Raphael Stevens

Quarantine-free travel between Singapore and South Korea will start from Nov. 15 for vaccinated travelers, Singapore’s ministry of transport announced in a press release Friday.
The two countries agreed to launch a so-called “vaccinated travel lane,” which allows vaccinated travelers to enter Singapore from South Korea, and vice versa without serving quarantines— as long as they test negative for Covid-19.

Korean Air Lines Co. aircraft sit on the tarmac at Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2020.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images

SINGAPORE — Quarantine-free travel between Singapore and South Korea will start from Nov. 15 for vaccinated travelers, the city-state’s transport ministry announced Friday.
The two countries agreed to launch a so-called “vaccinated travel lane,” which allows vaccinated travelers to enter Singapore from South Korea, and vice versa without serving quarantines. Instead, travelers will have to take Covid-19 tests to ensure they are not infected with the virus.

It is the “first of its kind between two major aviation hubs in Asia,” the press release said.
Transport Minister S Iswaran said the travel arrangement reopens general travel between Singapore and South Korea after some 20 months of disruption.
“This is another milestone as we re-open Singapore’s borders, and resume air travel in a careful and calibrated manner,” Iswaran said.
As part of the agreement, travelers will have to fly between Singapore’s Changi Airport and South Korea’s Incheon International Airport. More details will be announced soon, the transport ministry said.
In September, Singapore started similar arrangements with Brunei and Germany, allowing conditional travel for inoculated visitors from both countries, and establishing the country’s first vaccinated travel lanes.

Singapore is also in talks with the U.S. about a possible travel lane between the two countries, Gan Kim Yong, Singapore’s minister for trade and industry, said at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event in Washington DC on Thursday.
“We are now working on a VTL with the U.S. as soon as possible, and certainly before the end of the year,” he said, according to prepared remarks.

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The WHO signed off on wider use of GSK’s RTS,S malaria vaccine following pilot programs in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, which tracked 800,000 children since 2019.
Colin Sutherland, professor of parasitology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told CNBC Thursday that continued government funding would ensure further progress in the field.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during a news conference after a ceremony for the opening of the WHO Academy, in Lyon, France, September 27, 2021.
Denis Balibouse | Reuters

Policymakers and health experts have welcomed the WHO’s authorization of the first ever malaria vaccine, which could be rolled out in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of 2022.
The WHO signed off on wider use of GSK’s RTS,S malaria vaccine following pilot programs in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, which tracked 800,000 children since 2019.

GSK Chief Global Health Officer Thomas Breuer said the vaccine, which began development in 1987, can “reinvigorate the fight against malaria in the region at a time when progress on malaria control has stalled.”
Meanwhile WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the approval a “historic moment” and said it “changes the course of public health history.
U.K. Health Secretary Sajid Javid called the approval an “excellent result for the public health of the continent and for British science.”
The vaccine, although the first ever to gain approval, is still only 30% effective, requires four doses and fades within months.
However, scientists are hopeful that its approval marks a watershed moment for efforts to tackle the malaria burden in sub-Saharan Africa. The region accounts for a majority of the world’s 400,000 malaria deaths each year.

Colin Sutherland, professor of parasitology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told CNBC Thursday that children from low-income families in high transmission areas would ordinarily have several bouts of malaria every rainy season, or even throughout the year.
“The public health impact is therefore not only severe illness and even death in a relatively small proportion, but chronic or repeated infections leading to anemia, fatigue, poor school attendance, reduced learning opportunity and also impaired cognition,” Sutherland said.
“In that context, a vaccine that offers three to six months of protection at 30% can have some very welcome public health benefits.”

A health worker vaccinates a child against malaria in Ndhiwa, Homabay County, western Kenya on September 13, 2019 during the launch of malaria vaccine in Kenya.
Brian Ongoro | AFP | Getty Images

Sutherland suggested that the breakthrough could contribute to more rapid progress in the battle against malaria, providing that resources continue to be devoted to management, prevention and control alongside vaccine development.
New data showed that RTS,S, when combined with seasonal antimalarial medication, reduced clinical episodes, hospitalization and death by around 70%.
Sutherland also said the long-term prospects of future malaria vaccines deploying the same RNA-based technology present in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines are “excellent,” and have opened up a “very exciting pathway” in vaccine research.
“Pharma needs strong partnerships and incentivisation to work in tropical disease drug and vaccine development. In fact, malaria vaccine success (and indeed Covid vaccine success) has not come just from private enterprise working alone, but from a complex ecosystem of co-operation and innovative funding mechanisms involving academia, pharma, international charities and substantial amounts of direct government funding (from the UK, EU, USA and other countries),” he highlighted.
“Therefore it is imperative that government funding is maintained, particularly in global health where profits are low.”

