an office park, with a sign reading &quot;US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention&quot;" height="5464" width="8192" msid="98582731" hostid="261" sizebytes="2168476"></div>But the fact is, many old hands in public health are leery of private enterprise. They remember getting burned during the Obama years by software companies that promised to create shareable <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/va-vista-medical-records-flaw/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">electronic medical records</a> and easy healthcare signups. And they believe that public health is about more than gadgets and software. The kinds of things that earn a profit often cater to an elite clientele, while the kinds of things that improve the health of the public aren't for sale. "In political-science jargon, you have concentrated losers and distributed winners," says Thomas Frieden, who directed the CDC for almost a decade. In other words, it's a classic market failure. "That's one of the reasons we need public health in the first place," he says.Frieden recalls how, after the influenza outbreak of 2009, CDC identified a huge need to combat any respiratory pandemic: more ventilators. So the agency contracted with a company to design and build a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">new, robust ventilator</a>, cheap enough to go into rotation in hospitals nationwide."It worked," Frieden tells me. "I vividly remember, they brought it into my conference room, adjacent to my office."So if it worked a decade ago, why was there such a life-threatening shortage of ventilators in 2020? "One of the big ventilator companies buys it and kills it," Frieden says. "They didn't want it to undercut their market."That's the real risk of relying on the marketplace to protect public health. Market priorities aren't health priorities. For every well-meaning former public health official like Dean who is trying to make things better through the venture ecosystem, there are more tech types advocating nonsense like <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/hydroxychloroquine-covid-19-strange-twisted-tale/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hydroxychloroquine</a>. And Silicon Valley isn't exactly rushing to take on thorny stuff like school ventilation. While he was working on getting new ventilators, Frieden also begged the private sector to make a durable, reusable mask for healthcare workers, but no one stepped up. No market in it.As Frieden tells it, the most critical failures in the government's response to the coronavirus weren't anything that venture investments could actually help with. They were things like communication breakdowns, a creaky system for safely testing and approving new drugs, and a lack of consensus around societal priorities. Venture-funded innovations don't solve those problems. They just treat the underfunded, malfunctioning public-health system as damaged and attempt to route around it.In the end, almost every pandemic-related product created by Silicon Valley will ultimately require the government as a primary customer. Say a VC funds an innovation that costs only $1,000 a person and needs replacing only every five years. "Unless you have government procurement, it's not going to get bought," Frieden says. "That's $300 billion to cover the US. You don't have that money. The market isn't there." And if the government loses interest in funding pandemic preparedness, as it has so often in the past, VCs will lose access to the taxpayer money they're counting on to de-risk their investments.Three years after the pandemic devastated the world, we're already losing interest in preparing ourselves for the next one. Last month the vaccine maker Moderna reported a loss for 2023, and a falling demand for its shots. As emergency funding for COVID dries up, pandemic-related startups are in a race against time. In aiming to disrupt the panic-neglect cycle, venture capitalists hope to cash in on the panic. But they may find themselves unable to monetize the neglect.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/adam-rogers">Adam Rogers</a> is a senior correspondent at Insider.

The CDC’s response to COVID was a disaster. Can Silicon Valley get it right?