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Tesla officially moved its headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Austin, Texas CEO Elon Musk announced at the company’s 2021 annual shareholder meeting.
In April 2020, on a Tesla earnings call, Musk lashed out at California government officials calling their temporary Covid-related health orders “fascist” in an expletive-laced rant.
In 2020, Musk personally relocated to the Austin area from Los Angeles where he had lived for two decades.

Tesla is moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, CEO Elon Musk announced at the company’s shareholder meeting on Thursday.
The meeting took place at Tesla’s vehicle assembly plant under construction outside of Austin on a property that borders the Colorado River, near the city’s airport. 

However, the company plans to increase production in its California plant regardless of the headquarters move.
“To be clear we will be continuing to expand our activities in California,” Musk said. “Our intention is to increase output from Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50%. If you go to our Fremont factory it’s jammed.”
But, he added, “It’s tough for people to afford houses, and people have to come in from far away….There’s a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area.”

Regarding the plant underway in Austin, he noted that it would take some time to reach full production even after it’s completed.
It takes Tesla less time to build a factory than to reach high-volume production, Musk said. For example, Tesla’s Shanghai plant was built in 11 months, but took a year to reach high-volume production. He expects Tesla’s new plant near Austin will follow Shanghai’s example.

Musk’s growing dissatisfaction with California has been apparent for some time. In April 2020, on a Tesla earnings call, Musk lashed out at California government officials calling their temporary Covid-related health orders “fascist” in an expletive-laced rant.
Later, Musk personally relocated to the Austin area from Los Angeles, where he had lived for two decades.

Doing so enabled Musk, who is also CEO of aerospace company SpaceX, to reduce his personal tax burden and be closer to a SpaceX launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.
Tesla’s board granted Musk an executive compensation package that can earn him massive stock awards based on the automaker’s market cap increases and some other financial targets. If he sells options set to expire in 2021, he could generate proceeds of more than $20 billion this year, according to InsiderScore.
California levies some of the highest personal income taxes in the country on its wealthy residents, but Texas has no personal income tax.
Tesla is not the first company to move its headquarters out of California to Texas. Oracle and Hewlett Packard are among the tech giants who decided to make that move last year, for example.
Texas has been actively recruiting companies via its Texas Economic Development Act offering tax breaks to put new facilities in the state. Austin, with a top tech university and cultural events like South by Southwest, is a draw for tech employers.

Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro

Making such a move is not particularly burdensome, explained business attorney Domenic Romano, managing partner of Romano Law in New York City. A Delaware business that has operated as a “foreign” corporation with headquarters in California, like Tesla has, could relocate its domicile by establishing a facility in a new state, hiring there and relocating key employees.
They would not have to shut down operations in other states, although they typically do pare them back.
“From a legal perspective, there’s less of a regulatory burden in Texas,” Romano said. “It’s a more business- and employer-friendly state in many ways. You have to jump through far fewer hoops in Texas or Florida as an employer than you do in California in terms of reporting requirements and more.”
Tesla has not been happy with one set of regulations in Texas at least. The state bans direct sales of cars. Instead, car companies sell their vehicles through independent, franchised dealerships there. In other states where similar laws apply Tesla has fought to change the rules or exploited some loopholes, for example, by setting up their own store and service center on tribal lands in New Mexico.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the Tesla CEO supported his state’s “social policies” as well. However, Elon Musk declined to weigh in on Texas’ restrictive new abortion law after Abbott made that claim.
“In general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness,” Musk wrote on Twitter at that time. “That said, I would prefer to stay out of politics,” said Musk.
Tesla has generally garnered a huge amount of support from the state of California since it was founded there in 2003. It has enjoyed grant funding, tax breaks, incentives and favorable policies from the likes of the California Air Resources Board, California Energy Commission and California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority, among others.
Clarification: This report has been updated to clarify how long it takes Tesla to build a factory versus how long it takes to reach high-volume production.

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At the Tesla shareholders’ meeting on Thursday, CEO Elon Musk said the three paths to sustainabiity are solar and wind power, batteries for energy storage, and electric vehicles of every kind.
He also endorsed a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. “So how about a carbon tax? We just really need it.”
Musk also gave some updates on the company’s factory underway in Austin, Texas.

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and chief executive officer of Tesla, waves while arriving to a discussion at the Satellite 2020 Conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday, March 9, 2020.
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk once again endorsed the idea of a federal carbon tax at the company’s 2021 annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.
He said the three parts of a “sustainable future,” in his view, are solar and wind power, batteries for energy storage, and electric vehicles of every kind including cars, boats and airplanes.

“As we move to a sustainable energy grid and electric vehicles, then obviously we move to a fully sustainable energy economy which is where we want to get to as quickly as possible. The sooner the better! And can there be a carbon tax? I mean like, what the hell,” Musk said Thursday, expressing impatience.

A carbon tax, or tax on greenhouse gas emissions, has long been proposed as a way to reduce the emission of gases that cause climate change, particularly carbon dioxide. Some advocates believe that a carbon tax should increase over time to give industry time to discover and roll out lower-carbon alternatives to the products and processes they use that do emit CO2.
More than 40 governments have adopted some sort of price on carbon, according to the New York Times, but the United States has not.
A carbon tax would help Tesla by making gas more expensive, which would make its electric vehicles more attractive, and by increasing energy prices, which could encourage homeowners to adopt solar panels from Tesla and other providers. Musk acknowledged as much, but noted it would hurt his re-usable rocket business, SpaceX, a considerable consumer of fossil fuels that plans to drill for natural gas and to use methane in its rocket operations in Boca Chica.
“So how about a carbon tax? We just really need it,” he said.

Musk also strongly endorsed the idea of getting more materials out of spent batteries through improved recycling technology and processes.
“Battery materials are definitely recyclable. Burning gas is not. CO2 is an extremely stable molecule. Mars’ atmosphere has been primarily CO2 for I don’t know billions of years. It’s extremely stable. So, sometimes people worry about methane. Do not worry too much about methane. Methane quickly breaks down into CO2. Methane is not a stable molecule. CO2 is extremely stable,” Musk urged his audience, as if seeking to justify SpaceX’s use of methane.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.” Methane is also the second most abundant greenhouse gas emitted through human activity and industry, second after carbon dioxide. It accounts for about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Austin updates

At the annual shareholder meeting, Musk also spoke about Tesla’s aim to build cars closer to where customers order them. Doing so can save the company shipping costs, but also reduce its environmental footprint from shipping, Musk suggested.
“The sheer amount of money we’re spending on flying parts around the world is not great,” Musk said. “It makes sense to have production on the continent where the consumers are.”
Currently, Tesla has a new factory underway near Austin, Texas, which is expected to produce batteries on-site, and another outside of Berlin, Germany.
On Thursday, Tesla also confirmed that it has moved its headquarters to Austin.
Musk expects the Texas factory, dubbed Giga-Austin, to follow in the footsteps of Tesla’s Shanghai factory, which now produces more electric cars than are made in its original factory in Fremont, California.
At least year’s annual shareholder meeting, Musk proclaimed that battery and manufacturing advances Tesla is working on could soon lead to lower priced cars from the company. “About 3 years from now, we’re confident we can make a very compelling $25,000 electric vehicle that’s also fully autonomous,” he said then. Tesla also said last year that it designed and was producing its own 4680 battery cells at a facility in Fremont, California.
On Thursday, Musk did not give an update on timing for a $25,000 electric vehicle.
But he did say that Tesla would not be producing 4680 battery cells in Texas this year. Instead, it would produce these cells at its pilot facility in Fremont, and ship them to Texas to as Model Y production ramps up there.
Long-term Musk said he believes the crossover utility vehicle is likely to become Tesla’s best-seller, surpassing the Model 3 sedan in popularity.
Earlier this month, Tesla said it delivered 241,300 electric vehicles during the third quarter of 2021, and produced 237,823 cars in the same period.
Deliveries are the closest approximation to sales reported by Tesla. The company achieved a new record as other automakers’ deliveries declined compared to the same time last year, owing largely to supply chain issues including a global chip shortage.
Musk doesn’t see global supply chain issues resolving fully until 2023, he said Thursday.

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