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Chris Licht is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-ceo-chris-licht-is-reportedly-stepping-down-puck-2023-6">leaving his position as CEO</a> of CNN after a tumultuous year in charge.</li><li>CNN's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, announced the move Wednesday morning.</li></ul>CNN is once again searching for a new top executive just over a year after <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-ceo-chris-licht-is-reportedly-stepping-down-puck-2023-6">departing CEO Chris Licht</a> took the job — and David Zaslav, CEO of CNN's parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, reportedly told CNN staffers he is taking responsibility for Licht's challenged tenure.The news of Licht's departure was earlier reported by <a href="https://puck.news/lichts-out/">Puck's Dylan Byers</a>, and confirmed by the company in a <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chris-licht-steps-down-as-chairman-and-ceo-of-cnn-worldwide-301844947.html">press release</a>. Zaslav also sent an email and spoke to employees on a morning newsroom call explaining the decision and outlining an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-amy-entelis-cnn-exec-to-take-over-from-chris-licht-2023-6">interim leadership team</a> while the company finds a new CEO.The memo, reported by <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/06/07/2023/cnn-christ-licht-steps-down">Semafor's</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/maxwelltani/status/1666433623124238337?s=20">Max Tani</a>, has Zaslav stating his respect for Licht. But of Licht's tenure not working out as planned, Zaslav says: "ultimately that's on me. I take responsibility."Licht's tenure was marked with high-profile departures from <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/don-lemon-cnn-anchor-fired-2023-4">CNN, like Don Lemon</a> and Brian Stelter. One of the defining moments of his time leading CNN was the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-ceo-looked-like-survived-wreck-trump-town-hall-report-2023-6">town hall with former president Donald Trump</a> that he championed as a move to win back center- and right-leaning viewers, but was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-removed-words-sexual-abuse-chyron-trump-town-hall-atlantic-2023-6">in reality widely criticized</a>.Last week, The Atlantic <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/cnn-ratings-chris-licht-trump/674255/">published a lengthy profile</a> about <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-cnn-epic-pr-fail-around-chris-licht-profile-2023-6">Licht and his time leading CNN</a>, and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-ceo-chris-licht-ignored-staff-party-read-bad-press-2023-6">several details</a> like a Licht <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-removed-words-sexual-abuse-chyron-trump-town-hall-atlantic-2023-6">lieutenant telling staff</a> to remove the words "sexual abuse" from a chyron ahead of the Trump town hall reportedly shocked CNN employees and people <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/media-elite-shocked-by-cnn-boss-chris-licht-profile-atlantic-2023-6">around the media industry</a>.Licht <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-ceo-chris-licht-apologizes-to-staff-atlantic-profile-2023-6">apologized to CNN staff</a> in a Monday morning newsroom meeting about some of his comments from the Atlantic story, including a variety of criticisms of the network's journalism under <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-zucker-reportedly-said-cnn-firing-felt-like-being-shot-2023-6">his predecessor Jeff Zucker.</a> Licht reportedly believed he could fix the problems created by the profile and stay in the top job, <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1666440513833017348">according to Stelter</a>. However, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-media-reporter-ceo-lost-the-room-after-atlantic-profile-2023-6">several reports in the days since</a> the profile, including from CNN's <a href="https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/1686019024829db46ad8d5bea/raw?utm_term=1686019024829db46ad8d5bea&amp;utm_source=cnn_Reliable+Sources+-+June+5%2C+2023&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;bt_ee=%2FXvcBikEq05lN7xJVTJn86wRkifzAvXE%2BMxFVXb6sX8lq%2FwMBrmj5pwg7qN871mq&amp;bt_ts=1686019024831">own media reporter</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/07/media/chris-licht-cnn/index.html?utm_source=business_ribbon">Oliver Darcy</a>, appeared to indicate that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-firing-ceo-chris-licht-media-insider-reactions-2023-6">Zaslav's confidence in Licht was wavering</a>.A Tuesday report from The <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-cnn-anchors-criticize-ceo-chris-lichts-leadership-447a4f8e">Wall Street Journal</a> said that several <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-anchors-have-voiced-concern-over-boss-chris-licht-wsj-2023-6">high-profile anchors</a> for the network, including Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper, were expressing concerns to other executives about whether Licht is able to lead the newsroom.It's unclear what Zaslav means by taking responsibility for Licht's mistakes since Licht no longer has his job and Zaslav still has his, but his comments are part of a wider trend of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-ceos-publicly-apologizing-for-mass-layoffs-at-tech-companies-2022-11">tech and media executives apologizing</a> and pledging accountability when they make tough decisions and announcements like layoffs, which <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/stripe-layoff-memo-collison-twitter-fintech-2022-11">some experts say</a> can make the news easier to deal with for employees.Read the full memo Zaslav sent to CNN staff that was reported by Tani here:Spokespeople for CNN and Warner Bros. Discovery when contacted for comment referred Insider to its Wednesday morning <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chris-licht-steps-down-as-chairman-and-ceo-of-cnn-worldwide-301844947.html">press release</a>.

'That's on me': Warner Bros Discovery CEO sends email to CNN employees taking responsibility for Chris Licht disaster

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for "The Marvels."</li><li>The sequel to 2019's "Captain Marvel" is an absolute delight led by fun, intricate fight sequences.</li></ul>Don't listen to anything negative that's been in the press about "The Marvels." Nowhere near as messy as "<a href="https://www.insider.com/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-review-kang-fun-clunky-2023-2">Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania</a>," nor as dark as "<a href="https://www.insider.com/guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-3-review-2023-4">Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3</a>," the "Captain Marvel" sequel is the most fun Marvel's been in theaters this year. Clocking in at a breezy hour and 45 minutes, "The Marvels" is an absolute delight on par with the original, delivering an encouraging reminder that not even almighty Avengers have life figured out.Four years after her Marvel Cinematic Universe entry, Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) faces off against Kree leader Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton).Though a pretty forgettable villain overall, Dar-Benn's goal is simple enough. Her home planet Hala is dying and she holds Captain Marvel responsible. As revenge, Dar-Benn seeks out resources from planets Carol values to restore life to her world with the help of a mysterious bangle.<div type="image" title="Zawe Ashton as Dar-Ben in &quot;The Marvels.&quot;" height="1716" width="4096" msid="105077786" hostid="261"></div>This should be an easy battle for one of the MCU's most powerful heroes, but there's a wrinkle. Dar-Benn's new bangle can absorb Carol's powers, making her stronger. To make matters more complicated, Carol's light-based powers become entangled with those of Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), her estranged niece who gained similar abilities in "WandaVision," and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a Captain Marvel-obsessed teen who can manipulate light.When one of the trio uses their powers, they instantly swap places, leading to fun, intricate fight sequences early on, one of which simultaneously takes place in three locations to show off the heroes' range of abilities. Call it a gimmick, but the body-swap dilemma offers a fresh approach to the countless VFX-laden scenes that have grown tired now that we're 30-plus MCU movies deep. <h2>'The Marvels' brings a light, fun vibe to the MCU</h2><div type="image" title="Flerkittens in space in &quot;The Marvels.&quot;" height="1716" width="4096" msid="105077787" hostid="261"></div>Though the fate of the universe is at stake, "The Marvels" keeps things lighthearted throughout by using animation in a quirky opening and adding an over-the-top musical sequence midway through, complete with a stunning costume change for Carol. Elsewhere, Carol, Monica, and Kamala master coordinating their powers in a wholesome training sequence set to the Beastie Boys' "Intergalactic."One of the movie's best sequences involves kitten-like aliens called Flerken who dramatically run loose in a space station set to the tune of "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdBVJbzkoqo">Memory</a>" from the musical "Cats."Even the usually stern Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) softens here, cracking a few smiles. While Jackson isn't given much to do in "The Marvels" besides offer a few words of encouragement to our three heroes or act as comic relief, he seems mostly content playing cat dad between barking orders at a space crew.<h2>Iman Vellani is a star, giving hope for the MCU's future</h2><div type="image" title="Brie Larson and Iman Vellani in &quot;The Marvels.&quot;" height="2000" width="3000" msid="105077788" hostid="261"></div>No one's having more fun in this movie than Kamala Khan.Vellani kills it as a teenage superhero marveling over her idol. It's tough to tell where the fangirling stops and her acting begins. Her incredibly honest performance captures what it's like to eagerly tag along on a universe-saving adventure with someone you admire, bringing to mind a young Tom Holland as Spider-Man teaming up with Iron Man many moons ago. The effortlessly relatable Kamala and her overprotective, overbearing family steal every scene as they get swept up in the intergalactic adventure, providing hearty laugh after laugh. Those who didn't tune into Disney+'s "Ms. Marvel" series before may be compelled to seek it out now.Kamala is so central to the sequel, both opening and closing it, that "The Marvels" easily could've been a Kamala Khan vehicle instead. The movie convincingly passes the baton to Ms. Marvel to take over as a new leader.If this is the direction Marvel is heading, then maybe there's a glimmer of hope for the MCU's future.<h2>'The Marvels' is not perfect, but it is thoroughly enjoyable with a worthwhile lesson</h2><div type="image" title="Brie Larson as Captain Marvel in &quot;The Marvels.&quot;" height="2000" width="3000" msid="105077790" hostid="261"></div>Not everything makes sense in "The Marvels." The power switcheroo seems to work randomly sometimes when it's best for the story. Some characters who seem important early on are never seen again. There's no real sense of when this film even takes place in the MCU.But let the little things go and it's an enjoyable, if pretty standard, standalone superhero romp. For those invested in larger MCU world-building, the studio doesn't try to connect this entry with any recent movie, conveniently ignoring anything <a href="https://www.insider.com/jonathan-majors-domestic-assault-case-controversies-timeline-2023-10">Jonathan Majors-related</a>. Instead, it sets up other future franchises <a href="https://www.insider.com/marvel-movie-show-releases-need-feel-special-again-2023-3">of which Marvel already has too many</a>.And while it's frustrating Marvel spoiled a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwmDH12MAA4">minor cameo in its final trailer</a>, there's at least one big surprise in the sequel that's well worth the price of admission. Director Nia DaCosta was tasked with weaving heroes from three very different Marvel properties together and she navigated the challenge thoughtfully, using Kamala's light and optimistic presence to ease the awkward tension between Monica and Carol and help the trio heal and grow. Monica sees herself in Kamala, a young woman who thinks the world of Carol. In Kamala, Carol sees a second chance at getting to be the mentor that she wasn't able to be to her niece. By putting them all together, the sequel teaches Carol, typically a lone wolf, how to work within a team and that reaching her full potential doesn't mean going it alone. Regardless of any hiccups, "The Marvels" satisfyingly gets its larger message across, that women should lean on each other, and know they're higher, further, faster — and stronger — together. "The Marvels" hits theaters on Friday.<h2>Grade: B</h2>

You Searched For "disaster response team" and got 4 results

Biden's high-stakes NATO speech wasn't a disaster. But it's not going to change anyone's mind.

Brent D. Griffiths,Kelsey Vla…

The CDC’s response to COVID was a disaster. Can Silicon Valley get it right?

Adam Rogers

'That's on me': Warner Bros Discovery CEO sends email to CNN employees taking responsibility for Chris Licht disaster

Aaron McDade

The 'Captain Marvel' sequel is not the disaster the internet made it out to be

Kirsten Acuna

Popular Keywords

Buying Guides